A PHOENIX PAPERBACK
This edition first published In Great Britain by
Phoenix Paperbacks In 1999
Selection, introduction and other critical apparatus
© Phoenix Paperbacks 1999
The Humbug appears courtesy of the translator, Edward Baxter
© Edward Baxter 1990
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a collaborative ebook
Contents
Recollections of Childhood and Youth
1 2 3 4 5 6
The First Ships of the Mexican Navy
1-From the Island of Guajan to Acapulco
2-From Acapulco to Cigualan
3-From Cigualan to Tasco
4- From Tasco to Cuemavaca
5-From Cuernavaca to Popocatepetl
1-A Winter Night
2-The Pride of Science
3-A Strange Visit
4-The Church of Saint Pierre
5-The Hour of Death
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 2 3 4
Prelude
Rosario, May 24th, 2...
During the night
May 25th
On board the Virginia, June 4th
On land – January or February
At death’s door
Post-script
Note on the Author and Editor
JULES VERNE was born on 8 February 1828 at Nantes, where his father was a lawyer. When Verne left school in 1844 he too was to be a lawyer like his father, but he had already begun to write poems and plays.
Sent to Paris to finish his law studies, he was one of the generation affected by the revolution of 1848. Abandoning law he became secretary to a theatre in Paris.
In 1851 he began publishing his first stories, and in 1857 he married a widow with two daughters, by whom he had a son Michel (born in 1861). To support his family he became a stockbroker.
In 1863 he published a new kind of novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, the first in the series to be called ‘The Extraordinary Journeys’, which was an immediate success. Verne abandoned the stock exchange, and developed into one of the most significant of nineteenth-century authors, with a world-wide reputation and influence. Aside from his writing, music and sailing were his great passions.
His last years were clouded by illness and loss. He died on 24 March 1905 at Amiens, where he had lived since his marriage, and where he is buried.
PETER COSTELLO, a writer and literary historian based in Dublin, is the author of a biography of Jules Verne, among other literary and historical studies.
Introduction
Jules Verne is often called ‘the father of science fiction’, but he wrote many kinds of novels: stories of adventure, political satires, and social comedies. These aspects of his output are reflected in the short stories which he wrote from time to time over the six decades of his career.
When he died in 1905 he was one of the most popular writers in the world, and he has remained so, with new editions of his novels every year in many languages. But it is usually the earlier and better known novels, such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in 80 Days, that are read. Large areas of Verne’s output, whole fictional continents, are unexplored territory to readers outside France. Verne’s tales have fallen victim to this Anglo-Saxon neglect.
The first piece in this selection, his own account of his childhood and its influence on his career, was intended by Verne himself to be included in a collection of his short stories which was planned at the time of his death. But it never was, and this is its first publication in its integral form in English. It makes an essential entree to his fictional world.
Verne’s first published stories were in a family magazine, for which he wrote not only the stories about the origins of the Mexican navy and a balloon flight with a madman included here, but also a short novel, Martin Paz, set in Peru, which announced Verne’s sympathies with the oppressed at a very early date in his career. There he also published ‘Master Zacharius’, a story influenced by the tales of German fantasist E.T.A. Hoffmann, a writer he invokes by name in this haunting parable of a pact with the demon of time. Another important influence on Verne from a literary point of view was the American Edgar Allan Poe, of whom he was one of the first admirers in France.
Verne relished Hoffmann’s and Poe’s tales of the fantastic and strange. But he was also fascinated by travel, geography and history. These were all-important elements in all his novels, but they are especially strong in his tales.
With the publication of his first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, in 1863, Verne had started on the first of a long series which was to be called ‘The Extraordinary Journeys’. Though today his named is linked with the rise of science fiction, it was the romance of travel and adventure that first established him, rather than revelations of the future. His first love was always geography, a more prominent science in the nineteenth century than it is today.
Yet even when he became an established novelist, Verne still found time for shorter pieces, though the actual dates of composition are known only approximately in some cases. ‘The Humbug’, though his son Michel dated it from 1863, seems from internal evidence to have been written no earlier than 1869, two years after Verne himself had travelled to America on the Great Eastern, and made a trip up the Hudson, along the route in the story. Verne was astonished by the new country and the style of its citizens. This story of American enterprise owed much to the legendary figure of P.T. Barnum, but also the notorious Dr Albert C. Koch, who had displayed a fake fossil sea-serpent in the 1840s, and the celebrated ‘American Goliath’, the so-called Cardiff Giant, which caused a sensation in 1869-70. So soon after the appearance of Darwin’s theory of how evolution worked, geology was a radical, even dangerous science in some eyes, and fossils dangerous symbols of change, a challenge to established belief systems.
With ‘Dr Ox’s Experiment’ in 1872 Verne returned to the vein of satiric fantasy, drawing on certain ideas of contemporary physiologists about the effects of oxygen. But the theme of whether personality is innate or due to social influences, and the dangers inherent in some kinds of scientific research, while made with comic verve, were nevertheless seriously intended. Again Verne was commenting on a psycho-social debate that still continues.
The rest of the stories selected for this volume developed this theme of science and change. ‘An Ideal City’ was read to a local audience in Amiens, and is a vision of that town (of which he was an elected councillor on the Radical ticket) in the year 2000.
‘Dr Trifulgas’, a fantastic tale of the grotesque, was again an elaboration of the Hoffmann or Poe themes. Along with ‘Master Zacharius’ it is my favourite in this collection. ‘Gil Braltar’, another fantastic tale, inspired it seems by Verne’s visit on his yacht to Gibraltar in 1884, satirises Verne’s dislike of British (though not French) imperialism. It was left untranslated for eighty years, as it did not fit into Anglo-Saxon conceptions of Verne.
‘An Express of the Future’ is a comic piece suggested by a contemporary idea of a tunnel under the Atlantic, an engineer’s dream typical of the nineteenth century. It is unclear what part his son Michel played in writing this story, which lifted some notions of the future from a novel by a contemporary French writer named Robida, as well as the strange schemes of the American, Colonel Pierce, whom Verne may have met on a trip to Paris.
‘In the Twenty-Ninth Century’, though it may have been suggested by conversations with Jules Verne, was written in English by his son Michel though published under Verne’s own name (as contemporary correspondence reveals). Verne’s own English was poor. But the notions in the story cannot be said to have been Michel’s alone. Some come again from Robida, for instance, and the speculations of contemporary scientists, material Verne drew on for all his books. However the French version, from which the translation here has been made, was revised by Verne himself.
Michel’s role in the novels and stories of his father’s last years has become a vexed one for some critics. In 1910 Michel edited ‘The Humbug’ for publication in a collection of stories entitled Yesterday and Tomorrow, doing no more than authors and their publishers have always done. Jules Verne was not a writer whose first draft was the last. He often needed up to eight sets of printed proofs to get the story right. The manuscripts were mere drafts of a final idea he was striving for. When he became ill and blind towards the end of his life, his son arranged for a typist to take his dictation. To work at all, Verne needed their co-operation.
When Verne died in 1905 several manuscripts remained unpublished, and these were publicly listed by Michel. In bringing them before the world, however, he took some editorial decisions that have earned him the opprobrium of censorship and of passing off his own work as his father’s. But Michel Verne never saw himself as an author in his own right. He merely wished to do what his father, or his publisher, would have done: present the stories as well as possible to the public. The texts were secondary to this.
The books as published (as his grandson and biographer Jean Jules-Verne emphasised when this controversy arose in recent years) were as Jules Verne would have intended them to be. His father had done no more than carry out the revision which his grandfather would have wanted.
Thus ‘The Eternal Adam’ is based on a draft entitled ‘Edom’ by Jules Verne; the elaborations have been seen as a distortion of Jules Verne’s views, especially his political views. But Verne had been a radical with anarchist sympathies since 1848, and this bleak piece of science fiction remains true to his intentions. Even if the final words in which they are expressed passed through his son’s hand, the vision was Verne’s own.
Verne remains one of the world’s most widely read authors, rivalling the Bible, Mao, and Lenin in this respect. He continues to surprise us, as the recent appearance of his unpublished novel Paris in the XXth Century, written in 1863 and about which there are no editorial doubts, shows. Its theme of an isolated artist in a society of the future links it thematically with these stories of Verne’s last years, completing the circle of his life’s work. We can only speculate on the direction Verne’s work might have taken if it had been published as his first novel, instead of Five Weeks in a Balloon. Be that as it may, Verne’s influence on the development of science fiction was immense, but his own work is charming and unique, as the stories in this volume will show.
PETER COSTELLO
Recollections of Childhood and Youth
1
Reminiscences of childhood and youth? You are well advised in asking them of men of my years. The things seen or done by us in childhood are more deeply impressed upon our memory than are those of maturer age.
When one has passed beyond the number of years usually allotted to man, the mind takes pleasure in reverting to early days. The images it evokes are of those that never fade. Like indelible photographs, time only serves to bring them out into clearer relief.
Thus is justified that deep saying of a French writer, ‘Memory is far-sighted.’ It lengthens as it grows older, like a telescope when the barrel is drawn out, and discovers the most distant features of the past.
But are such reminiscences likely to be interesting? I cannot say. At any rate, perhaps the young readers of The Youth’s Companion may be curious to learn how the calling of a writer, which I still follow, although more than sixty years of age, first suggested itself to me.
So, at the request of the editor of that paper, I extend the telescope of my memory, turn round and look back.
2
In the first place, have I always had a taste for stories wherein the imagination gives itself free scope? Yes, doubtless, and my family have always held arts and letters in honour; whence I conclude that inheritance accounts in a large measure for my instincts.
Then again, there is this further reason that I was born at Nantes, where I spent nearly the whole of my childhood. The son of a father who was half a Parisian, and of a mother who was quite a Bretonne, I lived in the maritime bustle of a big commercial city which is the starting-point and goal of many long voyages.
I still see the river Loire, whose numerous arms are connected by a league of bridges, its quays encumbered by freight in the shadow of huge elms, along which did not then run the double railway track and the tramway lines.
Ships two or three rows deep line the wharves. Others sail up or down the stream. No steamboats were to be seen in those days, or, at least, very few of them. But there were many of those sailing-vessels, the type of which Americans were shrewd enough to retain and improve into clippers and three-masted schooners.
In those days the only kind of sailing-vessels we had were the lubberly merchantmen. What memories they recall! In fancy I climbed their shrouds, triced their maintops, and clung to their skyrakers. How I longed to cross the swaying plank that connected them with the quay, and set foot on their deck!
But, childishly timid as I was, I did not dare. Timid? Aye, I was indeed; and yet I had already seen one revolution, the overthrow of a regime and a new royalty founded, although I was only two years old; and I still hear the rattle of the musketry of 1830 in the streets of the town where, as in Paris, the people fought against the royal troops.
One day, however, I did venture to scale the netting of a three-master, while its watchman caroused in a neighbouring wine shop.
I was soon on deck. My hand caught hold of a halyard that slid in its block. What joy was in me! The hatches were open, and I leaned over their sides. The strong odours that came from the hold went to my head: odours in which the pungent smell of tar mixes with the perfume of spices.
I rose, went back towards the poop and entered. The interior was filled with those marine scents which give to it an atmosphere like that of the ocean.
Yonder appear the cabins with their creaking partitions, where I should have wished to live for months, and those bunks, so hard and narrow, wherein I should have liked to sleep whole nights. Then there was the room occupied by the captain, a much more important personage in my opinion than any king’s minister or lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
I came out, mounted the poop, and there actually made so bold as to turn the wheel a quarter round! I fancied the vessel was about to leave its moorings; that its hawsers had been cast off.That its masts were crowded with sail, and that I, an eight-year-old helmsman, was about to steer it out to sea!
The sea! Well, neither my brother, who became a sailor a few years later, nor I had yet seen it.
In summer all our family kept within the bounds of a large country place not far from the banks of the Loire, in the midst of vineyards, meadows and marshes.
It was the residence of an old uncle, formerly a ship-owner. He had been to Caracas and to Porto Bello. We used to call him ‘Uncle Prudent’, and it was in remembrance of him that I gave the name to one of my personages in Robur the Conqueror. But Caracas was in America – a country which fascinated me already.
Not being able to sail the sea, my brother and I drifted about the open fields and threaded the woods together. Not having any masts to climb, we spent whole days at the tops of the trees. He was the greater fellow who made his nest the higher in them. We chatted, read, or projected voyages, while the branches swayed by the breeze, gave us the illusion of the pitching and rolling on board ship. Ah, those delicious leisure hours!
3
At that time people travelled little or not at all. Oil street-lamps, breeches, the National Guard and the flint and tinder-box were then quite the fashion. Yes, I have witnessed the genesis of phosphoric matches, detached collars, cuffs, letter paper, postage stamps, pantaloons, the overcoat, the opera hat. women’s boots, the metric system, the steamboats of the Loire, which are said to be ‘inexplosive’ because they blow up a little less often than the rest, the buses, railways, tramways, gas, electricity, the telegraph, the telephone, and the phonograph.
I belong to that generation which is comprised between those two geniuses, Stephenson and Edison. And I now witness those astonishing discoveries, at the head of which marches America, with its movable hotels, its sandwich-making machines, its movable pavement, its newspapers printed with chocolate ink, upon stiff, thin sheets of pastry, which are read first and eaten afterward!
I was not ten years old when my father bought a small place at the extremity of the town, at Chantenay -a pretty name that! It was situated on a hill which overlooks the right bank of the Loire. From my little room I could see the river winding over an extent of two or three leagues, between the meadows which it flooded when the waters overflowed in winter time. In summer, it is true, the water would be low, and from the river bed there rose strips of lovely yellow sand, an archipelago of constantly changing islets.
Ah, the Loire! If it cannot be compared with the Hudson, the Mississippi, or the St Lawrence, it is none the less one of the finest rivers of France. It would no doubt be looked upon as a small stream in America; but then, America is not simply a ‘country’, – it is a whole continent.
Nevertheless, at sight of so many passing ships, I felt an eager leaning toward the sea. I was well versed in the seaman’s language, and understood naval manoeuvres sufficiently to follow them out in the maritime novels of Fenimore Cooper, whom I never tired of reading, and still read with admiration. Looking through a little telescope, I saw the ships, ready to tack about, hoist their jibs and gather in their sails, shifting first abaft, then at the bows. But my brother and I had still not sampled sailing on a stream ... that came later.
4
At the farther end of the port there was a man who kept boats to let, at twenty cents for the day. This was a heavy sum for our purses. It was also imprudent to embark in the man’s boats, for they leaked sadly.
The first one we took had but a single mast, but the second had two, and the third had three, like the coasting luggers and fishing-smacks. We went out with the ebb-tide, luffing against the west wind.
What a schooling was ours! The blunders we made in steering and in working the sails, the sheets let out at the wrong moment, and the shame of tacking with a back wind, when the waves ran high in the broad basin of the Loire, in front of our Chantenay!
Generally we went out with the ebb and came back with the flow, a few hours later. And, as our clumsy hired craft sailed heavily along between the banks, what a look of envy we cast on the pretty pleasure yachts that went lightly scudding over the bosom of the river!
One day I happened to be alone in a sorry yawl, which had no keel. I was some two leagues beyond Chantenay, when one of the planks was stove in, and the water came into the boat. There was no stopping the hole. The yawl went down head-foremost, and I had just time to save myself by swimming to an islet all covered with a thick growth of reeds, the tufted tops of which were swayed by the wind.
Now, of all the books I had read in my childhood, the one I liked best was The Swiss Family Robinson; I preferred it to Robinson Crusoe. I know that Daniel Defoe’s work is broader in its philosophical scope. It is man given up to himself alone, who one day discovers a footprint on the sand. But the work of Wyss, in rich facts and incidents, is perhaps more interesting to a youthful mind. It had the family, the father, the mother, the children in all their diverse aptitudes. How many years I passed on that island! With what enthusiasm I followed their discoveries! How I envied their lot! So it doesn’t surprise me that I was to be irresistibly drawn to create The Mysterious Island, ‘the Robinsons of science’, and in Two Years Holiday a whole boarding school of Robinson Crusoes!
Meanwhile, I was enacting, on my little island, not the part of Wyss’s hero, but that of Defoe’s. I was already meditating the construction of a log-hut, the manufacture of a fishing-line with a reed, and of fish-hooks with thorns, and of obtaining fire as the savages do, by rubbing one dry stick against another.
Signals? I should decline to make any, for they would be answered too soon, and I should be saved quicker than I wished to be.
The first thing was to appease my hunger. But how? My provisions had gone down with the wreck. Go hunting birds? I had neither dog nor gun. Well, what about shellfish? There were none.
Now, at last. I was made acquainted with all the agony of being shipwrecked on a desert island, and with horrors of privation such as the Selkirks and other personages mentioned in the ‘Celebrated Shipwrecks’ had experienced – men who were not imaginary Robinsons! My stomach cried with hunger.
The thing lasted only a few hours, for, as soon as it was low tide, I had merely to wade ankle-deep through the water to reach what I called the mainland, namely, the right bank of the Loire.
I quietly came back home, where I had to put up with the family dinner instead of the Crusoe repast I had dreamed of – raw shellfish, a slice of peccary, and bread made from the flour of manioc!
Such was this lively bit of navigation, with its head-winds, its foundering and disabled vessel – everything in fact that a shipwrecked mariner of my age could desire.
I have sometimes heard the reproach that my books excite young boys to quit their homes for adventurous travel. This, I am sure, has never been the case. But if boys should be brought to launch out into such enterprises, let them take example from the heroes of my Extraordinary Voyages, and they are sure to come safe into harbour again.
5
At twelve years of age I had not yet set eyes on the sea. Except in thought, I had not hitherto set foot on the many sardine-boats, fishing-smacks, brigs, schooners, three-masters, or even steamboats – they were then styled pyroscaphes – which sailed towards the mouth of the Loire.
One day, however, my brother and I got permission to take passage on board Pyroscaphe No. Two. What joy was ours! It was enough to make us lose our wits.
Soon we were on our way. We passed Indret, the huge State establishment, all feathered in dark wreaths of smoke. We left behind the landing-places on either bank. – Coueron, Le Pellerin, Paimboeuf. Our pyroscaphe crossed obliquely the broad estuary of the river.
We reached St Nazaire, with its incipient pier, its old church and slate-covered, slanting steeple, and the few houses or ramshackle tenements, which at that time made up the village that has so rapidly increased into a large town.
To rush off the boat and dash down the seaweed-coated rocks, in order to take up some of the sea-water in the hollow of our hands and convey it to our lips, was for my brother and myself our first impulse.
‘But it isn’t salty!’ said I, turning pale.
‘Not a bit!’ responded my brother.
‘We have been hoaxed!’ I exclaimed, in a tone which betrayed the liveliest disappointment.
Noodles that we were! It was low tide, and we had simply scooped up from the hollow of a rock some of the water of the Loire.
As the tide came in, however, we found it briny beyond our best hopes.
6
At last I had set eyes on the sea, or at least on the vast bay which opens on the ocean between the extreme points of the river.
I have since scudded over the Bay of Biscay, the Baltic, the North Sea and the Mediterranean.
With a smaller boat first, then with a sloop-yacht, and with a steam-yacht afterwards, I have been able to make some fine coasting pleasure-trips. I have even crossed the Atlantic on board the Great Eastern, and set foot on American soil, where – I am ashamed to have to confess it – I stayed only eight days.
What could I do? I had a ticket to go and come which was only good for a week!
After all, I saw New York, stopped at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, crossed East River before Brooklyn Bridge was built, sailed up the Hudson as far as Albany, visited Buffalo and Lake Erie, gazed on the Falls of Niagara from the top of the Terrapin Tower, while a lunar rainbow could be seen through the vapours of the mighty cataract, and finally, on the other side of the Suspension Bridge, sat down on the Canadian shore.
After which, I started back home. And one of my deepest regrets is to think that I shall never again see America – a country which I love, and which every Frenchman may love as a sister of France.
But these are no longer the reminiscences of childhood and youth; they are those of maturer years. My young readers are now made acquainted with the instincts and circumstances that led me to write a series of geographical novels. I was living in Paris, then, in the company of musicians, among whom I retain some good friends still, and was very little with my literary colleagues whom I knew little of.
However, I have made several voyages in the west, north and south of Europe – voyages, of course, much less extraordinary than those described in my stories, and I have now withdrawn into the provinces to terminate my task. That task is to paint the whole earth, the entire world, in novel-form, by imagining adventures peculiar to each people, and by creating personages specially belonging to the regions in which they act.
But the world is very big, and life very short. To leave behind a complete work, one should live a hundred years.
Well, I shall try to be a centenarian, like M. Chevreul. But, between you and me, it is very difficult.
The First Ships of the Mexican Navy
1- From the Island of Guajan to Acapulco
On 18th October, 1825, the Asia, a high-built Spanish ship, and the Constanzia, a brig of eight guns, cast anchor off the isle of Guajan, one of the Mariannas. The crews of these vessels, badly fed, ill-paid, and harassed with fatigue during their six months voyage from Spain, had been secretly plotting a mutiny. Their insubordinate spirit was more especially shown on the Constanzia commanded by Captain Don Orteva, a man of iron will whom nothing could bend. The brig’s progress had been impeded by a number of serious accidents, so unexpected that it was clear they were due to deliberate malice. The Asia, commanded by Don Roque of Guzarte, had had to put into port at the same time. One night the compass had been smashed, nobody knew how: on another the foremast shrouds gave way as if they had been cut through, and the mast with all its sails and rigging fell over the side. Finally, during some important manoeuvres, the rudder-ropes had twice, most unaccountably, snapped.
Guajan, like all the other islands in the Mariannas, is governed by the Captain General of the Philippines. The Spaniards were in a friendly port, where they could speedily repair the damage.
While they were still forced to remain in port, Don Orteva told Don Roque of the mutinous spirit he had noticed on the brig, and both captains decided to be on their guard and to redouble their vigilance.
Don Orteva had especially to keep an eye on two of his men – his lieutenant Martinez and José, the captain of the maintop.
Lieutenant Martinez, who had already compromised his standing as an officer by joining in the plots hatched in the forecastle, had been several times placed under arrest; and during his imprisonment his place as lieutenant of the Constanzia had been taken by the midshipman Pablo. As for the seaman José he was a despicable wretch, influenced only by the love of gold. But he was closely watched by the boatswain, Jacopo, in whom Don Orteva placed complete confidence.
Young Pablo was one of those select few whose generosity prompts him to dare anything. An orphan, saved and brought up by Captain Orteva, he would readily have given his life for that of his benefactor. During his talks with Jacopo, Pablo had spoken most warmly of the filial affection he felt for his captain, and the honest seaman shook his hand in token of sympathy. Don Orteva had thus two devoted men on whom he could rely absolutely. But what could the three of them do against the ill-will of a lawless crew? While they tried, by night and day, to subdue the unruly spirit of the men, Martinez and José instigated their comrades to revolt and treachery.
The night before they were to set sail, Lieutenant Martinez went to a seedy inn. where he met several petty-officers and a dozen of the seamen from both ships.
‘Comrades,’ he addressed them, ‘thanks to those lucky accidents, the vessels have had to put into port, and I’ve been able to come here on the quiet to have a word with you.’
‘Bravo!’ cried the company with one voice.
‘Go on, Lieutenant,’ said one of the sailors, ‘and tell us your plan.’
‘This is my plan,’ Martinez replied. ‘As soon as we’ve been able to master the two vessels, we’ll set sail for the coast of Mexico. You know that it’s a new state, and that it hasn’t any fleet. It’ll buy our ships with no questions asked, and then we’ll not only start getting regular pay, we’ll share out what we get for the ships.’
‘Right!’
‘And what’s to be the signal for acting on both the ships at once?’ asked José.
‘A rocket will be sent up from the Asia,’ Martinez told him.
‘That’ll be the time to act! We’re ten against one, and the officers will be made prisoners on both ships before they’ve got time to know where they are.’
‘And when’s the signal to be given?’ asked one of the petty-officers of the Constanzia.
‘It’ll be in a few days, when we’re off the island of Mendanao.’
‘But won’t the Mexicans welcome our ships with cannon-shot?’ José protested. ‘If I’m not mistaken, the Mexican Confederation has issued a decree to be on their guard against Spanish vessels and instead of gold it may be lead and iron they’ll pay us with!’
‘Don’t worry, José. We’ll let them know who we are – from a good distance! Martinez assured him.
‘But how?’
‘We’ll hoist the Mexican colours at our peaks,’ and Martinez displayed a flag striped green, white, and red.
A gloomy silence greeted the appearance of this emblem of Mexican independence.
‘So already you’re regretting the Spanish flag?’ the lieutenant sneered at them. ‘Very well then! Anyone who feels like that can clear out and sail on happily under the orders of Captain Don Orteva or Commander Don Roque! But we, who don’t want to obey them any longer, we’ll soon know how to get the better of them!’
There came a general shout of assent.
‘Comrades!’ Martinez continued. ‘Our officers rely on using the trade winds to make for Sunda, but we’ll show them that we can beat up against the easterlies of the Pacific without their assistance.’
On leaving this secret meeting the sailors scattered and went back separately to their respective ships.
Next day, at dawn, the Asia and the Constanzia weighed anchor, and, steering to the south-west, set a course to New Holland. Lieutenant Martinez had returned to his duty, but by Captain Orteva’s instructions he was closely watched.
None the less, the captain was disturbed by sinister forebodings. He realised that the Spanish navy was likely to be destroyed, and that insubordination would lead to its destruction. Moreover, his patriotism was not yet reconciled to the successive disasters which had fallen on his country, and of which the revolution in Mexico had been the final blow. He often discussed these serious questions with young Pablo, and he always stressed the former supremacy of the Spanish fleet in every sea.
‘My boy,’ he said, ‘there’s no more discipline among our sailors these days. Signs of mutiny are quite obvious on my own ship, and it’s quite likely – I have a foreboding – that some shameful treachery is going to cost me my life! But you will avenge me, will you not? – and avenge Spain at the same time, for any blow aimed at me is really directed at her.’
‘I swear I will, Captain Orteva,’ the boy assured him.
‘Don’t make enemies with anyone on the brig, but remember, my boy, that in these unhappy times, the best way of serving your country is to keep a good look-out and then, when the time comes, to punish the wretches who want to betray her.’
I’ll die, I promise you,’ the boy replied earnestly. ‘Yes, if need be I’ll die to punish these traitors.’
It was three days since the ships had left the Mariannas. The Constanzia sailed with yards squared before a fresh breeze. The brig, with her low graceful hull, her light rigging, and her raking masts, bounded over the waves, whose foam covered her eight six-pounder carronades.
‘Twelve knots, Lieutenant,’ the midshipman Pablo told Martinez. ‘If we can speed along like this with the wind right aft, our voyage won’t take long.’
‘God grant it! We’ve had sufferings enough to make me want to see the end of them.’
The seaman José, who happened to be near the quarterdeck, had been listening.
‘We soon ought to sight land,’ Martinez said loudly.
‘Mindanao Island,’ the midshipman replied. ‘We’re at 140° west longitude and 8° north latitude, and if I’m not mistaken that island is at ...’
‘A hundred and forty degrees thirty-nine minutes longitude and 7° latitude,’ Martinez replied at once.
José looked up; then, having made a slight sign to Martinez, he hurried forward.
‘You’re on the middle watch, Pablo?’ asked Martinez.
‘Yes, Lieutenant.’
‘It’s six now, so I won’t detain you.’
Pablo went below.
Martinez stayed alone on the poop and looked towards the Asia, which was sailing to leeward of the brig. The evening was fine, and presaged one of those lovely calm fresh tropical nights.
The lieutenant tried to make out in the gloom who was on watch. He could recognise José and two of the men who had been at the meeting in Guajan.
He then went up to the man at the helm. He said a couple of words to him in low tones, and that was all.
But it might have been noticed that the helm had been put a little more a-weather than before, so that the brig soon drew perceptibly towards the larger ship.
Contrary to the usual custom, Martinez paced up and down on the lee side, keeping an eye on the Asia. Uneasy and almost frightened, he kept playing with the speaking trumpet he was holding.
Suddenly an explosion was heard on the larger ship.
At this signal Martinez leapt on to the hammock-nettings and shouted: ‘All hands on deck! Brail up the courses.’
At that moment Don Orteva, followed by his officers, emerged from his cabin and demanded, ‘Why was that order given?’
Without replying, Martinez sprang down from the hammock-nettings and ran to the forecastle.
‘Down with the helm!’ he shouted. ‘Brace the yards to port! Quick! Haul away! Let fly the jib-sheet!’
At that moment some more explosions were heard on the Asia.
The crew obeyed the lieutenant’s orders, and the brig, coming quickly to the wind, hove to under her fore top-sail.
Don Orteva, turning towards the handful of men who had gathered round him exclaimed, ‘Stand by me, good lads!’ Then, striding towards Martinez, ‘Arrest that officer!’ he exclaimed.
‘Death to the commander,’ Martinez retorted.
Pablo and two of the officers drew their swords and grasped their pistols. A few of the men, led by Jacopo, were rushing to their help. But these were at once stopped by the mutineers, disarmed, and rendered powerless.
Don Orteva pointed his pistol at Martinez.
Then a rocket soared above the Asia.
‘They’ve won!’ shouted Martinez.
Don Orteva’s bullet was lost in space.
The scene did not last long. The captain grappled with the lieutenant: but, overcome by numbers and seriously wounded, he was easily mastered, and a few moments later his officers shared his fate.
Blue lights were now let off in the rigging of the brig, and they were replied to by those of the Asia. The mutiny had broken out and been successful on both ships.
Lieutenant Martinez had mastered the Constanzia and his prisoners were thrust pell-mell into the main cabin. But the sight of blood had aroused the crew’s ferocious instincts. It was not enough to have overcome, they wanted to kill.
‘Cut their throats!’ yelled some of the most ferocious. ‘Kill them! Dead men tell no tales!’
Lieutenant Martinez, at the head of these bloodthirsty mutineers, was rushing towards the cabin, but the rest of the crew protested against the massacre, and the officers were saved.
‘Bring Don Orteva up on deck!’ Martinez gave the order.
It was obeyed.
‘Orteva,’ Martinez addressed him. ‘I’m in command of both vessels now. Don Roque is my prisoner, too. Tomorrow we’re going to maroon you both on some lonely shore; then we’re going to steer for the Mexican coast, to sell these ships to the Republican Government.’
‘Traitor!’ was Don Orteva’s only reply.
‘Set the courses! Trim sails! Fasten this man on the poop.’
He pointed to Don Orteva, and again his orders were obeyed.
‘Put the others down in the hold. Prepare to go about! Be smart about it, boys!’
The manoeuvre was promptly executed. Don Orteva had been fastened on the lee side of the brig, hidden by the sails, and he could be heard still denouncing his lieutenant as a scoundrel and a traitor.
Suddenly Martinez, now completely beside himself, leaped on to the poop with an axe in his hand. He was kept from reaching the captain: instead, with one vigorous stroke, he cut the main sheet. The boom, swinging before the wind, struck Don Orteva and smashed his skull.
A cry of horror arose.
‘Killed by accident,’ commented Martinez. ‘Heave that carcase into the sea.’
And as usual his order was obeyed.
The two ships, keeping close together, made for the Mexican coast.
Next day an island came into sight abeam. The boats of both vessels were lowered, and, with the exception of the midshipman Pablo and the boatswain Jacopo, who had both submitted to Martinez, the officers were marooned on its desert shore. But fortunately, a few days later, they were picked up by an English whaler and taken to Manila.
But why had Pablo and Jacopo gone over to the mutineers? Wait awhile before judging them.
A few weeks later the two vessels anchored in Monterey Bay, in the north of Old California; here Martinez explained his plans to the military commander of the port. He offered to hand over to Mexico both the Spanish ships, with their stores and guns, and to put their crews under the Confederation’s orders, but, in return, the latter must pay the crew’s wages since they had left Spain.
In reply, the governor declared that he lacked the necessary authority. He advised Martinez to go on to Mexico City, where he could soon settle the whole business. The lieutenant followed this advice; he left the Asia at Monterey and, after a month of jollifications, he put out to sea in the Constanzia. Pablo, Jacopo, and José formed part of the crew, and the brig, with a following wind, hoisted all sail to reach Acapulco as quickly as possible.
2-From Acapulco to Cigualan
Of the four ports on the Mexican coast, Acapulco has the finest harbour; surrounded by lofty cliffs, it looks like a mountain lake. It was at that time protected by three forts and a battery, while another fort, San Diego, armed with thirty pieces of artillery, commanded the whole anchorage, and could at once have sunk any ship which tried to force an entrance.
But though the town had nothing to fear, a general panic seized its inhabitants three months after the events just described.
A vessel had been sighted off the coast. Doubtful about its intentions, the townspeople were not easily to be reassured. Indeed, the new Confederation still feared, not without some reason, a return of Spanish domination. In spite of the commercial treaties it had signed with Great Britain, which had recognised the new republic, and although a charge d’affaires had arrived from London, the Mexican government had not even a solitary ship to protect its coasts!
Whatever else it might be, this vessel was obviously some daring adventurer, driven with shivered canvas before the north westerly gales of winter. So the townspeople did not know what to think and at all events they were getting ready to repel an attack by this stranger, when the vessel they so much suspected unfurled at her peak the flag of Mexican independence.
Arrived at half a cannonshot from the harbour, the Constanzia, whose name was plainly visible on her stern, suddenly anchored. Her sails were furled, and a boat was at once lowered and soon arrived in the harbour.
Once ashore, Lieutenant Martinez went to the governor and explained the circumstances which had brought him there. The governor fully agreed with the lieutenant’s decision to go to Mexico so that General Guadalupe Vittoria, President of the Confederation, could ratify the bargain. Hardly was the news known in the town when the people broke into transports of delight. The whole of the population turned out to admire the first vessel of the Mexican navy and saw in its possession – with evidence of the indiscipline that prevailed in the Spanish service – a means of more effectively opposing any new effort of their former masters.
Martinez went back on board, and a few hours later the Constanzia was anchored in the harbour, and her crew were being welcomed by the townsfolk.
But when Martinez called the roll of his followers, Pablo and Jacopo had vanished.
Mexico is noteworthy among the countries of the world for the extent and height of its central plateau. Between Acapulco and Mexico City, about eighty leagues apart, the hills are less rugged and the slopes less steep than between Mexico and Vera Cruz.
And on the former route, a few days after the Constanzia had anchored, two horsemen were riding side by side.
They were Martinez and José. The sailor knew the road quite well: he had often climbed the mountains of Anahuac. So the Indian guide who had offered his services had been refused: and, mounted on excellent steeds, the two adventurers were speeding towards the Mexican capital.
After two hours of a rapid trot which kept them from talking, the two horsemen came to a halt.
‘Avast, Lieutenant,’ cried José, completely out of breath. ‘I’d sooner be astride one of the yards for a couple of hours in a north-westerly gale!’
‘We must push on,’ replied Martinez. ‘You know the road, José? You’re sure you know it?’
‘As well as you know your way from Cadiz to Vera Cruz, and we shan’t have either the tempests of the gulf or the bars of Taspan on Santander to delay us! But not so fast!’
‘Faster, I tell you,’ Martinez spurred on his horse. ‘I don’t like the way Pablo and Jacopo vanished! Do they want to clinch the deal for their own benefit and rob us of our share?’
‘By St James! It would only need that,’ the sailor replied cynically. ‘Trust a thief to rob a thief!’
‘How many days’ ride before we get to Mexico?’
‘Four or five, Lieutenant! Just a walk! But let’s walk it! You can see how the ground’s rising!’
And, indeed, the first slopes of the hills were beginning to make themselves felt.
‘Our horses aren’t shod,’ the sailor continued, as he pulled up. ‘And their hooves will soon be worn out on this granite. But after all, don’t let’s run the earth down. There’s gold in it, and because we’ve got to go over it. Lieutenant, that doesn’t say we’ve got to despise it.’
The two travellers had climbed to the top of a little hill; at their feet was a broad cultivated plain, clothed in a rich vegetation, which seemed to take on a new life under the sunlight. But in this unbearable heat the unfortunate inhabitants are often writhing in the grasp of yellow fever. This is why these regions, uninhabited and deserted, seem to be devoid of sound or movement.
‘What’s that cone rising in front of us on the horizon?’ Martinez asked José.
‘That’s the cone of La Brea, and it doesn’t rise far above the plain,’ was the sailor’s contemptuous reply.
It is the first important peak of the immense chain of the Cordilleras.
‘We’d better get on,’ said Martinez, preaching by example. ‘Our horses come from the haciendas of Northern Mexico, and their journeys across the Savannahs have accustomed them to these inequalities of the ground, so let’s take advantage of the slopes and get out of these lonely places, which weren’t made to cheer us up!’
‘Is Lieutenant Martinez beginning to feel remorse?’ José shrugged his shoulders.
‘Remorse!... No!’
Martinez fell into complete silence, and the two spurred on their steeds to a rapid trot.
They reached the cone of La Brea, crossing it by steep footpaths, beside precipices which had not yet become the bottomless gulfs of the Sierra Madre. Then, having descended the opposite slope, they stopped to rest their steeds.
The sun was beginning to vanish beneath the horizon when they reached the village of Cigualan. All it consisted of was a few huts inhabited by the poor Indians known as mansos, meaning peasants. These people are most of them very lazy, for all they have to do is to gather the wealth which the fertile earth lavishes on them. Their sloth distinguishes them from the Indians of the higher plateaux, made industrious by sheer necessity, and from the nomadic tribes of the north who, living by raids and plunder, have no fixed abode.
The Spaniards received only meagre hospitality in the village. Recognising them as their former oppressors, the inhabitants were obviously hardly inclined to be useful to them. What was more, two other travellers had recently passed through the village and had bought up what little food they could find.
The lieutenant and the seaman paid little attention to this, which was indeed nothing out of the ordinary.
They were glad to shelter in a sort of hut, and prepared a boiled sheep’s head for their meal. They dug a hole in the ground, and, after having filled it with burning wood and some stones to retain the heat, they allowed the combustible materials to be burned completely up. Then on the red-hot ashes they placed, without any preparation, the meat wrapped in aromatic leaves, and they covered it hermetically with branches and piled-up earth. A few hours later their dinner was done to a turn, and they ate it like men whose appetite had been whetted by a long journey.
Their meal over, they stretched on the ground with their daggers in their hands. Then, their weariness overcoming the hardness of their beds and the incessant biting of the mosquitoes, they were not long in falling asleep.
But Martinez was troubled by dreams in which he several times repeated the names of Jacopo and Pablo.
3-From Cigualan to Tasco
At daybreak next morning the horses were saddled and bridled. Following the half-effaced footpaths which wound before them, the travellers made their way eastwards, towards the rising sun. Their journey began under favourable auspices. But for the taciturnity of the lieutenant, which contrasted with the seaman’s good humour, they might have been taken for the most honest people in the world.
The ground rose more and more. The vast plateau of Chalpanzingo, which enjoys the finest climate of Mexico, soon came into sight, spreading out to the farthest limits of the horizon. This region, which belongs to the temperate zone, is about 10,000 feet above sea-level and it knows neither the heat of the lowlands nor the cold of the higher ground. Leaving the oasis on their right, the two Spaniards reached the small village of San Pedro, and after a three hours’ halt they made their way towards the little town of Tutela-del-Rio.
‘Where shall we sleep tonight?’ asked Martinez.
‘At Tasco,’ José replied. ‘A large town, Lieutenant, after these hamlets.’
‘We’ll find a good inn there?’
‘Yes, under a clear sky in a lovely climate! The sun’s less scorching there than down by the sea. And in the same way, if we keep going up, we’ll finish, so gradually that we won’t notice it, by freezing on the crests of Popocatapetl.’
‘When shall we be crossing the mountains, José?’
‘The day after tomorrow, Lieutenant, in the evening. And from the crest, which is still some way off, it’s true, we’ll be able to see the end of our journey! A golden city, Mexico is! Do you know what I’m thinking about, Lieutenant?’
Martinez made no response.
‘I’m wondering what can have happened to the officers of our ship – and the brig – whom we marooned on that island.’
Martinez shuddered. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied sullenly.
‘I’d like to be able to think,’ José continued, ‘that those haughty fellows are all dead of hunger! All the same, when we landed them some of them fell into the sea, and in these parts there’s the tintorea, a kind of shark, who won’t let you off! Santa Maria! If Captain Don Orteva were to come to life again, the best thing we could do would be to hide in the belly of a whale! But very luckily his head was just at the height of that boom, and when the sheets snapped – very queer that was ...’
‘Will you hold your tongue!’ snapped Martinez.
After that the sailor kept his mouth shut. ‘Here’s a nice place to have scruples,’ he said to himself. ‘Anyhow,’ he continued aloud, ‘when I get back I’ll settle down in this charming land of Mexico, where you can go on the spree through the pineapples and the bananas, and run aground on reefs of gold and silver!’
‘Was that what you mutinied for?’ Martinez asked him.
‘Why not, Lieutenant? A question of cash!’
‘Ah!...’ Martinez gave an exclamation of disgust.
‘Well, what about you?’
‘Me!... A question of rank ...’ What the lieutenant really wanted was to be avenged on his captain.
‘Ah!...’ now José gave an exclamation of disgust.
Whatever their motives, the two men were equally worthless.
‘Quiet!’ Martinez pulled up sharply. ‘What was that I saw?’
José stood erect in his stirrups. ‘There isn’t anything,’ he said.
‘I saw a man slinking under cover!’ Martinez insisted.
‘Imagination!’
‘I saw him!’ the lieutenant insisted.
‘Well, look for him at your leisure ...’ and José pushed on.
Martinez went by himself to a clump of mangroves whose branches, taking root wherever they touched the ground, formed an impenetrable thicket.
The lieutenant dismounted. The solitude was complete.
He suddenly caught sight of a sort of spiral moving about in the shadows. It was a small snake, its head crushed under a boulder while its hinder parts twisted as though it had been galvanised.
‘There’s been someone here!’ he exclaimed.
Superstitious and guilt-stricken, he stared round him. He began to tremble.
‘Who? Who?’ he muttered.
‘Well?’ asked José, who had come up beside him.
‘It’s nothing,’ Martinez replied. ‘Let’s get on!’
The travellers now followed the banks of the Mexala, a small tributary of the Balsas, and followed its course upwards. Soon some smoke betrayed the presence of the natives, and the little town of Tutela-del-Rio came into sight. But the Spaniards, anxious to get to Tasco before nightfall, soon left it, after a few moments’ rest.
The road now became very steep, so that they could get only the slowest pace out of their steeds. Here and there olive groves appeared on the side of the hills, and remarkable differences developed in the soil, in the temperature, in the vegetation.
Evening was not long in coming. Martinez followed a few paces behind his guide José, who could find his way only with difficulty among these dense shadows. He looked for the practicable footpaths, swearing now at a stump which made him stumble, now at a branch which whipped across his face and threatened to put out the excellent cigar he was smoking.
The lieutenant let his horse follow his companion’s; a vague remorse was troubling him, and he could no longer account for the obsession of which he was the prey.
Night had soon come, and the travellers hurried on. They passed without stopping through the little villages of Contapex and Iguala, and at last reached the town of Tasco.
José had spoken the truth. It was a large city compared to the wretched hamlets they had left behind them, and a sort of inn opened on the main street. Having entrusted their horses to the ostler, they went into the largest room, where a long narrow table was already laid.
The Spaniards took their seats opposite one another, and wolfed down a meal which might have pleased the native palates, but which hunger alone could make palatable to a European. There were fragments of chicken swimming in a sauce of green pimento; dishes of rice mixed with red pepper and saffron; old hens stuffed with olives, dried grapes, peanuts and onions, sugared pumpkins and purslane, the whole accompanied by tortillas, a sort of maize cake cooked on an iron griddle. Then, after the meal, the drink.
Whatever this might lack in the way of taste, hunger was satisfied, and fatigue made Martinez and José sleep to a late hour next morning.
4- From Tasco to Cuemavaca
The lieutenant was the first awake.
‘Come on, José!’ he shouted.
The seaman stretched and yawned.
‘Which road do we take?’ asked Martinez.
‘Faith, I know two of them. Lieutenant.’
Which?’
‘One goes by Zacualican, Tenancingo and Toluca. From Toluca to Mexico, the route’s good, for already we’ve scaled the Sierra Madre.’
‘And the other?’
‘That takes us a bit farther east, and then we’ll get near these fine mountains, Popocatepetl and Iectachuolt. That’s the safest, because it’s the least frequented. A nice walk of about fifteen leagues up a gentle slope!’
‘Settled for the longest way and let’s go!’ Martinez decided. ‘Where do we sleep tonight?’
‘Sailing a dozen knots or so, at Cuernavaca,’ the seaman replied.
The two Spaniards went to the stable, had their horses saddled, and filled their mochillas, a sort of saddle-bag which forms part of the harness, with maize cakes, pomegranates and dried meat, for in the mountains they ran the risk of not getting enough food. Having paid the bill, they mounted their horses and swerved off to the right.
Soon for the first time they saw the oak-forests, a tree of good augury, for the unhealthy emanations from the lower plateaux stop at their edge. Here, 1,500 yards above the sea, the travellers found themselves comfortable in a moderate temperature.
However, getting higher and higher on the Anahuac plateau, they crossed the immense barriers which form the plain of Mexico.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed José, ‘here’s the first of the three rivers we’ve got to cross.’
And, indeed, a river had worn its deep bed just at their feet.
‘Last time I was here, this river was dry,’ José commented. ‘Follow me, Lieutenant.’
Going down a fairly gentle slope cut into the bed-rock, they reached a practicable ford.
‘That’s one!’ said José.
‘Are the others just as easy to cross?’ asked the lieutenant.
‘Just as easy,’ José replied. ‘During the rainy season these torrents swell and flow into the little Ixtolucca river which we’ll find in the mountains.’
‘And there’s nothing to be afraid of in this solitude?’
‘Nothing, unless it’s a Mexican dagger.’
‘That’s true enough,’ commented Martinez. ‘The Indians of these uplands have a tradition of being faithful to the dagger.’
‘Yes,’ the seaman laughed, ‘what a lot of names they’ve got for their favourite weapson: estoque, verdugo, puna, anchillo, beldoque, navaja! The name comes into their mouth as quickly as the dagger into their hands! Well, so much the better! Santa Maria! At least we shan’t have to fear invisible bullets from their long carbines! I don’t know anything more annoying than not to know the rascal who’s killing you!’
‘Who are the Indians who live in these mountains?’ asked Martinez.
‘Well, Lieutenant, who can count the different races who swarm in this El Dorado of a Mexico? I’ve studied the various crosses with the idea of making a good marriage one of these days. Each cross has a different name for the kids, and there’s dozens of them!’
This was true, and the mixture of races in this country makes anthropological research very difficult. But in spite of the sailor’s conversation, Martinez kept falling into his usual taciturnity, and he sometimes kept away from his comrade, whose presence seemed to annoy him.
Soon two other torrents cut the road in front of them. The lieutenant seemed disappointed at finding their beds dry, for he had counted on them for watering his horse.
‘Now here we are in a dead calm, Lieutenant, with no food and no water,’ said José. ‘Bah! Follow me! We’ll look among the oaks and elms for a tree which is called the ahuehuelt and which takes the place of the wisps of straw they use as signs for the inns. You always find a spring within its shade, and if it’s only water, faith, I can tell you that the water is the wine of the wilderness.’
The horsemen went round the mountain spur, and soon they found the tree in question. But the promised spring had run dry, and it was obvious that it had done so recently.
‘That’s queer!’ José commented.
‘You might say it’s queer!’ Martinez had turned pale. ‘Come on, come on!’
The travellers did not exchange another word until they had reached the village of Cachuimilchan, where they reduced the load in their saddle-bags. Then they made for Cuernavaca, towards the east.
The country had now become extremely rugged, and confronted the travellers with gigantic peaks whose basaltic summits checked the clouds coming from the ocean. Beyond a large rock they sighted Cochicalcho Fort, built by the ancient Mexicans on a plateau of 9,000 square yards. They made for the gigantic cone which forms its base and which is crowned by tottering rocks and grimacing ruins.
Having dismounted and tethered their steeds to the trunk of an elm, Martinez and José, anxious to verify the direction of the road, climbed, helped by the irregularities of the ground, to the summit of the cone.
Night fell and, robbing the various objects of their colour, gave them a fantastic appearance. The old fort vaguely suggested an enormous bison, crouching down with motionless head; and the wild imagination of Martinez made him fancy he could see shadows moving about on the flanks of the monstrous animal. He said nothing, however, for fear of laying himself open to taunts from the incredulous José. The latter slowly wandered off along the mountain paths and whenever he vanished behind some obstacle, he guided his companion by the sound of his ‘St James’, and ‘Santa Maria’.
Suddenly a huge night-bird, uttering a raucous cry, rose heavily on its mighty wings.
Martinez pulled up sharply.
An enormous block of stone was visibly swaying on its base about thirty feet above him. Suddenly it came loose, and, smashing everything in its way with the speed and noise of thunder, it was engulfed in the abyss below.
‘Santa Maria!’ cried the seaman – ‘Hi! Lieutenant?’
‘José?’
‘Over here.’
The two Spaniards moved towards one another.
‘What an avalanche! Let’s go down,’ suggested the seaman.
Martinez followed him without saying a word, and they soon got down to the lower plains.
Here a large furrow marked the track of the rock.
‘Santa Maria!’ exclaimed José. ‘Look, our horses have vanished – they’re crushed flat.’
‘Good God!’ Martinez gave an incredulous gasp.
‘Look here!’
What was more, the tree to which the animals were tethered had gone with them.
‘If we’d been down there!’ was the seaman’s philosophic comment.
Martinez was gripped by a violent feeling of terror.
‘The snake, the spring, the avalanche!’ he muttered.
Then he turned his haggard eyes on José.
‘Aren’t you going to say something about Captain Don Orteva?’ he asked, his lips contracted with anger.
José recoiled.
‘Oh, no nonsense, Lieutenant! We’ll take off our hats to our poor beasts, and then move on! It doesn’t do any good to hang about here when the old mountain is shaking its mane!’
The two Spaniards pushed on without saying another word, and in the middle of the night they reached Cuernavaca. But they found it impossible to get any horses, and it was on foot that they made their way to Popocatepetl.
5-From Cuernavaca to Popocatepetl
The temperature was cold and vegetation completely absent. These inaccessible heights belonged to the glacial zone, known as ‘cold country’. Already the lines of the foggy regions showed their dry outlines between the last oak of the more elevated lands, and springs became even more rare in a soil consisting largely of splintered trachytes and porous amygdaloids.
For six long hours the lieutenant and his companion dragged themselves painfully along, cutting their hands against the edges of the rock and their feet against the sharp stones in their path. Soon weariness forced them to sit down, and José got busy preparing some food.
‘A devil of an idea not to have taken the usual road!’ he muttered.
They both hoped, however, to find at Aracopistla, a village lost among the mountains, some means of transport to finish their journey. But what was their disappointment when they found only the same destitution, the complete lack of everything, and the same inhospitality as at Cuernavaca! None the less, they had to get on.
At last there towered before them the huge cone of Popocatepetl, so tall that the eye lost itself among the clouds when it sought to find the peak. The way was desperately arid. On all sides fathomless precipices were excavated in the slopes, and the dizzy footpaths seemed to sway beneath the feet of those who used them. To make out the road, they had to climb part of the mountain, 5,500 yards high, which the Indians call the ‘Smoking Rock’ and which still bore the traces of recent eruptions. Dark crevasses traversed its steep sides. Since José had last been that way, new cataclysms had convulsed these solitudes, which he could no longer recognise. So he went astray in the midst of impracticable footpaths, and often he stopped and listened, for heavy rumblings ran here and there through the gaps in the enormous cone.
Already the sun was setting. Great clouds, massing against the sky, made the air even darker. Rain and storm were threatening; they are very common in these regions, where the soil favours the evaporation of water. The last of the vegetation had disappeared from these rocks, whose summit was lost in the eternal snows.
‘I can’t go any further!’ José was dropping with weariness.
‘Get on, anyhow!’ Martinez spoke in a fever of impatience.
Soon thunder-claps were re-echoing in the crevasses of Popocatepetl.
‘Devil take me if I can find my way in these lost paths,’ complained José.
‘Get up and get on!’ Martinez told him roughly. He forced José to stumble forward.
‘And not a human being to guide us!’ the seaman grumbled.
‘So much the better!’ Martinez told him.
‘You don’t know then, that every year a thousand murders are committed in Mexico, and that the country isn’t safe?’
‘So much the better!’ said Martinez again.
Great drops of water were sparkling here and there on the rocks, lit by the last gleams from the sky.
‘When once we’ve crossed the peaks all around us, what do we see next?’ asked the lieutenant.
‘Mexico to the left, Puebla to the right,’ replied José. ‘If we can see anything, that is! But we shan’t see anything! It’s too black! In front of us will be the mountain of Icctacihualt, with a good road down in the ravine. But devil take us if we ever get to it!’
‘Get on!’
José was right. The Mexican plateau is enclosed in an immense square of mountains. It forms a vast oval, 18 leagues long and 67 round, hemmed in by tall slopes among which can be seen to the south-west Popocatepetl and Icctacihualt.
Once having reached the crest of these barriers, the traveller finds no difficulty in getting down into the Anahuac plateau, and then pushing on northwards along a good road to Mexico. In the long avenues of elms and poplars he can admire the cypress planted by the Aztec dynasty, and the schinds, like the weeping willows of the west. Here and there cultivated fields and flower-gardens display their products, while the apple trees, pomegranate trees, and cherry trees flourish under a light blue sky which makes the air of these heights dry and rarefied.
The thunder-claps now broke out, repeatedly and with great violence, among the mountains. The wind and rain, hitherto silent, intensified the echoes.
José cursed at every step. Lieutenant Martinez, pale and silent, cast evil glances at his companion, who now appeared in his eyes like an accomplice he wanted to get rid of.
A sudden flash of lightning lit up the gloom. The seaman and lieutenant were on the edge of a precipice.
Martinez strode up to José. He gripped the man’s shoulder, and when the thunder had died away he said ‘José, I’m frightened!’
‘Frightened of the storm?’
‘Not of the storm in the sky, José, but I’m frightened of the storm that’s rising within me.’
‘Oh, so you’re still thinking about Don Orteva! ... Go along with you, Lieutenant, you make me laugh,’ replied José; but he did not laugh at all, for Martinez was staring at him with haggard eyes.
A frightful clap of thunder roared out.
‘Quiet, José, be quiet!’ Martinez no longer seemed master of himself.
‘This is a fine night to preach at me!’ the seaman retorted. ‘If you’re afraid, Lieutenant, shut your eyes and stop up your ears!’
‘I fancy,’ gasped Martinez, ‘that I can see the captain ... Don Orteva ... with his head smashed! ... there ... there.’
A black mass, lit up the next moment by a flash of lightning, was towering twenty paces away from the lieutenant and his companion.
At that very instant José saw Martinez quite close to him, pale, frantic, and sinister, and his hand grasping a dagger!
‘What ...!’ he exclaimed.
A flash of lightning flared around them.
‘Help!’ screamed José.
Only one body was left in that place. Like a second Cain, Martinez was rushing away through the storm, his hand grasping his bloodstained dagger.
A few moments later two men bent over the seaman’s body and said, ‘There’s one of them.’
Martinez was wandering like a madman through the dark solitudes: he was running, his head bare, through the torrents of rain.
‘Help! Help!’ he screamed, stumbling across the slippery rocks.
Then he suddenly heard a swirling noise.
It was the little river Ixtolucca, falling 500 feet below him.
A few paces away a rope bridge had been thrown across this very torrent. Secured to both banks by a few spikes driven into the rock, it was swinging in the wind like a thread extended through the void.
Martinez, hanging on to the lianas, crawled slowly across the bridge. By sheer effort he succeeded in reaching the opposite bank.
There a shadow rose up in front of him.
Without saying a word, he recoiled and made his way back to the other bank.
There, too, was another human form.
He went back on his knees to the middle of the bridge, his hands clenched in despair.
‘Martinez, I am Pablo!’ said a voice.
‘Martinez, I am Jacopo!’ said another.
‘You are a traitor! You shall die!’
‘You are a murderer! You shall die!’
Two sharp blows could be heard. The spikes which had secured the two ends of the bridge gave way beneath the axe.
A horrible cry re-echoed, and Martinez, clutching wildly, was hurled into the gulf.
A league down-stream, the midshipman and the boatswain met, after having forded the river Ixtolucca.
‘I have avenged Don Orteva!’ exclaimed Jacopo.
‘And I,’ replied Pablo, ‘I have avenged Spain!’
In this way was born the navy of the Mexican Confederation. The two Spanish ships, handed over by the traitors, remained with the new republic, and they became the kernel of the tiny fleet which recently fought for Texas and California against the United States of America.
A Drama in the Air
In the month of September, 185-, I arrived at Frankfort-on-the-Main. My passage through the principal German cities had been brilliantly marked by balloon ascents; but as yet no German had accompanied me in my car, and the fine experiments made at Paris by MM. Green, Eugene Godard, and Poitevin had not tempted the grave Teutons to essay aerial voyages.
But scarcely had the news of my approaching ascent spread through Frankfort, than three of the principal citizens begged the favour of being allowed to ascend with me. Two days afterwards we were to start from the Place de la Comedie. I began at once to get my balloon ready. It was of silk, prepared with gutta-percha, a substance impermeable by acids or gasses; and its volume, which was 3,000 cubic yards, enabled it to ascend to the loftiest heights.
The day of the ascent was that of the great September fair, which attracts so many people to Frankfort. Lighting gas, of a perfect quality and of great lifting power, had been furnished to me in excellent condition, and about eleven o’clock the balloon was filled; but only three-quarters filled, – an indispensable precaution, for, as one rises, the atmosphere diminishes in density, and the fluid enclosed within the balloon, acquiring more elasticity, might burst its sides. My calculations had furnished me with exactly the quantity of gas necessary to carry up my companions and myself.
We were to start at noon. The impatient crowd which pressed around the enclosed space, filling the enclosed square, overflowing into the contiguous streets, and covering the houses from the ground floor to the slated gables, presented a striking scene. The high winds of the preceding days had subsided. An oppressive heat fell from the cloudless sky. Scarcely a breath animated the atmosphere. In such weather, one might descend again upon the very spot whence he had risen.
I carried 300 pounds of ballast in bags; the car, quite round, four feet in diameter, was comfortably arranged; the hempen cords which supported it stretched symmetrically over the upper hemisphere of the balloon; the compass was in place, the barometer suspended in the circle which united the supporting cords, and the anchor carefully put in order. All was now ready for the ascent.
Among those who pressed around the enclosure, I remarked a young man with a pale face and agitated features. The sight of him impressed me. He was an eager spectator of my ascents, whom I had already met in several German cities. With an uneasy air, he closely watched the curious machine, as it lay motionless a few feet above the ground; and he remained silent among those about him.
Twelve o’clock came. The moment had arrived, but my travelling companions did not appear.
I sent to their houses, and learnt that one had left for Hamburg, another for Vienna, and the third for London. Their courage had failed them at the moment of undertaking one of those excursions which, thanks to the ability of living aeronauts, are free from all danger. As they formed, in some sort, a part of the programme of the day, the fear had seized them that they might be forced to execute it faithfully, and they had fled far from the scene at the instant when the balloon was being filled. Their courage was evidently the inverse ratio of their speed – in decamping.
The multitude, half deceived, showed not a little ill-humour. I did not hesitate to ascend alone. In order to re-establish the equilibrium between the specific gravity of the balloon and the weight which had thus proved wanting, I replaced my companions by more sacks of sand, and got into the car. The twelve men who held the balloon by twelve cords fastened to the equatorial circle, let them slip a little between their fingers, and the balloon rose several feet higher. There was not a breath of wind, and the atmosphere was so leaden that it seemed to forbid the ascent.
‘Is everything ready?’ I cried.
The men put themselves in readiness. A last glance told me that I might go.
‘Attention!’
There was a movement in the crowd, which seemed to be invading the enclosure.
‘Let go!’
The balloon rose slowly, but I experienced a shock which threw me to the bottom of the car.
When I got up, I found myself face to face with an unexpected fellow-voyager, – the pale young man.
‘Monsieur, I salute you,’ said he, with the utmost coolness.
‘By what right -’
‘Am I here? By the right which the impossibility of your getting rid of me confers.’
I was amazed! His calmness put me out of countenance, and I had nothing to reply. I looked at the intruder but he took no notice of my astonishment.
‘Does my weight disarrange your equilibrium, monsieur?’ he asked. ‘You will permit me -’
And without waiting for my consent, he relieved the balloon of two bags, which he threw into space.
‘Monsieur,’ said I, taking the only course now possible, ‘you have come; very well, you will remain; but to me alone belongs the management of the balloon.’
‘Monsieur,’ said he, ‘your urbanity is French all over: it comes from my own country. I morally press the hand you refuse me. Make all precautions, and act as seems best to you. I will wait till you have done -’
‘For what?’
‘To talk with you.’
The barometer had fallen to twenty-six inches. We were nearly 600 yards above the city; but nothing betrayed the horizontal displacement of the balloon, for the mass of air in which it is enclosed goes forward with it. A sort of confused glow enveloped the objects spread out under us, and unfortunately obscured their outline.
I examined my companion afresh.
He was a man of thirty years, simply clad. The sharpness of his features betrayed an indomitable energy, and he seemed very muscular. Indifferent to the astonishment he created, he remained motionless, trying to distinguish the objects which were vaguely confused below us.
‘Miserable mist!’ said he, after a few moments.
I did not reply.
‘You owe me a grudge?’ he went on. ‘Bah! I could not pay for my journey, and it was necessary to take you by surprise.’
‘Nobody asks you to descend, monsieur!’
‘Eh, do you not know, then, that the same thing happened to the Counts of Laurencin and Dampierre, when they ascended at Lyons, on the 15th of January, 1784? A young merchant, named Fontaine, scaled the gallery, at the risk of capsizing the machine. He accomplished the journey, and nobody died of it!’
‘Once on the ground, we will have an explanation,’ replied I, piqued at the light tone in which he spoke.
‘Bah! Do not let us think of our return.’
‘Do you think, then, that I shall not hasten to descend?’
‘Descend!’ said he, in surprise. ‘Descend? Let us begin by first ascending.’
And before I could prevent it, two more bags had been thrown over the car, without even having been emptied.
‘Monsieur!’ cried I, in a rage.
‘I know your ability,’ replied the unknown quietly, ‘and your fine ascents are famous. But if Experience is the sister of Practice, she is also a cousin of Theory, and I have studied the aerial art long. It has got into my head!’ he added sadly, falling into a silent reverie.
The balloon, having risen some distance farther, now became stationary. The unknown consulted the barometer, and said, —
‘Here we are, at 800 yards. Men are like insects. See! I think we should always contemplate them from this height, to judge correctly of their proportions. The Place de la Comedie is transformed into an immense ant-hill. Observe the crowd which is gathered on the quays; and the mountains also get smaller and smaller. We are over the cathedral. The Main is only a line, cutting the city in two, and the bridge seems a thread thrown between the two banks of the river.’
The atmosphere became somewhat chilly.
‘There is nothing I would not do for you, my host,’ said the unknown. ‘If you are cold, I will take oil my coat and lend it to you.’
‘Thanks,’ said I dryly.
‘Bah! Necessity makes law. Give me your hand. I am your fellow-countryman; you will learn something in my company, and my conversation will indemnify you for the trouble I have given you.’
I sat down, without replying, at the opposite extremity of the car. The young man had taken a voluminous manuscript from his greatcoat. It was an essay on ballooning.
‘I possess,’ said he, ‘the most curious collection of engravings and caricatures extant concerning aerial manias. How people admired and scoffed at the same time at this precious discovery! We are happily no longer in the age in which Montgolfier tried to make artificial clouds with steam, or a gas having electrical properties, produced by the combustion of moist straw and chopped-up wool.’
‘Do you wish to depreciate the talent of the inventors?’ I asked, for I had resolved to enter into the adventure. ‘Was it not good to have proved by experience the possibility of rising in the air?’
‘Ah, monsieur, who denies the glory of the first aerial navigators? It required immense courage to rise by means of those frail envelopes which only contained heated air. But I ask you, has the aerial science made great progress since Blanchard’s ascensions, that is, since nearly a century ago? Look here, monsieur.’
The unknown took an engraving from his portfolio.
‘Here,’ said he, ‘is the first aerial voyage undertaken by Pilatre des Rosiers and the Marquis d’Arlandes, four months after the discovery of balloons. Louis XVI refused to consent to the venture, and two men who were condemned to death were the first to attempt the aerial ascent. Pilatre des Rosiers became indignant at this injustice, and, by means of intrigues, obtained permission to make the experiment. The car, which renders the management easy, had not then been invented, and a circular gallery was placed around the lower and contracted part of the Montgolfier balloon. The two aeronauts must then remain motionless at each extremity of this gallery, for the moist straw which filled it forbade them all motion. A chafing-dish with fire was suspended below the orifice of the balloon; when the aeronauts wished to rise, they threw straw upon this brazier, at the risk of setting fire to the balloon, and the air, more heated, gave it fresh ascending power. The two bold travellers rose, on the 21st of November, 1783, from the Muette Gardens, which the dauphin had put at their disposal. The balloon went up majestically, passed over the Isle of Swans, crossed the Seine at the Conference barrier, and, drifting between the dome of the Invalides and the Military School, approached the Church of Saint Sulpice. Then the aeronauts added to the fire, crossed the Boulevard, and descended beyond the Enfer barrier. As it touched the soil, the balloon collapsed, and for a few moments buried Pilatre des Rosiers under its folds.’
‘Unlucky augury,’ I said, interested in the story, which affected me nearly.
‘An augury of the catastrophe which was later to cost this unfortunate man his life,’ replied the unknown sadly. ‘Have you never experienced anything like it?’
‘Never.’
‘Bah! Misfortunes sometimes occur unforeshadowed!’ added my companion.
He then remained silent.
Meanwhile we were advancing southward, and Frankfort had already passed from beneath us.
‘Perhaps we shall have a storm,’ said the young man.
‘We shall descend before that,’ I replied.
‘Indeed! It is better to ascend. We shall escape it more surely.’
And two more bags of sand were hurled into space.
The balloon rose rapidly, and stopped at 1,200 yards. I became colder; and yet the sun’s rays, falling upon the surface, expanded the gas within, and gave it a greater ascending force.
‘Fear nothing,’ said the unknown. ‘We have still 3,500 fathoms of breathing air. Besides, do not trouble yourself about what I do.’
I would have risen, but a vigorous hand held me to my seat.
‘Your name?’ I asked.
‘My name? What matters it to you?’
‘I demand your name!’
‘My name is Erostratus or Empedocles, whichever you choose!’
This reply was far from reassuring.
The unknown, besides, talked with such strange coolness that I anxiously asked myself whom I had to deal with.
‘Monsieur,’ he continued, ‘nothing original has been imagined since the physicist Charles. Four months after the discovery of balloons, this able man had invented the valve, which permits the gas to escape when the balloon is too full, or when you wish to descend; the car. which aids the management of the machine: the netting, which holds the envelope of the balloon, and divides the weight over its whole surface; the ballast, which enables you to ascend, and to choose the place of your landing; the india-rubber coating, which renders the tissue impermeable: the barometer, which shows the height attained. Lastly, Charles used hydrogen, which, fourteen times lighter than air, permits you to penetrate to the highest atmospheric regions, and does not expose you to the dangers of a combustion in the air. On the 1st of December, 1783, 300,000 spectators were crowded around the Tuileries. Charles rose, and the soldiers presented arms to him. He travelled nine leagues in the air, conducting his balloon with an ability not surpassed by modern aeronauts. The king awarded him a pension of 2,000 livres; for then they encouraged new inventions.’
The unknown now seemed to be under the influence of considerable agitation.
‘Monsieur,’ he resumed, ‘I have studied this, and I am convinced that the first aeronauts guided their balloons. Without speaking of Blanchard, whose assertions may be received with doubt, Guyton-Morveaux, by the aid of oars and rudder, made his machine answer to the helm, and take the direction he determined on. More recently, M. Julien, a watchmaker, made some convincing experiments at the Hippodrome, in Paris; for, by a special mechanism, his aerial apparatus, oblong in form, went visibly against the wind. It occurred to M. Petin to place four hydrogen balloons together; and, by means of sails hung horizontally and partly folded, he hopes to be able to disturb the equilibrium, and, thus inclining the apparatus, to convey it in an oblique direction. They speak, also, of forces to overcome the resistance of currents, – for instance, the screw; but the screw, working on a moveable centre, will give no result. I, monsieur, have discovered the only means of guiding balloons; and no academy has come to my aid, no city has filled up subscriptions for me, no government has thought fit to listen to me! It is infamous!’
The unknown gesticulated fiercely, and the car underwent violent oscillations. I had much trouble in calming him.
Meanwhile the balloon had entered a more rapid current, and we advanced south, at 1,500 yards above the earth.
‘See, there is Darmstadt,’ said my companion, leaning over the car. ‘Do you perceive the château? Not very distinctly, eh? What would you have? The heat of the storm makes the outline of objects waver, and you must have a skilled eye to recognise localities.’
‘Are you certain it is Darmstadt?’ I asked.
‘I am sure of it. We are now six leagues from Frankfort.’
‘Then we must descend.’
‘Descend! You would not go down on the steeples,’ said the unknown, with a chuckle.
‘No, but in the suburbs of the city.’
Well, let us avoid the steeples!’
So speaking, my companion seized some bags of ballast. I hastened to prevent him; but he overthrew me with one hand, and the unballasted balloon ascended to 2,000 yards.
‘Rest easy,’ said he, ‘and do not forget that Brioschi, Biot, Gay-Lussac, Bixio, and Barral ascended to still greater heights to make their scientific experiments.’
‘Monsieur, we must descend,’ I resumed, trying to persuade him by gentleness. ‘The storm is gathering around us. It would be more prudent -’
‘Bah! We will mount higher than the storm, and then we shall no longer fear it!’ cried my companion. ‘What is nobler than to overlook the clouds which oppress the earth? Is it not an honour thus to navigate on aerial billows? The greatest men have travelled as we are doing. The Marchioness and Countess de Montalembert, the Countess of Podenas, Mademoiselle la Garde, the Marquis de Montalembert, rose from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine for these unknown regions, and the Duke de Chartres exhibited much skill and presence of mind in his ascent on the 15th of July, 1784. At Lyons, the Counts of Laurencin and Dampierre; at Nantes, M. de Luynes; at Bordeaux, D’Arbelet des Granges: in Italy, the Chevalier Andreani; in our own time, the Duke of Brunswick, – have all left the traces of their glory in the air. To equal these great personages, we must penetrate still higher than they into the celestial depths! To approach the infinite is to comprehend it!’
The rarefaction of the air was fast expanding the hydrogen in the balloon, and I saw its lower part, purposely left empty, swell out, so that it was absolutely necessary to open the valve; but my companion did not seem to intend that I should manage the balloon as I wished. I then resolved to pull the valve cord secretly, as he was excitedly talking; for I feared to guess with whom I had to deal. It would have been too horrible! It was nearly a quarter before one. We had been gone forty minutes from Frankfort; heavy clouds were coming against the wind from the south, and seemed about to burst upon us.
‘Have you lost all hope of succeeding in your project?’ I asked with anxious interest.
‘All hope!’ exclaimed the unknown in a low voice. ‘Wounded by slights and caricatures, these asses’ kicks have finished me! It is the eternal punishment reserved for innovators! Look at these caricatures of all periods, of which my portfolio is full.’
While my companion was fumbling with his papers, I had seized the valve-cord without his perceiving it. I feared, however, that he might hear the hissing noise, like a water-course, which the gas makes in escaping.
‘How many jokes were made about the Abbé Miolan!’ said he. ‘He was to go up with Janninet and Bredin. During the filling their balloon caught fire, and the ignorant populace tore it in pieces! Then this caricature of "curious animals" appeared, giving each of them a punning nickname.’
I pulled the valve-cord, and the barometer began to ascend. It was time. Some far-off rumblings were heard in the south.
‘Here is another engraving,’ resumed the unknown, not suspecting what I was doing. ‘It is an immense balloon carrying a ship, strong castles, houses, and so on. The caricaturists did not suspect that their follies would one day become truths. It is complete, this large vessel. On the left is its helm, with the pilot’s box; at the prow are pleasure-houses, an immense organ, and a cannon to call the attention of the inhabitants of the earth or the moon; above the poop there are the observatory and the balloon long-boat; in the equatorial circle, the army barrack; on the left, the funnel: then the upper galleries for promenading, sails, pinions; below, the cafés and general storehouse. Observe this pompous announcement: "Invented for the happiness of the human race, this globe will depart at once for the ports of the Levant, and on its return the programme of its voyages to the two poles and the extreme west will be announced. No one need furnish himself with anything; everything is foreseen, and all will prosper. There will be a uniform price for all places of destination, it will be the same for the most distant countries of our hemisphere – that is to say, 1,000 louis for one of any of the said journeys. And it must be confessed that this sum is very moderate, when the speed, comfort, and arrangements which will be enjoyed on the balloon are considered – arrangements which are not to be found on land, while on the balloon each passenger may consult his own habits and tastes. This is so true that in the same place some will be dancing, others standing; some will be enjoying delicacies; others fasting. Whoever desires the society of wits may satisfy himself: whoever is stupid may find stupid people to keep him company. Thus pleasure will be the soul of the aerial company." All this provoked laughter: but before long, if I am not cut off, they will see it all realised.’
We were visibly descending. He did not perceive it!
‘This kind of "game at balloons",’ he resumed, spreading out before me some of the engravings of his valuable collection, ‘this game contains the entire history of the aerostatic art. It is used by elevated minds, and is played with dice and counters, with whatever stakes you like, to be paid or received according to where the player arrives.’
‘Why,’ said I, ‘you seem to have studied the science of aerostation profoundly.’
‘Yes, monsieur, yes! From Phaethon, Icarus, Architas, I have searched for, examined, learnt everything. I could render immense services to the world in this art, if God granted me life. But that will not be!’
‘Why?’
‘Because my name is Empedocles, or Erostratus.’
Meanwhile, the balloon was happily approaching the earth; but when one is falling, the danger is as great at a hundred feet as at 5,000.
‘Do you recall the battle of Fleurus?’ resumed my companion, whose face became more and more animated. ‘It was at that battle that Contello, by order of the Government, organised a company of balloonists. At the siege of Manbenge General Jourdan derived so much service from this new method of observation that Contello ascended twice a day with the general himself. The communications between the aeronaut and his agents who held the balloon were made by means of small white, red, and yellow flags. Often the gun and cannon shot were directed upon the balloon when he ascended, but without result. When General Jourdan was preparing to invest Charleroi, Contello went into the vicinity, ascended from the plain of Jumet, and continued his observations for seven or eight hours with General Morlot, and this no doubt aided in giving us the victory of Fleurus. General Jourdan publicly acknowledged the help which the aeronautical observations had afforded him. Well, despite the services rendered on that occasion and during the Belgian campaign, the year which had seen the beginning of the military career of balloons saw also its end. The school of Meudon, founded by the Government, was closed by Buonaparte on his return from Egypt. And now, what can you expect from the new-born infant? as Franklin said. The infant was born alive; it should not be stifled!’
The unknown bowed his head in his hands, and reflected for some moments; then raising his head, he said, —
‘Despite my prohibition, monsieur, you have opened the valve.’
I dropped the cord.
‘Happily,’ he resumed, ‘we have still 300 pounds of ballast.’
‘What is your purpose?’ said I.
‘Have you ever crossed the seas?’ he asked.
I turned pale.
‘It is unfortunate,’ he went on, ‘that we are being driven towards the Adriatic. That is only a stream; but higher up we may find other currents.’
And, without taking any notice of me, he threw over several bags of sand; then, in a menacing voice, he said, —
‘I let you open the valve because the expansion of the gas threatened to burst the balloon; but do not do it again!’
Then he went on as follows:—
‘You remember the voyage of Blanchard and Jeffries from Dover to Calais? It was magnificent! On the 7th of January, 1785, there being a north-west wind, their balloon was inflated with gas on the Dover coast. A mistake of equilibrium, just as they were ascending, forced them to throw out their ballast so that they might not go down again, and they only kept thirty pounds. It was too little: for, as the wind did not freshen, they only advanced very slowly towards the French coast. Besides, the permeability of the tissue served to reduce the inflation little by little, and in an hour and a half the aeronauts perceived that they were descending.
"What shall we do?" said Jeffries.
"We are only one quarter of the way over," replied Blanchard, "and very low down. On rising, we shall perhaps meet more favourable winds."
"Let us throw out the rest of the sand."
‘The balloon acquired some ascending force, but itsoon began to descend again. Towards the middle of the transit the aeronauts threw over their books and tools. A quarter of an hour after, Blanchard said to Jeffries: —
"The barometer?"
"It is going up! We are lost, and yet there is the French coast."
A loud noise was heard.
"Has the balloon burst?" asked Jeffries.
"No. The loss of the gas has reduced the inflation of the lower part of the balloon. But we are still descending. We are lost! Out with everything useless!"
‘Provisions, oars, and rudder were thrown into the sea. The aeronauts were only one hundred yards high.
"We are going up again," said the doctor.
"No. It is the spurt caused by the diminution of the weight, and not a ship in sight, not a bark on the horizon! To the sea with our clothing!"
The unfortunates stripped themselves, but the balloon continued to descend.
"Blanchard," said Jeffries, "you should have made this voyage alone; you consented to take me; I will sacrifice myself! I am going to throw myself into the water, and the balloon, relieved of my weight, will mount again."
"No. no! It is frightful!"
The balloon became less and less inflated, and as it doubled up its concavity pressed the gas against the sides, and hastened its downward course.
"Adieu, my friend," said the doctor. "God preserve you!"
He was about to throw himself over, when Blanchard held him back.
"There is one more chance," said he. "We can cut the cords which hold the car, and cling to the net! Perhaps the balloon will rise. Let us hold ourselves ready. But – the barometer is going down! The wind is freshening! We are saved!"
‘The aeronauts perceived Calais. Their joy was delirious. A few moments more, and they had fallen in the forest of Guines. I do not doubt,’ added the unknown, ‘that, under similar circumstances, you would have followed Doctor Jeffries’ example!’
The clouds rolled in glittering masses beneath us. The balloon threw large shadows on this heap of clouds, and was surrounded as by an aureola. The thunder rumbled below the car. All this was terrifying.
‘Let us descend!’ I cried.
‘Descend, when the sun is up there, waiting for us? Out with more bags!’
And more than fifty pounds of ballast were cast over.
At a height of 3,500 yards we remained stationary.
The unknown talked unceasingly. I was in a state of complete prostration, while he seemed to be in his element.
‘With a good wind, we shall go far,’ he cried. ‘In the Antilles there are currents of air which have a speed of a hundred leagues an hour. When Napoleon was crowned, Garnerin sent up a balloon with coloured lamps, at eleven o’clock at night. The wind was blowing north-north-west. The next morning, at daybreak, the inhabitants of Rome greeted its passage over the dome of St Peter’s. We shall go farther and higher!’
I scarcely heard him. Everything whirled around me. An opening appeared in the clouds.
‘See that city,’ said the unknown. ‘It is Spires!’
I leaned over the car and perceived a small blackish mass. It was Spires. The Rhine, which is so large, seemed an unrolled ribbon. The sky was a deep blue over our heads. The birds had long abandoned us, for in that rarefied air they could not have flown. We were alone in space, and I in presence of this unknown!
‘It is useless for you to know whither I am leading you,’ he said, as he threw the compass among the clouds. ‘Ah! a fall is a grand thing! You know that but few victims of ballooning are to be reckoned, from Pilatre des Rosiers to Lieutenant Gale, and that the accidents have always been the result of imprudence. Pilatre des Rosiers set out with Romain of Boulogne, on the 13th of June, 1785. To his gas balloon he had affixed a Montgolfier apparatus of hot air, so as to dispense, no doubt, with the necessity of losing gas or throwing out ballast. It was putting a torch under a powder-barrel. When they had ascended 400 yards, and were taken by opposing winds, they were driven over the open sea. Pilatre, in order to descend, essayed to open the valve, but the valve-cord became entangled in the balloon, and tore it so badly that it became empty in an instant. It fell upon the Montgolfier apparatus, overturned it, and dragged down the unfortunates, who were soon shattered to pieces! It is frightful, is it not?’
I could only reply, ‘For pity’s sake, let us descend!’
The clouds gathered around us on every side, and dreadful detonations, which reverberated in the cavity of the balloon, took place beneath us.
‘You provoke me,’ cried the unknown, ‘and you shall no longer know whether we are rising or falling!’
The barometer went the way of the compass, accompanied by several more bags of sand. We must have been 5,000 yards high. Some icicles had already attached themselves to the sides of the car, and a kind of fine snow seemed to penetrate to my very bones. Meanwhile a frightful tempest was raging under us, but we were above it.
‘Do not be afraid,’ said the unknown. ‘It is only the imprudent who are lost. Olivari, who perished at Orléans, rose in a paper "Montgolfier"; his car, suspended below the chafing-dish, and ballasted with combustible materials, caught fire; Olivari fell, and was killed! Mosment rose, at Lille, on a light tray; an oscillation disturbed his equilibrium; Mosment fell, and was killed! Bittorf, at Mannheim, saw his balloon catch fire in the air; and he, too, fell, and was killed! Harris rose in a badly constructed balloon, the valve of which was too large and would not shut; Harris fell, and was killed! Sadler, deprived of ballast by his long sojourn in the air, was dragged over the town of Boston and dashed against the chimneys; Sadler fell, and was killed! Cokling descended with a convex parachute which he pretended to have perfected; Cokling fell, and was killed! Well, I love them, these victims of their own imprudence, and I shall die as they did. Higher! still higher!’
All the phantoms of this necrology passed before my eyes. The rarefaction of the air and the sun’s rays added to the expansion of the gas, and the balloon continued to mount. I tried mechanically to open the valve, but the unknown cut the cord several feet above my head. I was lost!
‘Did you see Madame Blanchard fall?’ said he. ‘I saw her, yes, I! I was at Tivoli on the 6th of July, 1819. Madame Blanchard rose in a small-sized balloon, to avoid the expense of filling, and she was forced to entirely inflate it. The gas leaked out below, and left a regular train of hydrogen in its path. She carried with her a sort of pyrotechnic aureola, suspended below her car by a wire, which she was to set off in the air. This she had done many times before. On this day she also carried up a small parachute ballasted by a firework contrivance, that would go off in a shower of silver. She was to start this contrivance after having lighted it with a portfire made on purpose. She set out; the night was gloomy. At the moment of lighting her fireworks she was so imprudent as to pass the taper under the column of hydrogen which was leaking from the balloon. My eyes were fixed upon her. Suddenly an unexpected gleam lit up the darkness. I thought she was preparing a surprise. The light flashed out, suddenly disappeared and reappeared, and gave the summit of the balloon the shape of an immense jet of ignited gas. This sinister glow shed itself over the Boulevard and the whole Montmartre quarter. Then I saw the unhappy woman rise, try twice to close the appendage of the balloon, so as to put out the fire, then sit down in her car and try to guide her descent; for she did not fall. The combustion of the gas lasted for several minutes. The balloon, becoming gradually less, continued to descend, but it was not a fall. The wind blew from the north-west and drove it towards Paris. There were then some large gardens just by the house No. 16, Rue de Provence. Madame Blanchard essayed to fall there without danger: but the balloon and the car struck on the roof of the house with a light shock. "Save me!" cried the wretched woman. I got into the street at this moment. The car slid along the roof, and encountered an iron cramp. At this concussion, Madame Blanchard was thrown out of her car and precipitated upon the pavement. She was killed!’
These stories froze me with horror. The unknown was standing with bare head, dishevelled hair, haggard eyes!
There was no longer any illusion possible. I at last recognised the horrible truth. I was in the presence of a madman!
He threw out the rest of the ballast, and we must have now reached a height of at least 9,000 yards. Blood spurted from my nose and mouth!
‘Who are nobler than the martyrs of science?’ cried the lunatic. ‘They are canonised by posterity.’
But I no longer heard him. He looked about him, and, bending down to my ear, muttered, —
‘And have you forgotten Zambecarri’s catastrophe? Listen. On the 7th of October, 1804, the clouds seemed to lift a little. On the preceding days, the wind and rain had not ceased; but the announced ascension of Zambecarri could not be postponed. His enemies were already bantering him. It was necessary to ascend, to save the science and himself from becoming a public jest. It was at Boulogne. No one helped him to inflate his balloon.
‘He rose at midnight, accompanied by Andreoli and Grossetti. The balloon mounted slowly, for it had been perforated by the rain, and the gas was leaking out. The three intrepid aeronauts could only observe the state of the barometer by aid of a dark lantern. Zambecarri had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours. Grossetti was also fasting.
"My friends," said Zambecarri, "I am overcome by cold, and exhausted. I am dying."
He fell inanimate in the gallery. It was the same with Grossetti. Andreoli alone remained conscious. After long efforts, he succeeded in reviving Zambecarri.
"What news? Whither are we going? How is the wind? What time is it?"
"It is two o’clock."
"Where is the compass?"
"Upset!"
"Great God! The lantern has gone out!"
"It cannot burn in this rarefied air," said Zambecarri.
The moon had not risen, and the atmosphere was plunged in murky darkness.
"I am cold, Andreoli. What shall I do?"
They slowly descended through a layer of whitish clouds.
"Sh!" said Andreoli. "Do you hear?"
"What?" asked Zambecarri.
" A strange noise."
"You are mistaken."
"No."
Consider these travellers, in the middle of the night, listening to that unaccountable noise! Are they going to knock against a tower? Are they about to be precipitated on the roofs?
"Do you hear? One would say it was the noise of the sea."
"Impossible!"
"It is the groaning of the waves!"
"It is true."
"Light! light!"
After five fruitless attempts, Andreoli succeeded in obtaining light. It was three o’clock.
‘The voice of violent waves was heard. They were almost touching the surface of the sea!
"We are lost!" cried Zambecarri, seizing a large bag of sand.
"Help!" cried Andreoli.
The car touched the water, and the waves came up to their breasts.
"Throw out the instruments, clothes, money!"
‘The aeronauts completely stripped themselves. The balloon, relieved, rose with frightful rapidity. Zambecarri was taken with vomiting. Grossetti bled profusely. The unfortunate men could not speak, so short was their breathing. They were taken with cold, and they were soon crusted over with ice. The moon looked as red as blood.
‘After traversing the high regions for a half-hour, the balloon again fell into the sea. It was four in the morning. They were half submerged in the water, and the balloon dragged them along, as if under sail, for several hours.
‘At daybreak they found themselves opposite Pesaro, four miles from the coast. They were about to reach it, when a gale blew them back into the open sea. They were lost! The frightened boats fled at their approach. Happily, a more intelligent boatman accosted them, hoisted them on board, and they landed at Ferrada.
‘A frightful journey, was it not? But Zambecarri was a brave and energetic man. Scarcely recovered from his sufferings, he resumed his ascensions. During one of them he struck against a tree; his spirit-lamp was broken on his clothes; he was enveloped in fire, his balloon began to catch the flames, and he came down half consumed.
‘At last, on the 21st of September, 1812, he made another ascension at Boulogne. The balloon clung to a tree, and his lamp again set it on fire. Zambecarri fell, and was killed! And in presence of these facts, we would still hesitate! No. The higher we go, the more glorious will be our death!’
The balloon being now entirely relieved of ballast and of all it contained, we were carried to an enormous height. It vibrated in the atmosphere. The least noise resounded in the vaults of heaven. Our globe, the only object which caught my view in immensity, seemed ready to be annihilated, and above us the depths of the starry skies were lost in thick darkness.
I saw my companion rise up before me.
‘The hour is come!’ he said. ‘We must die. We are rejected of men. They despise us. Let us crush them!’
‘Mercy!’ I cried.
‘Let us cut these cords! Let this car be abandoned in space. The attractive force will change its direction, and we shall approach the sun!’
Despair galvanised me. I threw myself upon the madman, we struggled together, and a terrible conflict took place. But I was thrown down, and while he held me under his knee, the madman was cutting the cords of the car.
‘One!’ he cried.
‘My God!’
‘Two! Three!’
I made a superhuman effort, rose up, and violently repulsed the madman.
‘Four!’
The car fell, but I instinctively clung to the cords and hoisted myself into the meshes of the netting.
The madman disappeared in space!
The balloon was raised to an immeasurable height. A horrible cracking was heard. The gas, too much dilated, had burst the balloon. I shut my eyes —
Some instants after, a damp warmth revived me. I was in the midst of clouds on fire. The balloon turned over with dizzy velocity. Taken by the wind, it made a hundred leagues an hour in a horizontal course, the lightning flashing around it.
Meanwhile my fall was not a very rapid one. When I opened my eyes, I saw the country. I was two miles from the sea, and the tempest was driving me violently towards it, when an abrupt shock forced me to loosen my hold. My hands opened, a cord slipped swiftly between my fingers, and I found myself on the solid earth!
It was the cord of the anchor, which, sweeping along the surface of the ground, was caught in a crevice; and my balloon, unballasted for the last time, careered off to lose itself beyond the sea.
When I came to myself, I was in bed in a peasant’s cottage, at Harderwick, a village of La Gueldre, fifteen leagues from Amsterdam, on the shores of the Zuyder-Zee.
A miracle had saved my life, but my voyage had been a series of imprudences, committed by a lunatic, and I had not been able to prevent them.
May this terrible narrative, though instructing those who read it, not discourage the explorers of the air.
Master Zacharius
1-A Winter Night
The city of Geneva lies at the west end of the lake of the same name. The Rhone, which passes through the town at the outlet of the lake, divides it into two sections, and is itself divided in the centre of the city by an island placed in mid-stream. A topographical feature like this is often found in the great depots of commerce and industry. No doubt the first inhabitants were influenced by the easy means of transport which the swift currents of the rivers offered them – those ‘roads which walk along of their own accord,’ as Pascal puts it. In the case of the Rhone, it would be the road that ran along.
Before new and regular buildings were constructed on this island, which was enclosed like a Dutch galley in the middle of the river, the curious mass of houses, piled one on the other, presented a delightfully confused coup-d’œil. The small area of the island had compelled some of the buildings to be perched, as it were, on the piles, which were entangled in the rough currents of the river. The huge beams, blackened by time, and worn by the water, seemed like the claws of an enormous crab, and presented a fantastic appearance. The little yellow streams, which were like cobwebs stretched amid this ancient foundation, quivered in the darkness, as if they had been the leaves of some old oak forest, while the river engulfed in this forest of piles, foamed and roared most mournfully.
One of the houses of the island was striking for its curiously aged appearance. It was the dwelling of the old clockmaker, Master Zacharius, whose household consisted of his daughter Gerande, Aubert Thun, his apprentice, and his old servant Scholastique.
There was no man in Geneva to compare in interest with this Zacharius. His age was past finding out. Not the oldest inhabitant of the town could tell for how long his thin, pointed head had shaken above his shoulders, nor the day when, for the first time, he had walked through the streets, with his long white locks floating in the wind. The man did not live; he vibrated like the pendulum of his clocks. His spare and cadaverous figure was always clothed in dark colours. Like the pictures of Leonardo da Vinci, he was sketched in black.
Gerande had the pleasantest room in the whole house, whence, through a narrow window, she had the inspiriting view of the snowy peaks of Jura; but the bedroom and workshop of the old man were a kind of cavern close on to the water, the floor of which rested on the piles.
From time immemorial Master Zacharius had never come out except at meal times, and when he went to regulate the different clocks of the town. He passed the rest of his time at his bench, which was covered with numerous clockwork instruments, most of which he had invented himself. For he was a clever man; his works were valued in all France and Germany. The best workers in Geneva readily recognised his superiority, and showed that he was an honour to the town, by saying, ‘To him belongs the glory of having invented the escapement.’ In fact, the birth of true clockwork dates from the invention which the talents of Zacharius had discovered not many years before.
After he had worked hard for a long time, Zacharius would slowly put his tools away, cover up the delicate pieces that he had been adjusting with glasses, and stop the active wheel of his lathe; then he would raise a trap-door constructed in the floor of his workshop, and, stooping down, used to inhale for hours together the thick vapours of the Rhone, as it dashed along under his eyes.
One winter’s night the old servant Scholastique served the supper, which, according to old custom, she and the young mechanic shared with their master. Master Zacharius did not eat, though the food carefully prepared for him was offered him in a handsome blue and white dish. He scarcely answered the sweet words of Gerande, who evidently noticed her father’s silence, and even the clatter of Scholastique herself no more struck his ear than the roar of the river, to which he paid no attention.
After the silent meal, the old clockmaker left the table without embracing his daughter, or saying his usual ‘Good-night’ to all. He left by the narrow door leading to his den. and the staircase groaned under his heavy footsteps as he went down.
Gerande, Aubert, and Scholastique sat for some minutes without speaking. On this evening the weather was dull; the clouds dragged heavily on the Alps, and threatened rain; the severe climate of Switzerland made one feel sad, while the south wind swept round the house, and whistled ominously.
‘My dear young lady,’ said Scholastique, at last, ‘do you know that our master has been out of sorts for several days? Holy Virgin! I know he has had no appetite, because his words stick in his inside, and it would take a very clever devil to drag even one out of him.’
‘My father has some secret cause of trouble, that I cannot even guess,’ replied Gerande, as a sad anxiety spread over her face.
‘Mademoiselle, don’t let such sadness fill your heart. You know the strange habits of Master Zacharius. Who can read his secret thoughts in his face? No doubt some fatigue has overcome him, but tomorrow he will have forgotten it, and be very sorry to have given his daughter pain.’
It was Aubert who spoke thus, looking into Gerande’s lovely eyes. Aubert was the first apprentice whom Master Zacharius had ever admitted to the intimacy of his labours, for he appreciated his intelligence, discretion, and goodness of heart; and this young man had attached himself to Gerande with the earnest devotion natural to a noble nature.
Gerande was eighteen years of age. Her oval face recalled that of the artless Madonnas whom veneration still displays at the street corners of the antique towns of Brittany. Her eyes betrayed an infinite simplicity. One would love her as the sweetest realisation of a poet’s dream. Her apparel was of modest colours, and the white linen which was folded about her shoulders had the tint and perfume peculiar to the linen of the church. She led a mystical existence in Geneva, which had not as yet been delivered over to the dryness of Calvinism.
While, night and morning, she read her Latin prayers in her iron-clasped missal, Gerande had also discovered a hidden sentiment in Aubert Thun’s heart, and comprehended what a profound devotion the young workman had for her. Indeed, the whole world in his eyes was condensed into this old clockmaker’s house, and he passed all his time near the young girl, when he left her father’s workshop, after his work was over.
Old Scholastique saw all this, but said nothing. Her loquacity exhausted itself in preference on the evils of the times, and the little worries of the household. Nobody tried to stop its course. It was with her as with the musical snuff-boxes which they made at Geneva; once wound up, you must break them before you will prevent their playing all their airs through.
Finding Gerande absorbed in a melancholy silence, Scholastique left her old wooden chair, fixed a taper on the end of a candlestick, lit it, and placed it near a small waxen Virgin, sheltered in her niche of stone. It was the family custom to kneel before this protecting Madonna of the domestic hearth, and to beg her kindly watchfulness during the coming night; but on this evening Gerande remained silent in her seat.
‘Well, well, dear demoiselle,’ said the astonished Scholastique, ‘supper is over, and it is time to go to bed. Why do you tire your eyes by sitting up late? Ah, Holy Virgin! It’s much better to sleep, and to get a little comfort from happy dreams! In these detestable times in which we live, who can promise herself a fortunate day?’
‘Ought we not to send for a doctor for my father?’ asked Gerande.
‘A doctor!’ cried the old domestic. ‘Has Master Zacharius ever listened to their fancies and pompous sayings? He might accept medicines for the watches, but not for the body!’
‘What shall we do?’ murmured Gerande. ‘Has he gone to work, or to rest?’
‘Gerande,’ answered Aubert softly, ‘some mental trouble annoys your father, that is all.’
‘Do you know what it is, Aubert?’
‘Perhaps, Gerande.’
‘Tell us, then,’ cried Scholastique eagerly, economically extinguishing her taper.
‘For several days, Gerande,’ said the young apprentice, ‘something absolutely incomprehensible has been going on. All the watches which your father has made and sold for some years have suddenly stopped. Very many of them have been brought back to him. He has carefully taken them to pieces; the springs were in good condition, and the wheels well set. He has put them together yet more carefully; but, despite his skill, they will not go.’
‘The devil’s in it!’ cried Scholastique.
‘Why say you so?’ asked Gerande. ‘It seems very natural to me. Nothing lasts for ever in this world. The infinite cannot be fashioned by the hands of men.’
‘It is none the less true,’ returned Aubert, ‘that there is in this something very mysterious and extraordinary. I have myself been helping Master Zacharius to search for the cause of this derangement of his watches: but I have not been able to find it, and more than once I have let my tools fall from my hands in despair.’
‘But why undertake so vain a task?’ resumed Scholastique. ‘Is it natural that a little copper instrument should go of itself, and mark the hours? We ought to have kept to the sun-dial!’
‘You will not talk thus, Scholastique,’ said Aubert, ‘when you learn that the sun-dial was invented by Cain.’
‘Good heavens! what are you telling me?’
‘Do you think,’ asked Gerande simply, ‘that we might pray to God to give life to my father’s watches?’
‘Without doubt,’ replied Aubert.
‘Good! They will be useless prayers,’ muttered the old servant, ‘but Heaven will pardon them for their good intent.’
The taper was relighted. Scholastique. Gerande, and Aubert knelt down together upon the tiles of the room. The young girl prayed for her mother’s soul, for a blessing for the night, for travellers and prisoners, for the good and the wicked, and more earnestly than all for the unknown misfortunes of her father.
Then the three devout souls rose with some confidence in their hearts, because they had laid their sorrow on the bosom of God.
Aubert repaired to his own room; Gerande sat pensively by the window, whilst the last lights were disappearing from the city streets; and Scholastique, having poured a little water on the flickering embers, and shut the two enormous bolts on the door, threw herself upon her bed, where she was soon dreaming that she was dying of fright.
Meanwhile the terrors of this winter’s night had increased. Sometimes, with the whirlpools of the river, the wind engulfed itself among the piles, and the whole house shivered and shook; but the young girl, absorbed in her sadness, thought only of her father. After hearing what Aubert told her, the malady of Master Zacharius took fantastic proportions in her mind; and it seemed to her as if his existence, so dear to her, having become purely mechanical, no longer moved on its worn-out pivots without effort.
Suddenly the penthouse shutter, shaken by the squall, struck against the window of the room. Gerande shuddered and started up without understanding the cause of the noise which thus disturbed her reverie. When she became a little calmer she opened the sash. The clouds had burst, and a torrent-like rain pattered on the surrounding roofs. The young girl leaned out of the window to draw to the shutter shaken by the wind, but she feared to do so. It seemed to her that the rain and the river, confounding their tumultuous waters, were submerging the frail house, the planks of which creaked in every direction. She would have flown from her chamber, but she saw below the flickering of a light which appeared to come from Master Zacharius’s retreat, and in one of those momentary calms during which the elements keep a sudden silence, her ear caught plaintive sounds. She tried to shut her window, but could not. The wind violently repelled her, like a thief who was breaking into a dwelling.
Gerande thought she would go mad with terror. What was her father doing? She opened the door, and it escaped from her hands, and slammed loudly with the force of the tempest. Gerande then found herself in the dark supper-room, succeeded in gaining, on tiptoe, the staircase which led to her father’s shop, and pale and fainting, glided down.
The old watchmaker was upright in the middle of the room, which resounded with the roaring of the river. His bristling hair gave him a sinister aspect. He was talking and gesticulating, without seeing or hearing anything. Gerande stood still on the threshold.
‘It is death!’ said Master Zacharius, in a hollow voice; ‘it is death! Why should I live longer, now that I have dispersed my existence over the earth? For I, Master Zacharius, am really the creator of all the watches that I have fashioned! It is a part of my very soul that I have shut up in each of these cases of iron, silver, or gold! Every time that one of these accursed watches stops, I feel my heart cease beating, for I have regulated them with its pulsations!’
As he spoke in this strange way, the old man cast his eyes on his bench. There lay all the pieces of a watch that he had carefully taken apart. He took up a sort of hollow cylinder, called a barrel, in which the spring is enclosed, and removed the steel spiral, but instead of relaxing itself, according to the laws of its elasticity, it remained coiled on itself like a sleeping viper. It seemed knotted, like impotent old men whose blood has long been congealed. Master Zacharius vainly essayed to uncoil it with his thin fingers, the outlines of which were exaggerated on the wall; but he tried in vain, and soon, with a terrible cry of anguish and rage, he threw it through the trap-door into the boiling Rhone.
Gerande, her feet riveted to the floor, stood breathless and motionless. She wished to approach her father, but could not. Giddy hallucinations took possession of her. Suddenly she heard, in the shade, a voice murmur in her ears, —
‘Gerande, dear Gerande! grief still keeps you awake. Go in again, I beg of you; the night is cold.’
‘Aubert!’ whispered the young girl. ‘You!’
‘Ought I not to be troubled by what troubles you?’
These soft words sent the blood back into the young girl’s heart. She leaned on Aubert’s arm, and said to him, —
‘My father is very ill, Aubert! You alone can cure him, for this disorder of the mind would not yield to his daughter’s consolings. His mind is attacked by a very natural delusion, and in working with him, repairing the watches, you will bring him back to reason. Aubert,’ she continued, ‘it is not true, is it, that his life is mixed up with that of his watches?’
Aubert did not reply.
‘But is my father’s a trade condemned by God?’ asked Gerande, trembling.
‘I know not,’ returned the apprentice, warming the cold hands of the girl with his own. ‘But go back to your room, my poor Gerande, and with sleep recover hope!’
Gerande slowly returned to her chamber, and remained there till daylight, without sleep closing her eyelids. Meanwhile, Master Zacharius, always mute and motionless, gazed at the river as it rolled turbulently at his feet.
2-The Pride of Science
The severity of the Geneva merchant in business matters has become proverbial. He is rigidly honourable, and excessively just. What must, then, have been the shame of Master Zacharius, when he saw these watches, which he had so carefully constructed, returning to him from every direction?
It was certain that these watches had suddenly stopped, and without any apparent reason. The wheels were in a good condition and firmly fixed, but the springs had lost all elasticity. Vainly did the watchmaker try to replace them; the wheels remained motionless. These unaccountable derangements were greatly to the old man’s discredit. His noble inventions had many times brought upon him suspicions of sorcery, which now seemed confirmed. These rumours reached Gerande, and she often trembled for her father, when she saw malicious glances directed towards him.
Yet on the morning after this night of anguish, Master Zacharius seemed to resume work with some confidence. The morning sun inspired him with some courage. Aubert hastened to join him in the shop, and received an affable ‘Good-day.’
‘I am better,’ said the old man. ‘I don’t know what strange pains in the head attacked me yesterday, but the sun has quite chased them away, with the clouds of the night.’
‘In faith, master,’ returned Aubert, ‘I don’t like the night for either of us!’
‘And thou art right, Aubert. If you ever become a great man, you will understand that day is as necessary to you as food. A great savant should be always ready to receive the homage of his fellow men.’
‘Master, it seems to me that the pride of science has possessed you.’
‘Pride, Aubert! Destroy my past, annihilate my present, dissipate my future, and then it will be permitted to me to live in obscurity! Poor boy, who comprehends not the sublime things to which my art is wholly devoted! Art thou not but a tool in my hands?’
‘Yet, Master Zacharius,’ resumed Aubert, ‘I have more than once merited your praise for the manner in which I adjusted the most delicate parts of your watches and clocks.’
‘No doubt, Aubert; thou art a good workman, such as I love; but when thou workest, thou thinkest thou hast in thy hands but copper, silver, gold; thou dost not perceive these metals, which my genius animates, palpitating like living flesh! So that thou wilt not die, with the death of thy works!’
Master Zacharius remained silent after these words; but Aubert essayed to keep up the conversation.
‘Indeed, master,’ said he, ‘I love to see you work so unceasingly! You will be ready for the festival of our corporation, for I see that the work on this crystal watch is going forward famously.’
‘No doubt, Aubert,’ cried the old watchmaker, ‘and it will be no slight honour for me to have been able to cut and shape the crystal to the durability of a diamond! Ah, Louis Berghem did well to perfect the art of diamond-cutting, which has enabled me to polish and pierce the hardest stones!’
Master Zacharius was holding several small watch pieces of cut crystal, and of exquisite workmanship. The wheels, pivots, and case of the watch were of the same material, and he had employed remarkable skill in this very difficult task.
‘Would it not be fine,’ said he, his face flushing, ‘to see this watch palpitating beneath its transparent envelope, and to be able to count the beatings of its heart?’
‘I will wager, sir,’ replied the young apprentice, ‘that it will not vary a second in a year.’
‘And you would wager on a certainty! Have I not imparted to it all that is purest of myself? And does my heart vary? My heart, I say?’
Aubert did not dare to lift his eyes to his master’s face.
‘Tell me frankly,’ said the old man sadly. ‘Have you never taken me for a madman? Do you not think me sometimes subject to dangerous folly? Yes; is it not so? In my daughter’s eyes and yours, I have often read my condemnation. Oh!’ he cried, as if in pain, ‘to be misunderstood by those whom one most loves in the world! But I will prove victoriously to thee, Aubert, that I am right! Do not shake thy head, for thou wilt be astounded. The day on which thou understandest how to listen to and comprehend me, thou wilt see that I have discovered the secrets of existence, the secrets of the mysterious union of the soul with the body!’
As he spoke thus, Master Zacharius appeared superb in his vanity. His eyes glittered with a supernatural fire, and his pride illumined every feature. And truly, if ever vanity was excusable, it was that of Master Zacharius!
The watchmaking art, indeed, down to his time, had remained almost in its infancy. From the day when Plato, four centuries before the Christian era, invented the night watch, a sort of clepsydra which indicated the hours of the night by the sound and playing of a flute, the science had continued nearly stationary. The masters paid more attention to the arts than to mechanics, and it was the period of beautiful watches of iron, copper, wood, silver which were richly engraved, like one of Cellini’s ewers. They made a masterpiece of chasing, which measured time imperfectly, but was still a masterpiece. When the artist’s imagination was not directed to the perfection of modelling, it set to work to create clocks with moving figures and melodious sounds, whose appearance took all attention. Besides, who troubled himself, in those days, with regulating the advance of time? The delays of the law were not as yet invented; the physical and astronomical sciences had not as yet established their calculations on scrupulously exact measurements; there were neither establishments which were shut at a given hour, nor trains which departed at a precise moment. In the evening the curfew bell sounded; and at night the hours were cried amid the universal silence. Certainly people did not live so long, if existence is measured by the amount of business done; but they lived better. The mind was enriched with the noble sentiments born of the contemplation of chefs-d’oeuvre. They built a church in two centuries, a painter painted but few pictures in the course of his life, a poet only composed one great work; but these were so many masterpieces for afterages to appreciate.
When the exact sciences began at last to make some progress, watch- and clockmaking followed in their path, though it was always arrested by an insurmountable difficulty, – the regular and continuous measurement of time.
It was in the midst of this stagnation that Master Zacharius invented the escapement, which enabled him to obtain a mathematical regularity by submitting the movement of the pendulum to a sustained force. This invention had turned the old man’s head. Pride, swelling in his heart, like mercury in the thermometer, had attained the height of transcendent folly. By analogy he had allowed himself to be drawn to materialistic conclusions, and as he constructed his watches, he fancied that he had discovered the secrets of the union of the soul with the body.
Thus, on this day, perceiving that Aubert listened to him attentively, he said to him in a tone of simple conviction, —
‘Dost thou know what life is, my child? Hast thou comprehended the action of those springs which produce existence? Hast thou examined thyself? No. And yet, with the eyes of science, thou mightest have seen the intimate relation which exists between God’s work and my own: for it is from his creature that I have copied the combinations of the wheels of my clocks.’
‘Master,’ replied Aubert eagerly, ‘can you compare a copper or steel machine with that breath of God which is called the soul, which animates our bodies as the breeze stirs the flowers? What mechanism could be so adjusted as to inspire us with thought?’
‘That is not the question,’ responded Master Zacharius gently, but with all the obstinacy of a blind man walking towards an abyss. ‘In order to understand me, thou must recall the purpose of the escapement which I have invented. When I saw the irregular working of clocks, I understood that the movements shut up in them did not suffice, and that it was necessary to submit them to the regularity of some independent force. I then thought that the balance-wheel might accomplish this, and I succeeded in regulating the movement! Now. was it not a sublime idea that came to me, to return to it its lost force by the action of the clock itself, which it was charged with regulating?’
Aubert made a sign of assent.
‘Now, Aubert,’ continued the old man, growing animated, ‘cast thine eyes upon thyselfl Dost thou not understand that there are two distinct forces in us, that of the soul and that of the body - that is, a movement and a regulator? The soul is the principle of life: that is, then, the movement. Whether it is produced by a weight, by a spring, or by an immaterial influence, it is none the less in the heart. But without the body this movement would be unequal, irregular, impossible! Thus the body regulates the soul, and, like the balance-wheel, it is submitted to regular oscillations. And this is so true, that one falls ill when one’s drink, food, sleep - in a word, the functions of the body – are not properly regulated; just as in my watches the soul renders to the body the force lost by its oscillations. Well, what produces this intimate union between soul and body, if not a marvellous escapement, by which the wheels of the one work into the wheels of the other?This is what I have discovered and applied; and there are no longer any secrets for me in this life, which is, after all, only an ingenious mechanism!’
Master Zacharius looked sublime in this hallucination, which carried him to the ultimate mysteries of the Infinite. But his daughter Gerande, standing on the threshold of the door, had heard all. She rushed into her father’s arms, and he pressed her convulsively to his breast.
‘What is the matter with thee, my daughter?’ he asked.
‘If I had only a spring here,’ said she, putting her hand on her heart, ‘I would not love you as I do, Father.’
Master Zacharius looked intently at Gerande, and did not reply, Suddenly he uttered a cry, carried his hand eagerly to his heart, and fell fainting on his old leathern chair.
‘Father, what is the matter?’
‘Help!’ cried Aubert. ‘Scholastique!’
But Scholastique did not come at once. Someone was knocking at the front door; she had gone to open it, and when she returned to the shop, before she could open her mouth, the old watch-maker. having recovered his senses, spoke: —
‘I divine, my old Scholastique, that you bring me still another of those accursed watches which have stopped.’
‘Lord, it is true enough!’ replied Scholastique, handing a watch to Aubert.
‘My heart could not be mistaken!’ said the old man, with a sigh.
Meanwhile Aubert carefully wound up the watch, but it would not go.
3-A Strange Visit
Poor Gerande would have lost her life with that of her father, had it not been for the thought of Aubert, who still attached her to the world.
The old watchmaker was, little by little, passing away. His faculties evidently grew more feeble, as he concentrated them on a single thought. By a sad association of ideas, he referred everything to his monomania, and a human existence seemed to have departed from him, to give place to the extra-natural existence of the intermediate powers. Moreover, certain malicious rivals revived the sinister rumours which had spread concerning his labours.
The news of the strange derangements which his watches betrayed had a prodigious effect upon the master clockmakers of Geneva. What signified this sudden paralysis of their wheels, and why these strange relations which they seemed to have with the old man’s life? These were the kind of mysteries which people never contemplate without a secret terror. In the various classes of the town, from the apprentice to the great lord who used the watches of the old horologist, there was no one who could not himself judge of the singularity of the fact. The citizens wished, but in vain, to get to see Master Zacharius. He fell very ill; and this enabled his daughter to withdraw him from those incessant visits which had degenerated into reproaches and recriminations.
Medicines and physicians were powerless in presence of this organic wasting away, the cause of which could not be discovered. It sometimes seemed as if the old man’s heart had ceased to beat; then the pulsations were resumed with an alarming irregularity.
A custom existed in those days of publicly exhibiting the works of the masters. The heads of the various corporations sought to distinguish themselves by the novelty or the perfection of their productions; and it was among these that the condition of Master Zacharius excited the most lively, because most interested, commiseration. His rivals pitied him the more willingly because they feared him the less. They never forgot the old man’s success, when he exhibited his magnificent clocks with moving figures, his repeaters, which provoked general admiration, and commanded such high prices in the cities of France, Switzerland, and Germany.
Meanwhile, thanks to the constant and tender care of Gerande and Aubert, his strength seemed to return a little; and in the tranquillity in which his convalescence left him, he succeeded in detaching himself from the thoughts which had absorbed him. As soon as he could walk, his daughter lured him away from the house, which was still besieged with dissatisfied customers. Aubert remained in the shop, vainly adjusting and readjusting the rebel watches; and the poor boy, completely mystified, sometimes covered his face with his hands, fearful that he, like his master, might go mad.
Gerande led her father towards the more pleasant promenades of the town. With his arm resting on hers, she conducted him sometimes through the quarter of Saint Antoine, the view from which extends towards the Cologny hill, and over the lake: on fine mornings they caught sight of the gigantic peaks of Mount Buet against the horizon. Gerande pointed out these spots to her father, who had well-nigh forgotten even their names. His memory wandered; and he took a childish interest in learning anew what had passed from his mind. Master Zacharius leaned upon his daughter; and the two heads, one white as snow and the other covered with rich golden tresses, met in the same ray of sunlight.
So it came about that the old watchmaker at last perceived that he was not alone in the world. As he looked upon his young and lovely daughter, and on himself old and broken, he reflected that after his death she would be left alone without support. Many of the young mechanics of Geneva had already sought to win Gerande’s love; but none of them had succeeded in gaining access to the impenetrable retreat of the watchmaker’s household. It was natural, then, that during this lucid interval, the old man’s choice should fall on Aubert Thun. Once struck with this thought, he remarked to himself that this young couple had been brought up with the same ideas and the same beliefs; and the oscillations of their hearts seemed to him, as he said one day to Scholastique, ‘isochronous’.
The old servant, literally delighted with the word, though she did not understand it, swore by her holy patron saint that the whole town should hear it within a quarter of an hour. Master Zacharius found it difficult to calm her; but made her promise to keep on this subject a silence which she never was known to observe.
So, though Gerande and Aubert were ignorant of it, all Geneva was soon talking of their speedy union. But it happened also that, while the worthy folk were gossiping, a strange chuckle was often heard, and a voice saying, ‘Gerande will not wed Aubert.’
If the talkers turned round, they found themselves facing a little old man who was quite a stranger to them.
How old was this singular being? No one could have told. People conjectured that he must have existed for several centuries, and that was all. His big flat head rested upon shoulders the width of which was equal to the height of his body; this was not above three feet. This personage would have made a good figure to support a pendulum, for the dial would have naturally been placed on his face, and the balance-wheel would have oscillated at its ease in his chest. His nose might readily have been taken for the style of a sun-dial, for it was narrow and sharp; his teeth, far apart, resembled the cogs of a wheel, and ground themselves between his lips; his voice had the metallic sound of a bell, and you could hear his heart beat like the tick of a clock.
This little man, whose arms moved like the hands on a dial, walked with jerks, without ever turning round. If anyone followed him, it was found that he walked a league an hour, and that his course was nearly circular.
This strange being had not long been seen wandering, or rather circulating, around the town; but it had already been observed that, every day, at the moment when the sun passed the meridian, he stopped before the Cathedral of Saint Pierre, and resumed his course after the twelve strokes of noon had sounded. Excepting at this precise moment, he seemed to become a part of all the conversations in which the old watchmaker was talked of; and people asked each other, in terror, what relation could exist between him and Master Zacharius. It was remarked, too, that he never lost sight of the old man and his daughter while they were taking their promenades.
One day Gerande perceived this monster looking at her with a hideous smile. She clung to her father with a frightened motion.
‘What is the matter, my Gerande?’ asked Master Zacharius.
‘I do not know,’ replied the young girl.
‘But thou art changed, my child. Art thou going to fall ill in thy turn? Ah, well,’ he added, with a sad smile, ‘then I must take care of thee, and I will do it tenderly.’
‘O Father, it will be nothing. I am cold, and I imagine that it is -’
‘What, Gerande?’
‘The presence of that man, who always follows us,’ she replied in a low tone.
Master Zacharius turned towards the little old man.
‘Faith, he goes well,’ said he, with a satisfied air, ‘for it is just four o’clock. Fear nothing, my child; it is not a man, it is a clock!’
Gerande looked at her father in terror. How could Master Zacharius read the hour on this strange creature’s visage?
‘By-the-bye,’ continued the old watchmaker, paying no further attention to the matter, ‘I have not seen Aubert for several days.’
‘He has not left us, however, Father,’ said Gerande, whose thoughts turned into a gentler channel.
‘What is he doing then?’
‘He is working.’
‘Ah!’ cried the old man. ‘He is at work repairing my watches, is he not? But he will never succeed; for it is not repair they need, but a resurrection!’
Gerande remained silent.
‘I must know,’ added the old man, ‘if they have brought back any more of those accursed watches upon which the Devil has sent this epidemic!’
After these words Master Zacharius fell into complete silence, till he knocked at the door of his house, and for the first time since his convalescence descended to his shop, while Gerande sadly repaired to her chamber.
Just as Master Zacharius crossed the threshold of his shop, one of the many clocks suspended on the wall struck five o’clock. Usually the bells of these clocks – admirably regulated as they were – struck simultaneously, and this rejoiced the old man’s heart: but on this day the bells struck one after another, so that for a quarter of an hour the ear was deafened by the successive noises. Master Zacharius suffered acutely: he could not remain still, but went from one clock to the other, and beat the time to them, like a conductor who no longer has control over his musicians.
When the last had ceased striking, the door of the shop opened, and Master Zacharius shuddered from head to foot to see before him the little old man, who looked fixedly at him and said, —
‘Master, may I not speak with you a few moments?’
‘Who are you?’ asked the watchmaker abruptly.
‘A colleague. It is my business to regulate the sun.’
‘Ah, you regulate the sun?’ replied Master Zacharius eagerly, without wincing. ‘I can scarcely compliment you upon it. Your sun goes badly, and in order to make ourselves agree with it, we have to keep putting our clocks forward so much or back so much.’
‘And by the cloven foot,’ cried this weird personage, ‘you are right, my master! My sun does not always mark noon at the same moment as your clocks: but some day it will be known that this is because of the inequality of the earth’s transfer, and a mean noon will be invented which will regulate this irregularity!’
‘Shall I live till then?’ asked the old man, with glistening eyes.
‘Without doubt,’ replied the little old man, laughing. ‘Can you believe that you will ever die?’
‘Alas! I am very ill now.’
‘Ah, let us talk of that. By Beelzebub! that will lead to just what I wish to speak to you about’
Saying this, the strange being leaped upon the old leather chair, and carried his legs one under the other, after the fashion of the bones which the painters of funeral hangings cross beneath death’s heads. Then he resumed, in an ironical tone, —
‘Let us see, Master Zacharius, what is going on in this good town of Geneva? They say that your health is failing, that your watches have need of a doctor!’
‘Ah, do you believe that there is an intimate relation between their existence and mine?’ cried Master Zacharius.
‘Why, I imagine that these watches have faults, even vices. If these wantons do not preserve a regular conduct, it is right that they should bear the consequences of their irregularity. It seems to me that they have need of reforming a little!’
‘What do you call faults?’ asked Master Zacharius, reddening at the sarcastic tone in which these words were uttered. ‘Have they not a right to be proud of their origin?’
‘Not too proud, not too proud,’ replied the little old man. ‘They bear a celebrated name, and an illustrious signature is graven on their cases, it is true, and theirs is the exclusive privilege of being introduced among the noblest families; but for some time they have got out of order, and you can do nothing in the matter, Master Zacharius; and the stupidest apprentice in Geneva could prove it to you!’
‘To me, to me, – Master Zacharius!’ cried the old man, with a flush of outraged pride.
‘To you, Master Zacharius, – you, who cannot restore life to your watches!’
‘But it is because I have a fever, and so have they also!’ replied the old man, as a cold sweat broke out upon him.
‘Very well, they will die with you, since you cannot impart a little elasticity to their springs.’
‘Die! No, for you yourself have said it! I cannot die, - I, the first watchmaker in the world; I, who, by means of these pieces and diverse wheels, have been able to regulate the movement with absolute precision! Have I not subjected time to exact laws, and can I not dispose of it like a despot? Before a sublime genius had arranged these wandering hours regularly, in what vast uncertainty was human destiny plunged? At what certain moment could the acts of life be connected with each other? But you, man or devil, whatever you may be, have never considered the magnificence of my art, which calls every science to its aid! No, no! I, Master Zacharius, cannot die, for, as I have regulated time, time would end with me! It would return to the infinite, whence my genius has rescued it, and it would lose itself irreparably in the abyss of nothingness! No, I can no more die than the Creator of this universe, that submitted to His laws! I have become His equal, and I have partaken of His power! If God has created eternity, Master Zacharius has created time!’
The old watchmaker now resembled the fallen angel, defiant in the presence of the Creator. The little old man gazed at him, and even seemed to breathe into him this impious transport.
‘Well said, master,’ he replied. ‘Beelzebub had less right than you to compare himself with God! Your glory must not perish! So your servant here desires to give you the method of controlling these rebellious watches.’
‘What is it? what is it?’ cried Master Zacharius.
‘You shall know on the day after that on which you have given me your daughter’s hand.’
‘My Gerande?’
‘Herself!’
‘My daughter’s heart is not free,’ replied Master Zacharius, who seemed neither astonished nor shocked at the strange demand.
‘Bah! She is not the least beautiful of watches; but she will end by stopping also -’
‘My daughter, – my Gerande! No!’
‘Well, return to your watches, Master Zacharius. Adjust and readjust them. Get ready the marriage of your daughter and your apprentice. Temper your springs with your best steel. Bless Aubert and the pretty Gerande. But remember, your watches will never go, and Gerande will not wed Aubert!’
Thereupon the little old man disappeared, but not so quickly that Master Zacharius could not hear six o’clock strike in his breast.
4-The Church of Saint Pierre
Meanwhile Master Zacharius became more feeble in mind and body every day. An unusual excitement, indeed, impelled him to continue his work more eagerly than ever, nor could his daughter entice him from it.
His pride was still more aroused after the crisis to which his strange visitor had hurried him so treacherously, and he resolved to overcome, by the force of genius, the malign influence which weighed upon his work and himself. He first repaired to the various clocks of the town which were confided to his care. He made sure, by a scrupulous examination, that the wheels were in good condition, the pivots firm, the weights exactly balanced. Every part, even to the bells, was examined with the minute attention of a physician studying the breast of a patient. Nothing indicated that these clocks were on the point of being affected by inactivity.
Gerande and Aubert often accompanied the old man on these visits. He would no doubt have been pleased to see them eager to go with him, and certainly he would not have been so much absorbed in his approaching end, had he thought that his existence was to be prolonged by that of these cherished ones, and had he understood that something of the life of a father always remains in his children.
The old watchmaker, on returning home, resumed his labours with feverish zeal. Though persuaded that he would not succeed, it yet seemed to him impossible that this could be so, and he unceasingly took to pieces the watches which were brought to his shop, and put them together again.
Aubert tortured his mind in vain to discover the causes of the evil.
‘Master,’ said he, ‘this can only come from the wear of the pivots and gearing.’
‘Do you want, then, to kill me, little by little?’ replied Master Zacharius passionately. ‘Are these watches child’s work? Was it lest I should hurt my fingers that I worked the surface of these copper pieces in the lathe? Have I not forged these pieces of copper myself, so as to obtain a greater strength? Are not these springs tempered to a rare perfection? Could anybody have used finer oils than mine? You must yourself agree that it is impossible, and you avow, in short, that the devil is in it!’
From morning till night discontented purchasers besieged the house, and they got access to the old watchmaker himself, who knew not which of them to listen to.
‘This watch loses, and I cannot succeed in regulating it,’ said one.
‘This,’ said another, ‘is absolutely obstinate, and stands still, as did Joshua’s sun.’
‘If it is true,’ said most of them, ‘that your health has an influence on that of your watches, Master Zacharius, get well as soon as possible.’
The old man gazed at these people with haggard eyes, and only replied by shaking his head, or by a few sad words, —
‘Wait till the first fine weather, my friends. The season is coming which revives existence in wearied bodies. We want the sun to warm us all!’
‘A fine thing, if my watches are to be ill through the winter!’ said one of the most angry. ‘Do you know, Master Zacharius, that your name is inscribed in full on their faces? By the Virgin, you do little honour to your signature!’
It happened at last that the old man, abashed by these reproaches, took some pieces of gold from his old trunk, and began to buy back the damaged watches. At news of this, the customers came in a crowd, and the poor watchmaker’s money fast melted away; but his honesty remained intact. Gerande warmly praised his delicacy, which was leading him straight towards ruin; and Aubert soon offered his own savings to his master.
‘What will become of my daughter?’ said Master Zacharius, clinging now and then in the shipwreck to his paternal love.
Aubert dared not answer that he was full of hope for the future, and of deep devotion to Gerande. Master Zacharius would have that day called him his son-in-law, and thus refuted the sad prophecy, which still buzzed in his ears, —
‘Gerande will not wed Aubert.’
By this plan the watchmaker at last succeeded in entirely despoiling himself. His antique vases passed into the hands of strangers; he deprived himself of the richly carved panels which adorned the walls of his house; some primitive pictures of the early Flemish painters soon ceased to please his daughter’s eyes, and everything, even the precious tools that his genius had invented, were sold to indemnify the clamorous customers.
Scholastique alone refused to listen to reason on the subject; but her efforts failed to prevent the unwelcome visitors from reaching her master, and from soon departing with some valuable object. Then her chattering was heard in all the streets of the neighbourhood, where she had long been known. She eagerly denied the rumours of sorcery and magic on the part of Master Zacharius, which gained currency; but as at bottom she was persuaded of their truth, she said her prayers over and over again to redeem her pious falsehoods.
It had been noticed that for some time the old watchmaker had neglected his religious duties. Time was, when he had accompanied Gerande to church, and had seemed to find in prayer the intellectual charm which it imparts to thoughtful minds, since it is the most sublime exercise of the imagination. This voluntary neglect of holy practices, added to the secret habits of his life, had in some sort confirmed the accusations levelled against his labours. So, with the double purpose of drawing her father back to God, and to the world, Gerande resolved to call religion to her aid. She thought that it might give some vitality to his dying soul; but the dogmas of faith and humility had to combat, in the soul of Master Zacharius, an insurmountable pride, and came into collision with that vanity of science which connects everything with itself, without rising to the infinite source whence first principles flow.
It was under these circumstances that the young girl undertook her father’s conversion; and her influence was so effective that the old watchmaker promised to attend high mass at the cathedral on the following Sunday. Gerande was in an ecstasy, as if heaven had opened to her view. Old Scholastique could not contain her joy, and at last found irrefutable arguments against the gossiping tongues which accused her master of impiety. She spoke of it to her neighbours, her friends, her enemies, to those whom she knew not as well as to those whom she knew.
‘In faith, we scarcely believe what you tell us, dame Scholastique,’ they replied; ‘Master Zacharius has always acted in concert with the devil!’
‘You haven’t counted, then,’ replied the old servant, ‘the fine bells which strike for my master’s clocks? How many times they have struck the hours of prayer and the mass!’
‘No doubt,’ they would reply. ‘But has he not invented machines which go all by themselves, and which actually do the work of a real man?’
‘Could a child of the devil,’ exclaimed dame Scholastique wrathfully, ‘have executed the fine iron clock of the château of Andernatt, which the town of Geneva was not rich enough to buy? A pious motto appeared at each hour, and a Christian who obeyed them, would have gone straight to Paradise! Is that the work of the devil?’
This masterpiece, made twenty years before, had carried Master Zacharius’s fame to its acme; but even then there had been accusations of sorcery against him. But at least the old man’s visit to the cathedral ought to reduce malicious tongues to silence.
Master Zacharius, having doubtless forgotten the promise made to his daughter, had returned to his shop. After being convinced of his powerlessness to give life to his watches, he resolved to try if he could not make some new ones. He abandoned all those useless works, and devoted himself to the completion of the crystal watch, which he intended to be his masterpiece; but in vain did he use his most perfect tools, and employ rubies and diamonds for resisting friction. The watch fell from his hands the first time that he attempted to wind it up!
The old man concealed this circumstance from everyone, even from his daughter; but from that time his health rapidly declined. There were only the last oscillations of a pendulum, which goes slower when nothing restores its original force. It seemed as if the laws of gravity, acting directly upon him, were dragging him irresistibly down to the grave.
The Sunday so ardently anticipated by Gerande at last arrived. The weather was fine, and the temperature inspiriting. The people of Geneva were passing quietly through the streets, gaily chatting about the return of spring. Gerande, tenderly taking the old man’s arm, directed her steps towards the cathedral, while Scholastique followed behind with the prayer-books. People looked curiously at them as they passed. The old watchmaker permitted himself to be led like a child, or rather like a blind man. The faithful of Saint Pierre were almost frightened when they saw him cross the threshold, and shrank back at his approach.
The chants of high mass were already resounding through the church. Gerande went to her accustomed bench, and kneeled with profound and simple reverence. Master Zacharius remained standing upright beside her.
The ceremonies continued with the majestic solemnity of that faithful age, but the old man had no faith. He did not implore the pity of Heaven with cries of anguish of the ‘Kyrie’; he did not, with the ‘Gloria in Excelsis’, sing the splendours of the heavenly heights; the reading of the Testament did not draw him from his materialistic reverie, and he forgot to join in the homage of the ‘Credo’. This proud old man remained motionless, as insensible and silent as a stone statue; and even at the solemn moment when the bell announced the miracle of transubstantiation, he did not bow his head, but gazed directly at the sacred host which the priest raised above the heads of the faithful. Gerande looked at her father, and a flood of tears moistened her missal. At this moment the clock of Saint Pierre struck half-past eleven. Master Zacharius turned quickly towards this ancient clock which still spoke. It seemed to him as if its face was gazing steadily at him; the figures of the hours shone as if they had been engraved in lines of fire, and the hands shot forth electric sparks from their sharp points.
The mass ended. It was customary for the ‘Angelus’ to be said at noon, and the priests, before leaving the altar, waited for the clock to strike the hour of twelve. In a few moments this prayer would ascend to the feet of the Virgin.
But suddenly a harsh noise was heard. Master Zacharius uttered a piercing cry.
The large hand of the clock, having reached twelve, had abruptly stopped, and the clock did not strike the hour.
Gerande hastened to her father’s aid. He had fallen down motionless, and they carried him outside the church.
‘It is the death-blow!’ murmured Gerande, sobbing.
When he had been borne home, Master Zacharius lay upon his bed utterly crushed. Life seemed only to still exist on the surface of his body, like the last whiffs of smoke about a lamp just extinguished.
When he came to his senses, Aubert and Gerande were leaning over him. In these last moments the future took in his eyes the shape of the present. He saw his daughter alone, without a protector.
‘My son,’ said he to Aubert, ‘I give my daughter to thee.’
So saying, he stretched out his hands towards his two children, who were thus united at his death-bed.
But soon Master Zacharius lifted himself up in a paroxysm of rage. The words of the little old man recurred to his mind.
‘I do not wish to die!’ he cried; ‘I cannot die! I, Master Zacharius, ought not to die! My books – my accounts! -’
With these words he sprang from his bed towards a book in which the names of his customers and the articles which had been sold to them were inscribed. He seized it and rapidly turned over its leaves, and his emaciated finger fixed itself on one of the pages.
‘There!’ he cried, ‘there! this old iron clock, sold to Pittonaccio! It is the only one that has not been returned to me! It still exists – it goes – it lives! Ah, I wish for it -I must find it! I will take such care of it that death will no longer seek me!’
And he fainted away.
Aubert and Gerande knelt by the old man’s bedside and prayed together.
5-The Hour of Death
Several days passed, and Master Zacharius, though almost dead, rose from his bed and returned to active life under a supernatural excitement. He lived by pride. But Gerande did not deceive herself; her father’s body and soul were for ever lost.
The old man got together his last remaining resources, without thought of those who were dependent upon him. He betrayed an incredible energy, walking, ferreting about, and mumbling strange, incomprehensible words.
One morning Gerande went down to his shop. Master Zacharius was not there. She waited for him all day. Master Zacharius did not return.
Gerande wept bitterly, but her father did not reappear.
Aubert searched everywhere through the town, and soon came to the sad conviction that the old man had left it.
‘Let us find my father!’ cried Gerande, when the young apprentice told her this sad news.
‘Where can he be?’ Aubert asked himself.
An inspiration suddenly came to his mind. He remembered the last words which Master Zacharius had spoken. The old man only lived now in the old iron clock that had not been returned! Master Zacharius must have gone in search of it.
Aubert spoke of this to Gerande.
‘Let us look at my father’s book,’ she replied.
They descended to the shop. The book was open on the bench. All the watches or clocks made by the old man, and which had been returned to him because they were out of order, were stricken out excepting one: —
Sold to M. Pittonaccio, an iron clock, with bell and moving figures:
sent to his château at Andernatt.
It was this ‘moral’ clock of which Scholastique had spoken with so much enthusiasm.
‘My father is there!’ cried Gerande.
‘Let us hasten thither,’ replied Aubert. ‘We may still save him!’
‘Not for this life,’ murmured Gerande, ‘but at least for the other.’
‘By the mercy of God, Gerande! The château of Andernatt stands in the gorge of the ‘Dents-du-Midi’, twenty hours from Geneva. Let us go!’
That very evening Aubert and Gerande, followed by the old servant, set out on foot by the road which skirts Lake Leman. They accomplished five leagues during the night, stopping neither at Bessinge nor at Ermance, where rises the famous château of the Mayors. They with difficulty forded the torrent of the Dranse, and everywhere they went they inquired for Master Zacharius, and were soon convinced that they were on his track.
The next morning, at daybreak, having passed Thonon, they reached Evian, whence the Swiss territory may be seen extended over twelve leagues. But the two betrothed did not even perceive the enchanting prospect. They went straight forward, urged on by a supernatural force. Aubert, leaning on a knotty stick, offered his arm alternately to Gerande and to Scholastique, and he made the greatest efforts to sustain his companions. All three talked of their sorrow, of their hopes, and thus passed along the beautiful road by the waterside, and across the narrow plateau which unites the borders of the lake with the heights of the Chalais. They soon reached Bouveret, where the Rhone enters the Lake of Geneva.
On leaving this town they diverged from the lake, and their weariness increased amid these mountain districts. Vionnaz, Chesset, Collombay, half-lost villages, were soon left behind. Meanwhile their knees shook, their feet were lacerated by the sharp points which covered the ground like a brushwood of granite; – but no trace of Master Zacharius!
He must be found, however, and the two young people did not seek repose either in the isolated hamlets or at the château of Monthay, which, with its dependencies, formed the appanage of Margaret of Savoy. At last, late in the day, and half dead with fatigue, they reached the hermitage of Notre-Dame-du-Sex, which is situated at the base of the Dents-du-Midi, 600 feet above the Rhone.
The hermit received the three wanderers as night was falling. They could not have gone another step, and here they must needs rest.
The hermit could give them no news of Master Zacharius. They could scarcely hope to find him still living amid these sad solitudes. The night was dark, the wind howled amid the mountains, and the avalanches roared down from the summits of the broken crags.
Aubert and Gerande, crouching before the hermit’s hearth, told him their melancholy tale. Their mantles, covered with snow, were drying in a corner; and without, the hermit’s dog barked lugubriously, and mingled his voice with that of the tempest.
‘Pride,’ said the hermit to his guests, ‘has destroyed an angel created for good. It is the stumbling-block against which the destinies of man strike. You cannot reason with pride, the principal of all the vices, since, by its very nature, the proud man refuses to listen to it. It only remains, then, to pray for your father!’
All four knelt down, when the barking of the dog redoubled, and someone knocked at the door of the hermitage.
‘Open, in the devil’s name!’
The door yielded under the blows, and a dishevelled, haggard, ill-clothed man appeared.
‘My father!’ cried Gerande.
It was Master Zacharius.
‘Where am I?’ said he. ‘In eternity! Time is ended – the hours no longer strike – the hands have stopped!’
‘Father!’ returned Gerande, with so piteous an emotion that the old man seemed to return to the world of the living.
‘Thou here, Gerande?’ he cried; ‘and thou, Aubert? Ah, my dear betrothed ones, you are going to be married in our old church!’
‘Father,’ said Gerande, seizing him by the arm, ‘come home to Geneva, – come with us!’
The old man tore away from his daughter’s embrace and hurried towards the door, on the threshold of which the snow was falling in large flakes.
‘Do not abandon your children!’ cried Aubert.
‘Why return.’ replied the old man sadly, ‘to those places which my life has already quitted, and where a part of myself is for ever buried?’
‘Your soul is not dead,’ said the hermit solemnly.
‘My soul? O no, – its wheels are good! I perceive it beating regularly -’
‘Your soul is immaterial, – your soul is immortal!’ replied the hermit sternly.
‘Yes – like my glory! But it is shut up in the château of Andernatt, and I wish to see it again!’
The hermit crossed himself; Scholastique became almost inanimate. Aubert held Gerande in his arms.
‘The château of Andernatt is inhabited by one who is lost,’ said the hermit, ‘one who does not salute the cross of my hermitage.’
‘My father, go not thither!’
‘I want my soul! My soul is mine -’
‘Hold him! Hold my father!’ cried Gerande.
But the old man had leaped across the threshold, and plunged into the night, crying, ‘Mine, mine, my soul!’
Gerande, Aubert, and Scholastique hastened after him. They went by difficult paths, across which Master Zacharius sped like a tempest, urged by an irresistible force. The snow raged around them, and mingled its white flakes with the froth of the swollen torrents.
As they passed the chapel erected in memory of the massacre of the Theban legion, they hurriedly crossed themselves. Master Zacharius was not to be seen.
At last the village of Evionnaz appeared in the midst of this sterile region. The hardest heart would have been moved to see this hamlet, lost among these horrible solitudes. The old man sped on, and plunged into the deepest gorge of the Dents-du-Midi, which pierce the sky with their sharp peaks.
Soon a ruin, old and gloomy as the rocks at its base, rose before him.
‘It is there – there!’ he cried, hastening his pace still more frantically.
The château of Andernatt was a ruin even then. A thick, crumbling tower rose above it, and seemed to menace with its downfall the old gables which reared themselves below. The vast piles of jagged stones were gloomy to look on. Several dark halls appeared amid the debris, with caved-in ceilings, now become the abode of vipers.
A low and narrow postern, opening upon a ditch choked with rubbish, gave access to the château. Who had dwelt there none knew. No doubt some margrave, half lord, half brigand, had sojourned in it; to the margrave had succeeded bandits or counterfeit coiners, who had been hanged on the scene of their crime. The legend went that, on winter nights, Satan came to lead his diabolical dances on the slope of the deep gorges in which the shadow of these ruins was engulfed.
But Master Zacharius was not dismayed by their sinister aspect. He reached the postern. No one forbade him to pass. A spacious and gloomy court presented itself to his eyes; no one forbade him to cross it. He passed along the kind of inclined plane which conducted to one of the long corridors, whose arches seemed to banish daylight from beneath their heavy springings. His advance was unresisted. Gerande, Aubert, and Scholastique closely followed him.
Master Zacharius, as if guided by an irresistible hand, seemed sure of his way, and strode along with rapid step. He reached an old worm-eaten door, which fell before his blows, whilst the bats described oblique circles around his head.
An immense hall, better preserved than the rest, was soon reached. High sculptured panels, on which serpents, ghouls, and other strange figures seemed to disport themselves confusedly, covered its walls. Several long and narrow windows, like loopholes, shivered beneath the bursts of the tempest.
Master Zacharius, on reaching the middle of this hall, uttered a cry of joy.
On an iron support, fastened to the wall, stood the clock in which now resided his entire life. This unequalled masterpiece represented an ancient Roman church, with buttresses of wrought iron, with its heavy bell-tower, where there was a complete chime for the anthem of the day, the ‘Angelus’, the mass, vespers, compline, and the benediction. Above the church door, which opened at the hour of the services, was placed a ‘rose’, in the centre of which two hands moved, and the archivault of which reproduced the twelve hours of the face sculptured in relief. Between the door and the rose, just as Scholastique had said, a maxim, relative to the employment of every moment of the day, appeared on a copper plate. Master Zacharius had once regulated this succession of devices with a really Christian solicitude; the hours of prayer, of work, of repast, of recreation, and of repose, followed each other according to the religious discipline, and were to infallibly insure salvation to him who scrupulously observed their commands.
Master Zacharius, intoxicated with joy, went forward to take possession of the clock, when a frightful roar of laughter resounded behind him.
He turned, and by the light of a smoky lamp recognised the little old man of Geneva.
‘You here?’ cried he.
Gerande was afraid. She drew closer to Aubert.
‘Good-day, Master Zacharius,’ said the monster.
‘Who are you?’
‘Signor Pittonaccio, at your service! You have come to give me your daughter! You have remembered my words, "Gerande will not wed Aubert."‘
The young apprentice rushed upon Pittonaccio, who escaped from him like a shadow.
‘Stop, Aubert!’ cried Master Zacharius.
‘Good-night,’ said Pittonaccio, and he disappeared.
‘My father, let us fly from this hateful place!’ cried Gerande. ‘My father!’
Master Zacharius was no longer there. He was pursuing the phantom of Pittonaccio across the rickety corridors. Scholastique, Gerande, and Aubert remained, speechless and fainting, in the large gloomy hall. The young girl had fallen upon a stone seat; the old servant knelt beside her, and prayed; Aubert remained erect, watching his betrothed. Pale lights wandered in the darkness, and the silence was only broken by the movements of the little animals which live in old wood, and the noise of which marks the hours of ‘death watch’.
When daylight came, they ventured upon the endless staircase which wound beneath these ruined masses; for two hours they wandered thus without meeting a living soul, and hearing only a far-off echo responding to their cries. Sometimes they found themselves buried a hundred feet below the ground, and sometimes they reached places whence they could overlook the wild mountains.
Chance brought them at last back again to the vast hall, which had sheltered them during this night of anguish. It was no longer empty. Master Zacharius and Pittonaccio were talking there together, the one upright and rigid as a corpse, the other crouching over a marble table.
Master Zacharius, when he perceived Gerande, went forward and took her by the hand, and led her towards Pittonaccio, saying, ‘Behold your lord and master, my daughter. Gerande, behold your husband!’
Gerande shuddered from head to foot.
‘Never!’ cried Aubert, ‘for she is my betrothed.’
‘Never!’ responded Gerande, like a plaintive echo.
Pittonaccio began to laugh.
‘You wish me to die, then!’ exclaimed the old man. ‘There, in that clock, the last which goes of all which have gone from my hands, my life is shut up; and this man tells me, "When I have thy daughter, this clock shall belong to thee." And this man will not rewind it. He can break it, and plunge me into chaos. Ah, my daughter, you no longer love me!’
‘My father!’ murmured Gerande, recovering consciousness.
‘If you knew what I have suffered, far away from this principle of my existence!’ resumed the old man. ‘Perhaps no one looked after this timepiece. Perhaps its springs were left to wear out, its wheels to get clogged. But now, in my own hands, I can nourish this health so dear, for I must not die, -I, the great watchmaker of Geneva. Look, my daughter, how these hands advance with certain step. See, five o’clock is about to strike. Listen well, and look at the maxim which is about to be revealed.’
Five o’clock struck with a noise which resounded sadly in Gerande’s soul, and these words appeared in red letters:
YOU MUST EAT OF THE FRUITS OF THE TREE OF SCIENCE.
Aubert and Gerande looked at each other stupefied. These were no longer the pious sayings of the Catholic watchmaker. The breath of Satan must have passed over it. But Zacharius paid no attention to this, and resumed —
‘Dost thou hear, my Gerande? I live, I still live! Listen to my breathing, – see the blood circulating in my veins! No, thou wouldst not kill thy father, and thou wilt accept this man for thy husband, so that I may become immortal, and at last attain the power of God!’
At these blasphemous words old Scholastique crossed herself, and Pittonaccio laughed aloud with joy.
‘And then, Gerande, thou wilt be happy with him. See this man, – he is Time! Thy existence will be regulated with absolute precision. Gerande, since I gave thee life, give life to thy father!’
‘Gerande,’ murmured Aubert, ‘I am thy betrothed.’
‘He is my father!’ replied Gerande, fainting.
‘She is thine!’ said Master Zacharius. ‘Pittonaccio, thou wilt keep thy promise!’
‘Here is the key of the clock,’ replied the horrible man.
Master Zacharius seized the long key, which resembled an uncoiled snake, and ran to the clock, which he hastened to wind up with fantastic rapidity. The creaking of the spring jarred upon the nerves. The old watchmaker wound and wound the key, without stopping a moment, and it seemed as if the movement were beyond his control. He wound more and more quickly, with strange contortions, until he fell from sheer weariness.
‘There, it is wound up for a century!’ he cried.
Aubert rushed from the hall as if he were mad. After long wandering, he found the outlet of the hateful château, and hastened into the open air. He returned to the hermitage of Notre-Dame-du-Sex, and talked so despairingly to the holy recluse, that the latter consented to return with him to the château of Andernatt.
If, during these hours of anguish, Gerande had not wept, it was because her tears were exhausted.
Master Zacharius had not left the hall. He ran every moment to listen to the regular beating of the old clock.
Meanwhile the clock had struck, and to Scholastique’s great terror, these words had appeared on the silver face: —
MAN OUGHT TO BECOME THE EQUAL OF GOD.
The old man had not only not been shocked by these impious maxims, but read them deliriously, and flattered himself with thoughts of pride, whilst Pittonaccio kept close by him.
The marriage-contract was to be signed at midnight. Gerande, almost unconscious, saw or heard nothing. The silence was only broken by the old man’s words, and the chuckling of Pittonaccio.
Eleven o’clock struck. Master Zacharius shuddered, and read in a loud voice: —
MAN SHOULD BE THE SLAVE OF SCIENCE,
AND SACRIFICE TO IT RELATIVES AND FAMILY.
‘Yes!’ he cried, ‘there is nothing but science in this world!’
The hands slipped over the face of the clock with the hiss of a serpent, and the pendulum beat with accelerated strokes.
Master Zacharius no longer spoke. He had fallen to the floor, his throat rattled, and from his oppressed bosom came only these half-broken words: ‘Life – science!’
The scene had now two new witnesses, the hermit and Aubert. Master Zacharius lay upon the floor; Gerande was praying beside him, more dead than alive.
Of a sudden a dry, hard noise was heard, which preceded the strike.
Master Zacharius sprang up.
‘Midnight!’ he cried.
The hermit stretched out his hand towards the old clock, – and midnight did not sound.
Master Zacharius uttered a terrible cry, which must have been heard in hell, when these words appeared: —
WHOEVER SHALL ATTEMPT TO MAKE HIMSELF THE EQUAL OF GOD, SHALL BE FOR EVER DAMNED!
The old clock burst with a noise like thunder, and the spring, escaping, leaped across the hall with a thousand fantastic contortions: the old man rose, ran after it, trying in vain to seize it, and exclaiming, ‘My soul, – my soul!’
The spring bounded before him, first on one side, then on the other, and he could not reach it.
At last Pittonaccio seized it, and, uttering a horrible blasphemy, ingulfed himself in the earth.
Master Zacharius fell backwards. He was dead.
The old watchmaker was buried in the midst of the peaks of Andermatt.
Then Aubert and Gerande returned to Geneva, and during the long life which God accorded to them, they made it a duty to redeem by prayer the soul of the castaway of science.
The Humbug
The American Way of Life
On a March day in 1863 I boarded the steamboat Kentucky, which travels back and forth between New York and Albany.
Traffic between the two cities was heavy at that time of year, because of the large volume of merchandise arriving in the country. Not that there was anything unusual about this, for New York merchants are always in contact, through their agents, with even the most remote regions. This enables them to distribute goods imported from the Old World at the same time as they export domestic products to other countries.
My departure for Albany gave me a new opportunity to admire the hustle and bustle of New York. Travellers came flocking from all directions, some berating the porters who carried their numerous pieces of luggage, others walking alone, like true English tourists whose entire wardrobe can fit into one inconspicuous bag. Everyone was in a hurry to reserve passage on the steamboat, to which they all seemed to attribute the peculiarly American quality of elasticity.
The bell had already rung twice, spreading panic among the late-comers. The wharf groaned under the weight of the latest arrivals (who are inevitably the very ones whose journey cannot be postponed without the most dire consequences). Eventually, however, the whole crowd was accommodated. Parcels were piled up and travellers were packed together. The fire roared in the boiler tubes and the Kentucky’s deck shuddered. With a great effort, the sun broke through the morning mist, giving a little warmth to the March atmosphere, which makes you turn up your coat collar, shove your hands into your pockets, and say to yourself, ‘It will be fine tomorrow.’
Since I was not travelling on business, since my portmanteau was big enough to hold everything I needed and a bit more, and since my mind was not preoccupied by speculative ventures or by business deals, I let my thoughts wander idly, trusting to chance, that intimate friend of tourists, to find me some source of pleasure and entertainment on the way. Suddenly I noticed Mrs Melvil, standing not a dozen feet from me, smiling her most charming smile.
‘Why madam!’ I exclaimed, as surprised as I was pleased, ‘are you really braving the dangers and the crowds of a Hudson River steamboat?’
‘I most certainly am, my dear sir,’ she replied, offering me her hand after the English fashion. ‘But I’m not alone. My trusty old Arsinoe is with me.’
She pointed to her faithful black serving woman, who was sitting on a bale of wool and gazing at her affectionately. The word ‘affectionately’ deserves to be underlined here, for no one but a black servant is capable of such a look.
‘Even with all the help and support that Arsinoe can give you, madam,’ I said, ‘I consider myself fortunate to have the privilege of being your protector during this journey.’
‘If that’s a privilege,’ she answered with a laugh, ‘I’ll be under no obligation to you. But what brings you here? You told us you were not going to Albany for several days yet. Why didn’t you tell us yesterday that you were leaving?’
‘Because yesterday I didn’t know that myself. I decided to go to Albany only because the ship’s bell woke me at six o’clock this morning. You see how little it takes to change the course of events. If I had slept until seven, I might have gone to Philadelphia! But what about yourself, madam? Last night you seemed to be the most sedentary woman in the whole world.’
‘Indeed I did! However, the person you see before you now is not Mrs Melvil, but the chief clerk of the New York merchant and shipowner Henry Melvil, on her way to Albany to supervise the arrival of a shipment of goods. That must be too much for you to understand, living as you do in the over-civilised countries of the Old World! Since my husband couldn’t leave New York this morning, I’m taking his place. And you can be sure that the books will be just as well kept and the calculations every bit as exact.’
‘I’ve decided not to let anything surprise me any more!’ I exclaimed. ‘But if such a thing were to happen in France, if wives carried on their husbands’ business, husbands would soon be doing their wives’ business, playing the piano, cutting flowers, embroidering suspenders.’
Mrs Melvil laughed. ‘You’re not very flattering to your fellow countrymen.’
‘On the contrary! I’m assuming that their wives embroider their suspenders for them.’
The bell rang for the third time. The last passengers rushed onto the deck of the Kentucky, amid the shouts of the sailors, who were picking up long gaffs to push the ship off from the dock.
I offered Mrs Melvil my arm and took her a little farther astern, where the crowd was less dense.
‘I’ve given you some letters of recommendation for Albany,’ she began.
‘So you have. And for the thousandth time, I thank you for them.’
‘Not at all. They’re of no use to you now anyway, since they’re addressed to my father, and I’m on my way to see him now. Please allow me to introduce you personally and to offer you hospitality on his behalf.’
‘I see I was right in trusting to luck to make my journey a charming one. And yet we both came close to not leaving at all.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘There was one passenger, a man as eccentric as only the English could be before the discovery of America, who wanted to reserve the Kentucky exclusively for himself.’
‘Does he come from the East Indies, then, with a retinue of elephants and dancing girls?’
‘Good heavens, no! I heard the argument that took place when the captain refused his request, and I saw no elephants taking part in the conversation. He’s an odd individual, but he struck me as just a very jovial stout man who likes to have his own way. But look! There he is now. I recognise him. Do you see that man running up onto the dock, waving his arms around and shouting? He’s going to delay us again, just when the boat is getting under way.’
A man of average height, with an enormous head adorned by bushy, flaming red sideburns, and wearing a long double-collared frock coat and a broad-brimmed cowboy hat, puffed and panted his way onto the dock, just as the gang-plank had been taken down. He was gesticulating, stamping his feet, and shouting, completely oblivious to the laughter of the crowd that had gathered around him.
‘Ahoy! Kentucky! Damn it to hell! I’ve booked my passage and paid my fare and still I’m being left behind! Damn it to hell, Captain, I’ll hold you responsible before the High Judge and all his court.’
‘If people are late, that’s their tough luck!’ shouted the captain, climbing up onto one of the paddle-boxes. ‘We’ve got a deadline to meet, and the tide is starting to ebb.’
‘Damn it to hell!’ bellowed the stout man again. ‘I’ll sue you for a hundred thousand dollars at least. Bobby,’ he shouted, turning to one of the blacks who were with him, ‘look after the baggage and run back to the hotel, while Dacopa gets a boat going to catch up with that damned Kentucky.’
‘You’re wasting your time,’ cried the captain, and he gave the order to cast off the last hawser.
‘Get a move on, Dacopa!’ said the stout man, to encourage his black servant.
Dacopa seized the rope just as the steamboat was dragging it past, and deftly slipped the end of it through one of the rings attached to the dock. At the same time, the persistent traveller jumped into a rowboat, to the applause of the bystanders, and, with a few strokes of the scull, drew abreast of the Kentucky’s boarding ladder. He leaped onto the deck, rushed up to the captain, and started shouting at him with the noise of ten men and the speed of twenty fishwives. The captain, unable to get a word in edgewise, and seeing that the traveller appeared to be possessed, decided not to worry about him. He picked up his megaphone and headed towards the engine. He was about to give the signal to leave when the stout man turned on him and shouted, ‘Damn it to hell! What about my luggage?’
‘Well, what about your luggage?’ retorted the captain. ‘Could that by any chance be it that I see coming now?’
Murmurs of protest arose from the passengers, irritated by this new delay.
‘Why are you all blaming me?’ demanded the newcomer, still undaunted. ‘Am I not a free citizen of the United States of America? My name is Augustus Hopkins, and if that doesn’t mean anything to you ...’
I have no idea whether this name carried any weight with most of the passengers, but in any case, the captain of the Kentucky was obliged to tie up again and take on the luggage of Augustus Hopkins, free citizen of the United States of America.
‘I must admit,’ I remarked to Mrs Melvil, ‘that is certainly no ordinary man.’
‘But not as extraordinary as his luggage,’ she replied, pointing to two carts that were approaching the dock, carrying two huge packing cases twenty feet high, wrapped in oilcloth and tied up with a formidable network of cords and knots. The top and bottom were clearly identified in red letters, and the word ‘fragile’, in characters a foot high, struck terror for a hundred yards around into the heart of everyone who was responsible for them in any way. Despite the grumbling occasioned by the appearance of these enormous bundles, Mr Hopkins used his hands, his feet, his head, and his lungs to such good effect that eventually, after much effort and considerable delay, they were deposited on the deck. At last the Kentucky was able to cast off, and she headed up the Hudson among the many different kinds of vessels that were plying its waters.
Augustus Hopkins’s two black servants had taken up their positions near their master’s packing cases, which were the object of intense curiosity on the part of the passengers. Most of them were crowding around, giving free rein to every weird fantasy that a foreigner’s imagination is capable of. Even Mrs Melvil seemed totally engrossed. I, on the other hand, as a true Frenchman, did my best to feign complete indifference.
‘What a strange man you are!’ said Mrs Melvil. ‘You’re not the least bit concerned about what may be in those huge structures. I’m consumed with curiosity.’
‘I must admit,’ I replied, ‘that all this holds very little interest for me. When I saw those two enormous objects arrive, I began making wild guesses as to what was in them. Perhaps there’s a five-storey house with all its occupants, I said to myself, or perhaps there’s nothing at all. Neither of these two bizarre extremes would surprise me very much. However, madam, if you wish, I’ll see what I can find out and I’ll let you know.’
‘Thank you,’ she replied, ‘and while you’re gone I’ll go over these invoices.’
I left my unusual travelling companion adding up figures with the speed of one of those Bank of New York cashiers who are said to be able to calculate the sum of a column of numbers at a single glance.
Still thinking about this singular business arrangement and about the double existence led by these charming American women, I made my way towards the man who had set every tongue wagging and on whom every eye was focused.
Although the forward part of the ship, and even the Hudson River itself, were completely hidden from view by the two packing cases, the helmsman steered the steamboat with absolute confidence and a complete lack of concern for obstacles. And yet, the obstacles must have been numerous, for no river in the world, not even the Thames, was ever travelled by more vessels than the rivers of the United States. At a time when France had no more than 12,000 or 13,000 ships and when England’s total had reached 40,000, the United States already had 60,000, including 2,000 steamships plying the seven seas. These figures give some idea of the extent of commercial traffic, and also explain why accidents occur so frequently on American rivers.
It is true that these disasters, or collisions, or shipwrecks, Are of little importance in the eyes of the intrepid traders. In fact, they even create new business for the insurance companies, whose profits would be very small if their premiums were not so exorbitant. Pound for pound, and volume for volume, a man is of less value and importance in America than a sack of charcoal or a bale of coffee.
The Americans may be right, but I would have given all the coal mines and coffee plantations in the world for my little French demoiselle. As we sailed full steam ahead through the obstacle course. I had some misgivings as to how our journey would end.
Augustus Hopkins apparently did not share my fears. He must have been one of those people who would jump off the rails or sink rather than miss out on a business deal. In any case, he paid not the slightest attention to the beauty of the landscape along the banks of the Hudson, as they disappeared rapidly behind us. For him, the distance between New York, our point of departure, and Albany, our destination, meant eighteen hours of lost time and nothing more. The delightful resorts on the bank, the villages clustered together in such a picturesque way, the wooded areas scattered here and there throughout the countryside like flowers tossed at the feet of a prima donna, the swift flow of the magnificent river, the first signs of spring – nothing could tear this man away from the speculations that preoccupied him. He paced back and forth from one end of the Kentucky to the other, muttering bits of sentences. Sometimes he would suddenly sit down on a bale of goods and pull from one of his many pockets a large, thick wallet, stuffed with a thousand pieces of paper. I even saw him take this collection of every kind of red tape known to commercial bureaucracy and spread it meticulously out on the deck. He thumbed anxiously through an enormous pile of correspondence, unfolded letters mailed from every country and stamped with the postmarks of every post office in the world, and pored over the closely written lines with a relentless determination that did not fail to attract attention.
I could see that it would be impossible to learn anything by speaking to this man. Several other curious passengers had tried in vain to strike up a conversation with the two blacks standing guard over the mysterious packing cases. The two sons of Africa maintained an absolute silence, quite out of keeping with their customary loquacity.
I was about to go back and give Mrs Melvil my personal impressions when I found myself in a group of passengers standing around the captain of the Kentucky, who was holding forth on the subject of Augustus Hopkins.
‘I tell you,’ he was saying, ‘this crack-pot keeps doing one stupid thing after another. This is the tenth time he’s travelled up the Hudson from New York to Albany, it’s the tenth time he’s managed to arrive late, and the tenth time he’s brought this kind of luggage with him. Where does it all go? I don’t know. The rumour is that Mr Hopkins is setting up some big enterprise near Albany and that people from all over the world are shipping merchandise to him without identifying it.’
‘He must be one of the principal agents of the East India Company,’ said one of the bystanders, ‘and he’s coming here to open an office in America.’
‘He’s more likely a millionaire who owns some goldfields in California,’ said another. ‘There must be some equipment involved ...’
‘Or maybe there’s something up for tender that we can bid on,’ suggested a third. ‘The New York Herald has been hinting at that these past few days.’
‘Pretty soon,’ interjected a fourth, ‘we’ll see shares offered for sale in a new company with a capital of five million dollars. I’ll be the first in. I’ll buy a hundred shares at 1,000 dollars each.’
‘Why should you be the first?’ someone else interrupted.
‘Maybe you’ve already been promised something in this deal. I’m ready to put up the money for 200 shares, and more if I have to.’
‘That’s if there are any left to buy after I’m finished,’ shouted someone on the far side of the crowd, whose face I could not make out. ‘What we’re talking about here is obviously a plan to build a railroad from Albany to San Francisco, and the banker who got the contract to build it is my best friend.’
‘A railroad! What are you talking about? This Mr Hopkins is going to lay an electric cable across Lake Ontario, and these big packing cases contain miles and miles of insulated wire.’
‘Across Lake Ontario? That will bring in a fortune,’ exclaimed several traders who had all caught the speculation fever. ‘Mr Hopkins will have to tell us what kind of business he’s in. I’m buying the first shares!...’
‘For me, Mr Hopkins, please!’
‘No, for me!’
‘No, for me! I’ll pay you a 1,000-dollar bonus!...’
The offers and replies flew back and forth as the confusion increased. Although gambling on the stock market holds no fascination for me, I followed the group of speculators as they made their way towards the hero of the Kentucky. Hopkins was soon surrounded by a tightly packed crowd, on whom he did not even deign to cast a glance. Long rows of figures, and numbers followed by impressive series of zeroes, were spreading across his vast wallet. Arithmetical calculations – addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division – flowed from his pencil. The millions streamed like a torrent from his lips. He seemed to be in the grip of a mathematical frenzy. Silence fell around him, despite the storms created in every American’s brain by an obsession with business.
After an operation of tremendous proportions, during which he broke his pencil three times, Mr Augustus Hopkins succeeded in tracing out a majestic figure 1, which commanded an army of eight magnificent zeroes. Finally, he pronounced these three ritual words:
‘One hundred million!’
He quickly folded his papers, stuffed them back into his impressive wallet, and pulled from his pocket a watch adorned with a double row of fine pearls.
‘Nine o’clock! It’s nine o’clock already!’ he shouted. ‘Is this damned boat not moving at all? The captain! Where’s the captain?’
With this, Hopkins abruptly pushed his way through the three rows of people surrounding him. His glance fell on the captain, who was leaning over the engine room hatchway, giving orders to the engineer.
‘You know, Captain,’ he said pompously, ‘a ten-minute delay could cost me an important business deal.’
‘Who are you talking to about delay?’ retorted the captain, taken aback by this criticism. ‘You were the one responsible for it.’
‘If you hadn’t been so stubborn as to leave me behind,’ replied Hopkins, his voice rising in pitch, ‘you wouldn’t have wasted valuable time – especially valuable at this time of year.’
‘And if you and your packing cases had managed to get here on time,’ the captain shot back in an irritated voice, ‘we could have left on the rising tide, and we’d be a good three miles farther on than we are now.’
‘That’s no concern of mine. I’ve got to be at the Washington Hotel in Albany before midnight. If it’s any later, I might as well not have left New York at all. I’m warning you! If that happens, I’ll sue you and your company for damages.’
‘Just leave me alone!’ shouted the captain, who was beginning to lose his temper.
‘I certainly will not, not as long as you’re so spineless and cheap with your fuel that you could make me lose a fortune ten times over. Come on, stokers, let’s have four or five good shovelfuls of coal in your furnaces. And you there, engineer, just keep your foot on the safety valve of your boiler until we make up the time we’ve lost.’
He took out a purse with a few shiny dollars in it and tossed it down into the engine room.
The captain flew into a violent rage, but his fanatical passenger bellowed even louder and longer than he did. I thought it best to hurry away from the scene of battle, for I knew that Hopkins’s advice to the engineer, to make the ship go faster by holding down the safety valve and increasing the steam pressure, could very well cause the boiler to explode.
Needless to say, our travelling companions considered the advice very sound, and so I decided not to mention it to Mrs Melvil. She would have laughed until she cried at my groundless fears.
When I rejoined her, she had finished her lengthy calculations, and the cares of business no longer furrowed her charming brow.
‘You took leave of a businesswoman,’ she said, ‘and now you return to find a woman of the world, ready to listen to whatever you care to talk about – art, sentiment, poetry ..."
‘How can I talk about art, or dreams, or poetry, after what I’ve just seen and heard? I’ve caught the mercantile spirit, and all I can hear now is the jingling of dollars. I’m blinded by their glittering brilliance. To me, this beautiful river is now simply a route for moving merchandise. Its charming banks are just a highway for transporting goods. Those pretty little towns are nothing but a series of stores for selling sugar and cotton. I’m seriously thinking of building a dam across the Hudson and using the water to turn a coffee mill.’
‘Well now, except for the coffee mill, that’s not a bad idea!’
‘And why, may I ask, should I not have ideas, just like anyone else?’
Mrs Melvil laughed. ‘So you’ve really been bitten by the industry bug, have you?’
‘Listen, and judge for yourself.’
I told her about everything I had seen that day. She listened attentively to my account, as any intelligent American would have done, and then began to ponder over it. A Parisian woman would not have let me tell the half of it.
‘Well, madam, what do you think of this Hopkins?’
‘He could be an investment genius starting up a huge enterprise, or he could be nothing but a bear trainer from the latest Baltimore fair.’
I burst out laughing and the conversation turned to other matters.
Our voyage ended with no further incident, except that Hopkins tried to move one of his huge packing cases, against the captain’s advice, and nearly dumped it overboard. The ensuing discussion gave him another chance to hold forth on the importance of his business dealings and the value of his cargo. He lunched and dined like a man whose aim is not to take on nourishment, but to spend as much money as possible. By the time we reached our destination, every passenger on board was singing the praises of this extraordinary character.
The Kentucky docked at Albany before the fatal hour of midnight. I gave Mrs Melvil my arm, thinking myself fortunate to have disembarked safe and sound, while Mr Augustus Hopkins, with considerable ado, got his two marvellous packing cases unloaded and made his triumphal entry into the Washington Hotel, followed by a large crowd.
Mr Francis Wilson, Mrs Melvil’s father, greeted me with a grace and openness that made his hospitality all the more welcome. Nothing would do but that I must accept an attractive blue room in that honourable businessman’s home. I cannot call it a hotel, for although it was an immense house, its spacious apartments were overshadowed by the enormous stores, crammed with merchandise from all over the world. The business establishments of Le Havre and Bordeaux are only a faint imitation of this city, with its swarms of office workers, tradesmen, clerks, and labourers. Although the master of the house had many demands on his time, I was treated like a king. I had no need to ask, or even to wish for anything. And as if this were not enough, I was waited on by black servants, and for anyone who has enjoyed that experience, nothing else will do.
The name Albany had always struck me as a charming one, and the next day I went for a walk in that beautiful city. I found that it had all the activity of New York, the same bustle of business, the same wide variety of interests. The businessmen’s thirst for profit, the zeal with which they work, their need to extract money by every means that industry or speculation can discover, does not have the same repulsive aspect in the traders of the New World as it sometimes produces in their overseas counterparts. They act with a certain grandeur that is quite compelling. It is easy to understand why these people need to earn money in such large amounts, because they spend it on the same scale.
The conversations over our luxuriously served meals, and during the evenings, began in a very general way, but soon turned to more specific topics. We chatted about the city, its points of interest, its theatre. It seemed to me that Mr Wilson was very well informed about these worldly amusements, but when we got around to discussing the eccentricities of particular cities, a topic that has aroused considerable interest in Europe, he proved to be American to the core.
‘Are you referring,’ he asked me, ‘to our attitude to the famous Lola Montès?’
‘Of course,’ I replied, ‘only the Americans could have taken the Countess of Lansfeld seriously.’
‘We took her seriously because she acted like a serious person. It’s the same in business. When serious matters are treated lightly, we don’t attach the slightest importance to them.’
‘You must have been shocked,’ said Mrs Melvil facetiously, ‘to learn that Lola Montès spent some of her time here visiting girls’ boarding schools.’
‘To tell the honest truth,’ I replied, ‘that did strike me as bizarre. She is a very charming dancer, but not exactly a role model for our young ladies to emulate.’
‘Our young ladies,’ retorted Mr Wilson, ‘are brought up along more independent lines than yours are. When Lola Montès visited their boarding schools, it was neither the Parisian dancer nor the Bavarian Countess of Lansfeld who made her appearance there, but simply a famous and very attractive woman. The curious children who saw her were not harmed in the least by her visit. It was a holiday, a bit of fun and amusement. Now what’s wrong with that?’
‘What’s wrong is that great artists are spoiled by these extraordinary ovations. When they come home after a tour in the United States, they’re completely impossible.’
‘What have they got to complain about, then?’ asked Mr Wilson abruptly.
‘Nothing at all,’ I replied. ‘But how could Jenny Lind feel honoured by European hospitality when here she sees the pillars of society clinging to her carriage during public festivities? How can hospital openings, which her impresario arranges for her, compete with that?’
‘Now you’re beginning to sound jealous,’ quipped Mrs Melvil. ‘You resent the fact that such an eminent artist has always refused to perform in Paris.’
‘Absolutely not, madam. And in any case I wouldn’t advise her to come to Paris, because she would find a very different reception from the one you gave her here.’
‘That’s your loss,’ said Mr Wilson.
‘Not as much our loss as hers, if you ask me.’
Mrs Melvil laughed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you do lose some hospitals, at least.’
After a few more minutes of banter, Mr Wilson said to me: ‘If you’re interested in exhibitions and sales, you’ve come at just the right time. The first tickets for Madame Sontag’s concert are going to be auctioned off tomorrow.’
‘Auctioned? Just as if they were auctioning off a railroad?’
‘Exactly. And the buyer who seems ready to make the highest bid so far is an ordinary hatter from right here in Albany.’
‘He must be a great music lover, is he?’ I asked.
‘Him? John Turner? He absolutely detests music. He thinks it’s the most unpleasant sound in the world.’
‘What’s he up to, then?’
‘He wants to improve his public image. It’s an advertising stunt. People will talk about him, not only here, but in every state in the Union, and not just in America, but in Europe as well. People will buy hats from him. He’ll ship his junk out to the whole world.’
‘I can’t believe it!’
‘You’ll see tomorrow, and if you need a hat ...’
‘I won’t buy one of his. They must be appalling.’
‘Oho!’ said Mrs Melvil, getting to her feet. ‘Listen to the fanatical Parisian!’
I took leave of my hosts and went off to ponder over these American wonders.
The next day I went to the auction of the famous first ticket to Madame Sontag’s concert, with a serious look on my face that would have done justice to the most phlegmatic American in the whole country. All eyes were on John Turner the hatter, the hero of this new craze. His friends came up to him and complimented him as if he were the saviour of his country’s independence. Others were egging him on and laying bets on his chances of winning the honour, as against the chances of his competitors.
The bidding started. Soon the price of the first ticket had risen from four dollars to 200 and then 300 dollars. John Turner was sure his would be the winning bid. He never tried to outbid his competitors by more than a small amount, for an increase of a single dollar would have been enough to make him the lucky purchaser, and he was prepared to spend 1,000, if he had to, to acquire the precious ticket. The bidding rose rapidly to 300, 400, 500, and 600 dollars. The crowd’s excitement rose to a fever pitch, and roars of approval greeted every reckless bidder. The first ticket took on an astronomical price in everyone’s mind, and scarcely any thought was given to the others. It was, in short, a question of honour.
Suddenly, a longer cheer than usual rang out, as the hatter shouted in a stentorian voice:
‘One thousand dollars!’
‘A thousand dollars,’ repeated the auctioneer. ‘Any advance on 1,000? A thousand dollars for the first ticket to the concert. Do I hear another bid?’
In the silences between outbursts, a low rustling sound spread through the hall. In spite of myself, I was impressed. Turner, sure that victory was in his grasp, looked smugly at his admirers. He held in his hand a sheaf of bank notes from one of the 600 banks that do business in the United States, and waved them about, shouting again: ‘One thousand dollars!’
Then a new voice rang out. ‘Three thousand dollars!’ I turned my head to see who had spoken.
‘Hurrah!’ shouted the excited crowd.
‘Three thousand dollars,’ repeated the auctioneer.
In the face of such competition the hatter turned and fled with his head down, completely unnoticed in the excitement.
‘Sold for 3,000 dollars!’ cried the auctioneer.
Up strode Augustus Hopkins in person, the free citizen of the United States of America. Obviously he was well on the way to becoming a famous man. All he needed now was to have anthems composed in his honour.
I escaped from the hall with difficulty and just barely managed to push my way through the 10,000 people standing at the door to greet the triumphant purchaser. As soon as he came in sight he was greeted with shouts of praise. For the second time since the previous evening, he was taken back to the Washington Hotel by the exuberant populace. He greeted them with a mixture of modesty and arrogance, and that evening, in response to popular demand, he made an appearance on the hotel balcony, to the applause of the delirious crowd.
‘Well, what do you make of it?’ Mr Wilson asked me later, when I told him about the day’s events.
‘As a Frenchman and a Parisian, I think Madame Sontag will be kind enough to let me have a ticket without paying 15,000 francs for it.’
‘I think so too,’ said Mr Wilson, ‘but if this Mr Hopkins is clever enough, the 3,000 dollars he spent may bring him 100,000. A man as eccentric as that can make millions just by stooping down and picking them up.’
‘What kind of man can this Hopkins be?’ wondered Mrs Melvil. At that very moment, the entire city of Albany was asking the same question.
That question was answered by the events of the next few days. The steamboat from New York unloaded more packing cases, even more extraordinary in shape and size than the first. One of them, which looked like a house, carelessly (or carefully, depending on one’s point of view) got stuck in a narrow street on the outskirts of Albany. It could go no farther, and there it had to stay, motionless as a block of stone. During the next twenty-four hours the entire population of the town arrived on the scene. Hopkins took advantage of the crowds to make fiery speeches, lashing out at the ignorant architects and even suggesting that he would have the plan of the streets changed to make way for his freight.
The feasible solutions were soon reduced to two. The packing case, whose contents were the object of widespread curiosity, could be broken open, or the tumbledown house impeding its progress could be demolished. The curious citizens of Albany would no doubt have preferred the first option, but Hopkins vetoed it. Still, something had to be done. Traffic in the neighbourhood was blocked and the police were threatening to get a court order to have the packing case broken up. Hopkins solved the problem by buying the offending house and having it torn down.
This last little touch, as might have been expected, brought him to the pinnacle of his renown. His name and story made the rounds of every living room in town. He was the topic of conversation at the Independent Club and the Union Club. In the Albany cafés, wagers were laid as to what this mysterious man was planning to do. The newspapers indulged in the wildest speculation, temporarily diverting public attention from the problems that had recently arisen between Cuba and the United States. I believe it even led to a duel between a merchant and one of the town’s officials, and that Hopkins’s backer emerged victorious on that occasion.
When Madame Sontag gave her concert, which I attended with much less fanfare than our hero did, his presence all but changed the entire purpose of the gathering.
Eventually the mystery was explained, and soon Augustus Hopkins stopped trying to conceal it. He was simply a businessman who had come to set up a kind of World’s Fair just outside Albany. He was planning to operate independently one of those colossal undertakings which up until then had been the monopoly of governments.
He had bought for this purpose a vast tract of uncultivated land about ten miles from Albany, with nothing standing on it but the ruins of Fort William, which at one time protected English trading posts along the Canadian frontier. He was already in the process of hiring workmen to make a start on his gigantic projects. His immense packing cases no doubt contained tools and construction equipment.
As soon as this news reached the Albany stock market, it aroused an unusually keen interest among the traders. They all wanted an option to buy shares from the great entrepreneur. Although Hopkins gave vague replies to all their questions, an artificial market soon sprang up for these imaginary shares, and from then on the affair began to snowball.
‘This man is a very clever speculator,’ Mr Wilson remarked to me one day. ‘I don’t know whether he’s a millionaire or a beggar, because you’d have to be either Job or Rothschild to undertake such a venture, but he’ll certainly make a huge fortune.’
‘I don’t know what to believe any more, my dear Mr Wilson. And I don’t know which to admire more, a man with nerve enough to embark on such an enterprise, or a country that supports and promotes it, and asks nothing in return.’
‘That’s the road to success, my dear sir.’
‘Or to ruin,’ I replied.
‘Well,’ retorted Mr Wilson, ‘let me tell you that in America, a bankruptcy makes everyone rich and ruins no one.’
My only arguments against Mr Wilson were the facts themselves, and so I waited impatiently for the outcome of all the manoeuvring and publicity, which I found extremely interesting. I collected every titbit of news about Augustus Hopkins’s venture, and every day I read reports of it in the newspapers. The first group of workmen had left for the site and the ruins of Fort William were beginning to disappear. The only topic of conversation was these construction projects, and what their ultimate purpose might be. Suggestions poured in from all sides, from New York and Albany, Boston and Baltimore. ‘Musical instruments’.
‘daguerreotype pictures’, ‘abdominal supports’, ‘centrifugal pumps’, ‘square pianos’ were some of the guesses vying for attention, and the American imagination was going full speed ahead. It was stated as a fact that a whole new town would spring up around the Exposition. It was rumoured that Augustus Hopkins planned to found a city that would rival New Orleans, and to name it after himself. Next came the theory that this city (which would of course be fortified because of its proximity to the Canadian border) would shortly become the capital of the United States! And so on, and so on.
While these and many other exaggerated ideas were circulating through every brain, the hero of the moment had almost nothing to say. He paid regular visits to the Albany Stock Exchange, made inquiries about business matters, took note of recently arrived shipments, but remained tight-lipped about his own extensive plans. It was surprising that such a powerful man had put out no actual publicity. Perhaps he considered himself above using everyday methods of starting up an enterprise and intended to do it purely on his own merits.
Developments had reached this point when, one fine morning, the New York Herald carried the following item:
As everyone knows, work on the Albany World’s Fair is progressing rapidly. By now the ruins of old Fort William have disappeared and foundations are being dug for splendid new buildings. There is widespread enthusiasm for the project. The other day a workman’s pick turned up the remains of an enormous skeleton that had evidently lain buried there for thousands of years. We hasten to add that this discovery will in no way delay work on what will be the eighth wonder of the world, right here in the United States.
I paid no more attention to these few lines than to any of the countless brief news items that clutter up American newspapers. Little did I suspect the use that would be made of them later. As Augustus Hopkins told it, the new discovery took on an extraordinary importance. He was now as free with his speeches, stories, theories, and deductions about the unearthing of this prodigious skeleton as he had been reluctant before to explain the plans that lay behind his great undertaking. It seemed as if all his speculations and money-making schemes were wrapped up in that one newly discovered item. The discovery had come about, apparently, in a miraculous fashion. For three days, excavations had been under way, on Hopkins’s orders, aimed at reaching the other end of the gigantic fossil, but still without results. No one could tell how big it might eventually prove to be. It was Hopkins himself, while he was supervising the excavation of a deep hole about 200 feet from the first one, who finally made out the end of the cyclopean carcass. The news immediately spread with lightning speed, and the discovery, unique in the annals of geology, became an event of world-wide significance.
The impressionable Americans, with their tendency to revise and exaggerate, soon spread the news around, adding to its importance to suit their own tastes. People wondered about the origin of these huge remains and about the significance of their presence in the hitherto undisturbed earth. The Albany Institute undertook a study on the topic.
I must admit that this question held more interest for me than the future splendours of the Palace of Industry or the eccentric speculations of the New World. I began watching for every little incident related to it. That was not hard to do, for the press served it up in every possible way. I was even fortunate enough to learn about it in detail from citizen Hopkins himself.
Since his arrived in Albany, this extraordinary man had been sought out by the high society of the city. In the United States, where the merchant class are the nobility, it was only natural that such a venturesome speculator should be received with the honours due to his rank. And so he was welcomed in clubs and at family teas with characteristic eagerness. I met him one evening in Mr Wilson’s living room. Naturally, there was no talk of anything but the topic of the day, and in any case. Mr Hopkins did not wait to be asked about it.
He gave us an interesting, thorough, scholarly, but witty description of the discovery, how it had come about, and what its unforeseeable consequences might be. At the same time, he hinted that he was considering how he might make a profit from it.
‘But,’ he told us, ‘our work has had to stop for the moment, because I have already put up some of my new buildings between the first and last excavations, where the two extremities of the skeleton were uncovered.’
‘But are you sure,’ someone asked, ‘that the two ends of the animal are joined together under the unexplored area?’
‘There isn’t the slightest doubt about that,’ Hopkins assured his questioners. ‘Judging from the bone fragments we have dug up so far, the creature must be gigantic – much, much bigger than the famous mastodon that was discovered in the Ohio valley some time ago.’
‘Do you really think so?’ exclaimed a Mr Cornut, who was a naturalist of sorts, and ‘did’ science in the same way as his fellow-citizens did business.
‘I’m sure of it,’ replied Hopkins. ‘The monster’s structure shows that it obviously belonged to the order of pachyderms, for it possesses all the characteristics so well described by Mr de Humboldt.’
‘It’s really a shame,’ I interjected, ‘that the whole skeleton can’t be dug up.’
‘And what’s stopping us?’ Cornut asked excitedly.
‘Why ... the buildings that have just been put up ...’
I had hardly uttered these words, which seemed to me nothing more than plain common sense, when I found myself surrounded by a circle of disdainful smiles. To these worthy merchants, it seemed a very simple matter to tear everything down, even the largest of buildings, in order to unearth a creature that dated from the time of the flood. No one was surprised, therefore, when Hopkins announced that he had already given orders to that effect. Everyone congratulated him heartily, and opined that fortune was right in favouring bold and enterprising men. For myself, I offered him my warmest compliments and promised to be one of the first to come and see his marvellous discovery. I even offered to go to Exhibition Park (a term that was by now in the public domain), but he asked me to wait until the excavations had been completed, for it was still too soon to estimate how huge the fossil really was.
Four days later, the New York Herald published new details about the gigantic skeleton. The carcass was not, the writer declared superciliously, that of a mammoth, or a mastodon, or a megatherium, or a pterodactyl, or a plesiosaurus. The remains of all the above-mentioned creatures belong to the tertiary era, or to the Mesozoic at the very earliest, whereas the excavations that Hopkins was directing went right to the primal layers of the earth’s crust, in which no fossil had ever been discovered before. This display of science (of which the American merchants understood very little) aroused considerable excitement. What other conclusion could be drawn but that this monster – since it was neither a mollusc, nor a pachyderm, nor a rodent, nor a ruminant, nor a carnivore, nor a sea mammal – was a man? And that this man was a giant more than forty metres tall? No one could now deny the existence of a race of titans older than homo sapiens. If this were true (and everyone agreed that it was), even the best established geological theories would have to be changed, for fossils had been found well below the diluvian deposits, indicating that they had been buried there before the flood.
The New York Herald article created a tremendous sensation. It was reprinted in full by every newspaper in the United States. This topic of conversation was soon the order of the day, and the most complicated scientific terms were being pronounced by the prettiest lips in the New World. Great discussions opened up, leading to deductions that were highly flattering to America, for it was here, rather than in Asia, that the cradle of humanity was to be found. In conventions and academies, it was clearly proven that America, which had been inhabited since the beginning of the world, had obviously been the starting point of a series of migrations. The honours of antiquity passed from the Old World to the New. Voluminous dissertations, inspired by patriotic ambition, were written on this very serious topic. Finally, a meeting of scientists, the minutes of which were published and commented on by every newspaper in the United States, proved beyond all shadow of doubt that the earthly Paradise, bounded by Pennsylvania, Virginia and Lake Erie, occupied at one time the territory that is now the state of Ohio.
I must confess that all this daydreaming fascinated me beyond measure. I pictured Adam and Eve in command of packs of ferocious beasts that actually existed in America, whereas on the banks of the Euphrates not the slightest trace of them is to be found. In my mind’s eye, the tempting serpent took on the form of a boa constrictor or a rattlesnake. But what surprised me most was the slavish and uncritical credence given to this discovery. It never entered anyone’s mind that this famous skeleton might be a fraud, a bluff, or as the Americans say, a humbug. Not one of these keen scientists thought of going to see with his own eyes the miracle that was causing such a commotion in his brain. I mentioned this to Mrs Melvil.
‘Why bother?’ she said. ‘We’ll see our precious monster when the time comes. Everyone knows what it looks like, because you can’t go a mile anywhere in America without coming across a picture of it in one form or another. Some of the pictures show a lot of imagination, too.’
That was indeed the true genius of the speculator. Augustus Hopkins had been very close-mouthed about his proposed Exhibition, but when it came to planting the idea of his miraculous skeleton in the minds of his fellow-Americans, he used all the zeal, inventiveness, and imagination at his command. He could do whatever he wanted, because his eccentricities had already attracted the attention of the public.
Before long, walls throughout the city were covered with coloured posters showing the monster in a wide variety of shapes and forms. Hopkins used every kind of poster known to man, and in the most striking colours. He plastered them on walls, on dockside parapets, on tree trunks along public walkways. On some, the lines were printed diagonally, on others, the message was spelled out in broad brush strokes, which no passerby could possibly miss. On every street there were men walking up and down, wearing jackets and coats bearing pictures of the skeleton. In the evening, immense transparencies projected its black outline against a brilliantly lit background.
But Hopkins was not satisfied with such everyday American publicity methods. Posters and page four newspaper advertisements were not enough for him. He devised a course of studies in ‘skeletology’, in which he quoted Cuvier, Blumenbach, Backland, link, Stemberg, Brongniart, and a hundred other palaeontologists. His courses were so well attended and so highly applauded that one day two people were crushed to death at the door.
Needless to say, Mr Hopkins arranged magnificent funerals for them. The flags in the funeral procession displayed, once again, the ubiquitous outline of the currently fashionable fossil. All these publicity stunts worked very well in and around the city of Albany, but now the important thing was to expand the campaign throughout the entire country. When Jenny Lind was making her debut in England, a Mr Lumley offered to give the soap manufacturers free moulds, depicting the portrait of the eminent prima donna. The offer was accepted and produced excellent results, since people were now using the famous singer’s face to wash their hands. Hopkins employed a similar method. He contracted with cloth manufacturers to have them produce material for clothing that would appeal to the good taste of customers by displaying an illustration of his prehistoric creature. It was printed on the inside of hats, and even plates were decorated with the outline of the amazing phenomenon! And so on, and so on. It was impossible to escape it. You could not get dressed, put on a hat, or eat dinner, except in this interesting company.
All this high-pressure salesmanship had a tremendous effect. And so, when newspapers, drums, trumpets, and volleys of musket fire announced that the miracle would shortly be put on display for public admiration, a cheer went up on all sides. Preparations were begun for building an enormous hall, large enough to hold, as the advertisements put it, ‘not only the myriads of enthusiastic spectators, but also the skeleton of one of those giants who, according to legend, attempted to climb up to heaven’.
I had only a few more days to spend in Albany. I was bitterly disappointed at not being able to extend my visit long enough to attend the opening of this unique spectacle, but since I did not want to leave without seeing something, at least, I made up my mind to pay a secret visit to Exhibition Park.
Setting out one morning with my gun on my shoulder. I walked north for about three hours without finding any information about my desired goal, but five or six miles farther on, as I was looking for the site of old Fort William, I reached my journey’s end.
I was standing in the middle of an immense plain, one small part of which had been disturbed by some recent, but not extensive, excavations. A fairly large area was tightly sealed off by a wooden fence. I had no idea whether this fence marked out the site of the Exhibition, but that fact was confirmed for me by a beaver hunter whom I met in the neighbourhood as he was on his way to the Canadian border.
‘It’s here all right,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know what’s going on, because just this morning I heard a lot of rifle shots.’
I thanked him and continued my search.
I saw not the slightest trace of any work going on outdoors. The unbroken plain, to which gigantic construction works were supposed to bring life and movement, lay wrapped in total silence. Since I could not satisfy my curiosity without getting inside the fence, I decided to walk around it and try to find a way in. I walked for a long time without seeing anything that resembled a door, and had decided, in my disappointment, to settle for a crack or a hole that I could put my eye to, when I noticed, at a corner of the fence, some boards and posts that had been knocked down.
I quickly scrambled into the enclosure, and found that the ground under my feet had been completely torn up. Huge pieces of rock lay scattered wherever the gunpowder blasts had deposited them. The area was dotted with little mounds of earth that looked like waves on an angry sea. Finally I came to the edge of a deep excavation, at the bottom of which lay a large quantity of bones.
There, before my eyes, was the object of all the fuss and advertising. There was certainly nothing unusual about what I saw. It was a heap of bone fragments of every kind, broken into a thousand pieces. On some, the breaks appeared to be fairly recent. I did not recognise any major human bones which, according to the dimensions that had been announced, would have had to be of a tremendous size. With the help of a little imagination, I could have believed that I was in a boneblack factory and nothing more.
Needless to say, I was still very confused. For a moment I thought I had been on a wild-goose chase. Suddenly, on an embankment covered with footprints, I noticed a few drops of blood. I followed the trail of blood back to the opening, and there I found more bloodstains that I had not seen when I came in. My glance fell on a scrap of powder-blackened paper lying beside the bloodstains. It had probably come from the wad of a firearm. Everything fitted in with what the beaver hunter had told me.
I picked up the piece of paper and painstakingly deciphered a few of the words scribbled on it. It was a bill for materials supplied to Mr Augustus Hopkins by a certain Mr Barckley. There was nothing to indicate the nature of the items supplied, but I found more scraps of paper scattered here and there, which provided the missing information. In spite of my disappointment, I had to laugh. I was indeed in the presence of the giant and its skeleton, but it was a skeleton made up of very heterogeneous parts, which since time immemorial had roamed the plains of Kentucky under such names as buffalo, heifer, cow, and bull. Mr Barckley was an ordinary New York butcher who had delivered enormous quantities of bones to the famous Mr Augustus Hopkins. Those fossils had certainly never piled Pelion on Ossa to scale Olympus! Their remains owed their presence there to the efforts of the illustrious scam artist, who had known all along that he would discover them by chance in the course of laying the foundations for a palace that would never exist!
I had reached that point in my reflections, and my hilarity (which might have been more sincere if I had not, like my hosts themselves, been the victim of this incredible humbug) when I heard shouts of joy coming from outside the fence.
Hurrying back to the opening, I saw Mr Augustus Hopkins in person running up, rifle in hand, obviously very pleased about something. When I walked towards him, he did not seem at all perturbed at finding me on the scene of his exploits.
‘Victory! Victory!’ he shouted.
The two black servants, Bobby and Dacopa, followed him at a distance. Experience warned me to be on my guard, in case the audacious master of mystery should decide to use me as a target.
‘I’m in luck,’ he said, ‘I have a witness to what has just happened to me. You see before you a man returning from a tiger hunt.’
‘A tiger hunt!’ I mimicked, determined not to believe a word of it.
‘And a red tiger at that,’ he added, ‘also known as the cougar, renowned for its cruelty. As you can see, the damned thing got into my enclosure. It broke through these gates, which up until now have kept out the curious public, and smashed my wonderful skeleton into a million pieces. As soon as I saw that, I decided to track it down and kill it. I caught up with it in a thicket about three miles from here. When I looked at it, it stared back at me with its two savage eyes and jumped. But it never finished its leap, because I dropped it with a bullet just behind the shoulder. That was the first time I ever fired a gun, by God! It will be quite a trophy for me. I wouldn’t sell it for a billion dollars!’
‘Now the millions will start to come back,’ I thought to myself.
Just then the two black servants came up. dragging the carcass of an enormous red tiger, an animal that is almost unknown in this part of America. Its coat was of a solid tawny colour, except for its ears and the tip of its tail, which were black. It made no difference to me whether Hopkins had killed it or whether it had been supplied to him already conveniently dead (or maybe even stuffed) by some Barckley or other. What struck me was the carefree and indifferent tone with which my speculator friend talked about his skeleton. And yet, this whole affair must have cost him more than 100,000 francs.
Not wanting to let him know that I had stumbled onto the secret of his mystery – he would have been perfectly capable of giving thanks to Providence for it – I simply said, ‘How are you going to get out of this fix?’
‘What the devil do you mean by "this fix"? No matter what I do now, I can’t lose. A wild beast has destroyed the wonderful fossil that would have won the admiration of the entire world, because it was absolutely unique, but it has not destroyed my prestige or my influence. I still enjoy all the advantages of being famous.’
‘But what will you say to your enthusiastic and impatient public?’ I asked in a serious tone.
‘I’ll tell them the truth, nothing but the truth.’
‘The truth!’ I exclaimed, wondering what he meant by that word.
‘Of course,’ he explained, as calmly as could be. ‘Isn’t it true that the animal got into my enclosure? Isn’t it true that it smashed up these wonderful bones that I went to such lengths to dig up? Isn’t it true that I tracked it down and killed it?’
‘Now there,’ I said to myself, ‘is a whole host of things that I wouldn’t want to swear to.’
‘As for the public,’ he went on, ‘What more can they expect? Now they’ll know all there is to know about the affair. I’ll even get a reputation for bravery. In fact, I don’t see anything that I won’t be famous for.’
‘But what good will it do you to be famous?’
‘If I play my cards right, I’ll be rich. A man who is well known can get away with anything. He can hope, he can dare, he can undertake whatever he likes. If George Washington had decided to put two-headed calves on display, after the battle of Yorktown, it’s obvious that he would have made a lot of money.’
‘Perhaps,’ I answered seriously.
‘There’s no doubt about it,’ retorted Augustus Hopkins. ‘My only problem is to decide what I should put on display.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s a difficult choice. The tenors are worn out, the dancers are past their prime, and what’s left of their legs is priced out of reach. The Siamese twins have had their day, and the seals, despite the best efforts of the distinguished professors who are teaching them, still can’t talk.’
‘I won’t concern myself with spectacles like that. No matter how worn out, exhausted, dead, or speechless the seals, Siamese twins, dancers, and tenors may be, they are still too good for a man like me, because I’m worth so much just for myself. I think, my dear sir, that I will have the pleasure of seeing you in Paris.’
‘Do you expect to find some cheap object in Paris,’ I asked him, ‘and make it famous on the strength of your reputation?’
‘Perhaps,’ he replied seriously. ‘If I come across a doorman’s daughter who has never been accepted by the Conservatoire, I’ll turn her into the greatest singer in the Western Hemisphere.’
On that note, we took leave of each other and I returned to Albany. That same day, the awful news came out. It was generally assumed that Hopkins was ruined. Large subscriptions were taken up for his benefit. Everyone went to Exhibition Park to assess the extent of the disaster, and this too put a goodly number of dollars in the speculator’s pocket. He got a ridiculously high price for the pelt of the cougar that had brought him to such a timely ruin and thereby saved his reputation as the most enterprising man in the New World. As for me. I went back to New York and from there to France, leaving the United States richer (without knowing it) by one more superb humbug. And I brought back with me this conclusion: that artists with no talent, singers with no voice, dancers without a leg, and jumpers without a rope would have a dismal future before them if Christopher Columbus had not discovered America.
Doctor Ox’s Experiment
1
How it is useless to seek, even on the best maps, for the small town of Quiquendone
If you try to find, on any map of Flanders, ancient or modern, the small town of Quiquendone, probably you will not succeed. Is Quiquendone, then, one of those towns which have disappeared? No. A town of the future? By no means. It exists in spite of geographies, and has done so for some 800 or 900 years. It even numbers 2,393 souls, allowing one soul to each inhabitant. It is situated thirteen and a half kilometres north-west of Oudenarde, and fifteen and a quarter kilometres south-east of Bruges, in the heart of Flanders. The Vaar, a small tributary of the Scheldt, passes beneath its three bridges, which are still covered with a quaint mediaeval roof, like that at Tournay. An old château is to be seen there, the first stone of which was laid so long ago as 1197, by Count Baldwin, afterwards Emperor of Constantinople; and there is a Town Hall, with Gothic windows, crowned by a chaplet of battlements, and surrounded by a turreted belfry, which rises 357 feet above the soil. Every hour you may hear there a chime of five octaves, a veritable aerial piano, the renown of which surpasses that of the famous chimes of Bruges. Strangers – if any ever come to Quiquendone – do not quit the curious old town until they have visited its ‘Stadtholder’s Hall’, adorned by a full-length portrait of William of Nassau, by Brandon; the loft of the Church of Saint Magloire, a masterpiece of sixteenth-century architecture; the cast-iron well in the spacious Place Saint Ernuph, the admirable ornamentation of which is attributed to the artist-blacksmith, Quentin Metsys; the tomb formerly erected to Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold, who now reposes in the Church of Notre Dame at Bruges; and so on. The principal industry of Quiquendone is the manufacture of whipped creams and barley-sugar on a large scale. It has been governed by the Van Tricasses, from father to son, for several centuries. And yet Quiquendone is not on the map of Flanders! Have the geographers forgotten it, or is it an intentional omission? That I cannot tell; but Quiquendone really exists, with its narrow streets, its fortified walls, its Spanish-looking houses, its market, and its burgomaster – so much so, that it has recently been the theatre of some surprising phenomena, as extraordinary and incredible as they are true, which are to be recounted in the present narration.
Surely there is nothing to be said or thought against the Flemings of Western Flanders. They are a well-to-do folk, wise, prudent, sociable, with even tempers, hospitable, perhaps a little heavy in conversation as in mind; but this does not explain why one of the most interesting towns of their district has yet to appear on modern maps.
This omission is certainly to be regretted. If only history, or in default of history the chronicles, or in default of chronicles the traditions of the country, made mention of Quiquendone! But no; neither atlases, guides, nor itineraries speak of it. M. Joanne himself, that energetic hunter after small towns, says not a word of it. It might be readily conceived that this silence would injure the commerce, the industries, of the town. But let us hasten to add that Quiquendone has neither industry nor commerce, and that it does very well without them. Its barley-sugar and whipped cream are consumed on the spot; none is exported. In short, the Quiquendonians have no need of anybody. Their desires are limited, their existence is a modest one; they are calm, moderate, phlegmatic – in a word, they are Flemings; such as are still to be met with sometimes between the Scheldt and the North Sea.
2
In which the Burgomaster Van Tricasse and the Counsellor Niklausse consult about the affairs of the town
‘You think so?’ asked the burgomaster.
‘I – think so,’ replied the counsellor, after some minutes of silence.
‘You see, we must not act hastily,’ resumed the burgomaster.
‘We have been talking over this grave matter for ten years,’ replied the Counsellor Niklausse, ‘and I confess to you, my worthy Van Tricasse, that I cannot yet take it upon myself to come to a decision.’
‘I quite understand your hesitation,’ said the burgomaster, who did not speak until after a good quarter of an hour of reflection, ‘I quite understand it, and I fully share it. We shall do wisely to decide upon nothing without a more careful examination of the question.’
‘It is certain,’ replied Niklausse, ‘that this post of civil commissary is useless in so peaceful a town as Quiquendone.’
‘Our predecessor,’ said Van Tricasse gravely, ‘our predecessor never said, never would have dared to say, that anything is certain. Every affirmation is subject to awkward qualifications.’
The counsellor nodded his head slowly in token of assent; then he remained silent for nearly half an hour. After this lapse of time, during which neither the counsellor nor the burgomaster moved so much as a finger, Niklausse asked Van Tricasse whether his predecessor – of some twenty years before – had not thought of suppressing this office of civil commissary, which each year cost the town of Quiquendone the sum of 1,375 francs and some centimes.
‘I believe he did,’ replied the burgomaster, carrying his hand with majestic deliberation to his ample brow; ‘but the worthy man died without having dared to make up his mind, either as to this or any other administrative measure. He was a sage. Why should I not do as he did?’
Counsellor Niklausse was incapable of originating any objection to the burgomaster’s opinion.
‘The man who dies,’ added Van Tricasse solemnly, ‘without ever having decided upon anything during his life, has very nearly attained to perfection.’
This said, the burgomaster pressed a bell with the end of his little finger, which gave forth a muffled sound, which seemed less a sound than a sigh. Presently some light steps glided softly across the tile floor. A mouse would not have made less noise, running over a thick carpet. The door of the room opened, turning on its well-oiled hinges. A young girl, with long blonde tresses, made her appearance. It was Suzel Van Tricasse, the burgomaster’s only daughter. She handed her father a pipe, filled to the brim, and a small copper brazier, spoke not a word, and disappeared at once, making no more noise at her exit than at her entrance.
The worthy burgomaster lighted his pipe, and was soon hidden in a cloud of bluish smoke, leaving Counsellor Niklausse plunged in the most absorbing thought.
The room in which these two notable personages, charged with the government of Quiquendone, were talking, was a parlour richly adorned with carvings in dark wood. A lofty fireplace, in which an oak might have been burned or an ox roasted, occupied the whole of one of the sides of the room; opposite to it was a trellised window, the painted glass of which toned down the brightness of the sunbeams. In an antique frame above the chimney-piece appeared the portrait of some worthy man, attributed to Memling, which no doubt represented an ancestor of the Van Tricasses, whose authentic genealogy dates back to the fourteenth century, the period when the Flemings and Guy de Dampierre were engaged in wars with the Emperor Rudolph of Hapsburg.
This parlour was the principal apartment of the burgomaster’s house, which was one of the pleasantest in Quiquendone. Built in the Flemish style, with all the abruptness, quaintness, and picturesqueness of Pointed architecture, it was considered one of the most curious monuments of the town. A Carthusian convent, or a deaf and dumb asylum, was not more silent than this mansion. Noise had no existence there; people did not walk, but glided about in it; they did not speak, they murmured. There was not, however, any lack of women in the house, which, in addition to the Burgomaster Van Tricasse himself, sheltered his wife, Madame Brigitte Van Tricasse, his daughter, Suzel Van Tricasse, and his domestic, Lotchè Janshéu. We may also mention the burgomaster’s sister, Aunt Hermance, an elderly maiden who still bore the nickname of Tatanémance, which her niece Suzel had given her when a child. But in spite of all these elements of discord and noise, the burgomaster’s house was as calm as a desert.
The burgomaster was some fifty years old, neither fat nor lean, neither short nor tall, neither rubicund nor pale, neither gay nor sad, neither contented nor discontented, neither energetic nor dull, neither proud nor humble, neither good nor bad, neither generous nor miserly, neither courageous nor cowardly, neither too much nor too little of anything – a man notably moderate in all respects, whose invariable slowness of motion, slightly hanging lower jaw, prominent eyebrows, massive forehead, smooth as a copper plate and without a wrinkle, would at once have betrayed to a physiognomist that the Burgomaster Van Tricasse was phlegm personified. Never, either from anger or passion, had any emotion whatever hastened the beating of this man’s heart, or flushed his face; never had his pupils contracted under the influence of any irritation, however ephemeral. He invariably wore good clothes, neither too large nor too small, which he never seemed to wear out. He was shod with large square shoes with triple soles and silver buckles, which lasted so long that his shoemaker was in despair. Upon his head he wore a large hat which dated from the period when Flanders was separated from Holland, so that this venerable masterpiece was at least forty years old. But what would you have? It is the passions which wear out body as well as soul, the clothes as well as the body; and our worthy burgomaster, apathetic, indolent, indifferent, was passionate in nothing. He wore nothing out, not even himself, and he considered himself the very man to administer the affairs of Quiquendone and its tranquil population.
The town, indeed, was not less calm than the Van Tricasse mansion. It was in this peaceful dwelling that the burgomaster reckoned on attaining the utmost limit of human existence, after having, however, seen the good Madame Brigitte Van Tricasse, his wife, precede him to the tomb, where, surely, she would not find a more profound repose than that she had enjoyed on earth for sixty years.
This demands explanation.
The Van Tricasse family might well call itself the ‘Jeannot family’. This is why:
Everyone knows that the knife of this typical personage is as celebrated as its proprietor, and not less incapable of wearing out, thanks to the double operation, incessantly repeated, of replacing the handle when it is worn out, and the blade when it becomes worthless. A precisely similar operation had been going on from time immemorial in the Van Tricasse family, to which Nature had lent herself with more than usual complacency. From 1340 it had invariably happened that a Van Tricasse, when left a widower, had remarried a Van Tricasse younger than himself; who, becoming in turn a widow, had married again a Van Tricasse younger than herself; and so on, without a break in the continuity, from generation to generation. Each died in his or her turn with mechanical regularity. Thus the worthy Madame Brigitte Van Tricasse had now her second husband; and, unless she violated her every duty, would precede her spouse – he being ten years younger than herself – to the other world, to make room for a new Madame Van Tricasse. Upon this the burgomaster calmly counted, that the family tradition might not be broken. Such was this mansion, peaceful and silent, of which the doors never creaked, the windows never rattled, the floors never groaned, the chimneys never roared, the weathercocks never grated, the furniture never squeaked, the locks never clanked, and the occupants never made more noise than their shadows. The god Harpocrates would certainly have chosen it for the Temple of Silence.
3
In which the Commissary Passauf enters as noisily as unexpectedly
When the interesting conversation which has been narrated began, it was a quarter before three in the afternoon. It was at a quarter before four that Van Tricasse lighted his enormous pipe, which could hold a quart of tobacco, and it was at thirty-five minutes past five that he finished smoking it.
All this time the two comrades did not exchange a single word.
About six o’clock the counsellor, who had a habit of speaking in a very summary manner, resumed in these words, —
‘So we decide -’
‘To decide nothing.’ replied the burgomaster.
‘I think, on the whole, that you are right, Van Tricasse.’
‘I think so too, Niklausse. We will take steps with reference to the civil commissary when we have more light on the subject – later on. There is no need for a month yet.’
‘Nor even for a year,’ replied Niklausse. unfolding his pocket-handkerchief and calmly applying it to his nose.
There was another silence of nearly a quarter of an hour. Nothing disturbed this repeated pause in the conversation; not even the appearance of the house-dog Lento, who. not less phlegmatic than his master, came to pay his respects in the parlour. Noble dog! – a model for his race. Had he been made of pasteboard, with wheels on his paws, he would not have made less noise during his stay.
Towards eight o’clock, after Lotchè had brought the antique lamp of polished glass, the burgomaster said to the counsellor, —
‘We have no other urgent matter to consider?’
‘No, Van Tricasse; none that I know of.’
‘Have I not been told, though,’ asked the burgomaster,‘that the tower of the Oudenarde gate islikely to tumble down?’
‘Ah!’ replied the counsellor; ‘really, I should not be astonished if it fell on some passer-by any day.’
‘Oh! before such a misfortune happens I hope we shall have come to a decision on the subject of this tower.’
‘I hope so, Van Tricasse.’
‘There are more pressing matters to decide.’
‘No doubt; the question of the leather-market, for instance.’
‘What, is it still burning?’
‘Still burning, and has been for the last three weeks.’
‘Have we not decided in council to let it burn?’
‘Yes, Van Tricasse – on your motion.’
‘Was not that the surest and simplest way to deal with it?’
‘Without doubt.’
‘Well, let us wait. Is that all?’
‘All,’ replied the counsellor, scratching his head, as if to assure himself that he had not forgotten anything important.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed the burgomaster, ‘haven’t you also heard something of an escape of water which threatens to inundate the low quarter of Saint Jacques?’
‘I have. It is indeed unfortunate that this escape of water did not happen above the leather-market! It would naturally have checked the fire, and would thus have saved us a good deal of discussion.’
‘What can you expect, Niklausse? There is nothing so illogical as accidents. They are bound by no rules, and we cannot profit by one, as we might wish, to remedy another.’
It took Van Tricasse’s companion some time to digest this fine observation.
‘Well, but,’ resumed the Counsellor Niklausse, after the lapse of some moments, ‘we have not spoken of our great affair!’
‘What great affair? Have we, then, a great affair?’ asked the burgomaster.
‘No doubt. About lighting the town.’
‘O yes. If my memory serves me, you are referring to the lighting plan of Doctor Ox.’
‘Precisely.’
‘It is going on, Niklausse,’ replied the burgomaster.
‘They are already laying the pipes, and the works are entirely completed.’
‘Perhaps we have hurried a little in this matter,’ said the counsellor, shaking his head.
‘Perhaps. But our excuse is, that Doctor Ox bears the whole expense of his experiment. It will not cost us a sou.’
‘That, true enough, is our excuse. Moreover, we must advance with the age. If the experiment succeeds, Quiquendone will be the first town in Flanders to be lighted with the oxy – What is the gas called?’
‘Oxyhydric gas.’
‘Well, oxyhydric gas, then.’
At this moment the door opened, and Lotchè came in to tell the burgomaster that his supper was ready.
Counsellor Niklausse rose to take leave of Van Tricasse, whose appetite had been stimulated by so many affairs discussed and decisions taken; and it was agreed that the council of notables should be convened after a reasonably long delay, to determine whether a decision should be provisionally arrived at with reference to the really urgent matter of the Oudenarde gate.
The two worthy administrators then directed their steps towards the street-door, the one conducting the other. The counsellor, having reached the last step, lighted a little lantern to guide him through the obscure streets of Quiquendone, which Doctor Ox had not yet lighted. It was a dark October night, and a light fog overshadowed the town.
Niklausse’s preparations for departure consumed at least a quarter of an hour; for, after having lighted his lantern, he had to put on his big cow-skin socks and his sheep-skin gloves; then he put up the furred collar of his overcoat, turned the brim of his felt hat down over his eyes, grasped his heavy crow-beaked umbrella, and got ready to start.
When Lotchè, however, who was lighting her master, was about to draw the bars of the door, an unexpected noise arose outside.
Yes! Strange as the thing seems, a noise – a real noise, such as the town had certainly not heard since the taking of the donjon by the Spaniards in 1513 – a terrible noise, awoke the long-dormant echoes of the venerable Van Tricasse mansion.
Someone knocked heavily upon this door, hitherto virgin to brutal touch! Redoubled knocks were given with some blunt implement, probably a knotty stick, wielded by a vigorous arm. With the strokes were mingled cries and calls. These words were distinctly heard:—
‘Monsieur Van Tricasse! Monsieur the burgomaster!
Open, open quickly!’
The burgomaster and the counsellor, absolutely astounded, looked at each other speechless.
This passed their comprehension. If the old culverin of the chateâu, which had not been used since 1385, had been let off inthe parlour, the dwellers in the Van Tricasse mansion would not have been more dumbfounded.
Meanwhile, the blows and cries were redoubled. Lotchè, recovering her coolness, had plucked up courage to speak.
‘Who is there?’
‘It is I! I! I!’
‘Who are you?’
‘The Commissary Passauf!’
The Commissary Passauf! The very man whose office it had been contemplated to suppress for ten years. What had happened, then? Could the Burgundians have invaded Quiquendone, as they did in the fourteenth century? No event of less importance could have so moved Commissary Passauf, who in no degree yielded the palm to the burgomaster himself for calmness and phlegm.
On a sign from Van Tricasse – for the worthy man could not have articulated a syllable – the bar was pushed back and the door opened.
Commissary Passauf flung himself into the antechamber. One would have thought there was a hurricane.
‘What’s the matter, Monsieur the commissary?’ asked Lotchè, a brave woman, who did not lose her head under the most trying circumstances.
‘What’s the matter!’ replied Passauf, whose big round eyes expressed a genuine agitation. ‘The matter is that I have just come from Doctor Ox’s, who has been holding a reception, and that there -
‘There?’
‘There I have witnessed such an altercation as – Monsieur the burgomaster, they have been talking politics!’
‘Politics!’ repeated Van Tricasse, running his fingers through his wig.
‘Politics!’ resumed Commissary Passauf, ‘which has not been done for perhaps a hundred years at Quiquendone. Then the discussion got warm, and the advocate, André Schut, and the doctor, Dominique Custos, became so violent that it may be they will call each other out.’
‘Call each other out!’ cried the counsellor. ‘A duel! A duel at Quiquendone! And what did Advocate Schut and Doctor Custos say?’
‘Just this: "Monsieur advocate," said the doctor to his adversary, "you go too far, it seems to me, and you do not take sufficient care to control your words!’"
The Burgomaster Van Tricasse clasped his hands – the counsellor turned pale and let his lantern fall – the commissary shook his head. That a phrase so evidently irritating should be pronounced by two of the principal men in the country!
‘This Doctor Custos,’ muttered Van Tricasse, ‘is decidedly a dangerous man – a hare-brained fellow! Come, gentlemen!’
On this, Counsellor Niklausse and the commissary accompanied the burgomaster into the parlour.
4
In which Doctor Ox reveals himself as a physiologist of the first rank, and as an audacious experimentalist
Who, then, was this personage, known by the singular name of Doctor Ox?
An original character for certain, but at the same time a bold savant, a physiologist, whose works were known and highly estimated throughout learned Europe, a happy rival of the Davys, the Daltons, the Bostocks, the Menzies. the Godwins, the Vierordts – of all those noble minds who have placed physiology among the highest of modern sciences.
Doctor Ox was a man of medium size and height, aged – :but we cannot state his age, any more than his nationality. Besides, it matters little; let it suffice that he was a strange personage, impetuous and hot-blooded, a regular oddity out of one of Hoffmann’s volumes, and one who contrasted amusingly enough with the good people of Quiquendone. He had an imperturbable confidence both in himself and in his doctrines. Always smiling, walking with head erect and shoulders thrown back in a free and unconstrained manner, with a steady gaze, large open nostrils, a vast mouth which inhaled the air in liberal draughts, his appearance was far from unpleasing. He was full of animation, well proportioned in all parts of his bodily mechanism, with quicksilver in his veins, and a most elastic step. He could never stop still in one place, and relieved himself with impetuous words and a superabundance of gesticulations.
Was Doctor Ox rich, then, that he should undertake to light a whole town at his expense? Probably, as he permitted himself to indulge in such extravagance, – and this is the only answer we can give to this indiscreet question.
Doctor Ox had arrived at Quiquendone five months before, accompanied by his assistant, who answered to the name of Gédéon Ygène; a tall, dried-up, thin man, haughty, but not less vivacious than his master.
And next, why had Doctor Ox made the proposition to light the town at his own expense? Why had he, of all the Flemings, selected the peaceable Quiquendonians, to endow their town with the benefits of an unheard-of system of lighting? Did he not, under this pretext, design to make some great physiological experiment by operating in animâ vili? In short, what was this original personage about to attempt? We know not, as Doctor Ox had no confidant except his assistant Ygène, who, moreover, obeyed him blindly.
In appearance, at least, Doctor Ox had agreed to light the town, which had much need of it, ‘especially at night’, as Commissary Passauf wittily said. Works for producing a lighting gas had accordingly been established; the gasometers were ready for use, and the main pipes, running beneath the street pavements, would soon appear in the form of burners in the public edifices and the private houses of certain friends of progress. Van Tricasse and Niklausse, in their official capacity, and some other worthies, thought they ought to allow this modern light to be introduced into their dwellings.
If the reader has not forgotten, it was said, during the long conversation of the counsellor and the burgomaster, that the lighting of the town was to be achieved, not by the combustion of common carburetted hydrogen, produced by distilling coal, but by the use of a more modern and twenty-fold more brilliant gas, oxyhydric gas, produced by mixing hydrogen and oxygen.
The doctor, who was an able chemist as well as an ingenious physiologist, knew how to obtain this gas in great quantity and of good quality, not by using manganate of soda, according to the method of M. Tessié du Motay, but by the direct decomposition of slightly acidulated water, by means of a battery made of new elements, invented by himself. Thus there were no costly materials, no platinum, no retorts, no combustibles, no delicate machinery to produce the two gases separately. An electric current was sent through large basins full of water, and the liquid was decomposed into its two constituent parts, oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen passed off at one end: the hydrogen, of double the volume of its late associate, at the other. As a necessary precaution, they were collected in separate reservoirs, for their mixture would have produced a frightful explosion if it had become ignited. Thence the pipes were to convey them separately to the various burners, which would be so placed as to prevent all chance of explosion. Thus a remarkably brilliant flame would be obtained, whose light would rival the electric light, which, as everybody knows, is, according to Cassellmann’s experiments, equal to that of 1,171 wax candles, – not one more, nor one less.
It was certain that the town of Quiquendone would, by this liberal contrivance, gain a splendid lighting; but Doctor Ox and his assistant took little account of this, as will be seen in the sequel.
The day after that on which Commissary Passauf had made his noisy entrance into the burgomaster’s parlour, Gédéon Ygène and Doctor Ox were talking in the laboratory which both occupied in common, on the ground floor of the principal building of the gas-works.
‘Well, Ygène, well,’ cried the doctor, rubbing his hands. ‘You saw, at my reception yesterday, the cool-bloodedness of these worthy Quiquendonians. For animation they are midway between sponges and coral! You saw them disputing and irritating each other by voice and gesture? They are already metamorphosed, morally and physically! And this is only the beginning. Wait till we treat them to a big dose!’
‘Indeed, master,’ replied Ygène, scratching his sharp nose with the end of his forefinger, ‘the experiment begins well, and if I had not prudently closed the supply-tap, I know not what would have happened.’
‘You heard Schut, the advocate, and Custos, the doctor?’ resumed Doctor Ox. ‘The phrase was by no means ill-natured in itself, but, in the mouth of a Quiquendonian, it is worth all the insults which the Homeric heroes hurled at each other before drawing their swords. Ah, these Flemings! You’ll see what we shall do some day!’
‘We shall make them ungrateful,’ replied Ygène, in the tone of a man who esteems the human race at its just worth.
‘Bah!’ said the doctor; ‘what matters it whether they think well or ill of us, so long as our experiment succeeds?’
‘Besides,’ returned the assistant, smiling with a malicious expression, ‘is it not to be feared that, in producing such an excitement in their respiratory organs, we shall somewhat injure the lungs of these good people of Quiquendone?’
‘So much the worse for them! It is in the interests of science. What would you say if the dogs or frogs refused to lend themselves to the experiments of vivisection?’
It is probable that if the frogs and dogs were consulted, they would offer some objection; but Doctor Ox imagined that he had stated an unanswerable argument, for he heaved a great sigh of satisfaction.
‘After all, master, you are right,’ replied Ygène, as if quite convinced. ‘We could not have hit upon better subjects than these people of Quiquendone for our experiment.’
‘We – could – not,’ said the doctor, slowly articulating each word.
‘Have you felt the pulse of any of them?’
‘Some hundreds.’
‘And what is the average pulsation you found?’
‘Not fifty per minute. See – this is a town where there has not been the shadow of a discussion for a century, where the carmen don’t swear, where the coachmen don’t insult each other, where horses don’t run away, where the dogs don’t bite, where the cats don’t scratch, – a town where the police-court has nothing to do from one year’s end to another; – a town where people do not grow enthusiastic about anything, either about art or business, – a town where the gendarmes are a sort of myth, and in which an indictment has not been drawn up for a hundred years, – a town, in short, where for three centuries nobody has struck a blow with his fist or so much as exchanged a slap in the face! You see, Ygène, that this cannot last, and that we must change it all.’
‘Perfectly! perfectly!’ cried the enthusiastic assistant; ‘and have you analysed the air of this town, master?’
‘I have not failed to do so. Seventy-nine parts of azote and twenty-one of oxygen, carbonic acid and steam in a variable quantity. These are the ordinary proportions.’
‘Good, doctor, good!’ replied Ygène. ‘The experiment will be made on a large scale, and will be decisive.’
‘And if it is decisive,’ added Doctor Ox triumphantly, ‘we shall reform the world!’
5
In which the burgomaster and the counsellor pay a visit to Doctor Ox, and what follows
The Counsellor Niklausse and the Burgomaster Van Tricasse at last knew what it was to have an agitated night. The grave event which had taken place at Doctor Ox’s house actually kept them awake. What consequences was this affair destined to bring about? They could not imagine. Would it be necessary for them to come to a decision? Would the municipal authority, whom they represented, be compelled to interfere? Would they be obliged to order arrests to be made, that so great a scandal should not be repeated? All these doubts could not but trouble these soft natures; and on that evening, before separating, the two notables had ‘decided’ to see each other the next day.
On the next morning, then, before dinner, the Burgomaster Van Tricasse proceeded in person to the Counsellor Niklausse’s house. He found his friend more calm. He himself had recovered his equanimity.
‘Nothing new?’ asked Van Tricasse.
‘Nothing new since yesterday,’ replied Niklausse.
‘And the doctor, Dominique Custos?’
‘I have not heard anything, either of him or of the advocate, André Schut.’
After an hour’s conversation, which consisted of three remarks which it is needless to repeat, the counsellor and the burgomaster had resolved to pay a visit to Doctor Ox, so as to draw from him, without seeming to do so, some details of the affair.
Contrary to all their habits, after coming to this decision the two notables set about putting it into execution forthwith. They left the house and directed their steps towards Doctor Ox’s laboratory, which was situated outside the town, near the Oudenarde gate – the gate whose tower threatened to fall in ruins.
They did not take each other’s arms, but walked side by side, with a slow and solemn step, which took them forward but thirteen inches per second. This was, indeed, the ordinary gait of the Quiquendonians, who had never, within the memory of man, seen anyone run across the streets of their town.
From time to time the two notables would stop at some calm and tranquil crossway, or at the end of a quiet street, to salute the passers-by.
‘Good morning, Monsieur the burgomaster,’ said one.
‘Good morning, my friend,’ responded Van Tricasse.
‘Anything new, Monsieur the counsellor?’ asked another.
‘Nothing new,’ answered Niklausse.
But by certain agitated motions and questioning looks, it was evident that the altercation of the evening before was known throughout the town. Observing the direction taken by Van Tricasse, the most obtuse Quiquendonians guessed that the burgomaster was on his way to take some important step. The Custos and Schut affair was talked of everywhere, but the people had not yet come to the point of taking the part of one or the other. The Advocate Schut, having never had occasion to plead in a town where attorneys and bailiffs only existed in tradition, had, consequently, never lost a suit. As for the Doctor Custos, he was an honourable practitioner, who, after the example of his fellow-doctors, cured all the illnesses of his patients, except those of which they died – a habit unhappily acquired by all the members of all the faculties in whatever country they may practise.
On reaching the Oudenarde gate, the counsellor and the burgomaster prudently made a short detour, so as not to pass within reach of the tower, in case it should fall; then they turned and looked at it attentively.
‘I think that it will fall,’ said Van Tricasse.
‘I think so too,’ replied Niklausse.
‘Unless it is propped up,’ added Van Tricasse. ‘But must it be propped up? That is the question.’
"That is – in fact – the question.’
Some moments after, they reached the door of the gasworks.
‘Can we see Doctor Ox?’ they asked.
Doctor Ox could always be seen by the first authorities of the town, and they were at once introduced into the celebrated physiologist’s study.
Perhaps the two notables waited for the doctor at least an hour: at least it is reasonable to suppose so, as the burgomaster – a thing that had never before happened in his life – betrayed a certain amount of impatience, from which his companion was not exempt.
Doctor Ox came in at last, and began to excuse himself for having kept them waiting: but he had to approve a plan for the gasometer, rectify some of the machinery – But everything was going on well! The pipes intended for the oxygen were already laid. In a few months the town would be splendidly lighted. The two notables might even now see the orifices of the pipes which were laid on in the laboratory.
Then the doctor begged to know to what he was indebted for the honour of this visit.
‘Only to see you, doctor; to see you,’ replied Van Tricasse. ‘It is long since we have had the pleasure. We go abroad but little in our good town of Quiquendone. We count our steps and measure our walks. We are happy when nothing disturbs the uniformity of our habits.’
Niklausse looked at his friend. His friend had never said so much at once – at least, without taking time, and giving long intervals between his sentences. It seemed to him that Van Tricasse expressed himself with a certain volubility, which was by no means common with him. Niklausse himself experienced a kind of irresistible desire to talk.
As for Doctor Ox. he looked at the burgomaster with sly attention.
Van Tricasse, who never argued until he had snugly ensconced himself in a spacious armchair, had risen to his feet. I know not what nervous excitement, quite foreign to his temperament, had taken possession of him. He did not gesticulate as yet, but this could not be far off. As for the counsellor, he rubbed his legs, and breathed with slow and long gasps. His look became animated little by little, and he had ‘decided’ to support at all hazards, if need be, his trusty friend the burgomaster.
Van Tricasse got up and took several steps; then he came back, and stood facing the doctor.
‘And in how many months,’ he asked in a somewhat emphatic tome, ‘do you say that your work will be finished?’
‘In three or four months, Monsieur the burgomaster,’ replied Doctor Ox.
‘Three or four months, – it’s a very long time!’ said Van Tricasse.
‘Altogether too long!’ added Niklausse, who, not being able to keep his seat, rose also.
‘This lapse of time is necessary to complete our work,’ returned Doctor Ox. ‘The workmen, whom we have had to choose in Quiquendone, are not very expeditious.’
‘How not expeditious?’ cried the burgomaster, who seemed to take the remark as personally offensive.
‘No, Monsieur Van Tricasse,’ replied Doctor Ox obstinately. ‘A French workman would do in a day what it takes ten of your workmen to do; you know, they are regular Flemings!’
‘Flemings!’ cried the counsellor, whose fingers closed together. ‘In what sense, sir, do you use that word?’
‘Why, in the amiable sense in which everybody uses it,’ replied Doctor Ox, smiling.
‘Ah, but doctor,’ said the burgomaster, pacing up and down the room, ‘I don’t like these insinuations. The workmen of Quiquendone are as efficient as those of any other town in the world, you must know; and we shall go neither to Paris nor London for our models! As for your project, I beg you to hasten its execution. Our streets have been unpaved for the putting down of your conduit-pipes, and it is a hindrance to traffic. Our trade will begin to suffer, and I, being the responsible authority, do not propose to incur reproaches which will be but too just.’
Worthy burgomaster! He spoke of trade, of traffic, and the wonder was that those words, to which he was quite unaccustomed, did not scorch his lips. What could be passing in his mind?
‘Besides,’ added Niklausse, ‘the town cannot be deprived of light much longer.’
‘But,’ urged Doctor Ox, ‘a town which has been unlighted for 800 or 900 years -’
‘All the more necessary is it,’ replied the burgomaster, emphasising his words. ‘Times alter, manners alter! The world advances, and we do not wish to remain behind. We desire our streets to be lighted within a month, or you must pay a large indemnity for each day of delay; and what would happen if, amid the darkness, some affray should take place?’
‘No doubt,’ cried Niklausse. ‘It requires but a spark to inflame a Fleming! Fleming! Flame!’
‘Apropos of this,‘ said the burgomaster, interrupting his friend, ‘Commissary Passauf, our chief of police, reports to us that a discussion took place in your drawing room last evening, Doctor Ox. Was he wrong in declaring that it was a political discussion?’
‘By no means, Monsieur the burgomaster,‘ replied Doctor Ox, who with difficulty repressed a sigh of satisfaction.
‘So an altercation did take place between Dominique Custos and André Schut?’
‘Yes, counsellor; but the words which passed were not of grave import. ‘
‘Not of grave import!’ cried the burgomaster. ‘Not of grave import, when one man tells another that he does not measure the effect of his words! But of what stuff are you made, monsieur? Do you not know that in Quiquendone nothing more is needed to bring about extremely disastrous results? But monsieur, if you, or anyone else, presume to speak thus to me -’
‘Or to me,’ added Niklausse.
As they pronounced these words with a menacing air, the two notables, with folded arms and bristling air, confronted Doctor Ox, ready to do him some violence, if by a gesture, or even the expression of his eye, he manifested any intention of contradicting them.
But the doctor did not budge.
‘At all events, monsieur,’ resumed the burgomaster, ‘I propose to hold you responsible for what passes in your house. I am bound to insure the tranquillity of this town, and I do not wish it to be disturbed. The events of last evening must not be repeated, or I shall do my duty, sir! Do you hear? Then reply, sir. ‘
The burgomaster, as he spoke, under the influence of extraordinary excitement, elevated his voice to the pitch of anger. He was furious, the worthy Van Tricasse, and might certainly be heard outside. At last, beside himself, and seeing that Doctor Ox did not reply to his challenge, ‘Come, Niklausse,’ said he.
And, slamming the door with a violence which shook the house, the burgomaster drew his friend after him.
Little by little, when they had taken twenty steps on their road, the worthy notables grew more calm. Their pace slackened, their gait became less feverish. The flush on their faces faded away; from being crimson, they became rosy. A quarter of an hour after quitting the gasworks, Van Tricasse said softly to Niklausse, ‘An amiable man, Doctor Ox! It is always a pleasure to see him!’
6
In which Frantz Niklausse and Suzel Van Tricasse form certain projects for the future
Our readers know that the burgomaster had a daughter, Suzel. But, shrewd as they may be, they cannot have divined that the counsellor Niklausse had a son, Frantz; and had they divined this, nothing could have led them to imagine that Frantz was the betrothed lover of Suzel. We will add that these young people were made for each other, and that they loved each other, as folks did love at Quiquendone.
It must not be thought that young hearts did not beat in this exceptional place; only they beat with a certain deliberation. There were marriages there, as in every other town in the world; but they took time about it. Betrothed couples, before engaging in these terrible bonds, wished to study each other; and these studies lasted at least ten years, as at college. It was rare that any one was ‘accepted’ before this lapse of time.
Yes, ten years! The courtships last ten years! And is it, after all, too long, when the being bound for life is in consideration? One studies ten years to become an engineer or physician, an advocate or attorney, and should less time be spent in acquiring the knowledge to make a good husband? Is it not reasonable? and, whether due to temperament or reason with them, the Quiquendonians seem to us to be in the right in thus prolonging their courtship. When marriages in other more lively and excitable cities are seen taking place within a few months, we must shrug our shoulders, and hasten to send our boys to the schools and our daughters to the pensions of Quiquendone.
For half a century but a single marriage was known to have taken place after the lapse of two years only of courtship, and that turned out badly!
Frantz Niklausse, then, loved Suzel Van Tricasse, but quietly, as a man would love when he has ten years before him in which to obtain the beloved object. Once every week, at an hour agreed upon, Frantz went to fetch Suzel, and took a walk with her along the banks of the Vaar. He took good care to carry his fishing-tackle, and Suzel never forgot her canvas, on which her pretty hands embroidered the most unlikely flowers.
Frantz was a young man of twenty-two, whose cheeks betrayed a soft, peachy down, and whose voice had scarcely a compass of one octave.
As for Suzel, she was blonde and rosy. She was seventeen, and did not dislike fishing. A singular occupation this, however, which forces you to struggle craftily with a barbel. But Frantz loved it; the pastime was congenial to his temperament. As patient as possible, content to follow with his rather dreamy eye the cork which bobbed on the top of the water, he knew how to wait; and when, after sitting for six hours, a modest barbel, taking pity on him, consented at last to be caught, he was happy - but he knew how to control his emotion.
On this day the two lovers – one might say, the two betrothed were seated upon the verdant bank. The limpid Vaar murmured a few feet below them. Suzel quietly drew her needle across the canvas. Frantz automatically carried his line from left to right, then permitted it to descend the current from right to left. The fish made capricious rings in the water, which crossed each other around the cork, while the hook hung useless near the bottom.
From time to time Frantz would say, without raising his eyes, —
‘I think I have a bite, Suzel. ‘
‘Do you think so, Frantz?’ replied Suzel, who, abandoning her work for an instant, followed her lover’s line with earnest eye.
‘N-no,’ resumed Frantz; ‘I thought I felt a little twitch; I was mistaken. ‘
‘You will have a bite, Frantz,’ replied Suzel, in her pure, soft voice. ‘But do not forget to strike at the right moment. You are always a few seconds too late, and the barbel takes advantage to escape. ‘
‘Would you like to take my line, Suzel?’
‘Willingly, Frantz. ‘
‘Then give me your canvas. We shall see whether I am more adroit with the needle than with the hook. ‘
And the young girl took the line with trembling hand, while her swain plied the needle across the stitches of the embroidery. For hours together they thus exchanged soft words, and their hearts palpitated when the cork bobbed on the water. Ah, could they ever forget those charming hours, during which, seated side by side, they listened to the murmurs of the river?
The sun was fast approaching the western horizon, and despite the combined skill of Suzel and Frantz, there had not been a bite. The barbels had not shown themselves complacent, and seemed to scoff at the two young people, who were too just to bear them malice.
‘We shall be more lucky another time, Frantz,’ said Suzel, as the young angler put up his still virgin hook.
‘Let us hope so,’ replied Frantz.
Then walking side by side, they turned their steps towards the house, without exchanging a word, as mute as their shadows which stretched out before them. Suzel became very, very tall under the oblique rays of the setting sun. Frantz appeared very, very thin, like the long rod which he held in his hand.
They reached the burgomaster’s house. Green tufts of grass bordered the shining pavement, and no one would have thought of tearing them away, for they deadened the noise made by the passers-by.
As they were about to open the door, Frantz thought it his duty to say to Suzel, —
‘You know, Suzel, the great day is approaching?’
‘It is indeed, Frantz,’ replied the young girl, with downcast eyes.
‘Yes,’ said Frantz, ‘in five or six years -’
‘Good-bye, Frantz,’ said Suzel.
‘Good-bye, Suzel,’ replied Frantz.
And, after the door had been closed, the young man resumed the way to his father’s house with a calm and equal pace.
7
In which the Andantes become Allegros, and Allegros Vivaces
The agitation caused by the Schut and Custos affair had subsided. The affair led to no serious consequences. It appeared likely that Quiquendone would return to its habitual apathy, which that unexpected event had for a moment disturbed.
Meanwhile, the laying of the pipes destined to conduct the oxyhydric gas into the principal edifices of the town was proceeding rapidly. The main pipes and branches gradually crept beneath the pavements. But the burners were still wanting; for, as it required delicate skill to make them, it was necessary that they should be fabricated abroad. Doctor Ox was here, there, and everywhere: neither he nor Ygène, his assistant, lost a moment, but they urged on the workmen, completed the delicate mechanism of the gasometer, fed day and night the immense piles which decomposed the water under the influence of a powerful electric current. Yes, the doctor was already making his gas, though the pipe-laying was not yet done; a fact which, between ourselves, might have seemed a little singular. But before long, – at least there was reason to hope so, – before long Doctor Ox would inaugurate the splendours of his invention in the theatre of the town.
For Quiquendone possessed a theatre – a really fine edifice, in truth – the interior and exterior arrangement of which combined every style of architecture. It was at once Byzantine, Roman, Gothic, Renaissance, with semicircular doors, Pointed windows, Flamboyant rose-windows, fantastic bell-turrets, – in a word, a specimen of all sorts, half a Parthenon, half a Parisian Grand Café. Nor was this surprising, the theatre having been commenced under the burgomaster Ludwig Van Tricasse, in 1175, and only finished in 1837, under the burgomaster Natalis Van Tricasse. It had required 700 years to build it. and it had been successively adapted to the architectural style in vogue in each period. But for all that it was an imposing structure; the Roman pillars and Byzantine arches of which would appear to advantage lit up by the oxyhydric gas.
Pretty well everything was acted at the theatre of Quiquendone; but the opera and the opera comique were especially patronised. It must, however, be added that the composers would never have recognized their own works, so entirely changed were the ‘movements’ of the music.
In short, as nothing was done in a hurry at Quiquendone, the dramatic pieces had to be performed in harmony with the peculiar temperament of the Quiquendonians. Though the doors of the theatre were regularly thrown open at four o’clock and closed again at ten, it had never been known that more than two acts were played during the six intervening hours. Robert le Diable, Les Huguenots, or Guillaume Tell usually took up three evenings, so slow was the execution of these masterpieces. The vivaces, at the theatre of Quiquendone, lagged like real adagios. The allegros were ‘long-drawn out’ indeed. The demisemiquavers were scarcely equal to the ordinary semibreves of other countries. The most rapid runs, performed according to Quiquendonian taste, had the solemn march of a chant. The gayest shakes were languishing and measured, that they might not shock the ears of the dilettanti. To give an example, the rapid air sung by Figaro, on his entrance in the first act of Le Barbier de Séville, lasted fifty-eight minutes – when the actor was particularly enthusiastic.
Artists from abroad, as might be supposed, were forced to conform themselves to Quiquendonian fashions; but as they were well paid, they did not complain, and willingly obeyed the leader’s baton, which never beat more than eight measures to the minute in the allegros.
But what applause greeted these artists, who enchanted without ever wearying the audiences of Quiquendone! All hands clapped one after another at tolerably long intervals, which the papers characterised as ‘frantic applause’, and sometimes nothing but the lavish prodigality with which mortar and stone had been used in the twelfth century saved the roof of the hall from falling in.
Besides, the theatre had only one performance a week, that these enthusiastic Flemish folk might not be too much excited; and this enabled the actors to study their parts more thoroughly, and the spectators to digest more at leisure the beauties of the masterpieces brought out.
Such had long been the drama at Quiquendone. Foreign artists were in the habit of making engagements with the director of the town, when they wanted to rest after their exertions in other scenes; and it seemed as if nothing could ever change these inveterate customs, when, a fortnight after the Schut-Custos affair, an unlooked-for incident occurred to throw the population into fresh agitation.
It was on a Saturday, an opera day. It was not yet intended, as may well be supposed, to inaugurate the new illumination. No; the pipes had reached the hall, but, for reasons indicated above, the burners had not yet been placed, and the wax-candles still shed their soft light upon the numerous spectators who filled the theatre. The doors had been opened to the public at one o’clock, and by three the hall was half full. A queue had at one time been formal, which extended as far as the end of the Place Saint Ernuph, in front of the shop of Josse Lietrinck the apothecary. This eagerness was significant of an unusually attractive performance.
‘Are you going to the theatre this evening?’ inquired the counsellor the same morning of the burgomaster.
‘I shall not fail to do so,’ returned Van Tricasse, ‘and I shall take Madame Van Tricasse, as well as our daughter Suzel and our dear Tatanémance, who all dote on good music. ‘
‘Mademoiselle Suzel is going then?’
‘Certainly, Niklausse. ‘
‘Then my son Frantz will be one of the first to arrive,’ said Niklausse.
‘A spirited boy, Niklausse,’ replied the burgomaster sententiously; ‘but hot-headed! He will require watching!’
‘He loves, Van Tricasse, – he loves your charming Suzel. ‘
‘Well, Niklausse, he shall marry her. Now that we have agreed on this marriage, what more can he desire?’
‘He desires nothing, Van Tricasse, the dear boy! But, in short – we’ll say no more about it – he will not be the last to get his ticket at the box-office. ‘
‘Ah, vivacious and ardent youth!’ replied the burgomaster, recalling his own past. ‘We have also been thus, my worthy counsellor! We have loved – we too! We have danced attendance in our day! Till tonight, then, till tonight! By-the-bye, do you know this Fiovaranti is a great artist? And what a welcome he has received among us! It will be long before he will forget the applause of Quiquendone!’
The tenor Fiovaranti was, indeed, going to sing; Fiovaranti, who, by his talents as a virtuoso, his perfect method, his melodious voice, provoked a real enthusiasm among the lovers of music in the town.
For three weeks Fiovaranti had been achieving a brilliant success in Les Huguenots. The first act, interpreted according to the taste of the Quiquendonians, had occupied an entire evening of the first week of the month. – Another evening in the second week, prolonged by infinite andantes, had elicited for the celebrated singer a real ovation. His success had been still more marked in the third act of Meyerbeer’s masterpiece. But now Fiovaranti was to appear in the fourth act, which was to be performed on this evening before an impatient public. Ah, the duet between Raoul and Valentine, that pathetic love-song for two voices, that strain so full of crescendos, stringendos, and più crescendos – all this, sung slowly, compendiously, interminably! Ah, how delightful!
At four o’clock the hall was full. The boxes, the orchestra, the pit, were overflowing. In the front stalls sat the Burgomaster Van Tricasse, Mademoiselle Van Tricasse, Madame Van Tricasse, and the amiable Tatanémance in a green bonnet; not far off were the Counsellor Niklausse and his family, not forgetting the amorous Frantz. The families of Custos the doctor, of Schut the advocate, of Honoré Syntax the chief judge, of Norbet Sontman the insurance director, of the banker Collaert, gone mad on German music, and himself somewhat of an amateur, and the teacher Rupp, and the master of the academy, Jerome Resh, and the civil commissary, and so many other notabilities of the town that they could not be enumerated here without wearying the reader’s patience, were visible in different parts of the hall.
It was customary for the Quiquendonians, while awaiting the rise of the curtain, to sit silent, some reading the paper, others whispering low to each other, some making their way to their seats slowly and noiselessly, others casting timid looks towards the bewitching beauties in the galleries.
But on this evening a looker-on might have observed that, even before the curtain rose, there was unusual animation among the audience. People were restless who were never known to be restless before. The ladies’ fans fluttered with abnormal rapidity. All appeared to be inhaling air of exceptional stimulating power. Everyone breathed more freely. The eyes of some became unwontedly bright, and seemed to give forth a light equal to that of the candles, which themselves certainly threw a more brilliant light over the hall. It was evident that people saw more clearly, though the number of candles had not been increased. Ah, if Doctor Ox’s experiment were being tried! But it was not being tried, as yet.
The musicians of the orchestra at last took their places. The first violin had gone to the stand to give a modest la to his colleagues. The stringed instruments, the wind instruments, the drums and cymbals, were in accord. The conductor only waited the sound of the bell to beat the first bar.
The bell sounds. The fourth act begins. The allegro appassionato of the inter-act is played as usual, with a majestic deliberation which would have made Meyerbeer frantic, and all the majesty of which was appreciated by the Quiquendonian dilettanti.
But soon the leader perceived that he was no longer master of his musicians. He found it difficult to restrain them, though usually so obedient and calm. The wind instruments betrayed a tendency to hasten the movements, and it was necessary to hold them back with a firm hand, for they would otherwise outstrip the stringed instruments; which, from a musical point of view, would have been disastrous. The bassoon himself, the son of Josse Lietrinck the apothecary, a well-bred young man, seemed to lose his self-control.
Meanwhile Valentine has begun her recitative, ‘I am alone,‘ &c.; but she hurries it.
The leader and all his musicians, perhaps unconsciously, follow her in her cantabile, which should be taken deliberately, like a 12/8 as it is. When Raoul appears at the door at the bottom of the stage, between the moment when Valentine goes to him and that when she conceals herself in the chamber at the side, a quarter of an hour does not elapse; while formerly, according to the traditions of the Quiquendone theatre, this recitative of thirty-seven bars was wont to last just thirty-seven minutes.
Saint Bris, Nevers, Cavannes, and the Catholic nobles have appeared, somewhat prematurely, perhaps, upon the scene. The composer has marked allegro pomposo on the score. The orchestra and the lords proceed allegro indeed, but not at all pomposo. and at the chorus, in the famous scene of the ‘benediction of the poniards’, they no longer keep to the enjoined allegro. Singers and musicians broke away impetuously. The leader does not even attempt to restrain them. Nor do the public protest; on the contrary, the people find themselves carried away, and see that they are involved in the movement, and that the movement responds to the impulses of their souls.
Will you, with me, deliver the land, From troubles increasing, an impious band?
They promise, they swear. Nevers has scarcely time to protest, and to sing that ‘among his ancestors were many soldiers, but never an assassin’. He is arrested. The police and the aldermen rush forward and rapidly swear ‘to strike all at once’. Saint Bris shouts the recitative which summons the Catholics to vengeance. The three monks, with white scarfs, hasten in by the door at the back of Nevers’s room, without making any account of the stage directions, which enjoin on them to advance slowly. Already all the artists have drawn sword or poniard, which the three monks bless in a trice. The soprani tenors, bassos, attack the allegro furioso with cries of rage, and of a dramatic 6/8 time they make it 6/8 quadrille time. Then they rush out, bellowing, —
At midnight,
Noiselessly,
God wills it,
Yes.
At midnight.
At this moment the audience start to their feet. Everybody is agitated – in the boxes, the pit, the galleries. It seems as if the spectators are about to rush upon the stage, the Burgomaster Van Tricasse at their head, to join with the conspirators and annihilate the Huguenots, whose religious opinions, however, they share. They applaud, call before the curtain, make loud acclamations! Tatanémance grasps her bonnet with feverish hand. The candles throw out a lurid glow of light.
Raoul, instead of slowly raising the curtain, tears it apart with a superb gesture and finds himself confronting Valentine.
At last! It is the grand duet, and it starts off allegro vivace. Raoul does not wait for Valentine’s pleading, and Valentine does not wait for Raoul’s responses.
The fine passage beginning, ‘Danger is passing, time is flying,’ becomes one of those rapid airs which have made Offenbach famous, when he composes a dance for conspirators: The andante amoroso, ‘Thou hast said it, aye, thou lovest me,’ becomes a real vivace furioso, and the violoncello ceases to imitate the inflections of the singer’s voice, as indicated in the composer’s score. In vain Raoul cries, ‘Speak on, and prolong the ineffable slumber of my soul.’ Valentine cannot ‘prolong’. It is evident that an unaccustomed fire devours her. Her b’s and her c’s above the stave were dreadfully shrill. He struggles, he gesticulates, he is all in a glow.
The alarum is heard; the bell resounds; but what a panting bell! The bell-ringer has evidently lost his self-control. It is a frightful tocsin, which violently struggles against the fury of the orchestra.
Finally the air which ends this magnificent act, beginning, ‘No more love, no more intoxication, O the remorse that oppresses me!’ which the composer marks allegro con moto, becomes a wild prestissimo. You would say an express-train was whirling by. The alarum resounds again. Valentine falls fainting. Raoul precipitates himself from the window.
It was high time. The orchestra, really intoxicated, could not have gone on. The leader’s baton is no longer anything but a broken stick on the prompter’s box. The violin strings are broken, and their necks twisted. In his fury the drummer has burst his drum; The counter-bassist has perched on the top of his musical monster. The first clarinet has swallowed the reed of his instrument, and the second oboe is chewing his reed keys. The groove of the trombone is strained, and finally the unhappy cornetist cannot withdraw his hand from the bell of his horn, into which he had thrust it too far.
And the audience! The audience, panting, all in a heat, gesticulates and howls. All the faces are as red as if a fire were burning within their bodies. They crowd each other, hustle each other to get out – the men without hats, the women without mantles! They elbow each other in the corridors, crush between the doors, quarrel, fight! There are no longer any officials, any burgomaster. All are equal amid this infernal frenzy!
Some moments after, when all have reached the street, each one resumes his habitual tranquillity, and peaceably enters his house, with a confused remembrance of what he has just experienced.
The fourth act of the Huguenots, which formerly lasted six hours, began, on this evening at half-past four, and ended at twelve minutes before five.
It had only lasted eighteen minutes!
8
In which the ancient and solemn German Waltz becomes a whirlwind
But if the spectators, on leaving the theatre, resumed their customary calm, if they quietly regained their homes, preserving only a sort of passing stupefaction, they had none the less undergone a remarkable exaltation, and overcome and weary as if they had committed some excess of dissipation, they fell heavily upon their beds.
The next day each Quiquendonian had a kind of recollection of what had occurred the evening before. One missed his hat, lost in the hubbub; another a coat-flap, torn in the brawl; one her delicately fashioned shoe, another her best mantle. Memory returned to these worthy people, and with it a certain shame for their unjustifiable agitation. It seemed to them an orgy in which they were the unconscious heroes and heroines. They did not speak of it; they did not wish to think of it. But the most astounded personage in the town was Van Tricasse the burgomaster.
The next morning, on waking, he could not find his wig. Lotchè looked everywhere for it, but in vain. The wig had remained on the field of battle. As for having it publicly claimed by Jean Mistrol, the town-crier, – no, it would not do. It were better to lose the wig than to advertise himself thus, as he had the honour to be the first magistrate of Quiquendone.
The worthy Van Tricasse was reflecting upon this, extended beneath his sheets, with bruised body, heavy head, furred tongue, and burning breast. He felt no desire to get up; on the contrary; and his brain worked more during this morning than it had probably worked before for forty years. The worthy magistrate recalled to his mind all the incidents of the incomprehensible performance. He connected them with the events which had taken place shortly before at Doctor Ox’s reception. He tried to discover the causes of the singular excitability which, on two occasions, had betrayed itself in the best citizens of the town.
‘What can be going on?’ he asked himself. ‘What giddy spirit has taken possession of my peaceable town of Quiquendone? Are we about to go mad, and must we make the town one vast asylum? For yesterday we were all there, notables, counsellors, judges, advocates, physicians, schoolmasters; and all, if my memory serves me, – all of us were assailed by this excess of furious folly! But what was there in that infernal music? It is inexplicable! Yet I certainly ate or drank nothing which could put me into such a state. No; yesterday I had for dinner a slice of overdone veal, several spoonfuls of spinach with sugar, eggs, and a little beer and water, – that couldn’t get into my head! No! There is something that I cannot explain, and as, after all, I am responsible for the conduct of the citizens, I will have an investigation. ‘
But the investigation, though decided upon by the municipal council, produced no result. If the facts were clear, the causes escaped the sagacity of the magistrates. Besides, tranquillity had been restored in the public mind, and with tranquillity, forgetfulness of the strange scenes of the theatre. The newspapers avoided speaking of them, and the account of the performance which appeared in the Quiquendone Memorial, made no allusion to this intoxication of the entire audience.
Meanwhile, though the town resumed its habitual phlegm, and became apparently Flemish as before, it was observable that, at bottom, the character and temperament of the people changed little by little. One might have truly said, with Dominique Custos, the doctor, that ‘their nerves were affected’.
Let us explain. This undoubted change only took place under certain conditions. When the Quiquendonians passed through the streets of the town, walked in the squares or along the Vaar, they were always the cold and methodical people of former days. So, too, when they remained at home, some working with their hands and others with their heads, – these doing nothing, those thinking nothing. – their private life was silent, inert, vegetating as before. No quarrels, no household squabbles, no acceleration in the beating of the heart, no excitement of the brain. The mean of their pulsations remained as it was of old, from fifty to fifty-two per minute.
But, strange and inexplicable phenomenon though it was, which would have defied the sagacity of the most ingenious physiologists of the day, if the inhabitants of Quiquendone did not change in their home life, they were visibly changed in their civil life and in their relations between man and man, to which it leads.
If they met together in some public edifice, it did not ‘work well’, as Commissary Passauf expressed it. On change, at the town-hall, in the amphitheatre of the academy, at the sessions of the council, as well as at the reunions of the savants, a strange excitement seized the assembled citizens. Their relations with each other became embarrassing before they had been together an hour. In two hours the discussion degenerated into an angry dispute. Heads became heated, and personalities were used. Even at church, during the sermon, the faithful could not listen to Van Stabel, the minister, in patience, and he threw himself about in the pulpit and lectured his flock with far more than his usual severity. At last this state of things brought about altercations more grave, alas! than that between Custos and Schut, and if they did not require the interference of the authorities, it was because the antagonists, after returning home, found there, with its calm, forgetfulness of the offences offered and received.
This peculiarity could not be observed by these minds, which were absolutely incapable of recognising what was passing in them. One person only in the town, he whose office the council had thought of suppressing for thirty years, Michael Passauf, had remarked that this excitement, which was absent from private houses, quickly revealed itself in public edifices; and he asked himself, not without a certain anxiety, what would happen if this infection should ever develop itself in the family mansions, and if the epidemic – this was the word he used – should extend through the streets of the town. Then there would be no more forgetfulness of insults, no more tranquillity, no intermission in the delirium; but a permanent inflammation, which would inevitably bring the Quiquendonians into collision with each other.
‘What would happen then?’ Commissary Passauf asked himself in terror. ‘How could these furious savages be arrested? How check these goaded temperaments? My office would be no longer a sinecure, and the council would be obliged to double my salary – unless it should arrest me myself, for disturbing the public peace!’
These very reasonable fears began to be realised. The infection spread from change, the theatre, the church, the town-hall, the academy, the market, into private houses, and that in less than a fortnight after the terrible performance of the Huguenots.
Its first symptoms appeared in the house of Collaert, the banker.
That wealthy personage gave a ball, or at least a dancing-party, to the notabilities of the town. He had issued, some months before, a loan of 30,000 francs, three-quarters of which had been subscribed; and to celebrate this financial success, he had opened his drawing rooms, and given a party to his fellow-citizens.
Everybody knows that Flemish parties are innocent and tranquil enough, the principal expense of which is usually in beer and syrups. Some conversation on the weather, the appearance of the crops, the fine condition of the gardens, the care of flowers, and especially of tulips; a slow and measured dance, from time to time, perhaps a minuet; sometimes a waltz, but one of those German waltzes which achieve a turn and a half per minute, and during which the dancers hold each other as far apart as their arms will permit, – such is the usual fashion of the balls attended by the aristocratic society of Quiquendone. The polka, after being altered to four time, had tried to become accustomed to it; but the dancers always lagged behind the orchestra, no matter how slow the measure, and it had to be abandoned.
These peaceable reunions, in which the youths and maidens enjoyed an honest and moderate pleasure, had never been attended by any outburst of ill-nature. Why, then, on this evening at Collaert the banker’s, did the syrups seem to be transformed into heady wines, into sparkling champagne, into heating punches? Why, towards the middle of the evening, did a sort of mysterious intoxication take possession of the guests? Why did the minuet become a jig? Why did the orchestra hurry with its harmonies? Why did the candles, just as at the theatre, burn with unwonted refulgence? What electric current invaded the banker’s drawing rooms? How happened it that the couples held each other so closely, and clasped each other’s hands so convulsively, that the ‘cavaliers seuls’ made themselves conspicuous by certain extraordinary steps in that figure usually so grave, so solemn, so majestic, so very proper?
Alas! what Oedipus could have answered these unsolvable questions? Commissary Passauf, who was present at the party, saw the storm coming distinctly, but he could not control it or fly from it, and he felt a kind of intoxication entering his own brain. All his physical and emotional faculties increased in intensity. He was seen, several times, to throw himself upon the confectionery and devour the dishes, as if he had just broken a long fast.
The animation of the ball was increasing all this while. A long murmur, like a dull buzzing, escaped from all breasts. They danced – really danced. The feet were agitated by increasing frenzy. The faces became as purple as those of Silenus. The eyes shone like carbuncles. The general fermentation rose to the highest pitch.
And when the orchestra thundered out the waltz in Der Freischütz, – when this waltz, so German, and with a movement so slow, was attacked with wild arms by the musicians, – ah! it was no longer a waltz, but an insensate whirlwind, a giddy rotation, a gyration worthy of being led by some Mephistopheles, beating the measure with a firebrand! Then a galop, an infernal galop, which lasted an hour without anyone being able to stop it, whirled off, in its windings, across the halls, the drawing rooms, the antechambers, by the staircases, from the cellar to the garret of the opulent mansion, the young men and young girls, the fathers and mothers, people of every age, of every weight, of both sexes; Collaert, the fat banker, and Madame Collaert, and the counsellors, and the magistrates, and the chief justice, and Niklausse, and Madame Van Tricasse, and the Burgomaster Van Tricasse, and the Commissary Passauf himself, who never could recall afterwards who had been his partner on that terrible evening.
But she did not forget! And ever since that day she has seen in her dreams the fiery commissary, enfolding her in an impassioned embrace! And ‘she’ – was the amiable Tatanémance!
9
In which Doctor Ox and Ygène, his assistant, say a few words
‘Well, Ygène?’
‘Well, master, all is ready. The laying of the pipes is finished.’ ‘At last! Now, then, we are going to operate on a large scale, on the masses!’
10
In which it will be seen that the epidemic invades the entire town, and what effect it produces
During the following months the evil, in place of subsiding, became more extended. From private houses the epidemic spread into the streets. The town of Quiquendone was no longer to be recognised.
A phenomenon yet stranger than those which had already happened, now appeared; not only the animal kingdom, but the vegetable kingdom itself, became subject to the mysterious influence.
According to the ordinary course of things, epidemics are special in their operation. Those which attack humanity spare the animals, and those which attack the animals spare the vegetables. A horse was never inflicted with smallpox, nor a man with the cattle-plague, nor do sheep suffer from the potato-rot. But here all the laws of nature seemed to be overturned. Not only were the character, temperament, and ideas of the townsfolk changed, but the domestic animals – dogs and cats, horses and cows, asses and goats – suffered from this epidemic influence, as if their habitual equilibrium had been changed. The plants themselves were infected by a similar strange metamorphosis.
In the gardens and vegetable patches and orchards very curious symptoms manifested themselves. Climbing plants climbed more audaciously. Tufted plants became more tufted than ever. Shrubs became trees. Cereals, scarcely sown, showed their little green heads, and gained, in the same length of time, as much in inches as formerly, under the most favourable circumstances, they had gained in fractions. Asparagus attained the height of several feet; the artichokes swelled to the size of melons, the melons to the size of pumpkins, the pumpkins to the size of gourds, the gourds to the size of the belfry bell, which measured, in truth, nine feet in diameter. The cabbages were bushes, and the mushrooms umbrellas.
The fruits did not lag behind the vegetables. It required two persons to eat a strawberry, and four to consume a pear. The grapes also attained the enormous proportions of those so well depicted by Poussin in his Return of the Envoys to the Promised Land.
It was the same with the flowers: immense violets spread the most penetrating perfumes through the air; exaggerated roses shone with the brightest colours; lilies formed, in a few days, impenetrable copses; geraniums, daisies, camellias, rhododendrons, invaded the garden walks, and stifled each other. And the tulips, – those dear liliaceous plants so dear to the Flemish heart, – what emotion they must have caused to their zealous cultivators! The worthy Van Bistrom nearly fell over backwards, one day, on seeing in his garden an enormous ‘Tulipa gesneriana’, a gigantic monster, whose cup afforded space to a nest for a whole family of robins!
The entire town flocked to see this floral phenomenon, and renamed it the ‘Tulipa quiquendonia’.
But alas! if these plants, these fruits, these flowers, grew visibly to the naked eye, if all the vegetables insisted on assuming colossal proportions, if the brilliancy of their colours and perfume intoxicated the smell and the sight, they quickly withered. The air which they absorbed rapidly exhausted them, and they soon died, faded, and dried up.
Such was the fate of the famous tulip, which, after several days of splendour, became emaciated, and fell lifeless.
It was soon the same with the domestic animals, from the house-dog to the stable pig, from the canary in its cage to the turkey of the back-court. It must be said that in ordinary times these animals were not less phlegmatic than their masters. The dogs and cats vegetated rather than lived. They never betrayed a wag of pleasure nor a snarl of wrath. Their tails moved no more than if they had been made of bronze. Such a thing as a bite or scratch from any of them had not been known from time immemorial. As for mad dogs, they were looked upon as imaginary beasts, like the griffins and the rest in the menagerie of the apocalypse.
But what a change had taken place in a few months, the smallest incidents of which we are trying to reproduce! Dogs and cats began to show teeth and claws. Several executions had taken place after reiterated offences. A horse was seen, for the first time, to take his bit in his teeth and rush through the streets of Quiquendone; an ox was observed to precipitate itself, with lowered horns, upon one of his herd; an ass was seen to turn himself over, with his legs in the air, in the Place Saint Ernuph, and bray as ass never brayed before; a sheep, actually a sheep, defended valiantly the cutlets within him from the butcher’s knife.
Van Tricasse, the burgomaster, was forced to make police regulations concerning the domestic animals, as, seized with lunacy, they rendered the streets of Quiquendone unsafe.
But alas! if the animals were mad, the men were scarcely less so. No age was spared by the scourge. Babies soon became quite insupportable, though till now so easy to bring up; and for the first time Honoré
Syntax, the judge, was obliged to apply the rod to his youthful offspring.
There was a kind of insurrection at the high school, and the dictionaries became formidable missiles in the classes. The scholars would not submit to be shut in, and, besides, the infection took the teachers themselves, who overwhelmed the boys and girls with extravagant tasks and punishments.
Another strange phenomenon occurred. All these Quiquendonians. so sober before, whose chief food had been whipped creams, committed wild excesses in their eating and drinking. Their usual regimen no longer sufficed. Each stomach was transformed into a gulf, and it became necessary to fill this gulf by the most energetic means. The consumption of the town was trebled. Instead of two repasts they had six. Many cases of indigestion were reported. The Counsellor Niklausse could not satisfy his hunger. Van Tricasse found it impossible to assuage his thirst, and remained in a state of rabid semi-intoxication.
In short, the most alarming symptoms manifested themselves and increased from day to day. Drunken people staggered in the streets, and these were often citizens of high position.
Dominique Custos, the physician, had plenty to do with the heartburns, inflammations, and nervous affections, which proved to what a strange degree the nerves of the people had been irritated.
There were daily quarrels and altercations in the once deserted but now crowded streets of Quiquendone; for nobody could any longer stay at home. It was necessary to establish a new police force to control the disturbers of the public peace. A prison-cage was established in the Town Hall, and speedily became full, night and day of refractory offenders. Commissary Passauf was in despair.
A marriage was concluded in less than two months, – such a thing had never been seen before. Yes, the son of Rupp, the schoolmaster, wedded the daughter of Augustine de Rovere, and that fifty-seven days only after he had petitioned for her hand and heart!
Other marriages were decided upon, which, in old times, would have remained in doubt and discussion for years. The burgomaster perceived that his own daughter, the charming Suzel, was escaping from his hands.
As for dear Tatanémance, she had dared to sound Commissary Passauf on the subject of a union, which seemed to her to combine every element of happiness, fortune, honour, youth!
At last, – to reach the depths of abomination, – a duel took place! Yes, a duel with pistols – horse-pistols – at seventy-five paces, with ball-cartridges. And between whom? Our readers will never believe!
Between M. Frantz Niklausse, the gentle angler, and young Simon Collaert, the wealthy banker’s son.
And the cause of this duel was the burgomaster’s daughter, for whom Simon discovered himself to be fired with passion, and whom he refused to yield to the claims of an audacious rival!
11
In which the Quiquendonians adopt a heroic resolution
We have seen to what a deplorable condition the people of Quiquendone were reduced. Their heads were in a ferment. They no longer knew or recognised themselves. The most peaceable citizens had become quarrelsome. If you looked at them askance, they would speedily send you a challenge. Some let their moustaches grow, and several – the most belligerent – curled them up at the ends.
This being their condition, the administration of the town and the maintenance of order in the streets became difficult tasks, for the government had not been organised for such a state of things. The burgomaster – that worthy Van Tricasse whom we have seen so placid, so dull, so incapable of coming to any decision – the burgomaster became intractable. His house resounded with the sharpness of his voice. He made twenty decisions a day, scolding his officials, and himself enforcing the regulations of his administration.
Ah, what a change! The amiable and tranquil mansion of the burgomaster, that good Flemish home – where was its former calm? What changes had taken place in your household economy! Madame Van Tricasse had become acrid, whimsical, harsh. Her husband sometimes succeeded in drowning her voice by talking louder than she, but could not silence her. The petulant humour of this worthy dame was excited by everything. Nothing went right. The servants offended her every moment. Tatanémance, her sister-in-law, who was not less irritable, replied sharply to her. M. Van Tricasse naturally supported Lotchè, his servant, as is the case in all good households; and this permanently exasperated Madame, who constantly disputed, discussed, and made scenes with her husband.
‘What on earth is the matter with us?’ cried the unhappy burgomaster. ‘What is this fire that is devouring us? Are we possessed with the devil? Ah, Madame Van Tricasse, Madame Van Tricasse, you will end by making me die before you, and thus violate all the traditions of the family!’
The reader will not have forgotten the strange custom by which M. Van Tricasse would become a widower and marry again, so as not to break the chain of descent.
Meanwhile, this disposition of all minds produced other curious effects worthy of note. This excitement, the cause of which has so far escaped us, brought about unexpected physiological changes. Talents, hitherto unrecognised, betrayed themselves. Aptitudes were suddenly revealed. Artists, before commonplace, displayed new ability. Politicians and authors arose. Orators proved themselves equal to the most arduous debates, and on every question inflamed audiences which were quite ready to be inflamed. From the sessions of the council, this movement spread to the public political meetings, and a club was formed at Quiquendone; whilst twenty newspapers, the Quiquendone Signal, the Quiquendone Impartial, the Quiquendone Radical, and so on, written in an inflammatory style, raised the most important questions.
But what about? you will ask. Apropos of everything, and of nothing; apropos of the Oudenarde tower, which was falling, and which some wished to pull down, and others to prop up; apropos of the police regulations issued by the council, which some obstinate citizens threatened to resist; apropos of the sweeping of the gutters, repairing the sewers, and so on. Nor did the enraged orators confine themselves to the internal administration of the town. Carried on by the current they went further, and essayed to plunge their fellow-citizens into the hazards of war.
Quiquendone had had for 800 or 900 years a casus belli of the best quality; but she had preciously laid it up like a relic, and there had seemed some probability that it would become effete, and no longer serviceable.
This was what had given rise to the casus belli.
It is not generally known that Quiquendone, in this cosy corner of Flanders, lies next to the little town of Virgamen. The territories of the two communities are contiguous.
Well, in 1185, some time before Count Baldwin’s departure to the Crusades, a Virgamen cow – not a cow belonging to a citizen, but a cow which was common property, let it be observed – audaciously ventured to pasture on the territory of Quiquendone. This unfortunate beast had scarcely eaten three mouthfuls; but the offence, the abuse, the crime – whatever you will – was committed and duly indicted, for the magistrates, at that time, had already begun to know how to write.
‘We will take revenge at the proper moment,’ said simply Natalis Van Tricasse, the thirty-second predecessor of the burgomaster of this story, ‘and the Virgamenians will lose nothing by waiting. ‘
The Virgamenians were forewarned. They waited thinking, without doubt, that the remembrance of the offence would fade away with the lapse of time; and really, for several centuries, they lived on good terms with their neighbours of Quiquendone.
But they counted without their hosts, or rather without this strange epidemic, which, radically changing the character of the Quiquendonians, aroused their dormant vengeance.
It was at the club of the Rue Monstrelet that the truculent orator Schut, abruptly introducing the subject to his hearers, inflamed them with the expressions and metaphors used on such occasions. He recalled the offence, the injury which had been done to Quiquendone, and which a nation ‘jealous of its rights’ could not admit as a precedent; he showed the insult to be still existing, the wound still bleeding; he spoke of certain special head-shakings on the part of the people of Virgamen, which indicated in what degree of contempt they regarded the people of Quiquendone; he appealed to his fellow-citizens, who, unconsciously perhaps, had supported this mortal insult for long centuries; he adjured the ‘children of the ancient town’ to have no other purpose than to obtain a substantial reparation. And, lastly, he made an appeal to ‘all the living energies of the nation’!
With what enthusiasm these words, so new to Quiquendonian ears, were greeted, may be surmised, but cannot be told. All the auditors rose, and with extended arms demanded war with loud cries. Never had the Advocate Schut achieved such a success, and it must be avowed that his triumphs were not few.
The burgomaster, the counsellor, all the notabilities present at this memorable meeting, would have vainly attempted to resist the popular outburst. Besides, they had no desire to do so, and cried as loud, if not louder, than the rest, —
‘To the frontier! To the frontier!’
As the frontier was but three kilometres from the walls of Quiquendone, it is certain that the Virgamenians ran a real danger, for they might easily be invaded without having had time to look about them.
Meanwhile, Josse Lietfrinck, the worthy chemist, who alone had preserved his senses on this grave occasion, tried to make his fellow-citizens comprehend that guns, cannon, and generals were equally wanting to their design.
They replied to him, not without many impatient gestures, that these generals, cannons, and guns would be improvised; that the right and love of country sufficed, and rendered a people irresistible.
Hereupon the burgomaster himself came forward, and in a sublime harangue made short work of those pusillanimous people who disguise their fear under a veil of prudence, which veil he tore off with a patriotic hand.
At this sally it seemed as if the hall would fall in under the applause.
The vote was eagerly demanded, and was taken amid acclamations.
The cries of ‘To Virgamen! to Virgamen!’ redoubled.
The burgomaster then took it upon himself to put the armies in motion, and in the name of the town he promised the honours of a triumph, such as was given in the times of the Romans to that one of its generals who should return victorious.
Meanwhile, Josse Lietfrinck, who was an obstinate fellow, and did not regard himself as beaten, though he really had been, insisted on making another observation. He wished to remark that the triumph was only accorded at Rome to those victorious generals who had killed 5,000 of the enemy.
‘Well, well!’ cried the meeting deliriously.
‘And as the population of the town of Virgamen consists of but 3,575 inhabitants, it would be difficult, unless the same person was killed several times -’
But they did not let the luckless logician finish, and he was turned out, hustled and bruised.
‘Citizens,’ said Pulmacher the grocer, who usually sold groceries by retail, ‘whatever this cowardly apothecary may have said, I engage by myself to kill 5,000 Virgamenians, if you will accept my services!’
‘Five thousand five hundred!’ cried a yet more resolute patriot.
‘Six thousand six hundred!’ retorted the grocer.
‘Seven thousand!’ cried Jean Orbideck, the confectioner of the Rue Hemling, who was on the road to a fortune by making whipped creams.
‘Adjudged!’ exclaimed the Burgomaster Van Tricasse, on finding that no one else rose on the bid.
And this was how Jean Orbideck the confectioner became general-in-chief of the forces of Quiquendone.
12
In which Ygène, the assistant, gives a reasonable piece of advice, which is eagerly rejected by Doctor Ox
‘Well, master,’ said Ygène next day, as he poured the pails of sulphuric acid into the troughs of the great battery.
‘Well,’ resumed Doctor Ox, ‘was I not right? See to what not only the physical developments of a whole nation, but its morality, its dignity, its talents, its political sense, have come! It is only a question of molecules. ‘
‘No doubt; but -’
‘But -’
‘Do you not think that matters have gone far enough, and that these poor devils should not be excited beyond measure?’
‘No, no!’ cried the doctor; ‘no! I will go on to the end!’
‘As you will, master; the experiment, however, seems to me conclusive, and I think it time to -’
‘To -’
‘To close the valve. ‘
‘You’d better!’ cried Doctor Ox. ‘If you attempt it. I’ll throttle you!’
13
in which it is once more proved that by taking high ground all human littleness may be overlooked
‘You say?’ asked the Burgomaster Van Tricasse of the Counsellor Niklausse.
‘I say that this war is necessary,’ replied Niklausse, firmly, ‘and that the time has come to avenge this insult. ‘
‘Well, I repeat to you,’ replied the burgomaster, tartly, ‘that if the people of Quiquendone do not profit by this occasion to vindicate their rights, they will be unworthy of their name. ‘
‘And as for me, I maintain that we ought, without delay, to collect our forces and lead them to the front. ‘
‘Really, monsieur, really!’ replied Van Tricasse. ‘And do you speak thus to me?’
‘To yourself, Monsieur the burgomaster; and you shall hear the truth, unwelcome as it may be. ‘
‘And you shall hear it yourself, counsellor,’ returned Van Tricasse in a passion, ‘for it will come better from my mouth than from yours! Yes, monsieur, yes, any delay would be dishonourable. The town of Quiquendone has waited 900 years for the moment to take its revenge, and whatever you may say, whether it pleases you or not, we shall march upon the enemy. ‘
‘Ah, you take it thus!’ replied Niklausse harshly. ‘Very well, monsieur, we will march without you, if it does not please you to go. ‘
‘A burgomaster’s place is in the front rank, monsieur!’
‘And that of a counsellor also, monsieur. ‘
‘You insult me by thwarting all my wishes,’ cried the burgomaster, whose fists seemed likely to hit out before long.
‘And you insult me equally by doubting my patriotism,’ cried Niklausse, who was equally ready for a tussle.
‘I tell you, monsieur, that the army of Quiquendone shall be put in motion within two days!’
‘And I repeat to you, monsieur, that forty-eight hours shall not pass before we shall have marched upon the enemy!’
It is easy to see, from this fragment of conversation, that the two speakers supported exactly the same idea. Both wished for hostilities; but as their excitement disposed them to altercation, Niklausse would not listen to Van Tricasse, nor Van Tricasse to Niklausse. Had they been of contrary opinions on this grave question, had the burgomaster favoured war and the counsellor insisted on peace, the quarrel would not have been more violent. These two old friends gazed fiercely at each other. By the quickened beating of their hearts, their red faces, their contracted pupils, the trembling of their muscles, their harsh voices, it might be conjectured that they were ready to come to blows.
But the striking of a large clock happily checked the adversaries at the moment when they seemed on the point of assaulting each other.
‘At last the hour has come!’ cried the burgomaster.
‘What hour?’ asked the counsellor.
‘The hour to go to the belfry tower. ‘
‘It is true, and whether it pleases you or not, I shall go, monsieur. ‘
‘And I too. ‘
‘Let us go!’
‘Let us go!’
It might have been supposed from these last words that a collision had occurred, and that the adversaries were proceeding to a duel; but it was not so. It had been agreed that the burgomaster and the counsellor, as the two principal dignitaries of the town, should repair to the Town Hall, and there show themselves on the high tower which overlooked Quiquendone; that they should examine the surrounding country, so as to make the best strategic plan for the advance of their troops.
Though they were in accord on this subject, they did not cease to quarrel bitterly as they went. Their loud voices were heard resounding in the streets; but all the passers-by were now accustomed to this; the exasperation of the dignitaries seemed quite natural, and no one took notice of it. Under the circumstances, a calm man would have been regarded as a monster.
The burgomaster and the counsellor, having reached the porch of the belfry, were in a paroxysm of fury. They were no longer red, but pale. This terrible discussion, though they had the same idea, had produced internal spasms, and every one knows that paleness shows that anger has reached its last limits.
At the foot of the narrow tower staircase there was a real explosion. Who should go up first? Who should first creep up the winding steps? Truth compels us to say that there was a tussle, and that the Counsellor Niklausse, forgetful of all that he owed to his superior, to the supreme magistrate of the town, pushed Van Tricasse violently back, and dashed up the staircase first.
Both ascended, denouncing and raging at each other at every step. It was to be feared that a terrible climax would occur on the summit of the tower, which rose 357 feet above the pavement.
The two enemies soon got out of breath, however, and in a little while, at the eightieth step, they began to move up heavily, breathing loud and short.
Then – was it because of their being out of breath? – their wrath subsided, or at least only betrayed itself by a succession of unseemly epithets. They became silent, and, strange to say, it seemed as if their excitement diminished as they ascended higher above the town. A sort of lull took place in their minds. Their brains became cooler, and simmered down like a coffee-pot when taken away from the fire. Why?
We cannot answer this ‘why’; but the truth is that, having reached a certain landing-stage, 266 feet above ground, the two adversaries sat down and, really more calm, looked at each other without any anger in their faces.
‘How high it is!’ said the burgomaster, passing his handkerchief over his rubicund face.
‘Very high!’ returned the counsellor, ‘Do you know that we have gone fourteen feet higher than the Church of Saint Michael at Hamburg?’
‘I know it,’ replied the Burgomaster, in a tone of vanity very pardonable in the chief magistrate of Quiquendone.
The two notabilities soon resumed their ascent, casting curious glances through the loopholes pierced in the tower walls. The burgomaster had taken the head of the procession, without any remark on the part of the counsellor. It even happened that at about the 304th step, Van Tricasse being completely tired out, Niklausse kindly pushed him from behind. The burgomaster offered no resistance to this, and, when he reached the platform of the tower, said graciously, —
Thanks, Niklausse; I will do the same for you one day. ‘
A little while before it had been two wild beasts, ready to tear each other to pieces, who had presented themselves at the foot of the tower; it was now two friends who reached its summit.
The weather was superb. It was the month of May. The sun had absorbed all the vapours. What a pure and limpid atmosphere! The most minute objects over a broad space might be discerned. The walls of Virgamen, glistening in their whiteness, – its red, pointed roofs, its belfries shining in the sunlight – appeared a few miles off. And this was the town that was foredoomed to all the horrors of fire and pillage!
The burgomaster and the counsellor sat down beside each other on a small stone bench, like two worthy people whose souls were in close sympathy. As they recovered breath, they looked around; then, after a brief silence, —
‘How fine this is!’ cried the burgomaster.
‘Yes, it is admirable!’ replied the counsellor. ‘Does it not seem to you. my good Van Tricasse, that humanity is destined to dwell rather at such heights, than to crawl about on the surface of our globe?’
‘I agree with you, honest Niklausse,’ returned the burgomaster, ‘I agree with you. You seize sentiment better when you get clear of nature. You breathe it in every sense! It is at such heights that philosophers should be formed, and that sages should live, above the miseries of this world!’
‘Shall we go around the platform?’ asked the counsellor.
‘Let us go around the platform,’ replied the burgomaster.
And the two friends, arm in arm, and putting, as formerly, long pauses between their questions and answers, examined every point of the horizon.
‘It is at least seventeen years since I have ascended the belfry tower,’ said Van Tricasse.
‘I do not think I ever came up before,’ replied Niklausse; ‘and I regret it, for the view from this height is sublime! Do you see, my friend, the pretty stream of the Vaar, as it winds among the trees?’
‘And, beyond, the heights of Saint Hermandad! How gracefully they shut in the horizon! Observe that border of green trees, which Nature has so picturesquely arranged! Ah, Nature, Nature, Niklausse! Could the hand of man ever hope to rival her?’
‘It is enchanting, my excellent friend,’ replied the counsellor. ‘See the flocks and herds lying in the verdant pastures, – the oxen, the cows, the sheep!’
‘And the labourers going to the fields! You would say they were Arcadian shepherds; they only want a bagpipe!’
‘And over all this fertile country the beautiful blue sky, which no vapour dims! Ah, Niklausse, one might become a poet here! I do not understand why Saint Simeon Stylites was not one of the greatest poets of the world. ‘
‘It was because, perhaps, his column was not high enough,’ replied the counsellor, with a gentle smile.
At this moment the chimes of Quiquendone rang out. The clear bells played one of their most melodious airs. The two friends listened in ecstasy.
Then in his calm voice, Van Tricasse said, —
‘But what, friend Niklausse, did we come to the top of this tower to do?’
‘In fact,’ replied the counsellor, ‘we have permitted ourselves to be carried away by our reveries -’
‘What did we come here to do?’ repeated the burgomaster.
‘We came,’ said Niklausse, ‘to breathe this pure air, which human weaknesses have not corrupted. ‘
‘Well, shall we descend, friend Niklausse?’
‘Let us descend, friend Van Tricasse. ‘
They gave a parting glance at the splendid panorama which was spread before their eyes; then the burgomaster passed down first, and began to descend with a slow and measured pace. The counsellor followed a few steps behind. They reached the landing-stage at which they had stopped on ascending. Already their cheeks began to redden. They tarried a moment, then resumed their descent.
In a few moments Van Tricasse begged Niklausse to go more slowly, as he felt him on his heels, and it ‘worried him’. It even did more than worry him; for twenty steps lower down he ordered the counsellor to stop, that he might get on some distance ahead.
The counsellor replied that he did not wish to remain with his leg in the air to await the good pleasure of the burgomaster, and kept on.
Van Tricasse retorted with a rude expression.
The counsellor responded by an insulting allusion to the burgomaster’s age, destined as he was, by his family traditions, to marry a second time.
The burgomaster went down twenty steps more, and warned Niklausse that this should not pass thus.
Niklausse replied that, at all events, he would pass down first; and, the space being very narrow, the two dignitaries came into collision, and found themselves in utter darkness. The words ‘blockhead’ and ‘booby’ were the mildest which they now applied to each other.
‘We shall see, stupid beast!’ cried the burgomaster, – ‘we shall see what figure you will make in this war, and in what rank you will march!’
‘In the rank that precedes yours, you silly old fool!’ replied Niklausse.
Then there were other cries, and it seemed as if bodies were rolling over each other. What was going on? Why were these dispositions so quickly changed? Why were the gentle sheep of the tower’s summit metamorphosed into tigers 200 feet below it?
However this might be, the guardian of the tower, hearing the noise, opened the door, just at the moment when the two adversaries, bruised, and with protruding eyes, were in the act of tearing each other’s hair, – fortunately they wore wigs.
‘You shall give me satisfaction for this!’ cried the burgomaster, shaking his fist under his adversary’s nose.
‘Whenever you please!’ growled the Counsellor Niklausse, attempting to respond with a vigorous kick.
The guardian, who was himself in a passion, – I cannot say why, – thought the scene a very natural one. I know not what excitement urged him to take part in it, but he controlled himself, and went off to announce throughout the neighbourhood that a hostile meeting was about to take place between the Burgomaster Van Tricasse and the Counsellor Niklausse.
14
In which matters go so far that the inhabitants of Quiquendone, the reader, and even the author, demand an immediate dénouement
The last incident proves to what a pitch of excitement the Quiquendonians had been wrought. The two oldest friends in the town, and the most gentle – before the advent of the epidemic, to reach this degree of violence! And that, too, only a few minutes after their old mutual sympathy, their amiable instincts, their contemplative habit, had been restored at the summit of the tower!
On learning what was going on, Doctor Ox could not contain his joy. He resisted the arguments which Ygène, who saw what a serious turn affairs were taking, addressed to him. Besides, both of them were infected by the general fury. They were not less excited than the rest of the population, and they ended by quarrelling as violently as the burgomaster and the counsellor.
Besides, one question eclipsed all others, and the intended duels were postponed to the issue of the Virgamenian difficulty. No man had the right to shed his blood uselessly, when it belonged, to the last drop, to his country in danger. The affair was, in short, a grave one, and there was no withdrawing from it.
The Burgomaster Van Tricasse, despite the warlike ardour with which he was filled, had not thought it best to throw himself upon the enemy without warning him. He had, therefore, through the medium of the rural policeman, Hottering, sent to demand reparation of the Virgamenians for the offence committed, in 1195, on the Quiquendonian territory.
The authorities of Virgamen could not at first imagine of what the envoy spoke, and the latter, despite his official character, was conducted back to the frontier very cavalierly.
Van Tricasse then sent one of the aides-de-camp of the confectioner-general, citizen Hildevert Shuman, a manufacturer of barley-sugar, a very firm and energetic man, who carried to the authorities of Virgamen the original minute of the indictment drawn up in 1195 by order of the Burgomaster Natalis Van Tricasse.
The authorities of Virgamen burst out laughing, and served the aide-de-camp in the same manner as the rural policeman.
The burgomaster then assembled the dignitaries of the town.
A letter, remarkably and vigorously drawn up, was written as an ultimatum; the cause of quarrel was plainly stated, and a delay of twenty-four hours was accorded to the guilty city in which to repair the outrage done to Quiquendone.
The letter was sent off, and returned a few hours afterwards, torn to bits, which made so many fresh insults. The Virgamenians knew of old the forbearance and equanimity of the Quiquendonians, and madesport of them and their demand, of their casus belli and their ultimatum.
There was only one thing left to do, – to have recourse to arms, to invoke the God of battles, and, after the Prussian fashion, to hurl themselves upon the Virgamenians before the latter could be prepared.
This decision was made by the council in solemn conclave, in which cries, objurgations, and menacing gestures were mingled with unexampled violence. An assembly of idiots, a congress of madmen, a club of maniacs, would not have been more tumultuous.
As soon as the declaration of war was known, General Jean Orbideck assembled his troops, perhaps 2,393 combatants from a population of 2,393 souls. The women, the children, the old men, were joined with the able-bodied males. The guns of the town had been put under requisition. Five had been found, two of which were without cocks, and these had been distributed to the advance-guard. The artillery was composed of the old culverin of the château, taken in 1339 at the attack on Quesnoy, one of the first occasions of the use of cannon in history, and which had not been fired off for five centuries. Happily for those who were appointed to take it in charge there were no projectiles with which to load it; but such as it was, this engine might well impose on the enemy. As for side-arms, they had been taken from the museum of antiquities, – flint hatchets, helmets, Frankish battle-axes, javelins, halberds, rapiers, and so on; and also from those domestic arsenals commonly known as ‘cupboards’ and ‘kitchens’. But courage, the right, hatred of the foreigner, the yearning for vengeance, were to take the place of more perfect engines, and to replace – at least it was hoped so – the modern mitrailleuses and breech-loaders.
The troops were passed in review. Not a citizen failed at the roll-call. General Orbideck, whose seat on horseback was far from firm, and whose steed was a vicious beast, was thrown three times in front of the army; but he got up again without injury, and this was regarded as a favourable omen. The burgomaster, the counsellor, the civil commissary, the chief justice, the schoolteacher, the banker, the rector, – in short, all the notabilities of the town, – marched at the head. There were no tears shed, either by mothers, sisters, or daughters. They urged on their husbands, fathers, brothers, to the combat, and even followed them and formed the rear-guard, under the orders of the courageous Madame Van Tricasse.
The crier, Jean Mistrol, blew his trumpet; the army moved off, and directed itself, with ferocious cries, towards the Oudenarde gate.
At the moment when the head of the column was about to pass the walls of the town, a man threw himself before it.
‘Stop! stop! Fools that you are!’ he cried. ‘Suspend your blows! Let me shut the valve! You are not changed in nature! You are good citizens, quiet and peaceable! If you are so excited, it is my master, Doctor Ox’s, fault! It is an experiment! Under the pretext of lighting your streets with oxyhydric gas, he has saturated -’
The assistant was beside himself; but he could not finish. At the instant that the doctor’s secret was about to escape his lips, Doctor Ox himself pounced upon the unhappy Ygène in an indescribable rage, and shut his mouth by blows with his fist.
It was a battle. The burgomaster, the counsellor, the dignitaries, who had stopped short on Ygène’s sudden appearance, carried away in turn by their exasperation, rushed upon the two strangers, without waiting to hear either the one or the other.
Doctor Ox and his assistant, beaten and lashed, were about to be dragged, by order of Van Tricasse, to the round-house, when, –
15
In which the dénouement takes place
When a formidable explosion resounded. All the atmosphere which enveloped Quiquendone seemed on fire. A flame of an intensity and vividness quite unwonted shot up into the heavens like a meteor. Had it been night, this flame would have been visible for ten leagues around.
The whole army of Quiquendone fell to the earth, like an army of monks. Happily there were no victims; a few scratches and slight hurts were the only result. The confectioner, who, as chance would have it, had not fallen from his horse this time, had his plume singed, and escaped without any further injury.
What had happened?
Something very simple, as was soon learned: the gasworks had just blown up. During the absence of the doctor and his assistant, some careless mistake had no doubt been made. It is not known how or why a communication had been established between the reservoir which contained the oxygen and that which enclosed the hydrogen. An explosive mixture had resulted from the union of these two gases, to which fire had accidentally been applied.
This changed everything; but when the army got upon its feet again, Doctor Ox and his assistant Ygène had disappeared.
16
In which the intelligent reader sees that he has guessed correctly, despite all the author’s precautions
After the explosion, Quiquendone immediately became the peaceable, phlegmatic, and Flemish town it formerly was.
After the explosion, which indeed did not cause a very lively sensation, each one, without knowing why, mechanically took his way home, the burgomaster leaning on the counsellor’s arm, the advocate Schut going arm in arm with Custos the doctor, Frantz Niklausse walking with equal familiarity with Simon Collaert, each going tranquilly, noiselessly, without even being conscious of what had happened, and having already forgotten Virgamen and their revenge. The general returned to his confections, and his aide-de-camp to the barley-sugar.
Thus everything had become calm again; the old existence had been resumed by men and beasts, beasts and plants; even by the tower of Oudenarde gate, which the explosion – these explosions are sometimes astonishing – had set upright again!
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 anyone 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.
17
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 odourless, 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.
An Ideal City
A public lecture delivered by Jules Verne, Director, on 12th December 1875
Ladies and gentlemen,
Will you permit me to neglect all the duties of a Director of the Academy of Amiens presiding at a public session, by replacing the usual lecture by an account of an adventure which happened to myself? I make my apologies in advance, not only to my colleagues, whose goodwill to me has never been lacking, but to you, ladies and gentlemen, for being about to hear something you did not expect.
I was present, towards the beginning of last month, at the prize-giving day at the lycée. There, without leaving my armchair, and guided by one of our colleagues, I made a tour of ancient Amiens. Of this excursion across the little industrial Venice formed north of the town by the eleven streams of the Seine, I retain only pleasant memories. I went home, I dined, I went to bed, I fell asleep.
Nothing out of the way in that, and quite likely on that day all the virtuous people in the town did the same, as it’s the proper thing to do.
I usually get up early. But for some reason I cannot explain I did not wake up till quite late next day. The dawn had forestalled me. I must have slept eleven hours at least! What was the reason of this? I must have taken a sleeping-draught. Never have I closed my eyes during any official lecture whatever!
Whatever the reason, when I got up the sun had already crossed the meridian. I opened my window. It was fine weather. I’d thought it would be Wednesday!... It was obviously Sunday, for the boulevards were encumbered by a crowd of strollers. I dressed myself, I breakfasted in a trice and I went out.
All that day, ladies and gentlemen, to recall one of the first Napoleon’s rare jokes, I was to ‘march from surprise to surprise’.
You can judge for yourself.
Scarcely had I set foot on the pavement than I was assailed by a crowd of urchins who shouted,
‘Competition programme! Fifteen centimes! Who wants a programme?’
‘Me,‘ I replied, without overmuch reflection that this expense had been rather thoughtless. On the previous evening I had indeed paid into the bank all my loose cash, and the price might risk ruining me.
‘Well,’ I asked one of the urchins. ‘What’s it all about?’
‘The regional competition, my prince!’ came the reply. ‘It ends today.‘ Whereupon they all scampered off.
But what was this competition? If my memory didn’t betray me, it had been over two months ago! The urchin must have been playing me a trick.
All the same, I took things philosophically, and went on my way.
At the corner of the Rue Mercier, what was my surprise when I saw it stretching on out of sight! I could see a long line of houses, of which the furthest vanished over a rise in the ground. Could I be at Rome? Had a new suburb grown up, like a mushroom, with its mansions and churches, and that in the space of a single night?
It must be so, for I saw a bus, yes a bus! – line F, to Notre Dame aux Reservoirs, going up the streets loaded with travellers!
I went on towards the bridge. A train passed me, going quite slowly. The driver rent the air with his whistle, and blew off steam with a deafening roar.
Did my eyes deceive me. but I fancied the carriages were of American type, with gangways to allow the travellers to go from one end of the train to the other! I tried to read the company’s initials painted on the carriages, but instead of the ‘N’ of the Nord line, I saw the ‘P’ and the ‘F’ of Picardy and Flanders. What did this mean? Had the little company absorbed the big one, by any chance? Were we now going to have the carriages heated, even when it was cold in October, against all the company’s rules? Were we going to have the compartments properly dusted? Were we going to be able to get return tickets, in fine weather, between Amiens and Paris?
Such were the first advantages I could imagine of the absorption of the Nord line by the P and F. But I could not think out anything so wildly improbable! I hurried on to the end of the bridge.
Here there had always been a beggar with a white beard who used to take off his hat fifty times a minute. But he wasn’t there!
I could have imagined anything but that, ladies and gentlemen, for he’d always seemed part of the bridge. Oh, why wasn’t he there now, in his usual place? Two stone stairways had replaced the goat-paths which yesterday had led down to the gardens, and with the crowds who were going up and down, he’d have reaped a harvest!
The coin I’d meant to give him fell out of my hand. As it touched the ground it jingled, as if it had hit something hard and not the soft earth of the boulevard.
I looked down. A pavement, lined with slabs of porphyry, ran right along it.
What a change! So this corner of Amiens no longer deserved its reputation as the ‘little Lutece’?[i]
What! you could now walk, even in the rain, without slipping in up to the ankles? You didn’t have to paddle in that clayey mud which the natives so much detested?
Yes! It was with delight that I trod on that municipal pavement, wondering, ladies and gentlemen, if, thanks to some new revolution, the town mayors were nominated, since yesterday, by the Minister of Public Works.
And that was not all! That day the boulevards had been watered at a well-chosen hour – not too early, not too late – which didn’t allow the dust to fly or the water to spread, just as the crowds were thickening! And these pathways, tarred like those of the Champs Elysées in Paris, were pleasant to walk upon! And there were double seats, with backs, between all the trees! And these seats were not dirtied by the thoughtlessness of the children and the carelessness of their nurses. And at every ten paces, bronze candelabras bore their elegant lanterns even among the leaves of the limes and the chestnut trees.
‘Lord!’ I exclaimed. ‘If these lovely walks are as well lighted as they’re kept up, if stars of the first magnitude are now shining in place of those yellowish glimmers of gas we used to have, then all is for the best in the best of possible towns!’
There was an enormous crowd on the boulevards. Splendid coaches rolled along the highway. I could scarcely get by. But – and this was strange, I could recognise among these magistrates, these merchants, these lawyers, these wealthy people, nobody whom I had had the pleasure of meeting at the music festivals; nobody among these officers, who were no longer of the 72nd regiment but of the 324th, wearing a new pattern of shako; nobody among these lovely ladies seated, so completely carefree, on armchairs with elastic seats.
And now who were these marvellous creatures who were showing off upon the footpaths, exhibiting, by the varieties of their toilette, the latest modes I’d seen in Paris? What bunches of artificial flowers, resembling real ones, and placed, maybe a little low, at the waist! What long trains, mounted on tiny metal wheels which murmured so pleasantly over the sand! What hats, with tangled lianas, arborescent plants, tropical birds, snakes and jaguars in miniature, of which even a Brazilian jungle would hardly give an idea! What hair-dos, so embarrassingly large and so heavy that they had to be supported on a little wicker cage decorated, however, in irreproachable taste! What hats, with such combinations of folds, ribbons and lace, that they’d be harder to put together than Poland herself![ii]
I stood there, unable to move! They passed in front of me like something out of Fairyland. I could see that there were no young men over eighteen years old, nor girls over sixteen. Nothing but married couples, affectionately linking their arms together, and a swarm of children such as had never been seen since the population began to multiply at the command of the Most High!
‘Lord,’ I exclaimed again. ‘If children can console one for anything then Amiens must be the city of consolations!’
Suddenly strange sounds were heard. Trumpets sounded. I went to the worm-eaten platform which from time immemorial has trembled beneath the feet of the masters of music.
In its place there now rose an elegant pavilion, crowned with a light verandah, all very charming. At its foot spread broad terraces, leading down to the boulevard and to the gardens in the rear. The basement was occupied by a splendid café of ultramodern luxury. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if, during the short space of a night, it had risen at the wave of a magic wand.
But I could no longer seek an explanation of inexplicable facts, which seemed to belong to the world of fantasy. The band of the 324th was playing a piece which did not seem human – or, for that matter, celestial either! Here everything had changed, too! Nothing musical in these phrases. No melody, no time, no harmony! The quintessence of Wagner? The algebra of sound? The triumph of discord! An effort like that of instruments being tuned in an orchestra, before the curtain rises!
Around me, the strollers, now grouped together, were applauding in a style which I’d seen only at gymnastic displays.
‘But it’s the music of the future?’ I exclaimed in spite of myself. ‘Have I left my own time?’
Certainly this seemed likely, for on approaching the notice which gave the names of the pieces, I read this bewildering title:
‘No. 1: Reverie in a minor key on the Square on the hypotenuse!’
I began to get seriously uneasy. Had I gone mad? If I hadn’t, wasn’t I going to? I hastened away, my ears ringing. I needed air, space, the desert and its absolute silence! Longueville Place wasn’t far away. I hurried off to this miniature Sahara! I ran...
It was an oasis. Great trees cast a refreshing shade. A carpet of grass extended beneath the clumps of flowers. The air was fragrant. A pretty little stream murmured through the greenery. The thirsty naiad of old now flowed with clear water. Without its overflows carefully controlled, its basin would certainly have flooded the town. It was neither fairy water, spun glass nor painted gauze. No! It was indeed the compound of hydrogen and oxygen, fresh drinkable water, and in it swarmed multitudes of tiny fish, which, only yesterday, would not have been able to live in it for an hour! I moistened my lips with this water, which hitherto had defied all analysis. If it had been sweetened, ladies and gentlemen, in my state of excitement I should have found this quite natural!
I threw a last glance at this clear naiad, as one might look at something phenomenal, and set off towards the Rue des Rabuissons, wondering if it were still in existence.
And there, on the left, rose a great building of hexagonal form with a fine entrance. It was at once a circus and a concert-hall, large enough to enable a dozen orchestras – including the Municipal Band of the Volunteer Firemen – to play together.
In that room a vast crowd were applauding enough to make it collapse. And outside was a long queue, down which spread waves of enthusiasm from within. At the door appeared gigantic notices, bearing this name in colossal letters:
PIANOWSKI
Pianist to the Emperor of the Sandwich Islands
I know neither of that emperor nor of his virtuoso in ordinary.
‘And when did Pianowski come?’ I asked a dilettante, recognisable by the extraordinary development of his ears.
‘He didn’t come.’ The native looked at me rather surprised.
‘Then when will he come?’
‘He isn’t coming,’ the dilettante replied. And this time he had an air of saying, ‘But you, where did you come from?’
‘But if he isn’t coming, when will he give this concert?’
‘He’s giving it now. ‘
‘Here?’
‘Yes, here, in Amiens, and at the same time in London, Vienna, Rome, St Petersburg, and Pekin!’
Well,’ I thought, ‘all these people are mad! Have they, by any chance, let loose the inmates of the Clermont Mental home?’
‘Sir,’ I continued.
‘But, sir,’ the dilettante replied – shrugging his shoulders. ‘Just read the notice! You’ll see that this is an electrical concert!’
I read the notice, and indeed at that very moment the famous ivory-pounder was playing in Paris; but by means of electric wires his instrument was linked up with the pianos of London, Vienna, Rome, St Petersburg, and Pekin. So, whenever he struck a note, the identical note resounded on the strings of these distant pianos, the keys being instantaneously depressed by the electric current!
I wanted to go into the hall. It was impossible! Well, I don’t know if the concert was electric, but I could certainly take my oath that the spectators were electrified.
No, no, I could not be in Amiens! It was not in this wise matter-of-fact city that such things happened! I wanted to be clear about this, so I hurried along down what must be the Rue des Rabuissons.
Was the Library still there? Yes, and in the middle of the courtyard the marble statue threatening all the passers-by who didn’t know their grammar!
And the Musée? It was there! With its crowned ‘N’ which still obstinately appeared beneath the municipal attempts to scrape it off.
And the abode of the General Council? Yes, with its monumental door through which my colleagues and I were accustomed to pass on the second and fourth Fridays of every month.
And that of the Prefecture? Yes, with its tricolour flag gnawed by the winds of the Somme Valley as if it had been to the front with the gallant 324th!
I could recognise them! But how they’d altered! The street had a spacious air of being a second Boulevard Haussmann! I was uncertain, I did not know what to believe... But at the Place Périgord doubt was no longer possible.
A sort of flood seemed to have invaded it. Water was spurting from the paving stones as though some artesian well had instantaneously opened beneath it.
‘The town mains!’ I exclaimed. ‘The town mains which burst here every year with mathematical regularity! Yes, I must be in Amiens, at the very heart of the old Samarobrive!’
But then what had happened since yesterday? Whom could I ask? I didn’t know anyone! I was like a stranger. But it was impossible that here, in the Rue Trois Cailloux I shouldn’t find someone to talk to!
I went up the Rue Trois Cailloux towards the station. But —
What was this I saw?
On the left a magnificent theatre, set apart from the adjoining houses, with a broad façade of that polychromatic architecture now so unfortunately come into fashion. A peristyle, comfortably arranged, giving access to stairs which led up to the hall. No more of those inconvenient barriers, of those narrow labyrinthine corridors which last night had been only big enough to hold a public, alas too few! As for the old room, it had vanished, and its debris had no doubt been sold on the secondhand market like relics of the stone age!
Then, as I turned my back on the theatre, on the corner of the Rue des Corps-nuds-sans-tête, a dazzling emporium met my eyes. Shop-front in carved wood, Venetian glass protecting a splendid window-display, expensive trinkets in copper or enamel, tapestry, porcelain which looked quite modern, although it was exhibited there like the products of the most venerable antiquity. This store was a real museum, with a Flemish cleanness, without a single spider’s web in its windows, without a single grain of dust on its floor. Along the façade, on a plate of black marble, in lapidary letters, extended the name of a famous second-hand shopkeeper of Amiens, a name quite inconsistent with his usual line of commerce, which consists of selling broken flower-pots!
A few symptoms of madness began to arise in my brain. I could not bear to see more of this. I took to flight. I went across the Place St Denis. It was ornamented with two dazzling fountains, and its age-old trees threw their shadows on a plaque green with the patina of time.
I rushed up the Boulevard St Michel. I glanced at the clock on the station. It was only three-quarters of an hour slow. Progress, eh! And I dashed like an avalanche into the Rue de Noyon.
There were two buildings that I didn’t know, that I couldn’t recognise. On one side I could see the home of the Industrial Society, with its buildings already old, hurling out through a tall chimney steam which was no doubt driving the mechanical compositors dreamed of by one of our wise colleagues. On the other side rose the Post Office, a superb building which contrasted strangely with the damp dark shop where, last night. I had succeeded in stuffing a letter through one of those narrow windows so likely to give one a crick in the neck.
This was a last blow directed against my poor brain! I made off up the Rue St Denis, and past the Palais de Justice. Incredible – it was completely finished, but the Court of Appeal was still being held amidst the scaffolding.
I reached the Place St Michel. Peter the Hermit was still there, calling us to some new crusade! I threw a sideways glance at the cathedral... The bell tower on the left wing had been repaired, and the cross on the tall spire, at one time bent by the western gales, stood up with the rectitude of a lightning conductor... I hurried on to the open space before the cathedral. It was no longer a narrow blind alley between squalid hovels but a large square, well laid out, surrounded by fine houses, which allowed it to show at its best that superb specimen of the thirteenth-century Gothic art.
I pinched myself hard enough to draw blood! A cry of pain escaped my lips to prove that I was still awake. I looked in my pocket-book, to verify the name on my visiting cards. It was my own! So I was really myself, and not a gentleman who’d come direct from Honolulu to fall right into the capital of Picardy?
‘Let’s see,’ I told myself. ‘I mustn’t lose my head! Either Amiens has changed greatly since I was here last, or I’m not in Amiens! Go along with you!... What about the burst pipe in the Place Périgord? – So the Somme is only a couple of steps away, and I’ll go... The Somme! But if someone told me that it flows nowadays into the Mediterranean or the North Sea, I shouldn’t have the right to be surprised!’
At that moment I felt a hand laid on my shoulder. My first idea was that I’d been recaptured by my keepers. No! I realised it was a friendly grasp.
I turned round.
‘Well, good morning, my dear patient,’ came the affectionate voice of a portly gentleman, with a round smiling face. He was dressed in white, and I’d never seen him before.
‘Well, sir, to whom do I have the honour of speaking?’ I asked, determined to make an end of it.
‘What, you don’t recognise your own doctor?’
‘My doctor was Dr Lenoel,’ I replied, ‘and I... ‘
‘Lenoel!’ exclaimed the man in white. ‘Really, my dear patient, have you gone mad?’
‘If I haven’t, sir, you have,’ I replied. ‘So you can decide which it is!’
I must have been honest to let him choose!
He looked at me attentively. ‘Urn,’ he said, his cheerful face clouding over. ‘You don’t seem too well. But, never mind, never mind. I’ve the same interest as yourself in keeping you healthy! It’s no longer as things were in the time of Dr Lenoel and his contemporaries, worthy physicians to be sure... But we’ve made progress since then!’
‘Oh!’ I replied. ‘You’ve made progress... So now you heal your sick?’
‘Our sick! Have we had any sick since France adopted the Chinese system! Now it’s just as if you were in China. ‘
‘In China! That wouldn’t much surprise me!’
‘Yes, our patients pay us their fees only so long as they keep well! When they aren’t the cash-box shuts! So isn’t it to our own interest to see they never get ill? So, no more epidemics, or hardly any! Everywhere a flourishing health that we tend with pious care, like farmer keeping up his farm. Illness! But with this new system that would ruin the doctors – and on the contrary, they’re all making their fortunes!’
‘Is it the same for the lawyers?’ I asked, smiling.
‘Oh, no! You’ll understand that there wouldn’t be any trials, whereas, whatever one does, there are still a few small ailments ... especially among close-fisted people who want to economise on my fees! – Look here, my dear patient, what’s wrong with you!’
‘Nothing’s wrong with me. ‘
‘You can recognise me now?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, so as not to contradict this strange doctor who might possibly be able to use it against me.
‘I’m not going to let you get ill,’ he continued, ‘for that would ruin me – Let’s see your tongue. ‘
I showed him my tongue and I really must have put on a pitiful expression.
‘Um, um,’ he murmured, after examining it with a lens.
‘Tongue coated! – Your pulse!’
I resignedly let him feel my pulse.
My doctor took from his pocket a tiny instrument I’ve heard mention of recently: putting it on my wrist, he obtained on squared paper a graph of my pulse-beats which he read easily, like a post office clerk reading a telegraphic message.
‘The devil!’ he said.
Then, producing a thermometer from nowhere, he stuffed it into my mouth before I could stop him.
‘Forty degrees!’ he exclaimed. (A hundred and four fahrenheit. )
And as he mentioned that figure he turned pale. His fees were plainly in danger.
‘Well, what have I got?’ I asked him, still half suffocated by the unexpected introduction of that thermometer.
‘Um! um!’
‘Yes, I know that answer, but it’s one fault is that it isn’t precise enough. Well, what I’ve got, doctor, I’m going to tell you. I feel that I’m going off my head. ‘
‘Before the proper time, my dear patient!’ he replied pleasantly. To reassure me, no doubt.
‘Don’t laugh!’ I exclaimed. ‘I can’t recognise anybody – not even you, doctor! I feel as if I’d never seen you before!’
‘Well, well! You see me once a month, when I come to collect my little fees!’
‘No, no! And I’m beginning to wonder whether this town is Amiens, and this street is the Rue de Beauvois!’
‘Yes, my dear patient, it is Amiens. Oh, if you’d got the time to climb up the cathedral spire, you’d soon recognise the capital of our dear Picardy, defended by its ring of forts. You would recognise these charming valleys of the Somme, the Arne, the Selle. shadowed by these lovely trees which don’t bring in five sous a year, but which our generous aediles keep up for us! You would recognise these outer boulevards, which cross the river on two splendid bridges and make a green belt round the city! You would recognise the industrial town which since the citadel was pulled down has sprung up so quickly on the right bank of the Somme. You would recognise that broad thoroughfare, called the Rue Tourne-Coiffe! You would recognise... But after all, my dear patient, I don’t want to contradict you if it amuses you to say we’re in Carpentras, right down in the south of France!’
I could plainly see that this worthy man was taking care not to contradict me openly – of course, you have to humour maniacs!
‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘listen to me... I’ll gladly take anything you prescribe... I don’t want to rob you of my money!... But let me ask you one question. ‘
‘Ask, my dear patient. ‘
‘Is today Sunday?’
‘The first Sunday in August. ‘
‘What year?’
‘The onset of madness characterised by loss of memory,’ he muttered. ‘That’ll take a long time. ‘
‘What year?’ I insisted.
‘It’s the year... ‘
But just as he was going to tell me I was interrupted by noisy shouts.
I turned round. A troop of loungers had surrounded a man: he was about sixty years old and looked very strange. This personage walked as though he were scared and hardly seemed able to keep on his feet. Anybody would have said that half of him was missing.
‘Who’s that man?’ I asked.
The doctor, who had taken my arm, was saying to himself. ‘We’ve got to take his mind off his monomania, so that... ‘
‘I asked who that fellow is, and why that crowd is following him!’
‘That fellow! What, you’re asking me who he is? But he’s the one and only bachelor left in the Department of the Somme!’
‘The last?’
‘Not a doubt about it? And you can see how they’re hooting him!’
‘So now it’s forbidden to be a bachelor?’ I asked.
‘Almost, since they’ve been taxed. The older they get, the more they have to pay, and unless they manage to settle down that will ruin them in no time! That poor wretch you saw has had a largish fortune completely swallowed up. ‘
‘So he’s got an unconquerable aversion for the fair sex?’
‘No – the fair sex have got an unconquerable aversion for him. He’s missed 326 chances of getting married. ‘
‘But still there are some girls to be married. I suppose?’
‘Very few, very few. No sooner do they reach marriageable age than they’re married!’
‘What about widows. ‘
‘Oh, widows! They don’t even give them time to recover. Before ten months have elapsed, off to the Hotel de Ville. Just now. I’m certain, there aren’t twenty-five widows available in France!’
‘But the widowers?’
‘Oh, them, they can take their time! They’re free from compulsory service, and they’ve nothing to fear from the tax-collectors!’
‘Now I understand why the boulevards are crowded with couples, young and old, conscripted under the cloak of marriage!’
‘Which has often been a flag of revenge, my dear patient!’
I could not keep back a shout of laughter.
‘Come along, come along,’ he said, grasping my arm.
‘One moment – doctor, we really are in Amiens, I suppose?’
‘There, it’s taken hold of him again,’ he muttered.
I repeated my question.
‘Yes, yes, we’re in Amiens!’
‘What year?’
‘I’ve told you already, in... ‘
The sound of a triple whistle cut short his words. It was followed by a loud blast like a foghorn. A gigantic vehicle appeared down the Rue de Beauvois.
‘Stand clear, stand clear!’ the doctor shouted, pushing me to one side.
And I fancied he added between his teeth, ‘Now all it needs is for him to break a leg! I’ll end up having nothing in my pocket. ‘
It was a tramcar. I hadn’t so far noticed that steel rails furrowed the street, and I must say I thought this innovation quite natural, although at present there’s no more chance of a tramway than there is of a bus!
The doctor beckoned to the conductor of the great vehicle, and we took our places on the platform, already crowded with travellers.
‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked, quite resigned, by now, to let things happen.
‘To the regional competition. ‘
‘At the Hotoie?’
‘At the Hotoie. ‘
‘So we really are in Amiens?’
‘Of course.’ The doctor threw an anxious glance at me.
‘And what’s the present population of this town since they started taxing bachelors?’
‘Four hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. ‘
‘And we’re in the year of grace?’
‘In the year of grace... ‘
Another blast on the foghorn kept me again from hearing the reply which would have interested me so much.
The vehicle had turned into the Rue du Lycée and was making for the Boulevard Cornuau.
As we passed the College, whose chapel already looked like an ancient monument, I was struck by the number of pupils who were coming out for their Sunday walk. I couldn’t keep myself from showing a little surprise.
‘Yes, 4,000 of them!’ the doctor commented. ‘It’s quite a regiment!’
‘Four thousand!’ I exclaimed. ‘Well! And in this regiment how many show their ignorance of the classic tongues?’
‘But, my dear patient,’ the doctor replied. ‘Do call to mind your own experience. It’s a hundred years, at least, since Latin and Greek were given up in the lycées! Education is now purely scientific, commercial, and industrial!’
‘Can it be possible?’
‘Yes, and you know well enough what happened to that unfortunate pupil who carried off the last prize for Latin verse? Well, when he appeared on the platform somebody threw a Latin grammar at his head, and amidst all the excitement the Prefect was so embarrassed he almost bit him!’
‘And since then, no more Latin verse in the colleges?’
‘Not even half a hexameter!’
‘And Latin prose was banned at the same time?’
‘No, two years later, and with good reason! Do you know how, at the examination, the best of the candidates translated Immanis pecoris custos!’[iii]
‘No. ‘
‘Like this, "guardian of an immense blockhead". ‘
‘Go along with you!’
‘And Patiens quia aeternus?’[iv]
‘I’ve no idea. ‘
‘He is "patient because he sneezes"! So the president of the university realised it was high time to suppress the study of Latin. ‘
My word, I shouted with laughter. Even the doctor’s expression could not stop me. It was clear that to his mind my madness was taking on an alarming character. Complete loss of memory on the one hand, and tempestuous maniacal laughter on the other! Now he’d got something to be concerned about!
And indeed my laughter might have continued indefinitely if the beauty of the scene hadn’t diverted my attention.
We were going down the Boulevard Cornuau, now straightened, thanks to an amiable understanding between the authorities and the trades unions. To the left rose the St Roch Station. This building, after being so strangely knocked about during the works of construction, now seemed to justify that line of Delille’s:
Its indestructible mass has wearied time!
The tram-rails stretched on down the centre of the boulevard, shadowed by a fourfold line of trees that I’d seen planted. And now they seemed to have lived two centuries.
In a few seconds we’d arrived at the Hotoie. What changes had been suffered by this fine walk where in the fourteenth century the youth of Picardy used to show off. It now displayed great stretches of lawn in the English fashion, large clumps of shrubs and flower-beds which disguised the rectangular form of the spaces reserved for the annual exhibitions. A rearrangement of the trees which yesterday were choking one another had given them space and air, and now they could rival the gigantic ‘Wellingtonias’ of California.
There was a crowd at the Hotoie. The programme hadn’t deceived me. Here the Regional Competition of Northern France displayed a long series of stables, stalls, tents, kiosks of every colour and every shape. But today the Agricultural and Industrial Fair had closed. Within an hour the prize-winners – two-footed or four-footed – were to be ‘crowned’.
I didn’t find the competition displeasing. It appealed to eyes and ears alike. The strident clatter of moving machinery, the hissing of the steam, the plaintive bleating of the sheep penned in their stalls, the deafening cackle of the poultry-yard, the speeches of the authorities whose pompous sentences resounded from the platform, the applause given to the prize-winners, the soft sound of the kisses which official lips placed upon their ‘crowned’ heads, the martial orders which echoed under the tall trees, and finally the vague murmur which rose from the crowd, all this combined to produce a strange concert whose charm I greatly appreciated.
The doctor pushed me through the turnstile. The hour was coming when the Ministerial Delegate would make his speech, and I didn’t want to lose a word of this harangue which, if only it followed the current of progress, ought to be so new in substance and style.
I therefore hurried into the centre of a large quadrilateral reserved for the machinery. My doctor bought at a high price several bottles of a precious liquid which had the quality of disinfecting the local water. I let myself be tempted by several boxes of a phosphorescent paste which had so completely destroyed the mice that the cats had taken their place.
Then I could hear some complicated pianos which harmoniously reproduced all the strains of an orchestra from the opera. Not far away were some stone-crushers thunderously crushing stones. The harvesters were reaping the cornfields like a barber shaving a stubbly chin. Pile-drivers, worked by compressed air, were striking five-million-pound blows. Centrifugal pumps were working as though they meant to absorb, with a few strokes of a piston, the whole of the Selle river, reminding me of Moreau’s lovely verse about the Voulzie:
A thirsty giant would drink it in a breath!
Then on all sides there were machines of American origin, carried to the last extremes of progress. One was given a live pig, and out of it came two hams, one York and one Westphalian! To another was offered a rabbit, still quivering, and it produced a silk hat! This one absorbed an ordinary fleece and ejected a complete suit of clothes in the best style! That one devoured a three-year-old calf and reproduced it in the twofold form of a smoking blanquette of veal and a pair of newly polished shoes! And so on and so forth.
But I could not stop to contemplate these wonders of human genius. Now it was my turn to drag the doctor along. I was intoxicated.
I reached the platform, which was already sagging under the weight of the important personages.
They had just been judging the fat men – as is done in America at every competition which takes itself seriously.
After the fat man’s competition came that of the thin woman, and the prize-winner as she came down from the platform, her eyes modestly lowered, repeated that watchword of one of our wittiest philosophers. ‘They like the fat woman, but they adore the thin ones!’
Now it was the turn of the babies. There were several hundred of them among whom those awarded a prize were the heaviest, the youngest, and the one who could bawl loudest! All were plainly dying of thirst and were calling for a drink in their own way, which was not at all pleasant.
‘Lord,’ I exclaimed, ‘there won’t be enough wet-nurses for... ‘
The sound of a steam-whistle interrupted me.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘It’s the suckling-machine starting to work,’ explained the doctor. ‘It’s equivalent to 500 Norman wet-nurses! You well understand, my dear patient, that since celibacy was abolished, they had to invent suckling by steam!’
The 300 babies had vanished. Their deafening cries were followed by a religious silence.
The Ministerial Delegate was about to close the competition with a speech.
He advanced to the edge of the platform. He began to speak.
My stupefaction which so far had kept on growing, now went beyond the limits of the impossible.
Yes, everything had changed in this world. Everything had followed the line of progress! Ideas, customs, industry, commerce, agriculture, all had been transformed!
Only the opening words of the Delegate’s speech remained what they had always been – what they will always be at the opening of any official harangue!
‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘It is always with renewed pleasure that I find myself once more... ‘
Thereupon I made a brusque movement. I fancied that my eyes were opening in darkness... I stretched out my hands... I unconsciously upset my table and my lamp... The noise woke me up...
All that was nothing but a dream!
Some well-informed scientists declare that dreams, even those which seem to last throughout a long night, only last, in reality, a few seconds.
It may seem like that to you, ladies and gentlemen, this ideal walk, which, maybe under too fantastic a form, I’ve just made in a dream through Amiens... in the year 2000!
Dr Trifulgas
1
Swish! It is the wind, let loose.
Swash! It is the rain, falling in torrents.
This shrieking squall bends down the trees of the Volsinian coast, and hurries on, flinging itself against the sides of the mountains of Crimma. Along the whole length of the littoral are high rocks, gnawed by the billows of the vast Sea of Megalocrida.
Swish! swash!
Down by the harbour nestles the little town of Luktrop; perhaps a hundred houses, with green palings, which defend them indifferently from the wild wind; four or five hilly streets – ravines rather than streets – paved with pebbles and strewn with ashes thrown from the active cones in the background. The volcano is not far distant: it is called the Vauglor. During the day it sends forth sulphurous vapours; at night, from time to time, great outpourings of flame. Like a lighthouse carrying 150 kertzes, the Vauglor indicates the port of Luktrop to the coasters, felzans, verliches, and balanzes, whose keels furrow the waters of Megalocrida.
On the other side of the town are ruins dating from the Crimmarian era. Then a suburb. Arab in appearance, much like a casbah, with white walls, domed roofs, and sun-scorched terraces, which are all nothing but accumulations of square stones thrown together at random. Veritable dice are these, whose numbers will never be effaced by the rust of Time.
Among others we notice the Six-Four, a name given to a curious erection, having six openings on one side and four on the other.
A belfry overlooks the town, the square belfry of Saint Philfilena, with bells hung in the thickness of the walls, which sometimes a hurricane will set in motion. That is a bad sign; the people tremble when they hear it.
Such is Luktrop. Then come the scattered habitations in the country, set amid heath and broom, as in Brittany. But this is not Brittanny. Is it in France? I do not know. Is it in Europe? I cannot tell. At all events, do not look for Luktrop on any map.
2
Rat-tat! A discreet knock is struck upon the narrow door of Six-Four, at the left corner of the Rue Messaglière. This is one of the most comfortable houses in Luktrop – if such a word is known there – one of the richest, if gaining some millions of fretzers, by hook or by crook, constitutes riches.
The rat-tat is answered by a savage bark, in which is much of lupine howl, as if a wolf should bark. Then a window is opened above the door of Six-Four, and an ill-tempered voice says, ‘Deuce take people who come bothering here!’
A young girl, shivering in the rain wrapped in a thin cloak, asks if Dr Trifulgas is at home.
‘He is, or he is not, according to circumstances. ‘
‘I want him to come to my father, who is dying. ‘
‘Where is he dying?’
‘At Val Karnion, four kertzes from here. ‘
‘And his name?’
‘Vort Kartif. ‘
‘Vort Kartif, the herring-salter?’
‘Yes; and if Dr Trifulgas—’
‘Dr Trifulgas is not at home. ‘
And the window is closed with a slam, while the swishes of the wind and the swashes of the rain mingle in a deafening uproar.
3
A hard man, this Dr Trifulgas, with little compassion, and attending no one unless paid cash in advance. His old Hurzof, a mongrel of bulldog and spaniel, would have had more feeling than he. The house called Six-Four admitted no poor, and opened only to the rich. Further, it had a regular tariff: so much for a typhoid fever, so much for a fit, so much for a pericarditis, and for other complaints which doctors invent by the dozen. Now, Vort Kartif, the herring-salter, was a poor man, and of low degree. Why should Dr Trifulgas have taken any trouble, and on such a night?
‘Is it nothing that I should have had to get up?’ he murmured, as he went back to bed; ‘that alone is worth ten fretzers.‘
Hardly twenty minutes had passed, when the iron hammer was again struck on the door of Six-Four.
Much against his inclination the doctor left his bed, and leaned out of his window.
‘Who is there?’ he cried.
‘I am the wife of Vort Kartif.‘
‘The herring-salter of Val Karnion?’
‘Yes; and, if you refuse to come, he will die.‘
‘All right; you will be a widow.‘
‘Here are twenty fretzers.‘
‘Twenty fretzers for going to Val Karnion, four kertzes from here! Thank you! Be off with you!’
And the window was closed again. Twenty fretzers! A grand fee! Risk a cold or lumbago for twenty fretzers, especially when tomorrow one has to go to Kiltreno to visit the rich Edzingov, laid up with gout, which is valued at fifty fretzers the visit! With this agreeable prospect before him, Dr Trifulgas slept more soundly than before.
Swish! Swash! and then rat-tat! rat-tat! rat-tat! To the noises of the squall were now added three blows of the knocker, struck by a more decided hand. The doctor slept. He woke, but in a fearful humour. When he opened the window the storm came in like a charge of shot.
‘I am come about the herring-salter.‘
‘That wretched herring-salter again!’
‘I am his mother.‘
‘May his mother, his wife, and his daughter perish with him!’
‘He has had an attack—’
‘Let him defend himself.‘
‘Some money has been paid us,’ continued the old woman, ‘an instalment on the house sold to the camondeur Doutrup, of the Rue Messaglière. If you do not come, my granddaughter will no longer have a father, my daughter-in-law a husband, myself a son.‘
It was piteous and terrible to hear the old woman’s voice – to know that the wind was freezing the blood in her veins, that the rain was soaking her very bones beneath her thin flesh.
‘A fit! why, that would be 200 fretzers!’ replied the heartless Trifulgas.
‘We have only 120. ‘
‘Good-night,’ and the window was again closed. But, after due reflection, it appeared that 120 fretzers for an hour and a half on the road, plus half an hour of visit, made a fretzer a minute. A small profit, but still, not to be despised.
Instead of going to bed again, the doctor slipped into his coat of valveter, went down in his wading boots, stowed himself away in his great coat of lurtaine, with his sou’wester on his head, and his mufflers on his hands. He left his lamp lighted close to his pharmacopoeia, open at page 197. Then, pulling the door of Six-Four, he paused on the threshold. The old woman was there; leaning on her stick, bowed down by her eighty years of misery.
‘The hundred and twenty fretzers. ‘
‘Here is the money; and may God multiply it for you a hundredfold!’
‘God! Who ever saw the colour of His money?’
The doctor whistled for Hurzof, gave him a small lantern to carry, and took the road towards the sea. The old woman followed.
4
What swishy-swashy weather! The bells of St Philfilena are all swinging by reason of the gale. A bad sign! But Dr Trifulgas is not superstitious. He believes in nothing – not even in his own science, except for what it brings him in. What weather, and also what a road! Pebbles and ashes; the pebbles slippery with seaweed, the ashes crackling with iron refuse. No other light than that from Hurzof’s lantern, vague and uncertain. At times jets of flame from Vauglor uprear themselves, and in the midst of them appear great comical silhouettes. In truth no one knows what is in the depths of those unfathomable craters. Perhaps spirits of the other world, which volatilise themselves as they come forth.
The doctor and the old woman follow the curves of the little bays of the littoral. The sea is white with a livid whiteness – a mourning white. It sparkles as it throws off the crests of the surf, which seem like outpourings of glow-worms.
These two persons go on thus as far as the turn in the road between sandhills, where the brooms and the reeds clash together with a shock like that of bayonets.
The dog had drawn near to his master and seemed to say to him, ‘Come, come! 120 fretzers for the strong box! That is the way to make a fortune. Another rood added to the vineyard; another dish added to our supper; another meat pie for the faithful Hurzof. Let us look after the rich invalids, and look after them – according to their purses!’
At that spot the old woman pauses. With her trembling finger she points out among the shadows a reddish light. There is the house of Vort Kartif, the herring-salter.
‘There?’ said the doctor.
‘Yes,’ said the old woman.
‘Hurrah!’ cries the dog Hurzof.
A sudden explosion from the Vauglor, shaken to its very base. A sheaf of lurid flame springs up to the zenith, forcing its way through the clouds. Dr Trifulgas is hurled to the ground. He swears roundly, picks himself up, and looks about him.
The old woman is no longer there. Has she disappeared through some fissure of the earth, or has she flown away on the wings of the mist? As for the dog, he is there still, standing on his hind legs, his jaws apart, his lantern extinguished.
‘Nevertheless, we will go on,’ mutters Dr Trifulgas. The honest man has been paid his 120 fretzers, and he must earn them.
5
Only a luminous speck at the distance of half a kertz. It is the lamp of the dying – perhaps of the dead. Of course, it is the herring-salter’s house; the old woman pointed to it with her finger; no mistake is possible. Through the whistling swishes and the dashing swashes, through the uproar of the tempest, Dr Trifulgas tramps on with hurried steps. As he advances, the house becomes more distinct, being isolated in the midst of the landscape.
It is very remarkable how much it resembles that of Dr Trifulgas, the Six-Four of Luktrop. The same arrangement of windows, the same little arched door. Dr Trifulgas hastens on as fast as the gale allows him. The door is ajar; he has but to push it. He pushes it, he enters, and the wind roughly closes it behind him. The dog Hurzof, left outside, howls, with intervals of silence.
Strange! One would have said that Dr Trifulgas had come back to his own house. And yet he has not wandered; he has not even taken a turning. He is at Val Karnion, not at Luktrop. And yet. here is the same low, vaulted passage, the same wooden staircase, with high banisters, worn away by the constant rubbing of hands.
He ascends. He reaches the landing. Beneath the door a faint light filters through, as in Six-Four. Is it a delusion? In the dimness he recognises his room – the yellow sofa, on the right the old chest of pear-wood, on the left the brass-bound strong box, in which he intended to deposit his 120 fretzers. There is his armchair, with the leathern cushions; there is his table, with its twisted legs, and on it, close to the expiring lamp, his pharmacopoeia, open at page 197.
‘What is the matter with me?’ he murmurs.
What is the matter with him? Fear! His pupils are dilated; his body is contracted, shrivelled; an icy perspiration freezes his skin – every hair stands on end.
But hasten! For want of oil, the lamp expires; and also the dying man! Yes, there is the bed – his own bed – with posts and canopy; as wide as it is long, shut in by heavy curtains. Is it possible that this is the pallet of a wretched herring-salter? With a quaking hand Dr Trifulgas seizes the curtains; he opens them; he looks in.
The dying man, his head uncovered, is motionless, as if at his last breath. The doctor leans over him —
Ah! what a cry, to which, outside, responds an unearthly howl from the dog.
The dying man is not the herring-salter, Vort Kartif – it is Dr Trifulgas; it is he, whom congestion has attacked – he himself! Cerebral apoplexy, with sudden accumulation of serosity in the cavities of the brain, with paralysis of the body on the side opposite that of the seat of the lesion.
Yes, it is he, who was sent for, and for whom 120 fretzers have been paid. He who, from hardness of heart, refused to attend the herring-salter – he who is dying.
Dr Trifulgas is like a madman, he knows himself lost. At each moment the symptoms increase. Not only all the functions of the organs slacken, but the lungs and the heart cease to act. And yet he has not quite lost consciousness. What can be done? Bleed! If he hesitates, Dr Trifulgas is dead. In those days they still bled; and then, as now, medical men cured all those apoplectic patients who were not going to die.
Dr Trifulgas seizes his case, takes out his lancet, opens a vein in the arm of his double. The blood does not flow. He rubs his chest violently – his own breathing grows slower. He warms his feet with hot bricks – his own grow cold.
Then his double lifts himself, falls back, and draws one last breath. Dr Trifulgas, notwithstanding all that his science has taught him to do, dies beneath his own hands.
6
In the morning a corpse was found in the house Six-Four – that of Dr Trifulgas. They put him in a coffin, and carried him with much pomp to the cemetery of Luktrop, whither he had sent so many others – in a professional manner.
As to old Hurzof, it is said that, to this day, he haunts the country with his lantern alight, and howling like a lost dog. I do not know if that be true; but strange things happen in Volsinia, especially in the neighbourhood of Luktrop.
And, again, I warn you not to hunt for that town on the map. The best geographers have not yet agreed as to its latitude – nor even as to its longitude.
Gil Braltar
1
There were 700 or 800 of them at least. Of medium height, but strong, agile, supple, framed to make prodigious bounds, they gambolled in the last rays of the sun, now setting over the mountains which formed serried ridges westward of the roadstead. Its reddish disc would soon disappear, and darkness was already falling in the midst of that-basin surrounded by the distant sierras of Sanorre and Ronda and by the desolate country of Cuervo.
Suddenly all the band became motionless. The leader had just appeared on the crest resembling the back of a skinny mule which forms the top of the mountain. From the military post perched on the distant summit of the Great Rock nothing could be seen of what was taking place under the trees.
‘Sriss... Sriss’ – they heard their leader, whose lips, thrust forward like a hen’s beak, gave that whistle an extraordinary intensity.
‘Sriss... Sriss’ – the strange army repeated the call in perfect unison.
A remarkable being that leader: tall in height, clad in a monkey’s skin with the fur outwards, his head shaggy with unkempt hair, his face bristling with a short beard, his feet bare, their soles as hard as a horse’s hoof.
He lifted his hand and extended it towards the lower crest of the mountain. All simultaneously repeated that gesture with a military – or rather with a mechanical – precision, as though they were marionettes moved by the same spring. He lowered his arm. They lowered their arms. He bent towards the ground. They bent down in the same attitude. He picked up a stick and waved it about. They waved their sticks in windmill fashion like his.
Then the leader turned: gliding into the bushes, he crawled between the trees. The troop crawled after him.
In less than ten minutes they were descending the rainworn mountain paths, but not even the movement of a pebble had disclosed the presence of that army on the march.
A quarter of an hour later the leader halted: they halted as though frozen to the ground.
Two hundred yards below them appeared the town, stretched along the length of the roadstead, with numerous lights revealing the confused mass of piers, houses, villas, barracks. Beyond, the riding-lights of the warships, merchant-vessels, pontoons, anchored out at sea, were reflected from the surface of the still water. Farther beyond, at the end of Europa Point, the lighthouse projected its beams.
At that moment there sounded a cannon, the ‘first gunfire’, discharged from one of the concealed batteries. Then could also be heard the rolling of the drums and the shrill sound of the fifes.
This was the hour of Retreat, the hour to go indoors: no stranger had the right thereafter to move about the town without being escorted by an officer of the Garrison. It was the hour for the crews to go aboard their ships. Every quarter of an hour the patrols took to the guardroom the stragglers and the drunks. Then all was silent.
General MacKackmale could sleep with both eyes shut.
It seemed that England had nothing to fear, that night, for the Rock of Gibraltar.
2
Everybody knows that formidable rock. It somewhat resembles an enormous crouching lion, its head towards Spain, its tail dipping into the sea. Its face discloses teeth – 700 cannon pointing from the casemates – ‘the old woman’s teeth’, as they are called, but those of an old woman who can bite if she is attacked.
Thus England is firmly placed here, as she is at Aden, Malta, and Hong Kong, on cliffs which, aided by the progress of mechanisation, she will someday convert into revolving fortresses.
Meanwhile Gibraltar assures to the United Kingdom the incontestable domination of the fifteen miles of that Strait which the club of Hercules struck open in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea between Abyla and Calpe.
Have the Spanish given up the idea of regaining their peninsula? Unquestionably, for it seems to be impregnable by land and by sea.
But there was someone who cherished the idea of reconquering this defensive and offensive peninsula. It was the leader of the band, a strange being – or perhaps rather a madman. This hidalgo bore the name of Gil Braltar, a name which, to his mind at least, had predestined him to that patriotic conquest. His reason had not been able to resist it, and his place should have been in a mental home. He was well known, but for ten years nobody knew what had become of him. Had he wandered off into the outer world? In fact, he had not left his ancestral home: he lived there like a troglodyte in the woods, in the caverns, and especially in the unexplored depths of the Cave of San Miguel which, it was reputed, led right down to the sea. He was thought to be dead. He was still alive, none the less, after the style of a savage, bereft of human reason, and obeying only his animal instincts.
3
He slept well, did General MacKackmale, with both eyes shut, though longer than was permitted by regulations. With his long arms, his round eyes deeply set under their beetling brows, his face embellished with a stubbly beard, his grimaces, his anthropithecoid gestures, the extraordinary prognathism of his jaw, he was remarkably ugly – even for an English general. Something of a monkey but an excellent soldier nevertheless, in spite of his apelike appearance.
Yes, he slept in his comfortable apartments on Waterport Street, that winding road which traverses the town from the Waterport Gate to the Alameda Gate. Was he perhaps dreaming that England would seize Egypt, Turkey, Holland, Afghanistan, the Sudan, the Boer Republics – in short, every part of the globe at her convenience? And this at the very moment when she was in danger of losing Gibraltar!
The door of his bedroom opened with a crash.
‘What’s up?’ shouted the general, sitting erect with a bound.
‘Sir,’ replied the aide-de-camp who had just burst in like a bombshell, ‘the town has been invaded!’
‘The Spanish?’
‘Presumably, sir. ‘
‘They have dared –’
The general did not complete his sentence. He got up, wrenched off the nightcap which adorned his head, jumped into his trousers, pulled on his cloak, slid down into his boots, clapped on his helmet and buckled on his sword even while saying:
‘What’s that racket I can hear?’
‘It’s the clatter of lumps of rock falling like an avalanche on the town. ‘
‘Then there’s a lot of them?’
‘Yes, sir, there must be. ‘
‘Then all the bandits of the coast must have joined forces to take us by surprise – the smugglers of Ronda, the fishermen of San Roque, the refugees who are swarming in the villages?’
‘Yes, sir, I’m afraid so. ‘
‘Well, has the governor been warned?’
‘No, sir; we can’t possibly get through to his residence on Europa Point. The gates have been seized, and the streets are full of the enemy. ‘
‘What about the barracks at the Waterport Gate?’
‘We can’t get there either. The gunners must have been locked up in their barracks. ‘
‘How many men have you got with you?’
‘About twenty, sir – men of the Third Regiment who have been able to get away. ‘
‘By Saint Dunstan!’ shouted General MacKackmale. Gibraltar taken from England by those – those – orange-vendors! It’s not going to happen! No! It shan’t!’
At that very instant the bedroom door opened, to admit a strange being who jumped on to the general’s shoulders.
4
‘Surrender!’ he howled in raucous tones which sounded more like the roar of a beast than like a human voice.
Several men, who had entered with the aide-de-camp, were about to throw themselves on that being when, seeing him by the light of the room, they recoiled.
‘Gil Braltar!’ they cried.
It was indeed that hidalgo whom nobody had seen for a long time – that savage from the caves of San Miguel.
‘Will you surrender?’ he howled.
‘Never!’ replied General MacKackmale.
Suddenly, just as the soldiers were surrounding him, Gil Braltar emitted a prolonged and shrill ‘Sriss.’ At once the courtyard of the house itself was filled with an invading army.
Could it be credible! They was monkeys, they were apes – hundreds of them! Had they come to seize from the English that rock of which they themselves are the true owners, that hill on which they had dwelt even before the Spanish, and certainly long before Cromwell had dreamed of conquering it for Britain?
Yes, they certainly had! And their numbers made them formidable, these tailless apes with whom one could live on good terms only by tolerating their thieving: those cunning and audacious beasts whom one took care not to molest because they revenged themselves – as had sometimes happened – by rolling enormous rocks on the town.
And now these apes had become an army led by a madman as fierce as themselves – by this Gil Braltar whom they knew, who shared their independent life, by this four-legged William Tell whose whole existence was devoted to the one idea – to drive the foreigners from Spanish soil!
What a disgrace for the United Kingdom if the attempt succeeded! The English, conquerors of the Hindoos, of the Abyssinians, of the Tasmanians, of the Australian Black-fellows, of the Hottentots, and of so many others, to be overcome by mere apes!
If such a catastrophe took place, all that General MacKackmale could do would be to blow out his brains! He could never survive such a dishonour.
However, before the apes whom their leader’s whistle had summoned had entered the room, a few of the soldiers had been able to throw themselves upon Gil Braltar. The madman, endowed with superhuman strength, struggled, and only after great difficulty was he overcome. The monkey-skin which he had borrowed having been torn from him, he was thrust into a corner almost naked, gagged, bound, unable to move or to utter a cry. A little later General MacKackmale rushed from the house resolved, in the best military tradition, to conquer or die.
The danger was no less outside. A few of the soldiers had been able to rally, probably at the Waterport Gate, and were advancing towards the general’s house, and a few shots could be heard in Waterport Street and the market-place. None the less, so great was the number of apes that the garrison of Gibraltar was in danger of being forced to give up the position. And then, if the Spaniards made common cause with the monkeys, the forts would be abandoned, the batteries deserted, and the fortifications would not have even one defender.
Suddenly the situation was completely changed.
Indeed in the torchlight the apes could be seen beating a retreat. At their head marched their leader, brandishing his stick. And all, copying the movements of his arms and legs, were following him at the same speed.
Then had Gil Braltar been able to free himself from his bonds, to escape from that room where he had been imprisoned? It could not be doubted. But where was he going now? Was he going towards Europa Point, to the residence of the governor, to attack him and call on him to surrender?
No! The madman and his army descended Waterport Street. Then, having passed the Alameda Gate, they set off obliquely across the park and up the slopes.
An hour later, not one of the invaders of Gibraltar remained.
Then what had happened?
This was disclosed later, when General MacKackmale appeared on the edge of the park.
It was he who, taking the madman’s place, had directed the retreat of that army after having wrapped himself up in the monkey skin. So much did he resemble an ape, that gallant warrior, that he had deceived the monkeys themselves. So he had only to appear for them to follow him...
It was indeed the idea of a genius, and it well merited the award to him of the Cross of the Order of St George.
As for Gil Braltar. the United Kingdom gave him, for cash down, to a Barnum, who soon made his fortune exhibiting him in the towns of the Old and the New World. He even let it be supposed, that Barnum, that it was not the Wild Man of San Miguel whom he was exhibiting, but General MacKackmale himself.
The episode had certainly been a lesson for the government of Her Gracious Majesty. They realised that if Gibraltar could not be taken by man it was at the mercy of the apes. And that is why England, always practical, decided that in future it would send to the rock only the ugliest of its generals, so that the monkeys could be deceived once more.
This simple precaution will secure it for ever the ownership of Gibraltar.
In the Twenty-Ninth Century
The day of an American journalist in the year 2889
The men of the twenty-ninth century live in a perpetual fairyland, though they do not seem to realise it. Bored with wonders, they are cold towards everything that progress brings them every day. It all seems only natural.
If they compared it with the past, they would better appreciate what our civilisation is, and realise what a road it has traversed. What would then seem finer than our modern cities, with streets a hundred yards wide, with buildings a thousand feet high, always at an equable temperature, and the sky furrowed by thousands of aero-cars and aero-buses! Compared with these towns, whose population may include up to ten million inhabitants, what were those villages, those hamlets of a thousand years ago, that Paris, that London, that New York, – muddy and badly ventilated townships, traversed by jolting contraptions, hauled along by horses – yes! by horses! it’s unbelievable!
If they recalled the erratic working of the steamers and the railways, their many collisions, and their slowness, how greatly would travellers value the aero-trains, and especially these pneumatic tubes laid beneath the oceans, which convey them with a speed of a thousand miles an hour? And would they not enjoy the telephone and the telephote even better if they recollected that our fathers were reduced to that antediluvial apparatus which they called the ‘telegraph’?
It’s very strange. These surprising transformations are based on principles which were quite well known to our ancestors, although these, so to speak, made no use of them. Heat, steam, electricity, are as old as mankind. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, did not the savants declare that the only difference between the physical and chemical forces consists of the special rates of vibration of the etheric particles?
As so enormous a stride had been made, that of recognising the mutual relationship of all these forces, it is incredible that it took so long to work out the rates of vibration that differentiate between them. It is especially surprising that the method of passing directly from one to another, and of producing one without the other, has only been discovered so recently.
So it was however, that things happened, and it was only in 2790, about a hundred years ago, that the famous Oswald Nyer succeeded in doing so.
A real benefactor of humanity, that great man! His achievement, a work of genius, was the parent of all the others! A constellation of inventors was born out of it, culminating in our extraordinary James Jackson. It is to him that we owe the new accumulators, some of which condense the force of the solar rays, others the electricity stored in the heart of our globe, and yet again others, energy coming from any source whatever, whether it be the waterfalls, winds, or rivers. It is to him that we owe no less the transformer which, at a touch on a simple switch, draws on the force that lives in the accumulators and releases it as heat, light, electricity, or mechanical power after it has performed any task we need.
Yes, it was from the day on which these two appliances were thought out that progress really dates. They have given mankind almost an infinite power. Through mitigating the bleakness of winter by restoring to it the excessive heat of the summer, they have revolutionised agriculture. By providing motive power for the appliances used in aerial navigation, they have enabled commerce to make a splendid leap forward. It is to them that we owe the unceasing production of electricity without either batteries or machines, light without combustion or incandescence, and finally that inexhaustible source of energy which has increased industrial production a hundred-fold.
Very well then! The whole of these wonders, we shall meet them in an incomparable office-block – the office of the Earth Herald, recently inaugurated in the 16823rd Avenue.
If the founder of the New York Herald, Gordon Bennett, were to be born a second time today, what would he say when he saw this palace of marble and gold that belongs to his illustrious descendant, Francis Bennett? Thirty generations had followed one another, and the New York Herald had always stayed in that same Bennett family. Two hundred years before, when the government of the Union had been transferred from Washington to Centropolis, the newspaper had followed the government – if it were not that the government had followed the newspaper – and it had taken its new title, the Earth Herald.
And let nobody imagine that it had declined under the administration of Francis Bennett. No! On the contrary, its new director had given it an equalled vitality and driving-power by the inauguration of telephonic journalism.
Everybody knows that system, made possible by the incredible diffusion of the telephone. Every morning, instead of being printed as in antiquity, the Earth Herald is ‘spoken’. It is by means of a brisk conversation with a reporter, a political figure, or a scientist, that the subscribers can learn whatever happens to interest them. As for those who buy an odd number for a few cents, they know that they can get acquainted with the day’s issue through the countless phonographic cabinets.
This innovation of Francis Bennett restored new life to the old journal. In a few months its clientele numbered eighty-five million subscribers, and the director’s fortune rose to 300 million dollars, and has since gone far beyond that. Thanks to this fortune, he was able to build his new office – a colossal edifice with four façades each two miles long, whose roof is sheltered beneath the glorious flag, with its seventy-five stars, of the Confederation.
Francis Bennett, king of journalists, would then have been king of the two Americas, if the Americans would ever accept any monarch whatever. Do you doubt this? But the plenipotentiaries of every nation and our very ministers, throng around his door, peddling their advice, seeking his approval, imploring the support of his all-powerful organ. Count up the scientists whom he has encouraged, the artists whom he employs, the inventors whom he subsidises! A wearisome monarchy was his, work without respite, and certainly nobody of earlier times would ever have been able to carry out so unremitting a daily grind. Fortunately however, the men of today have a more robust constitution, thanks to the progress of hygiene and of gymnastics, which from thirty-seven years has now increased to sixty-eight the average length of human life – thanks too to the aseptic foods, while we wait for the next discovery: that of nutritious air which will enable us to take nourishment... only by breathing.
And now, if you would like to know everything that constitutes the day of a director of the Earth Herald, take the trouble to follow him in his multifarious operations – this very day, this July 25th of the present year, 2889.
That morning Francis Bennett awoke in rather a bad temper. This was eight days since his wife had been in France and he was feeling a little lonely. Can it be credited? They had been married ten years, and this was the first time that Mrs Edith Bennett, that professional beauty, had been so long away. Two or three days usually sufficed for her frequent journeys to Europe and especially to Paris, where she went to buy her hats.
As soon as he awoke, Francis Bennett switched on his phonotelephote, whose wires led to the house he owned in the Champs-Elysées.
The telephone, completed by the telephote, is another of our time’s conquests! Though the transmission of speech by the electric current was already very old, it was only since yesterday that vision could also be transmitted. A valuable discovery, and Francis Bennett was by no means the only one to bless its inventor when, in spite of the enormous distance between them, he saw his wife appear in the telephotic mirror.
A lovely vision! A little tired by last night’s theatre or dance, Mrs Bennett was still in bed. Although where she was it was nearly noon, her charming head was buried in the lace of the pillow. But there she was stirring... her lips were moving... No doubt she was dreaming?... Yes! She was dreaming... A name slipped from her mouth. ‘Francis... dear Francis!... ‘
His name, spoken by that sweet voice, gave a happier turn to Francis Bennett’s mood. Not wanting to wake the pretty sleeper, he quickly jumped out of bed, and went into his mechanised dressing-room.
Two minutes later, without needing the help of a valet, the machine deposited him, washed, shaved, shod, dressed and buttoned from top to toe, on the threshold of his office. The day’s work was going to begin.
It was into the room of the serialised novelists that Francis first entered.
Very big that room, surmounted by a large translucent dome. In a corner, several telephonic instruments by which the hundred authors of the Earth Herald related a hundred chapters of a hundred romances to the enfevered public.
Catching sight of one of these serialists who was snatching five minutes’ rest, Francis Bennett said:
‘Very fine, my dear fellow, very fine, that last chapter of yours! That scene where the young village girl is discussing with her admirer some of the problems of transcendental philosophy shows very keen powers of observation! These country manners have never been more clearly depicted! Go on that way, my dear Archibald, and good luck to you. Ten thousand new subscribers since yesterday, thanks to you!’
‘Mr John Last,’ he continued, turning towards another of his collaborators, ‘I’m not so satisfied with you! It hasn’t any life, your story! You’re in too much of a hurry to get to the end! Well! and what about all that documentation? You’ve got to dissect, John Last, you’ve got to dissect! It isn’t with a pen one writes nowadays, it’s with a scalpel! Every action in real life is the result of a succession of fleeting thoughts, and they’ve got to be carefully set out to create a living being! And what’s easier than to use electrical hypnotism, which redoubles its subject and separates his two-fold personality! Watch yourself living, John Last, my dear fellow! Imitate your colleague whom I’ve just been congratulating! Get yourself hypnotised... What?... You’re having it done, you say?... Not good enough yet, not good enough!’
Having given this little lesson, Francis Bennett continued his inspection and went on into the reporters’ room. His 1,500 reporters, placed before an equal number of telephones, were passing on to subscribers the news which had come in during the night from the four quarters of the earth.
The organisation of this incomparable service has often been described. In addition to his telephone, each reporter has in front of him a series of commutators, which allow him to get into communication with this or that telephotic line. Thus the subscribers have not only the story but the sight of these events. When it is a question of ‘miscellaneous facts’, which are things of the past by the time they are described, their principal phases alone are transmitted; these are obtained by intensive photography.
Francis Bennett questioned one of the ten astronomical reporters – a service which was growing because of the recent discoveries in the stellar world.
‘Well, Cash, what have you got?’
‘Phototelegrams from Mercury, Venus and Mars, sir. ‘
-Interesting, that last one?’
‘Yes! a revolution in the Central Empire, in support of the reactionary liberals against the republican conservatives. ‘
‘Just like us, then! – And Jupiter?’
‘Nothing so far! We haven’t been able to understand the signals the Jovians make. Perhaps ours haven’t reached them?... ‘
‘That’s your job, and I hold you responsible, Mr Cash!’ Francis Bennett replied; extremely dissatisfied, he went on to the scientific editorial room.
Bent over their computers, thirty savants were absorbed in equations of the ninety-fifth degree. Some indeed were revelling in the formulae of algebraical infinity and of twenty-four dimensional space, like a child in the elementary class dealing with the four rules of arithmetic.
Francis Bennett fell among them rather like a bombshell.
‘Well, gentlemen, what’s this they tell me? No reply from Jupiter?... It’s always the same! Look here, Corley, it seems to me it’s been twenty years that you’ve been pegging away at that planet... ‘
‘What do you expect, sir?’ the savant replied. ‘Our optical science still leaves something to be desired, and even with our telescopes two miles long... ‘
‘You hear that, Peer?’ broke in Francis Bennett, addressing himself to Corley’s neighbour. ‘Optical science leaves something to be desired!... That’s your speciality, that is, my dear fellow! Put on your glasses, devil take it! put on your glasses!’
Then, turning back to Corley:
‘But, failing Jupiter, aren’t you getting some result from the moon, at any rate?’
‘Not yet, Mr Bennett. ‘
‘Well, this time, you can’t blame optical science! The moon is 600 times nearer than Mars, and yet our correspondence service is in regular operation with Mars. It can’t be telescopes we’re needing... ‘
‘No, it’s the inhabitants,’ Corley replied with the thin smile of a savant stuffed with X.
‘You dare tell me that the moon is uninhabited?’
‘On the face it turns towards us, at any rate, Mr Bennett. Who knows whether on the other side?... ‘
‘Well, there’s a very simple method of finding out... ‘
‘And that is?... ‘
‘To turn the moon round!’
And that very day, the scientists of the Bennett factory started working out some mechanical means of turning our satellite right round.
On the whole Francis Bennett had reason to be satisfied. One of the Earth Herald’s astronomers had just determined the elements of the new planet Gandini. It is at a distance of 12, 841, 348, 284, 623 metres and 7 decimetres that this planet describes its orbit round the sun in 572 years, 194 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes, 9. 8 seconds.
Francis Bennett was delighted with such precision.
‘Good!’ he exclaimed. ‘Hurry up and tell the reportage service about it. You know what a passion the public has for these astronomical questions. I’m anxious for the news to appear in today’s issue!’
Before leaving the reporters’ room he took up another matter with a special group of interviewers, addressing the one who dealt with celebrities: ‘You’ve interviewed President Wilcox?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Mr Bennett, and I’m publishing the information that he’s certainly suffering from a dilatation of the stomach, and that he’s most conscientiously undergoing a course of tubular irrigations. ‘
‘Splendid. And that business of Chapmann the assassin?... Have you interviewed the jurymen who are to sit at the Assizes?’
‘Yes, and they all agree that he’s guilty, so that the case won’t even have to be submitted to them. The accused will be executed before he’s sentenced.‘
‘Splendid! Splendid!’
The next room, a broad gallery about a quarter of a mile long, was devoted to publicity, and it well may be imagined what the publicity for such a journal as the Earth Herald had to be. It brought in a daily average of three million dollars. Very ingeniously, indeed, some of the publicity obtained took an absolutely novel form, the result of a patent bought at an outlay of three dollars from a poor devil who had since died of hunger. They are gigantic signs reflected on the clouds, so large that they can be seen all over a whole country. From that gallery a thousand projectors were unceasingly employed in sending to the clouds, on which they were reproduced in colour, these inordinate advertisements.
But that day when Francis Bennett entered the publicity room he found the technicians with their arms folded beside their idle projectors. He asked them about it... The only reply he got was that somebody pointed to the blue sky.
‘Yes!... A fine day,’ he muttered, ‘so we can’t get any aerial publicity! What’s to be done about that? If there isn’t any rain, we can produce it! But it isn’t rain, it’s clouds that we need!’
‘Yes, some fine snow-white clouds!’ replied the chief technician.
‘Well, Mr Simon Mark, you’d better get in touch with the scientific editors, meteorological service. You can tell them from me that they can get busy on the problem of artificial clouds. We really can’t be at the mercy of the fine weather. ‘
After finishing his inspection of the different sections of the paper, Francis Bennett went to his reception hall, where he found awaiting him the ambassadors and plenipotentiary ministers accredited to the American government: these gentlemen had come to ask advice from the all-powerful director. As he entered the room they were carrying on rather a lively discussion.
‘Pardon me, your Excellency,’ the French Ambassador addressed the Ambassador from Russia. ‘But I can’t see anything that needs changing in the map of Europe. The north to the Slavs, agreed! But the south to the Latins! Our common frontier along the Rhine seems quite satisfactory. Understand me clearly, that our government will certainly resist any attempt which may be made against our Prefectures of Rome, Madrid, and Vienna!’
‘Well said!’ Francis Bennett intervened in the discussion. ‘What, Mr Russian Ambassador, you’re not satisfied with your great empire, which extends from the banks of the Rhine as far as the frontiers of China? An empire whose immense coast is bathed by the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic, the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and the Indian Ocean?’
‘And besides, what’s the use of threats? Is war with our modern weapons possible? These asphyxiating shells which can be sent a distance of a hundred miles, these electric flashes, sixty miles long, which can annihilate a whole army corps at a single blow, these projectiles loaded with the microbes of plague, cholera, and yellow fever, and which can destroy a whole nation in a few hours?’
‘We realise that, Mr Bennett,’ the Russian Ambassador replied. ‘But are we free to do what we like?... Thrust back ourselves by the Chinese on our eastern frontier, we must, at all costs, attempt something towards the west... ‘
‘Is that all it is, sir?’ Francis Bennett replied in reassuring tones – ‘Well! as the proliferation of the Chinese is getting to be a danger to the world, we’ll bring pressure to bear on the Son of Heaven. He’ll simply have to impose a maximum birth-rate on his subjects, not to be exceeded on pain of death! A child too many?... A father less! That will keep things balanced.
‘And you, sir,’ the director of the Earth Herald continued, addressing the English consul, ‘what can I do to be of service to you?’
‘A great deal, Mr Bennett,’ that personage replied. ‘It would be enough for your journal to open a campaign on our behalf...‘
‘And with what purpose?’
‘Merely to protest against the annexation of Great Britain by the United States... ‘
‘Merely that!’ Francis Bennett exclaimed. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘An annexation that’s 150 years old already! But won’t you English gentry ever resign yourselves to the fact that by a just compensation of events here below, your country has become an American colony? That’s pure madness! How could your government ever have believed that I should ever open so antipatriotic a campaign... ‘
‘Mr Bennett, you know that the Monroe doctrine is all America for the Americans, and nothing more than America, and not... ‘
‘But England is only one of our colonies, one of the finest. Don’t count upon our ever consenting to give her up!’
‘You refuse?’...
‘I refuse, and if you insist, we shall make it a casus belli, based on nothing more than an interview with one of our reporters. ‘
‘So that’s the end.’ The consul was overwhelmed. ‘The United Kingdom, Canada, and New Britain belong to the Americans, India to the Russians, and Australia and New Zealand to themselves! Of all that once was England, what’s left?... Nothing!’
‘Nothing, sir?’ retorted Francis Bennett. ‘Well, what about Gibraltar?’
At that moment the clock struck twelve. The director of the Earth Herald, ending the audience with a gesture, left the hall, and sat down in a rolling armchair. In a few minutes he had reached his dining room, half a mile away, at the far end of the office.
The table was laid, and he took his place at it. Within reach of his hand was placed a series of taps, and before him was the curved surface of a phonotelephote, on which appeared the dining room of his home in Paris. Mr and Mrs Bennett had arranged to have lunch at the same time – nothing could be more pleasant than to be face to face in spite of the distance, to see one another and talk by means of the phonotelephotic apparatus.
But the room in Paris was still empty.
‘Edith is late,’ Francis Bennett said to himself. ‘Oh, women’s punctuality! Everything makes progress, except that. ‘
And after this too just reflection, he turned on one of the taps.
Like everybody else in easy circumstances nowadays, Francis Bennett, having abandoned domestic cooking, is one of the subscribers to the Society for Supplying Food to the Home, which distributes dishes of a thousand types through a network of pneumatic tubes. This system is expensive, no doubt, but the cooking is better, and it has the advantage that it has suppressed that hair-raising race, the cooks of both sexes.
So, not without some regret, Francis Bennett was lunching in solitude. He was finishing his coffee when Mrs Bennett, having got back home, appeared in the telephoto screen.
‘Where have you been, Edith dear?’ Francis Bennett inquired.
‘What?’ Mrs Bennett replied. ‘You’ve finished?... I must be late, then?... Where have I been? Of course, I’ve been with my modiste... This year’s hats are so bewitching! They’re not hats at all... they’re domes, they’re cupolas! I rather lost count of time!’
‘Rather, my dear? You lost it so much that here’s my lunch finished. ‘
‘Well, run along then, my dear... run along to your work,’ Mrs Bennett replied. ‘I’ve still got a visit to make, to my modeleur-couturier. ‘
And this couturier was no other than the famous Wormspire, the very man who so judiciously remarked, ‘Woman is only a question of shape!’
Francis Bennett kissed Mrs Bennett’s cheek on the telephote screen and went across to the window, where his aerocar was waiting.
‘Where are we going, sir?’ asked the aero-coachman.
‘Let’s see. I’ve got time...’ Francis Bennett replied. ‘Take me to my accumulator works at Niagara.‘
The aero-car, an apparatus splendidly based on the principle of ‘heavier than air’, shot across space at a speed of about 400 miles an hour. Below him were spread out the towns with their moving pavements which carry the wayfarers along the streets, and the countryside, covered, as though by an immense spider’s web, by the network of electric wires.
Within half an hour, Francis Bennett had reached his works at Niagara, where, after using the force of the cataracts to produce energy, he sold or hired it out to the consumers. Then, his visit over, he returned, by way of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, to Centropolis, where his aero-car put him down about five o’clock.
The waiting room of the Earth Herald was crowded. A careful lookout was being kept for Francis Bennett to return for the daily audience he gave to his petitioners. They included the capital’s acquisitive inventors, company promoters with enterprises to suggest – all splendid, to listen to them. Among these different proposals he had to make a choice, reject the bad ones, look into the doubtful ones, give a welcome to the good ones. He soon got rid of those who had only got useless or impracticable schemes. One of them – didn’t he claim to revive painting, an art which had fallen into such desuetude that Millet’s Angelus had just been sold for fifteen francs – thanks to the progress of colour photography invented at the end of the twentieth century by the Japanese, whose name was on everybody’s lips –Aruziswa-Riochi-Nichome-Sanjukamboz-Kio-Baski-Kû? Another, hadn’t he discovered the biogene bacillus which, after being introduced into the human organism, would make man immortal? This one, a chemist, hadn’t he discovered a new substance. Nihilium, of which a gram would cost only three million dollars? That one, a most daring physician, wasn’t he claiming that he’d found a remedy for a cold in the head?
All these dreamers were at once shown out.
A few of the others received a better welcome, and foremost among them was a young man whose broad brow indicated a high degree of intelligence.
‘Sir,’ he began, ‘though the number of elements used to be estimated at seventy-five, it has now been reduced to three, as no doubt you are aware?"
‘Perfectly,’ Francis Bennett replied.
‘Well, sir, I’m on the point of reducing the three to one. If I don’t run out of money I’ll have succeeded in three weeks. ‘
‘And then?’
‘Then, sir, I shall really have discovered the absolute. ‘
‘And the results of that discovery?’
‘It will be to make the creation of all forms of matter easy – stone, wood, metal, fibrin... ‘
‘Are you saying you’re going to be able to construct a human being?’
‘Completely... The only thing missing will be the soul!’
‘Only that!’ was the ironical reply of Francis Bennett, who however assigned the young fellow to the scientific editorial department of his journal.
A second inventor, using as a basis some old experiments that dated from the nineteenth century and had often been repeated since, had the idea of moving a whole city in a single block. He suggested, as a demonstration, the town of Saaf, situated fifteen miles from the sea: after conveying it on rails down to the shore, he would transform it into a seaside resort. That would add an enormous value to the ground already built on and to be built over.
Francis Bennett, attracted by this project, agreed to take a half share in it.
‘You know, sir,’ said a third applicant, ‘that, thanks to our solar and terrestrial accumulators and transformers, we’ve been able to equalise the seasons. I suggest doing even better. By converting into heat part of the energy we have at our disposal and transmitting the heat to the polar regions we can melt the ice... ‘
‘Leave your plans with me,’ Francis Bennett replied, ‘and come back in a week. ‘
Finally, a fourth savant brought the news that one of the questions which had excited the whole world was about to be solved that very evening.
As is well known, a century ago a daring experiment made by Dr Nathaniel Faithburn had attracted public attention. A convinced supporter of the idea of human hibernation – the possibility of arresting the vital functions and then re-awakening them after a certain time – he had decided to test the value of the method on himself. After, by a holograph will, describing the operations necessary to restore him to life a hundred years later to the day, he had exposed himself to a cold of 172° Centigrade (278° Fahrenheit) below zero; thus reduced to a mummified state, he had been shut up in a tomb for the stated period.
Now it was exactly on that very day, July 25th 2889, that the period expired, and Francis Bennett had just received an offer to proceed in one of the rooms of the Earth Herald office with the resurrection so impatiently waited for. The public could then be kept in touch with it second by second.
The proposal was accepted, and as the operation was not to take place until ten that evening, Francis Bennett went to stretch himself out in an easy chair in the audition room. Then, pressing a button, he was put into communication with the Central Concert.
After so busy a day, what a charm he found in the works of our greatest masters, based, as everybody knows, on a series of delicious harmonico-algebraic formulae!
The room had been darkened, and, plunged into an ecstatic half-sleep, Francis Bennett could not even see himself. But a door opened suddenly.
‘Who’s there?’ he asked, touching a commutator placed beneath his hand.
At once, by an electric effect produced on the ether, the air became luminous.
‘Oh, it’s you, doctor?’ he asked.
‘Myself,’ replied Dr Sam, who had come to pay his daily visit (annual subscription). ‘How’s it going?’
‘Fine!’
‘All the better... Let’s see your tongue?’
He looked at it through a microscope.
‘Good... And your pulse?’
He tested it with a pulsograph, similar to the instruments which record earthquakes.
‘Splendid!... And your appetite?’
‘Ugh!’
‘Oh, your stomach!... It isn’t going too well, your stomach!... It’s getting old, your stomach is!... We’ll certainly have to get you a new one!’
‘We’ll see!’ Francis Bennett replied. ‘And meantime, doctor, you’ll dine with me. ‘
During the meal, phonotelephotic communication had been set up with Paris. Mrs Bennett was at her table this time, and the dinner, livened up by Dr Sam’s jokes, was delightful. Hardly was it over than:
‘When do you expect to get back to Centropolis, dear Edith?’ asked Francis Bennett.
‘I’m going to start this moment. ‘
‘By tube or aero-train?’
‘By tube. ‘
‘Then you’ll be here?’
‘At eleven fifty-nine this evening. ‘
‘Paris time?’
‘No, no!... Centropolis time. ‘
‘Good-bye then, and above all don’t miss the tube!’
These submarine tubes, by which one travels from Paris in 295 minutes, are certainly much preferable to the aero-trains, which only manage 600 miles an hour.
The doctor had gone, after promising to return to be present at the resurrection of his colleague Nathaniel Faithburn. Wishing to draw up his daily accounts, Francis Bennett went into his private office. An enormous operation, when it concerns an enterprise whose expenditure rises to 800,000 dollars every day! Fortunately, the development of modern mechanisation has greatly facilitated this work. Helped by the piano-electric-computer, Francis Bennett soon completed his task.
It was time. Hardly had he struck the last key of the mechanical totalisator than his presence was asked for in the experimental room. He went off to it at once, and was welcomed by a large cortège of scientists, who had been joined by Dr Sam.
Nathaniel Faithburn’s body is there, on the bier, placed on trestles in the centre of the room.
The telephoto is switched on. The whole world will be able to follow the various phases of the operation.
The coffin is opened... Nathaniel Faithburn’s body is taken out ... It is still like a mummy, yellow, hard. dry. It sounds like wood ... It is submitted to heat... electricity... No result... It’s hypnotised... It’s exposed to suggestion... Nothing can overcome that ultra-cataleptic state.
‘Well, Dr Sam?’ asks Francis Bennett.
The doctor leans over the body: he examines it very carefully... He introduces into it, by means of a hypodermic, a few drops of the famous Brown-Séquard elixir, which is once again in fashion ... The mummy is more mummified than ever.
‘Oh well,’ Dr Sam replies, ‘I think the hibernation has lasted too long... ‘
‘Oh!’
‘And Nathaniel Faithburn is dead. ‘
‘Dead?’
‘As dead as anybody could be!’
‘And how long has he been dead?’
‘How long?’... Dr Sam replies. ‘But... a hundred years – that is to say, since he had the unhappy idea of freezing himself for pure love of science!’
‘Then,’ Francis Bennett comments, ‘that’s a method which still needs to be perfected!’
‘Perfected is the word,’ replies Dr Sam, while the scientific commission on hibernation carries away its funereal bundle.
Followed by Dr Sam, Francis Bennett regained his room, and as he seemed very tired after so very lull a day, the doctor advised him to take a bath before going to bed.
‘You’re quite right, doctor... That will refresh me...‘
‘It will, Mr Bennett, and if you like I’ll order one on my way out...’
‘There’s no need for that, doctor. There’s always a bath all ready in the office, and I needn’t even have the trouble of going out of my room to take it. Look, simply by touching this button, that bath will start moving, and you’ll see it come along all by itself with the water at a temperature of sixty-five degrees!’
Francis Bennett had just touched the button. A rumbling sound began, got louder, increased... Then one of the doors opened, and the bath appeared, gliding along on its rails...
Heavens! While Dr Sam veils his face, little screams of frightened modesty arise from the bath...
Brought to the office by the transatlantic tube half an hour before, Mrs Bennett was inside it.
Next day, July 26th 2889, the director of the Earth Herald recommenced his tour of twelve miles across his office. That evening, when his totalisator had been brought into action, it was at 250,000 dollars that it calculated the profits of that day – 50,000 more than the day before.
A fine job, that of a journalist at the end of the twenty-ninth century!
An Express of the Future
‘Take care!’ cried my conductor, ‘there’s a step!’
Safely descending the step thus indicated to me, I entered a vast room, illuminated by blinding electric reflectors, the sound of our feet alone breaking the solitude and silence of the place.
Where was I? What had I come there to do? Who was my mysterious guide? Questions unanswered. A long walk in the night, iron doors opened and reclosed with a clang, stairs descending, it seemed to me, deep into the earth – that is all I could remember. I had, however, no time for thinking.
‘No doubt you are asking yourself who I am?’ said my guide: ‘Colonel Pierce, at your service. Where are you? In America, at Boston – in a station.‘
‘A station?’
‘Yes, the starting-point of the "Boston to Liverpool Pneumatic Tubes Company".’
And, with an explanatory gesture, the colonel pointed out to me two long iron cylinders, about a metre and a half in diameter, lying upon the ground a few paces off.
I looked at these two cylinders, ending on the right in a mass of masonry, and closed on the left with heavy metallic caps, from which a cluster of tubes were carried up to the roof; and suddenly I comprehended the purpose of all this.
Had I not, a short time before, read, in an American newspaper, an article describing this extraordinary project for linking Europe with the New World by means of two gigantic submarine tubes? An inventor had claimed to have accomplished the task; and that inventor, Colonel Pierce. I had before me.
In thought I realised the newspaper article.
Complaisantly the journalist entered into the details of the enterprise. He stated that more than 3,000 miles of iron tubes, weighing over 13,000. 000 tons, were required, with the number of ships necessary, for the transport of this material – 200 ships of 2,000 tons, each making thirty-three voyages. He described this Armada of science bearing the steel to two special vessels, on board of which the ends of the tubes were joined to each other, and incased in a triple netting of iron, the whole covered with a resinous preparation to preserve it from the action of the seawater.
Coming at once to the question of working, he filled the tubes – transformed into a sort of pea-shooter of interminable length – with a series of carriages, to be carried with their travellers by powerful currents of air, in the same way that despatches are conveyed pneumatically round Paris.
A parallel with the railways closed the article, and the author enumerated with enthusiasm the advantages of the new and audacious system. According to him, there would be, in passing through these tubes, a suppression of all nervous trepidation, thanks to the interior surface being of finely polished steel; equality of temperature secured by means of currents of air, by which the heat could be modified according to the seasons; incredibly low fares, owing to the cheapness of construction and working expenses – forgetting, or waving aside, all considerations of the question of gravitation and of wear and tear.
All that now came back to my mind.
So, then, this ‘Utopia’ had become a reality, and these two cylinders of iron at my feet passed thence under the Atlantic and reached to the coast of England!
In spite of the evidence, I could not bring myself to believe in the thing having been done. That the tubes had been laid I could not doubt; but that men could travel by this route – never!
‘Was it not impossible even to obtain a current of air of that length?’ – I expressed that opinion aloud.
‘Quite easy, on the contrary!’ protested Colonel Pierce; ‘to obtain it, all that is required is a great number of steam fans similar to those used in blast furnaces. The air is driven by them with a force which is practically unlimited, propelling it at the speed of 1,800 kilometres an hour – almost that of a cannon-ball! – so that our carriages with their travellers, in the space of two hours and forty minutes, accomplish the journey between Boston and Liverpool.’
‘Eighteen hundred kilometres an hour!’ I exclaimed.
‘Not one less. And what extraordinary consequences arise from such a rate of speed! The time at Liverpool being four hours and forty minutes in advance of ours, a traveller starting from Boston at nine o’clock in the morning, arrives in England at 3.54 in the afternoon. Isn’t that a journey quickly made? In another sense, on the contrary, our trains, in this latitude, gain over the sun more than 900 kilometres an hour, beating that planet hand over hand: quitting Liverpool at noon, for example, the traveller will reach the station where we now are at thirty-four minutes past nine in the morning – that is to say, earlier than he started! Ha! ha! I don’t think one can travel quicker than that!’
I did not know what to think. Was I talking with a madman? – or must I credit these fabulous theories, in spite of the objections which rose in my mind?
‘Very well, so be it!’ I said. ‘I will admit that travellers may take this mad-brained route, and that you can obtain this incredible speed. But, when you have got this speed, how do you check it? When you come to a stop, everything must be shattered to pieces!’
‘Not at all,’ replied the colonel, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Between our tubes – one for the out, the other for the home journey – consequently worked by currents going in opposite directions – a communication exists at every joint. When a train is approaching, an electric spark advertises us of the fact; left to itself, the train would continue its course by reason of the speed it had acquired; but, simply by the turning of a handle, we are able to let in the opposing current of compressed air from the parallel tube, and, little by little, reduce to nothing the final shock of stopping. But what is the use of all these explanations? Would not a trial be a hundred times better?’
And, without waiting for an answer to his questions, the colonel pulled sharply a bright brass knob projecting from the side of one of the tubes: a panel slid smoothly in its grooves, and in the opening left by its removal I perceived a row of seats, on each of which two persons might sit comfortably side by side.
‘The carriage!’ exclaimed the colonel. ‘Come in.’
I followed him without offering any objection, and the panel immediately slid back into its place.
By the light of an electric lamp in the roof I carefully examined the carriage I was in.
Nothing could be more simple: a long cylinder, comfortably upholstered, along which some fifty armchairs, in pairs, were ranged in twenty-five parallel ranks. At either end a valve regulated the atmospheric pressure, that at the farther end allowing breathable air to enter the carriage, that in front allowing for the discharge of any excess beyond a normal pressure.
After spending a few moments on this examination, I became impatient.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘are we not going to start?’
‘Going to start?’ cried the colonel. ‘We have started!’
Started – like that – without the least jerk, was it possible? I listened attentively, trying to detect a sound of some kind that might have guided me.
If we had really started – if the colonel had not deceived me in talking of a speed of 1,800 kilometres an hour – we must already be far from any land, under the sea; above our heads the huge, foam-crested waves; even at that moment, perhaps – taking it for a monstrous sea-serpent of an unknown kind – whales were battering with their powerful tails our long, iron prison!
But I heard nothing but a dull rumble, produced, no doubt, by the passage of our carriage, and, plunged in boundless astonishment, unable to believe in the reality of all that had happened to me, I sat silently, allowing the time to pass.
At the end of about an hour, a sense of freshness upon my forehead suddenly aroused me from the torpor into which I had sunk by degrees.
I raised my hand to my brow: it was moist.
Moist! Why was that? Had the tube burst under pressure of the waters – a pressure which could not but be formidable, since it increases at the rate of ‘an atmosphere’ every ten metres of depth? Had the ocean broken in upon us?
Fear seized upon me. Terrified, I tried to call out – and – and I found myself in my garden, generously sprinkled by a driving rain, the big drops of which had awakened me. I had simply fallen asleep while reading the article devoted by an American journalist to the fantastic projects of Colonel Pierce – who, also, I much fear, has only dreamed.
The Eternal Adam
Prelude
Zartog Sofr-Ai-Sr – meaning ‘Doctor, third male representative of the hundred and first generation in the Sofr Family’ – was slowly following the principal street of Basidra, the capital of the Hars-Iten-Schu – otherwise known as ‘The Empire of the Four Seas’.
Four seas, indeed: the Tubélone or northern, the Ehone or southern, the Spone or eastern, and the Mérone or western. They bounded that vast irregularly shaped country, whose most remote points – to use the means of reckoning familiar to the reader – lay respectively in longitude 14°E and 72°W, and in latitude 54°N and 55°S.[v]
As for the size of these seas, how was it to be calculated, even approximately, for they all merged together, so that a seaman leaving any one of their shores and always following a straight course was bound to reach the shore diametrically opposite? For nowhere on the surface of the globe did there exist any land other than the Hars-Iten-Schu.
Sofr walked slowly, partly because it was very warm: the torrid season was beginning, and on Basidra, situated on the edge of the Spone-Schu, or Eastern Sea, less than 20°N of the Equator, a terrible cataract of rays was falling from the sun, then almost in the zenith.
But not only lassitude and the heat but also the weight of his thoughts slowed the step of Sofr, the savant Zartog. As he wiped his forehead with a heedless hand he recalled the session held the previous evening, when so many eloquent orators, among whom he had the honour of being counted, had magnificently celebrated the hundred and ninety-fifth anniversary of their empire’s foundation.
Some had reviewed its history, which was that of all mankind. They had described the Mahart-Iten-Schu, the Land of the Four Seas, as divided at first between an immense number of savage peoples who knew nothing of one another. It was to them that the most ancient traditions went back. As to what had gone before, nobody knew anything, and the natural sciences had hardly begun to throw a gleam of light into the impenetrable shadows of the past. Certainly those far-distant times evaded critical history, whose earliest vestiges consisted of vague notions regarding these age-old scattered peoples.
For more than 8,000 years, the history of the Mahart-Iten-Schu, gradually getting more complete and more exact, described only conflicts and wars, at first of individual against individual, then of family against family, then of tribe against tribe. Each living creature, each community, small or large, had throughout the course of the ages no other objective than to ensure its own supremacy over its competitors and to strive, with varying and often contradictory fortunes, to subject them to its laws.
After these 8,000 years, human memory had become somewhat more precise. At the opening of the second of the four great ages into which the annals of the Mahart-Iten-Schu were commonly divided, legend had begun appropriately to merit the name of history. None the less, history or legend, the subject-matter of the story hardly changed at all: always massacres and slaughters – no longer, admittedly, of tribe by tribe but henceforth of people by people – so much so, indeed, that on the whole this second period was not so very different from the first.
And it was still the same with the third period which, after having lasted nearly six centuries, had ended hardly 200 years ago. More atrocious still perhaps, this third period during which, grouped into countless armies, mankind, with its insatiable rage, had watered the earth with its own blood.
Somewhat less than eight centuries, indeed, before the day on which Zartog Sofr was following the principal street of Basidra, humanity had been rent by vast convulsions. Then weapons, fire, violence, having already accomplished much of their inevitable work and the weak having succumbed to the strong, the people of the Mahart-Iten-Schu had formed three distinct nations, in each of which time had lessened the differences between the conquerors and the conquered of the past.
Then it was that one of these nations had undertaken to subdue its neighbours. Situated near the centre of the Mahart-Iten-Schu, the Andarti-Hai-Sammgor, the Men of the Brazen Face, had struggled mercilessly to enlarge their frontiers, within which their spirited and prolific race was being choked.
One after the other, at the cost of age-long wars, they had overcome the Andarti-Mahart-Horis, the Men of the Snow Country, who inhabited the southern lands, and the Andarti-Mitra-Psul, the Men of the Motionless Star, whose empire was situated more towards the north and the west.
Nearly 200 years had elapsed since the final revolt of these two peoples had been drowned in torrents of blood, and the land had at last known an era of peace. This was the fourth period of its history. One solitary empire having replaced the three nations of olden time, and the law of Basidra having been enforced everywhere, political unity had tended to merge the races. No longer was anything said about the men with the Brazen Faces, the men of the Snow Country, the Men of the Motionless Star. The earth now bore only one unique populace, the Andart’-Iten-Schu, the Men of the Four Seas, which in itself included all the others.
But now, after these 200 years of peace, a fifth period seemed to be opening. For some time disquieting rumours, arising nobody knew where, had been going the rounds. They suggested that certain thinkers were trying to arouse in the human heart ancestral memories long believed to have been abolished. The ancient emotions of the race were being revived in a novel form characterised by newly coined words. People were now speaking of ‘atavism’, ‘affinities’, ‘nationalities’, and so forth – all recently created terms which, answering as they did to some new need, had now gained recognition.
Based upon common origin, physical appearance, moral tendency, mutual interest, or simply upon district or climate, groups were appearing, and they were obviously getting larger and showing signs of unrest. Where would this growing evolution lead? Would the empire, scarcely formed though it was, start falling to pieces? Would the Mahart-Iten-Schu be divided, as of old, between a large number of nations? Or would it, to maintain its unity, have to seek recourse to the frightful hecatombs which, lasting for thousands of years, have turned the earth into a charnel-house?
With a shake of the head Sofr cast off these thoughts. The future was something which neither he nor anyone else could possibly know. So why depress himself by the prospect of uncertain events? This was no day to brood over these sinister possibilities. Today everybody was in a cheerful mood, and nothing was thought about except the august grandeur of Mogar-Si, twelfth emperor of the Hars-Iten-Schu, whose sceptre was leading the universe to its glorious destiny.
What was more, a zartog by no means lacked grounds for rejoicing. Not only had the historian retraced the pageant of the Mahart-Iten-Schu; a constellation of savants, to mark this grandiose anniversary, had, each in his own speciality, drawn up the balance-sheet of human knowledge, and had announced the point to which its age-long efforts had brought mankind. And if the former had to some extent aroused distressing thoughts by recalling by what a slow and tortuous route it had freed itself from its bestial origin, the others had stimulated their hearers’ legitimate pride.
Yes, in very truth, it was bound to inspire admiration, the comparison between what man had been when he arrived naked and helpless upon the earth and what he was today. Throughout the centuries, in spite of discords and fratricidal hates, never for one instant had he interrupted his struggle against nature; ever had he increased the scope of his victory.
At first slow, during the last 200 years his triumphant march had been astonishingly accelerated; and the stability of political institutions and the universal peace which this had produced had stimulated a marvellous advance in science. Humanity lived not only by its limbs but by its mind; instead of exhausting itself in senseless wars, it had thought, – and that was why, in the course of the last two centuries, it had advanced ever more rapidly towards knowledge and the taming of material nature.
So, as beneath the scorching sun he followed the long Basidran street, Sofr mentally sketched in bold outline the picture of the conquests man had made.
First of all – though this was lost in the darkness of time – mankind had invented writing, so as to perpetuate his thoughts. Then – the invention went back more than 500 years – he had found a method of spreading the written word far and wide in an endless number of copies by the aid of a block cast once and for all. It was really from this invention that all the others had sprung. It was thanks to this that so many brains had come into action, that the intelligence of each had grown from that of his neighbour, and that discoveries, both theoretical and practical, had so greatly multiplied that they could no longer be counted.
Man had penetrated into the bowels of the earth and had extracted its coal, the generous donor of heat; he had liberated the latent power of water, so that steam now drew the heavy trains along the iron rails or drove a host of machines, as powerful as they were delicate and precise. Thanks to these machines, he could weave the vegetable fibres and do what he pleased with metal, marble or rock.
In a realm that was less concrete or at all events of less direct and immediate utility, he had gradually unravelled the mystery of numbers and entered ever more deeply into the infinity of mathematical truth. By this means his thought had penetrated into the sky... He knew that the sun was nothing but a star gravitating through space according to rigorous laws, dragging with its flaming orb its escort of the seven planets.[vi] He understood the art both of combining certain natural bodies into new substances with which they had nothing in common, and of dividing certain other bodies into their constituent and primordial elements. He had subjected to analysis sound, heat and light, and was beginning to realise their nature and their laws.
Fifty years ago he had learned how to generate that force whose most terrifying manifestations are lightning and thunder, and he had at once made it his slave. Already that mysterious agent transmitted the written thought over incalculable distances; tomorrow it would transmit sound; and next day, no doubt, the light[vii] ... Yes, man was great, greater than the immense universe of which, on some day yet to come, he would be the master...
But for him to possess the truth in its integrity, one last problem remained to be solved. ‘This man, master of the world, who was he? Whence came he? To what unknown ends did his tireless efforts lead?’
It was precisely this vast subject that Zartog Sofr had just discussed during the ceremony from which he had emerged. Admittedly he had done no more than to skim over its surface, for such a problem was at the moment insoluble and would no doubt long remain so.
Yet a few vague gleams had already begun to throw light upon the mystery. And of all these gleams was it not Zartog Sofr who had thrown the most powerful when, by systematising and codifying the patient observations of his predecessors and of himself, he had arrived at his law of the evolution of living matter, a law universally accepted and which had found nobody whatever to contradict it?
This theory rested upon a threefold base.
First there was the science of geology which, born on the day when the bowels of the earth had first been dug into, had reached perfection through the development of mining technique. The earth’s crust was now so perfectly known that they had dared to fix its age at 400,000 years, and that of Mahart-Iten-Schu, as it was now, at 20,000 years. This continent had formerly slept beneath the waters of the sea, as was testified to by the thick layer of marine silt which interruptedly covered the rocky beds immediately below. By what force had it been lifted above the waves? Doubtless by the contraction of the cooling globe. But whatever the truth about that, the elevation of Mahart-Iten-Schu from the sea must be regarded as proved.
The natural sciences had furnished Sofr with the two other foundations of his system, by making clear the close interrelationship on the one hand of the plants, on the other of the animals. He had gone still further: he had proved from the available evidence that almost all the plants still in existence were connected with their ancestor, a seaweed, and that all the animals of earth or air were descended from those of the sea. By a slow but incessant evolution, they had gradually adapted themselves to living conditions at first resembling, then more distant from, those of their primitive life. Thus, from stage to stage, they had given birth to most of the living beings which peopled earth and sky.
But this ingenious theory was unfortunately not unassailable. That living beings of the animal or vegetable orders had descended from marine ancestors, that seemed incontestable for almost all of them, but not for all. There still indeed existed a few plants and animals which it seemed impossible to connect with the aquatic types. That was one of the two weak points of his system.
The other weak point – and Sofr never concealed this – was mankind. Between man and the animals there was no point of union. Certainly their primordial functions and properties – such as respiration, nutrition, and movement – were similar and were obviously carried out or showed themselves in a similar manner, but an impassable gulf existed between the exterior forms, the number, and the arrangement of their organs. If, by a chain of which few of the links were missing, the great majority of the animals could be associated with their ancestors from the sea, no such affiliation was admissible as regards man. To preserve the theory of evolution intact, the truth of a hypothesis had to be assumed gratuitously, that of a stock common to the inhabitants of the waters and to man, a stock of which nothing, absolutely nothing, demonstrated the former existence.
At one time Sofr had hoped to find in the ground the arguments that favoured his predilection. At his instigation and under his direction, digging had been carried out over a long succession of years, but only to lead to results diametrically opposed to those he had hoped for.
Below a thin layer of humus formed by the decomposition of plants and animals like or similar to those of every day, there had come the thick bed of silt, and in this these vestiges of the past had changed in nature. Within this silt, no more of the contemporary flora or fauna, but a quantity of fossils exclusively marine resembling types which were still living, most of them in the oceans surrounding the Mahart-Iten-Schu.
What was to be inferred from this, if it were not that the geologists were right in stating that the continent had once served as the floor of those same oceans? And that neither had Sofr been wrong in affirming the marine origin of the contemporary fauna and flora? Since, but for exceptions so rare that they might rightly be regarded as monstrosities, the aquatic and terrestrial forms were the only ones of which any trace had been found, the latter must necessarily have been engendered by the former...
Unfortunately for the generalisation of the system, other finds were made. Scattered throughout the whole thickness of the humus, and even in the most superficial part of the deposit of silt, innumerable human bones were brought to the daylight. Nothing exceptional in the structure of these fragmentary skeletons, and Sofr had to give up asking for the intermediate organisms whose existence his theory asserted: these bones were human bones, neither more nor less.
However one fairly remarkable peculiarity was not slow to be realised. Up to a certain antiquity, which could be roughly evaluated as 2,000 or 3,000 years, the older the ossuaries were the smaller the skulls within them. Beyond that epoch, on the other hand, progress was reversed and thenceforward the further one went back into the past, the bigger was the capacity of the skulls, and the larger therefore were the brains which they had held.
The very largest were found among the debris, somewhat scanty to be sure, found on the surface of the layer of silt. The conscientious examination of these venerable remains admitted of no doubt that the men living at that distant epoch had a cerebral development far superior to that of their successors – including the very contemporaries of Zartog Sofr. So that, during a period of 160 or 170 centuries, there had been an obvious retrogression, followed by a new ascent.
Disturbed by these strange facts, Sofr pushed his researches further. The bed of silt was dug through and through; its thickness showed that at the most moderate computation it could not have taken less than 15,000 or 20,000 years to form. Beyond, much surprise was felt at the discovery of the scanty remains of another layer of humus. Then, below that humus, there was rock, its nature varying from place to place.
But what raised his astonishment to its height was the discovery of some debris, undoubtedly of human origin, obtained from these mysterious depths. They were some pieces of bones obviously of human type, and also some odds and ends of weapons and implements, potsherds, vestiges of inscriptions in a language unknown, fragments of hard stone exquisitely worked, some sculptured into statues which were still almost intact, and some into the remains of delicately worked architecture, and so forth. Taken together, these discoveries led logically to the conclusion that about 40,000 years earlier, and thus 20,000 years before the rise – nobody knew how or where – of the first representatives of contemporary man, human beings were already living in the same places and had arrived at a high degree of civilisation.
This was, indeed, the conclusion generally accepted, though there was at least one dissident.
This dissident was no other than Sofr. To admit that other races of men, separated from their successors by a gulf of 20,000 years, had at one time peopled the earth, was, to his mind, sheer folly. What would have become, in that event, of the descendants of ancestors so long vanished? Rather than welcome so absurd a hypothesis it would be better to suspend judgment. Although these strange facts were unexplained, it did not follow that they were inexplicable; sooner or later, they would be interpreted. Until then it was better to ignore them, and to keep to the following principles, so fully satisfactory to the reason:
Planetary life might be divided into two phases: before and during the age of man. During the first the earth, in a state of perpetual change, was for that very reason unhabitable and uninhabited. During the second the earth’s crust had gained enough cohesion to stabilise it. At once, having at last a solid substratum, life had appeared. It had originated in the simplest forms, and became ever more complicated to reach its climax in man, its last and most perfect expression. Hardly had he appeared upon earth than he at once began his endless ascent. At a slow but sure pace he was on his way towards his goal, the perfect knowledge and the absolute domination of the universe...
Borne away by the heat of his convictions, Sofr had gone past his house. He turned round fuming.
‘What!’ he said to himself, ‘to admit that man – 40,000 years ago! – had reached a civilisation comparable with – if not superior to – that which we enjoy today? That its knowledge and achievements have vanished, without leaving the slightest trace, so completely that their descendants had to start right at the beginning, as if they were the pioneers in a world as yet uninhabited?... But that would be to deny the future, to announce that our efforts are all in vain, and that all progress is as precarious and as uncertain as a bubble of foam on the surface of the waves!’
In front of his house he stopped.
‘Upsa ni!... hartchok! (No, indeed no!...), Andant mir’ hoë spha!... (man is the master of things...)’ –he murmured as he opened the door.
When the Zartog was somewhat rested, he lunched with a good appetite, then stretched himself out for his daily siesta. But the questions over which he had been pondering as he was coming home still obsessed him and drove away sleep.
Greatly as he wished to demonstrate the complete unity of nature’s methods, he had too critical a mind to fail to realise how weak his system was when it touched on the problem of man’s origin and development. To adapt the facts to agree with a foregone conclusion, that is one way of convincing others, but not of convincing oneself.
If instead of being a savant, a most eminent zartog, Sofr had been classed among the illiterates he would have been less embarrassed. The people, in fact, without wasting their time in deep reflections, were content to accept with their eyes closed the ancient legend which from time immemorial had been handed down from father to son. Explaining one mystery by another, they had ascribed the origin of man to the intervention of a Higher Will. There was a time when that extra-terrestrial power had created out of nothing Hedom and Hiva, the first man and first woman, whose descendants had populated the earth. After that everything followed quite simply.
Too simply! As Sofr reflected. When you have given up trying to understand something, it is only too easy to bring in the intervention of a deity. But that makes it useless to look for an answer to the riddles of the universe, for no sooner are the questions asked than they are suppressed.
If only that legend had even the semblance of a serious basis!... But it was founded upon nothing. It was only a tradition, born in the epochs of ignorance, and thence transmitted from age to age. As for that name ‘Hedom’! Where did that strange vocable come from, for it did not seem to belong to the language of the Andart’-Iten-Schu?
Confronted only with that trifling philological difficulty countless savants had worn themselves out unable to find any satisfactory answer... All nonsense that was, unworthy of a zartog’s attention.
Sofr was still agitated as he went into his garden. Still, this was the hour when he usually did so. The setting sun shed a less scorching heat over the earth, and a warm breeze was beginning to blow in from the Spone-Schu. The Zartog wandered along the paths in the shadow of the trees whose trembling leaves murmured in the wind from the open sea, and little by little his nerves regained their accustomed calm. He was at last able to shake off these troublesome thoughts and to enjoy the open air, to feel an interest in the fruits which formed the wealth of his garden, and in the flowers, its ornaments.
His chance footsteps bringing him back towards the house, he stopped on the edge of a deep excavation in which were scattered a number of tools. There, before long, would be laid the foundations of a new building which would double the size of his laboratory. But on this general holiday the workers had abandoned their task, and had gone off to enjoy themselves.
Sofr was rather casually estimating the extent of the work already done and still remaining to do when in the shadows of the excavation a shining point attracted his gaze. Interested, he went down into the depths of the hole, and freed a strange-looking object from the earth which partly covered it.
Returned to the daylight, the Zartog examined his find. It was a sort of container, constructed of some unknown metal of a greyish colour and a granular texture, and whose brightness had been dimmed by its long stay in the ground. At one-third of its length, a crack showed that the case consisted of two parts one inside the other. He tried to open it.
At his first attempt the metal, disintegrated by time, fell into dust and revealed a second object which it contained.
The material of which this object was formed was as great a novelty for the Zartog as the metal which had hitherto protected it. It was a roll of sheets superimposed and covered with strange signs, whose regularity indicated that they were written characters of an unfamiliar type. Sofr had never seen anything like them or even distantly resembling them.
Trembling with emotion, the Zartog hurried to shut himself in his laboratory. After carefully spreading out the precious document he began to study it.
Yes, it was indeed writing, nothing could be more certain than that. But it was no less certain that this writing resembled none of those which, since the beginning of historic time, had been used anywhere on the surface of the earth.
Whence came that document? What did it signify? Such were the two questions which at once confronted Sofr’s mind.
To reply to the first he had of course to be able to reply to the second. So it was first a question of reading and then of translating – for it could be affirmed a priori that the language in which this document was written was as unknown as its writing.
Would that be impossible? The Zartog Sofr did not think so. Without further delay he set feverishly to work.
The work lasted long, very long, for whole years. Sofr did not give up. Without letting himself get discouraged, he continued his methodical study of the mysterious document, advancing step by step towards the light. At last the day came when he grasped the key to this undecipherable riddle, the day when, though still with much hesitation and more trouble, he could translate it into the tongue of the Men-of-the-Four-Seas.
And when that day came, Zartog Sofr-Ai-Sr read what follows:
Rosario, May 24th, 2...
I date the opening of my narrative in this way although it was really drawn up much more recently and in very different surroundings. But in such a matter order is to my mind imperiously necessary, and for this reason I have adopted the form of a ‘journal’ written from day to day.
Thus it is May 24th that opens the narration of those frightful happenings which I propose to describe for the enlightenment of those who come after me – if indeed mankind is still entitled to count on any future whatever.
In what language shall I write? In English or in Spanish, which I speak fluently? No! I shall write in the language of my own country: in French.
That day, May 24th, I had invited a few friends to my villa in Rosario.
Rosario is or rather was a Mexican town, on the shore of the Pacific, a little to the south of the Gulf of California. About ten years previously I had settled there to direct the exploitation of a silver-mine which I owned. My affairs had gone surprisingly well. I was rich, very rich indeed – that word makes me laugh today! – and I was intending before long to go back to my own country, France.
My villa, a very luxurious one, was situated on the highest point of a large garden which sloped down towards the sea and ended abruptly in a steep cliff, over a hundred yards high. To its rear the ground rose still further, and by using the zig-zag roads we could reach the crest of the mountains at a height of more than 1,500 yards. It was a very pleasant run - I had often climbed it in my car, a fine powerful open car of thirty-five horse-power, one of the best French makes.
I had been living at Rosario with my son Jean, a fine lad of twenty, when, on the death of some relatives distant by blood but near to my heart I welcomed their daughter Hélène, an orphan totally unprovided for. Since then five years had elapsed. My son Jean was now twenty-five and my ward Hélène twenty; in my secret heart I destined them for one another.
Our wants were attended to by a valet, Germain, by Modeste Simonat, an expert chauffeur, and by two servants Edith and Mary, the daughters of my gardener George Raleigh and his wife Anna.
That day, May 24th, there were eight of us sitting round my table, in the light of lamps fed by electrogenic groups installed in the garden. In addition to the master of the house, his son, and his ward, there were five others, three belonging to the Anglo-Saxon race and two to the Mexican peoples.
Dr Bathurst figured among the former and Dr Moreno among the latter. Both were savants in the broadest acceptance of the word, but this did not keep them from being very seldom in agreement. At heart they were splendid fellows and the best friends in the world.
The two other Anglo-Saxons were Williamson, the owner of an important fishery in Rosario; and Rowling, an enterprising businessman who had founded near the town a number of market gardens from which he was reaping a rich fortune.
As for the last of the guests, it was Señor Mendoza, president of the Rosario law-courts, a worthy man with a cultivated mind and of high integrity.
We reached the end of the meal without any noteworthy incident. What we talked about till then I have forgotten. Not so, on the other hand, regarding what we said as we smoked our cigars.
Not that our remarks were of any importance in themselves, but the brutal commentary soon to be made upon them could not fail to give them a certain piquancy. For this reason I have never been able to get them out of my mind.
We had come – how, it doesn’t matter! – to speak of the wonderful progress accomplished by man. Then Dr Bathurst said:
‘It’s a fact that if Adam (which naturally, as an Anglo-Saxon, he pronounced Edem ) and Eve (which of course he pronounced Iva ) were to come back upon the earth, they’d have a nice surprise!’
That was the beginning of the discussion. A fervent Darwinist, and a convinced supporter of natural selection, Moreno asked Bathurst ironically if he seriously believed in the legend of the Earthly Paradise. Bathurst replied that at any rate he believed in God and that as the existence of Adam and Eve was stated in the Bible, he refused to question it.
Moreno retorted that he believed in God at least as much as his adversary, but it was quite likely that the first man and the first woman were only myths and symbols. So there was nothing irreligious in supposing that the Bible had meant thus to typify the breath of Me introduced by the Creative Power into the first cell, from which all the others had then evolved.
Bathurst retorted that this explanation was specious and that for his part he thought it more complimentary to be the direct work of Divinity rather than to be descended from it by the intermediary of more or less simian primates...
I saw that the time had come for the discussion to get heated, but it suddenly ended, the two adversaries having chanced to find some common ground. It is this way, indeed, that such things usually finish.
This time, returning to their first subject, the two antagonists agreed, whatever might be his origin, in admiring the high degree of culture that man had attained, they enumerated his conquests with pride. We all joined in. Bathurst praised chemistry, brought to such a degree of perfection that it was tending to disappear and merge into physics; the two subjects were now becoming one, whose object was the study of immanent energy. Moreno praised medicine and surgery, thanks to which such researches had been made into the intimate nature of the phenomena of life that in the near future the immortality of living organisms might well be hoped for. They both congratulated themselves on the heights attained by astronomy. Were we not now in communication, failing the stars, with seven of the planets of the solar system?[viii]
Wearied out by their enthusiasm, the two snatched some moments’ rest. The others, in their turn, took advantage of this to put in a word, and we entered upon the vast field of practical inventions which have so profoundly modified human conditions. We praised the railways and the steamers, used for the carriage of heavy and cumbersome merchandise; the economical aeronefs, used by travellers who are not pressed for time; the pneumatic or electro-ionic tubes that traverse every continent and sea, used by people in a hurry. We praised the countless machines, each more ingenious than the other, of which, in certain industries, one alone can perform the work of a hundred men. We praised printing and the photography of colour and of light, sound, heat, and all the vibrations of the ether. We especially praised electricity, that agent so adaptable, so docile, and so thoroughly understood in its properties and in its nature, which enables us, without the slightest mechanical connection, either to work any mechanism whatever or to steer a vessel across or under the sea or through the air; either to write, to converse, or to see one another no matter how great the distance between us.
It was quite a dithyramb in which, I must admit, I took part. We were all agreed that mankind had reached an intellectual level unknown before our time, and that this justified us in believing in its definitive triumph over nature.
‘However,’ broke in the gentle voice of President Mendoza, taking advantage of the silence which followed. ‘I will venture to say that there may have been peoples, now vanished without leaving the slightest trace, who reached a civilisation equal or analogous to our own.’
‘Which?’ asked everybody at once.
‘Oh well!... The Babylonians, for example.’
There followed a burst of mirth. To dare to compare the Babylonians with modem man!
The Egyptians,’ Don Mendoza went on quietly.
We laughed louder than ever.
"There are the Atlanteans, too – it’s only our ignorance that makes us regard them as legendary,’ the president continued.’You might add that an infinity of other peoples, older than the Atlanteans themselves, may have appeared, prospered, and died out without our knowing anything about them!’
Don Mendoza insisted on his paradox and, so as not to hurt his feelings, we agreed to pretend to take him seriously.
‘But look here, my dear president,’ Moreno insinuated, in the sort of tone one uses to make a child see reason, ‘you don’t want to claim. I suppose, that any of those ancient peoples could be compared to ourselves?... In morality, I agree that they reached the same degree of culture, but in material things!’
‘Why not?’ Don Mendoza objected.
‘Because,’ Bathurst hastened to explain, ‘the great thing about our inventions is that they spread instantaneously over the earth: the disappearance of one people, or even a large number of peoples, would leave the sum of human progress intact. For human achievements to be lost, all mankind would have to vanish at once. Is that, I ask you, an admissible hypothesis?...’
While we were talking in this way, effects and causes went on interacting throughout the infinite universe, and less than a minute after Dr Bathurst had asked this question, their final result would justify Mendoza’s scepticism only too completely.
But we had no suspicion of this, and we went on talking quietly. Some leaning over the backs of their chairs, others with their elbows on the table, we were all turning pitying glances on Mendoza, who, as we thought, had been completely floored by Bathurst’s reply.
‘First,’ the president replied unemotionally, ‘we can well believe that in the old days the earth had fewer inhabitants than it has now, so that one nation might be the only one to possess universal knowledge. Then I don’t see anything absurd, on the face of it, in supposing that the whole surface of the globe should be overwhelmed at once!’
‘Nonsense,’ we exclaimed in chorus.
It was at that very moment that there came the cataclysm.
We had hardly chorussed ‘Nonsense!’ when a terrible din broke out. The ground trembled and gave way under our feet, the villa shook on its foundations.
We rose, we jostled together; the victims of an indescribable terror, we rushed outside.
Scarcely had we crossed the threshold than the house collapsed, burying in its ruins President Mendoza and my valet Germain, who had been coming out last. After a few seconds’ natural consternation we were going to try to rescue them when we saw Raleigh, my gardener, followed by his wife, rushing from his house at the end of the garden.
‘The sea!... The sea!...’ he was shouting at the top of his voice.
Turning towards the ocean, I stood there motionless, stupefied. It was not that I realised what I was seeing, but I felt at once that my whole surroundings had completely changed. And was not that enough to chill the heart with fright when the whole aspect of nature, that nature which we always think of as essentially changeless, could be so strangely transformed in a few seconds?
Yet I was not slow in regaining my presence of mind. The true superiority of man is not to conquer and dominate nature. It is for the thinking man, to understand it, to hold the whole universe in the microcosm of his mind. It is, for the man of action, to keep a calm spirit before the revolt of matter. It is to tell himself: ‘I may be destroyed, yes! but unnerved, never!’
As soon as I had regained my calm, I realised how the scene before my eyes differed from what I was accustomed to see. The cliff had vanished, simply vanished, and my garden was sloping down to the edge of the sea, whose waves, after destroying the gardener’s house, were beating furiously against the lowermost flower-beds.
As it was hardly admissible that the level of the sea had risen, it necessarily followed that that of the land had fallen. The subsidence was more than a hundred yards, for that had hitherto been the height of the cliff, but it must have taken place fairly gently, for we had hardly perceived it. This explained the comparative calmness of the ocean.
A few minutes’ thought told me that my theory was correct; what was more, it showed me that the descent had not yet stopped. Indeed, the sea was continuing to rise with a speed apparently of about six feet a second – roughly four or five miles an hour. Given the distance between us and the foremost of the waves, we should thus be swallowed up in less than three minutes, if the speed of the subsidence stayed the same.
I came to a decision at once:
‘My car!’ I shouted.
They saw what I meant. We dashed towards the garage, and dragged the car outside. In a twinkling it was filled with petrol, and we crowded pell-mell into it. My chauffeur. Simonat, swung the starting-handle, jumped to the wheel, engaged the clutch, and set off up the road in low gear, while Raleigh, having opened the gate, grabbed the car as it went by and hung on to the back springs.
It was high time! Just at the moment when the car reached the road, a wave broke, washing right up to the centre of the wheels. Bah! Now we could laugh at the pursuit of the sea. Although it was overloaded, my fine car would know how to keep us out of its reach, and so long as the descent into the gulf did not go on indefinitely... Indeed, we had plenty of room: two hours’ climb at least, to a possible height of about 1,500 yards.
But I soon had to realise that it was not yet time to shout victory. After the first leap of the car had carried us about twenty yards beyond the line of foam, it was in vain that Simonat did his utmost: the distance did not increase. There could be no doubt about it: the weight of twelve people was slowing us down. However that might be. our speed was almost exactly that of the advancing water, which always kept the same distance away.
We soon realised our disquieting position and, except for Simonat, who had his hands full driving the car, we turned round towards the road we were leaving behind us. We could see nothing but water. As fast as we conquered it, the road vanished beneath the sea, which was conquering it at the same rate.
The sea itself was calm. A few ripples were quietly dying out against an ever-changing shore. It was a lake which kept on swelling, swelling, with a steady motion, and nothing could be more tragic than our pursuit by that calm sea. It was in vain that we fled before it: the water rose implacably with us...
Simonat was keeping his eyes fixed on the road. When we came to one of the turnings he told us:
‘Here we are, halfway up the slope. Still another hour’s climb.’
We shuddered. What! Within an hour we were going to reach the top, and we should have to go on down, hunted, caught up perhaps, whatever our speed, by the masses of liquid which would crash like an avalanche on top of us!...
The hour passed without any change in the situation. We could already distinguish the summit of the hill when the car was violently shaken and made a lurch which threatened to smash it against the stones by the side of the way. Meanwhile a great wave rose behind us, rushed forward to attack the hill, overhung and at last broke right over the car, which was surrounded by its foam... Were we going to be swallowed up?...
No! The water retired, seething, while the motor, suddenly panting more quickly, speeded up.
Where had that sudden acceleration come from? The cry that Anna Raleigh gave told us: the poor woman had just realised that her husband was no longer hanging on the springs. The backwash of the wave had torn the wretched fellow away, and that was why the lightened car was climbing the slope more easily.
Suddenly it stopped dead.
‘What’s up?’ I asked Simonat. ‘A breakdown?’
Even in these tragic circumstances, professional pride still maintained its rights: Simonat gave a disdainful shrug of his shoulders, by way of letting me know that to a chauffeur of his sort breakdowns were unknown. Then, raising his hand, he silently pointed ahead. Thus the stop was explained.
The road was cut less than ten yards away from us. ‘Cut’ is the very word; it might have been slashed with a knife. Beyond the sharp crest in which it ended, there was emptiness, a shadowy gulf in whose depths it was impossible to distinguish anything.
We turned round bewildered, sure that our last hour had come. The ocean which had pursued us even on to heights was bound to catch up with us in a few seconds...
Except for the unhappy Anna and her daughters, who were sobbing as though their hearts were breaking, we gave a cry of joyful surprise. No, the water was no longer moving upwards, or, more precisely, the earth had stopped falling. The shaking we had just felt had no doubt been the last manifestation of the phenomenon. The ocean had halted, and its level was still nearly a hundred yards below the point where we were grouped around our car, which was still throbbing, like an anim al out of breath after a rapid run.
Shall we be able to get out of this predicament? We cannot know until daybreak. Until then, we shall have to wait. One after another we stretched ourselves out on the ground, and I think, God forgive me, that I must have fallen asleep...
During the night
I am suddenly aroused by a terrible noise. What time is it? I don’t know. Moreover, we are still drowned in the shadows of night.
The noise is coming from the impenetrable gulf into which the road has collapsed. What has happened?... I could swear that masses of water were falling in cataracts, that gigantic waves were violently crashing together... Yes, it must be that, for swirls of foam are reaching us, and we are covered by the spray.
Then gradually calm returns... Silence covers everything... The sky is getting lighter... It’s daybreak.
May 25th
What agony, the slow realisation of our actual position! At first we can distinguish only our immediate surroundings, but the circle widens, grows ever wider, as if our disappointed hopes were lifting one after another an infinite number of flimsy veils; – and at last it is broad daylight, which dispels the last of our illusions.
Our situation is quite simple and can be summed up in a few words: we are on an island. The sea surrounds us on every side. Yesterday we should have seen a whole ocean of summits, several higher than the one on which we now find ourselves. These summits have vanished while, for reasons which must remain forever unknown, our own, though more humble, has been stopped in its gentle fall: in their place is a boundless sheet of water. On all sides, nothing but the sea. We are occupying the only solid point within the immense circle of the horizon.
A glance is enough to reveal the whole extent of the islet upon which some extraordinary chance has found us a refuge. It is indeed quite small: 1,000 yards long at most, and 500 in the other direction. To north, west, and south, its crest, rising only about a hundred yards above the waves, joins them by a fairly gentle slope. To the east, on the other hand, the islet ends in a cliff falling sheerly down into the ocean.
It is above all to that side that we turn our eyes. In that direction we ought to see range upon range of mountains, and beyond them the whole of Mexico. What a change in the space of a short spring night! The mountains have vanished. Mexico has been swallowed up! In their place is a boundless desert, the arid desert of the sea!
We stare at each other, terrified. Penned up, without food, without drinking-water, on this bare narrow rock, we cannot cherish even the faintest hope. We grimly lie down on the ground and set ourselves to wait for death.
On board the Virginia, June 4th
What happened during the next few days? I can’t remember. Presumably I ended by at last losing consciousness; I only came back to my senses on board the vessel which picked us up. Then only did I learn that we had spent ten whole days on the islet, and that two of our number, Williamson and Rowling, had died of hunger and thirst. Of the fourteen people whom my home had sheltered at the moment of the disaster, there were now only nine: my son Jean and my ward Hélène, my chauffeur Simonat, inconsolable at the loss of his machine, Anna Raleigh and her two daughters, Dr Bathurst and Dr Moreno – and lastly myself, I who hasten to jot down these lines for the edification of future peoples, assuming, that is, that they will ever be born.
The Virginia, which is carrying us, is a ‘mixed’ vessel – with steam and sails – of about2,000 tons, devoted to merchant traffic. She is a fairly old ship, rather a slow sailer. Captain Morris has twenty men under his command; he and his crew are English.
The Virginia left Melbourne under ballast a little over a month ago, sailing for Rosario. No incident had marked her voyage except, on the night of May 24th, a series of deep-sea waves rising to a prodigious height; but they were of a proportionate length and this made them inoffensive. However strange they might be these waves could not have forewarned the captain of the cataclysm which was taking place at that time.
So he was amazed to find nothing but the sea where he had expected to make Rosario and the Mexican coast. Of that shore, there remained nothing but an islet. One of the Virginia’s boats put off to that islet, on which eleven inanimate bodies were found. Two were only corpses; the nine others were taken on board. It was in this way we were saved.
On land – January or February
An interval of eight months separates the last of the preceding lines from the first which follow. I date these January or February because it is impossible to be more precise, for I have no longer any exact notion of time.
These eight months formed the most atrocious of our trials, those during which, getting ever more strictly rationed, we realised the full extent of our misfortune.
After picking us up, the Virginia cruised on at full steam towards the east. When I regained my senses, the islet where we had barely escaped death had long been below the horizon. According to our bearings, which the captain obtained from a cloudless sky. we were then sailing exactly over the place where Mexico should have been. But of Mexico there remained not a trace – no more than they had been able to find, while I was unconscious, of its central mountains; no more than any land whatever could be distinguished anywhere, no matter how far they looked. Everywhere, nothing but the infinity of the sea.
The realisation of this was indeed terrifying. We feared that our minds would give way. What! All Mexico swallowed up!... We exchanged horrified glances, silently asking one another how far the ravages of this frightful cataclysm extended...
Wishing to clear this matter up, the captain steered towards the north: even if Mexico no longer existed, it was unthinkable that this could be true of the whole continent of America.
Yet true it was. We cruised vainly northwards for twelve days without sighting land, nor did we sight it when we put about and steered southwards for nearly a month. However paradoxical it might appear, we had to give way to the evidence; yes, the whole of the American continent had been engulfed by the waves!
Then had we been saved only to experience the agonies of death a second time? We had certainly good reason to fear so. Without speaking of the food, which would give out sooner or later, a more urgent danger threatened us: what would become of us when our engines came to a standstill for lack of fuel? So the heart of an animal stops beating for lack of blood.
This was why, on July 14th – we were then almost at the former position of Buenos Aires – Captain Morris let the fires die out and hoisted the sails. That done, he mustered all the personnel of the Virginia, passengers and crew, explained the position to us in a few words, and asked us to think it over and to make any suggestions we could at the council he meant to hold next day.
I do not know whether any of my companions in misfortune could think of any more or less ingenious expedient. For my part, I must admit. I was still hesitating, quite uncertain what to suggest, when the question was settled by a tempest that sprang up during the night. We had to fly westwards, swept along by a tempestuous gale, always on the point of being swallowed up by a raging sea.
The hurricane lasted thirty-five days, without a minute’s interruption, or even a momentary lull. We were beginning to despair of its ever ending when, on August 19th, the fine weather returned as suddenly as it had stopped. The captain seized the opportunity to take our bearings: his calculations showed 40° north latitude and 114° east longitude. These were the coordinates of Pekin!
Thus we had sped over Polynesia, and perhaps even over Australia, without realising it. There, where we were now floating, had once been the capital of an empire numbering 400 million souls!
Then Asia had suffered the fate of America?
We were soon convinced of this. The Virginia, still heading for the south-west, reached the latitude of Tibet and then that of the Himalayas. Here ought to have towered the highest summits of earth. Yet wherever we looked, nothing emerged from the surface of the sea. We had to believe that there no longer existed, anywhere on earth, any solid land other than the islet which had saved us – that we were the only survivors of the cataclysm, the last inhabitants of a world wrapped in the moving shroud of the sea!
If this were so, it would not be long before we too in our turn would perish. In spite of our strict rationing, our store of provisions was diminishing, and we had to give up all hopes of renewing them...
I will not dwell on the record of that frightful voyage. If, to describe it in detail, I were to try to relive it day by day, its memory would drive me mad. However strange and terrible were the events which preceded and followed it, however distressing the future seems – a future which I shall never see – it was during that infernal voyage that we reached the height of our fear.
Oh, that eternal cruise over an endless sea! To expect every day to get somewhere, and to see the end of the journey forever receding!
To live poring over the maps on which human hands had traced the irregular line of the coast, and to realise that nothing, absolutely nothing, remained of these lands which had once been thought eternal! To tell ourselves that the earth, quivering with innumerable lives, that the millions of men and the myriads of animals which had traversed it in every direction or had soared through the air, had gone out like a tiny flame in a breath of wind! To look everywhere for our fellows and to look in vain! To become little by little convinced that nowhere around us was any living thing, to realise ever more clearly our loneliness in the midst of a pitiless universe!...
Have I found words suitable for expressing my anguish? I do not know. In no language whatever are there terms adequate for so completely unprecedented a situation.
After ascertaining that where the Indian peninsula had once been the sea now flowed, we headed to the north-west. Without the slightest change in our condition, we crossed the Ural chain – which had now become a submarine range of mountains – and sailed on over what once had been Europe. We then descended southwards, to twenty degrees beyond the Equator. Next, weary of our fruitless search, we made our way back towards the north and traversed, even over the Pyrenees, the sheet of water which covered Africa and Spain.
To tell the truth, we were beginning to get used to our terror. Wherever we went, we marked our route on our charts, and said to one another: Here, this was Moscow... Warsaw... Berlin Vienna... Rome... Tunis... Timbuctoo... St Louis... Or an... Madrid...’ But we spoke with growing indifference, and, having become habituated to it, we were at last able to pronounce these words, really so full of tragedy, without the slightest emotion.
But so far as I was concerned I had not yet exhausted my capacity for suffering. I can see it still, that day – it was about December 11th – when Captain Morris told me ‘Here, this was Paris...’ At these words I felt that my heart was being torn out. That the universe might be swallowed up, well and good. But France – my France! – and Paris, which symbolised her!...
From beside me came something like a sob. I turned round; it was Simonat who was weeping.
For another four days we pushed on towards the north; then, having reached the latitude of Edinburgh, we turned towards the south-west in search of Ireland, and then towards the east... We were really wandering about at random, for there Was no reason to go in one direction rather than in any other...
We sailed above London, whose liquid tomb was saluted by the whole crew. Five days later, when we were at the latitude of Danzig, the captain decided to go about and gave orders that we were to head to the south-west. The helmsman obeyed passively. What difference could that make to him? Wasn’t it the same on every side?...
It was when we had sailed in that direction for nine days that we swallowed our last scrap of biscuit.
As we stared at one another with haggard eyes. Captain Morris unexpectedly ordered the fires to be lighted. What notion was he giving way to? I still ask myself that; but the order was obeyed; the speed of our vessel increased...
Two days later we were suffering cruelly from hunger. After another two days, almost everyone obstinately refused to leave his bunk; there was only the captain, Simonat, a few members of the crew, and myself, with enough energy to keep the ship on course.
The next day, the fifth of our fast, the number of well-disposed steersmen and stokers had decreased still further. Another twenty-four hours and none of us would have the strength to stand.
We had then been travelling for more than seven months. For more than seven months we had been furrowing the sea in every direction. I think it must have been January 8th – I say ‘I think’ for I cannot possibly be more precise, for by now the calendar had lost much of its meaning for us.
And it was on that day, while I was at the wheel and devoting all my flagging attention to the compass, that I seemed to make out something towards the west. Thinking that I was the plaything of some error, I stared...
No, I was not mistaken!
I gave a veritable roar, then, hanging on to the wheel, I shouted at the top of my voice:
‘Land on the starboard bow!’
What a magic effect those words had! All those dying men revived at once, and their haggard faces lined the starboard rail.
‘Yes, land it is,’ said Captain Morris, after scrutinising the cloud rising above the horizon.
Half an hour later, it was impossible to feel the slightest doubt. It was certainly land which, after seeking it in vain all over the former continents, we had found in the midst of the Atlantic Ocean!
About three in the afternoon we could make out the details of the coast which barred our way, and we sank back into despair. In very truth this shore was unlike any other, and not one of us could remember ever seeing a coast so completely, so absolutely wild.
In the countries where we had lived before the disaster, green had always been the most abundant colour. Not one of us had ever known a coast so forsaken, a country so arid, that we could not find upon it a few shrubs, even if only a few tufts of gorse, or a few trails of lichen or moss. Here, nothing of the sort. All we could distinguish was a tall blackish cliff, at whose foot lay a chaos of rocks, without a plant, without a solitary blade of grass. It was the most complete, the most total, desolation that one could imagine.
For two days we coasted that abrupt cliff without finding the smallest gap. It was only towards the evening of the second day that we discovered a large bay. well sheltered against the winds of the open sea, in whose depths we let fall the anchor.
After reaching land in our boats, our first care was to collect some food from the shore, which was covered with turtles by the hundred and shell-fish by the million. In the crevices of the rocks we found fabulous quantities of crabs and lobsters, to say nothing of innumerable fish. To all appearances this sea was so richly inhabited that, failing any other resources, it would suffice to assure our subsistence for an indefinite time.
When we were restored, a gap in the cliff enabled us to reach the plateau, which we found to cover a wide expanse. The appearance of the coast had not deceived us: on all sides, in every direction, there was nothing but arid rocks, covered with seaweed and wrack – most of it dried up – without the smallest blade of grass, with no living thing either on the ground or in the sky. Here and there were tiny lakes, or rather ponds, gleaming in the sunshine, but when we sought to quench our thirst, we realised that they were salt.
To tell the truth, this did not surprise us. It confirmed what we had thought right from the outset, that this unknown continent was born yesterday and had risen, in one solid mass, from the depths of the sea. This explained both its aridity and its utter loneliness. It moreover explained this thick layer of mud, uniformly spread, which as the result of evaporation was beginning to crack and to fall into dust.
Next day, at noon, our bearings showed 17° 20’ north latitude and 23° 55’ west longitude. On consulting the map, we found that this was right in the open sea, nearly on a level with Cape Verde. And yet towards the west the land, and towards the east the sea, now extended out of sight.
However repulsive and inhospitable was this continent upon which we had set foot, we should have to be satisfied with it. For this reason the unloading of the Virginia was begun without further delay. We carried on to the plateau, at random, everything she contained. First, however, the ship had been securely moored with four anchors, in fifteen fathoms of water. In this quiet bay she was in no danger, and we could quite safely leave her to herself.
As soon as the unloading was complete, our new life began. In the first place we had to...
When he reached this point in his translation Zartog Sofr had to pause. In this place the manuscript had the first of its lacunae; this seemed to involve a large number of pages, and it was followed by several others which to all appearances were larger still. No doubt, in spite of the protection given by the case, many of the sheets had been attacked by damp; there remained only a few more or less lengthy fragments, their context having been destroyed. They were in the following order:
... beginning to get acclimatised.
How long is it since we landed on this coast? I no longer know. I asked Dr Moreno, who keeps a calendar of the days as they flow by. He told me: ‘Six months... " Then he added, ‘Within a few days,’ for fear of being mistaken.
So there we are already! It’s only needed six months for us not to be sure of keeping an exact count of time. That promises well!
But on the whole there is nothing surprising in our negligence. It takes all our attention, all our efforts, to keep ourselves alive. To feed ourselves is a problem whose solution takes the whole day. What do we eat? Fish, when we can find any, and every day that gets harder, for our ceaseless hunt is scaring them. We also eat turtles’ eggs and a few edible seaweeds. By evening we have fed, but we are exhausted, and all we think about is sleep.
We have improvised some tents out of the Virginia’s sails. I expect that soon we’ll have to build some better shelter.
Sometimes we shoot a bird; the air is not so completely deserted as we had thought, and a dozen known species are represented on his new continent. They are one and all migratory birds: the swallow, albatross, and so forth. Presumably they can find no food on this land, devoid of vegetation as it is, for they never stop flying round our camp, and this helps to eke out our wretched meals. Sometimes we are able to pick up one that has died of hunger, which saves our powder and shot.
Fortunately, however, there is a possibility that our situation will become less wretched. We have found a sack of wheat in the Virginia’s hold, and we sowed half of it. That will help us greatly when the wheat grows. But will it sprout? The ground is covered with a thick sheet of alluvium, a sandy mud enriched by the decomposition of the seaweeds; poor though its quality may be, it is soil all the same. When we landed it was impregnated with salt; but since then torrential rains have washed copiously over the surface, and all the depressions are now full of fresh water.
Yet the alluvial layer has been freed from its salt only on its surface; the streams and the very rivers which are beginning to form are all strongly brackish, and this shows that its depths are still saturated.
To sow the corn and keep the other half of it in reserve, we almost had to fight. Some of the Virginia’s crew wanted to make all of it into bread at once. We have had to...
... that we had on board the Virginia. The two pairs of rabbits have run off into the interior and we haven’t seen them since. I suppose they’ve found something to live on. Then does the land, unknown to us. produce...
... two years, at least, that we’ve been here!... The wheat has grown splendidly. We have almost as much bread as we want, and our fields are alwaysgetting wider. But what a struggle against the birds! They have multiplied amazingly, and all around our crops...
In spite of the deaths I mentioned, our little tribe is no smaller. On the contrary. My son and my ward have three children, and each of the three other households likewise. All these kids are in radiant health. Presumably the human species has a greater vigour, a more intense vitality, now that it is so much less numerous. But what causes...
... here for ten years, and we knew nothing about this continent. All we had seen of it was a distance of several miles round our camp. It was Dr Bathurst who made us ashamed of our weakness: at his suggestion we got the Virginia into service, which took nearly six months, and made a voyage of exploration.
We got back the day before yesterday. The voyage lasted longer than we thought, because we wanted to carry it out thoroughly.
We went all round this continent which, everything makes us think, must be, with our islet, the only stretch of solid land that now exists on the earth’s surface. Its shores seemed much the same everywhere, very craggy and very wild.
Our voyage was interrupted by several excursions into the interior; we especially hoped to find traces of the Azores and Madeira – situated, before the cataclysm, in the Atlantic Ocean, which certainly ought to make them a part of the new continent. – We could not recognise even the smallest vestige of them. All that we could find is that everywhere round their position the ground is upheaved and covered with a thick layer of lava; no doubt they were the centre of some great volcanic eruption.
Yet, if we failed to find what we were looking for, we found something we were not looking for at all! Half buried in the lava, in the latitude of the Azores, some evidences of human handiwork caught our eye – but not the handiwork of the inhabitants of these islands, our contemporaries of yesteryear. These were the remains of some columns and pottery, such as none of us had ever seen before. After studying them, Dr Moreno put forward the theory that these remains must have come from ancient Atlantis, and that it was the volcanic flow that restored them to the light of day.
Dr Moreno may be right. If it ever existed, the legendary Atlantis must certainly have been somewhere near the new continent. If so it is certainly very strange that three different races of man have followed one another in the same region.
However this may be, I declare that the problem leaves me cold: we have plenty to keep us busy in the present, without worrying about the past.
As soon as we got back to our camp, it struck us that, compared with the rest of the country, the region we occupied seems much favoured. This is due solely to the fact that the colour green, formerly so abundant in nature, is not completely unknown here, while it seems to have been radically suppressed elsewhere in the continent. We had not noticed this before, but it cannot be denied. Some blades of grass, which never existed at all before we landed, are now growing around us in fairly large numbers. They belong only to a few of the most common species, whose seeds were doubtless brought here by the birds.
It must not be inferred, however, that except for these familiar species there is no vegetation. Through the strangest work of adaptation, on the other hand, a vegetation in at least a rudimentary and promising state exists all over the continent.
The marine plants which covered it when it emerged from the waves have mostly died in the sunlight. A few, however, persisted in the lakes, the ponds, and the puddles of water which the heat has gradually dried up. But at that time rivers and rivulets began to flow, and these were the more suited for the existence of wracks and seaweeds in that their waters were salt. When the surface, and then the depths, of the soil were deprived of their salt, and the water became fresh, most of these plants were destroyed.
A few, however, able to adapt themselves to the new living conditions, flourished in the fresh water just as they had in the salt. But the process did not stop there: a few of these plants, gifted with an even greater power of accommodation, adapted themselves first to fresh water and then to the open air. At first along the banks and then further and further away from them they have spread into the interior.
We surprised this transformation in the very act, and we can see how their structures are getting modified along with their physiological functions. Already a few stems are rising timidly towards the sky. We can foresee that one day a flora of great variety will thus be created and that a fierce struggle will begin between these new species and those surviving from the ancient order of things.
What is true of the flora is true also of the fauna. Along the watercourses we can see the former marine animals, mostly molluscs and crustaceans, in process of becoming terrestrial. The air is furrowed by flying fish, birds rather than fish, their wings having enlarged beyond all reason and their incurved tails allowing them to...
The last of the fragments contained, intact, the end of the manuscript:
... all old. Captain Morris is dead. Dr Bathurst is sixty-five; Dr Moreno sixty; myself, sixty-eight. We shall all soon have done with life. First, however, we mean to finish the task we resolved on, and, so far as is in our power, we shall come to the aid of future generations in the struggle that awaits them.
But will they see the day. these future generations?
I should be tempted to say yes, if I considered only how my fellows are multiplying: the children are swarming, and, for the rest, in this healthy climate, in this country where wild animals are unknown, life is long. Our colony has tripled in size.
On the other hand I am tempted to say no, if I consider the deep intellectual decadence of my companions in distress.
Yet our little group of survivors was in a favourable position to share in human knowledge: it included one exceptionally energetic man – Captain Morris, who died today – two men more cultivated than is usual – my son and myself – and two real savants – Dr Bathurst and Dr Moreno. With such components we ought to have been able to accomplish something. We have done nothing. Right from the outset the maintenance of our material life has always been, and is still, our sole care. As at first we spend all our time looking for food, and in the evening we fall exhausted into a heavy sleep.
It is, alas! only too certain that mankind, of which we are the only representatives, is in a state of rapid retrogression and is tending to revert to the animal. Among the sailors of the Virginia, men originally uncultivated, the brutal characteristics have become more marked; my son and I, we have forgotten what we knew; Dr Bathurst and Dr Moreno have put their brains on the shelf. One might say that our cerebral life is abolished.
How lucky it is that, so many years ago, we made a survey of this continent! Today we shouldn’t have the courage... And besides, Captain Morris, who led the expedition, is dead – and dead also, or rather decayed, is the Virginia which carried us.
At the beginning of our stay a few of us decided to build some houses. They were never finished and now they are falling in ruins. We sleep, as before, on the ground, whatever the season.
For a long time not a vestige has been left of the garments which covered us. For several years we contrived to replace them by seaweeds woven together in a style that was at first ingenious but soon became coarser. At last we got tired of making the effort, which the mild climate renders needless: we go naked, like those whom we used to call savages.
Eating, eating, that is our perpetual aim. our sole preoccupation.
Yet there still remains some remnants of our former ideas, our former feelings. My son Jean, now a grown man and a grandfather, has not lost all his affection, and my ex-chauffeur, Modeste Simonat, keeps a vague memory that I used to be his master.
But for them, for us, these faint traces of the men we once were – for in very sooth we are no longer men – will vanish for ever. The people of the future, who were born here, have never known any other existence. Mankind will be reduced to these adults – even as I write I have them before my very eyes – who do not know how to write or to count, who hardly know how to speak; and to these sharp-toothed youngsters who seem to be nothing but an insatiable stomach. And after them there will be other adults and other children, and then still more adults and still more children, ever nearer to the animal, ever further away from their thinking ancestors.
I can almost see them, these future men. forgetting all articulate language, their intelligence extinct, their bodies covered with coarse fur, wandering about this sad wilderness...
Well, we want to try to avoid this. We want to do everything in our power to ensure that the achievements of the men among whom we once were shall not be completely lost.
Dr Moreno, Dr Bathurst and I, we are going to revive our stupefied minds, we are going to make ourselves recall what we once knew. We are going to share the task, and on this paper and with this ink which came from the Virginia we are going to set out all that we remember of the various branches of science, so that, later men, if they still exist, and if, after a more or less long period of savagery, they feel a revival of their thirst for light, will find a summary of what their predecessors have done. May they then bless the memory of those who strove, at all costs, to shorten the sorrowful road to be trodden by the brothers whom they will never see!
At death’s door
It is now nearly fifteen years since the above lines were written. Dr Bathurst and Dr Moreno are no more. Of all those who landed here, I, one of the oldest, I am almost the only one left. But death will soon take me in my turn. I can feel it rising from my frozen feet to my heart, which is about to stop.
Our work is done. I have entrusted the manuscripts which contain this summary of human knowledge into an iron chest landed from the Virginia, and which I have buried deeply in the earth. At its side I am going to bury these few pages rolled up in an aluminium container.
Will anyone ever find this material committed to the earth? Will anyone ever so much as look for it?...
That is for fate to decide. A Dieu vat!...
Post-script
As Zartog Sofr translated this strange document, a sort of terror seized upon his soul.
What! So the Andart’-Iten-Schu people were descended from these men who, after having wandered for long months across the desert of the ocean, had at last been washed up on this point on the shore where Basidra now stood? So these wretched creatures had formed part of a glorious race of men, compared with which modern man could scarcely babble! Yet for the knowledge and even the memory of these peoples to be destroyed, what was needed? Less than nothing; an imperceptible shudder had run through the earth’s crust.
What an irreparable misfortune that the manuscripts the document spoke of had been destroyed, along with the iron chest that contained them! But great though that misfortune was, it was impossible to cherish the slightest hope: while digging the foundations the workmen had turned up the earth in every direction. There could be no doubt that the iron had been corroded away by time, which the aluminium container had triumphantly resisted.
For the rest, it needed no more than this for Sofr’s optimism to be irretrievably overthrown. Although the manuscript gave no technical details, it was full of general indications and showed quite unmistakably that mankind had at one time advanced further in the quest for truth than it had done since. Everything was there in this narrative, the notions that Sofr had cherished, and others that he had not dared to imagine – even to the explanation of the name of Hedom, over which so many vain quarrels had broken out!... Hedom, it was a corrupt form of Edem – itself a corrupt form of Adam – the said Adam being perhaps nothing more than the corrupt form of some other word more ancient still.
Hedom, Edem, Adam – that was the perpetual symbol of the first man, and it was also an explanation of his appearance on earth. Then Sofr had been wrong to deny that ancestor, whose reality the manuscript had proved once and for all, and it was the people who had been right in giving themselves such an ancestry. But, not only in that but in everything else, the Andart’-Iten-Schu had invented nothing. They had been content to repeat what had been said before.
And perhaps, after all, the contemporaries of the author of the narrative had likewise invented nothing. Perhaps they too had done nothing but to retrace the road traversed by other races of man who had preceded them on earth. Did not the document speak of a people whom it called the Atlanteans? It was these Atlanteans, no doubt, of whom Sofr’s excavations had disclosed a few impalpable traces below the marine silt. What knowledge of the truth had that age-old nation attained when the invasion of the sea had swept them from the earth?
However that might be, none of their work had remained after the catastrophe, and mankind had again to start at the foot of the hill in climbing towards the light.
Perhaps it would be the same for the Andart’-Iten-Schu. Perhaps it would again be the same after them, until the day...
But would the day ever come when the insatiable desire of mankind would be satisfied? Would the day ever come when they, having succeeded in climbing the slope, would be content to rest upon the summit they had at last conquered?...
Such were the meditations of Zartog Sofr, as he bent over this venerable manuscript.
This narrative from beyond the tomb enabled him to imagine the terrible drama which is forever played throughout the universe, and his heart overflowed with pity. Bleeding from the countless wounds from which those who had ever lived had suffered before him, bending beneath the weight of these vain efforts accumulated throughout the infinity of time, Zartog Sofr’-Ai-Sr gained, slowly and painfully, an intimate conviction of the eternal recurrence of events.
Sources
Recollections of Childhood and Youth
First published as ‘The Story of My Boyhood’ in The Youth’s Companion (Boston), vol. 64, 9 April 1891, p. 221. This was an edited translation of ‘Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse’, first published from the manuscript in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana (Fondation Martin Bodmer), Cologny-Genevè, Switzerland, in Jules Verne, ed. Pierre-André Touttain (Paris: L’Herne, 1974), pp. 57-62. In the present version some passages cut by the American editor have been restored and a few changes made in the translation.
The First Ships of the Mexican Navy
First published as ‘L’Amérique du Nord, études historiques: Les Premiers Navires de la marine mexicaine’ in Musée des families, tome 18, no. de juillet 1851, pp. 304-12; volume publication as ‘Un drame au Mexique’ in 1876 with Michel Stroggoff, English translation by W. H. G. Kingston and Julius Chambers (London, 1876). This translation by I. O. Evans.
A Drama in the Air
First published as ‘Un voyage en ballon’ in Musée des families, tome 18, no. d’août 1851, pp. 329-36; published as ‘Un drame dans les airs’ with Dr Ox in 1874. In English with Dr Ox (London, 1874), translated by George M. Towle.
Master Zacharius
First published as ‘Maître Zacharius, or L’Horloger qui avait perdu son âme, tradition genevoise’ in Musée des families, tome 21, no, d’avril 1854, pp. 193-200, and no. de mai pp. 225-32; published with Dr Ox in 1874. In English with Dr Ox (London, 1874), translated by George M. Towle.
The Humbug
First published as ‘Le Humbug’ (written 1868-70, though dated 1863 by Michel Verne), from a manuscript edited by Michel Verne, in Hier et demain (Paris, 1910); translated by Edward Baxter (1990). This story was excluded by I O. Evans from the English edition of Yesterday and Tomorrow (London, 1965).
Dr Ox’s Experiment
First published as ‘Une fantaisie du docteur Ox’ in Musée des familles (Paris), tome 39, no. de mars 1872, pp. 65-74, no. d’avril 1872, pp. 99-107, no. de mai 1872, pp. 133-41; in volume form 1874. In English with Dr Ox (London, 1874), translated by George M. Towle.
An Ideal City
First published as ‘Amiens en I’an 2000’ in Mémoires de l’Académie d’Amiens, 1874-75, 3me series, tome II, pp. 347-78; as a pamphlet Une ville idéale (Amiens: imprimerie de T. Jeunet, 1875). This translation by I. O. Evans inserted into his edition of Yesterday and Tomorrow (London, 1965).
Dr Trifulgas
Date of composition unknown. First published as ‘Frritt-Flacc’ in Le Magasin illustré d’éducation et de récréation (Paris), tome 44, no. 527, du ler décembre 1886; Le Figaro illustré (Paris), décembre 1886; published in 1886 with Un billet de lotterie; translated as ‘Dr Trifulgas. a Fantastic Tale’ in the Strand Magazine (London), vol. 4, July 1892, in an uncredited translation.
Gil Braltar
Date of composition unknown, though it may have been inspired by Verne’s visit on his yacht to Gibraltar in 1884, which would also explain the allusion to the Boer republics. First published with Le Chemin de France on 27 November 1889. It was excluded from English-language editions of that novel. This translation by I. O. Evans inserted into his edition of Yesterday and Tomorrow (London, 1965).
In the Twenty-Ninth Century
First published as ‘In the 29th Century: The Day of An American Journalist in the year 2889’ by Michel Verne from an idea by Jules Verne in the Forum (New York), vol. VI, February 1889, pp. 662-77; revised French language version by Jules Verne, Aux XXIXe siècle: La Journée d’un journaliste américain en 2890’ in Mémoires de I’Académie d’Amiens, 1890, pp. 348-70, and in the Supplément illustré of the Petit Journal (Paris), 29 août 1891; revised version reprinted in Hier et demain (Paris, 1910); this translation by I. O. Evans in Yesterday and Tomorrow (London, 1965).
An Express of the Future
First published in Russian in Vokroug Svieta, no. 31, 1890, pp. 494-9, and in French as ‘Un express de l’avenir’ in Les Annales politiques et littéraires (Paris), 27 août 1893, signed M. Jules Verne, reprinted in Jules Verne 1, La Revue des Lettres Modernes (Paris), nos. 456-61, 1973 (3), pp. 131-6: and in English as ‘An Express of the Future’, from ‘the French of Jules Verne’ in the Strand Magazine (London), vol. 10. December 1895, pp. 638-40, in an uncredited translation. With Michel Verne.
The Eternal Adam
First published as ‘L’Éternal Adam’ in La Revue de Paris, 1 October, 1910 (revised by Michel Verne from an initial draft by Jules Verne entitled ‘Edom’, eventually printed in the Bulletin de la société Jules Verne (Paris), no. 100); reprinted in Hier et demain (Paris, 1910); this translation by I. O. Evans in Yesterday and Tomorrow (London, 1965). With Michel Verne.
Acknowledgements
For permission to use copyright translations, thanks are due to: Edward Baxter, for ‘The Humbug’; © 1990 by Edward Baxter. This version was first published in The Jules Verne Encyclopedia (Lanham, Maryland and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1996), edited by Brian Taves and Stephen Michaluk.
The translations of ‘An Ideal City’, ‘Gil Braltar’, ‘In the 29th Century. The Day of An American Journalist in the Year 2889’ and ‘The Eternal Adam’ first appeared in Yesterday and Tomorrow, translated and edited by I. O. Evans; © 1965 by Arco Publications.
The remainder of the translations are in the public domain and are taken from editions in the editor’s and other collections, as detailed in the sources. Though passages deleted by the translators have been restored in some pieces, notably in Verne’s childhood recollections, his prolix geographical excursions, which add little to the narratives, have not been. For their assistance the editor wishes to thank the Central Catholic Library in Dublin, Boston Public Library, the London Library. Edward Baxter, and Brian Taves. The bibliographical information has been derived largely from Charles-Noël Martin and Brian Taves, though other sources in French and English have also been consulted.
Notes
[i] The former name of Paris.
[ii] Poland was then split - to all appearances irretrievably - between Russia, Germany and Austria: and the hats of the period seemed to have been called 'polonnaises'.
[iii] 'A keeper of gigantic cattle. '
[iv] 'He is patient because he is eternal. '
[v] From the neighbourhood of Berlin to near Cape Horn.
[vi] The Andart'-Iten-Schu thus knew nothing of Neptune.
[vii] It will be seen that, at the time when Zartog Sofr-Ai-Sr was indulging in these reflections, though the Andart'-Iten-Schu knew the telegraph, they were still ignorant of the telephone and the electric light.
[viii] From these words it must be assumed that at the time when this journal
will be written, the solar system
will include more than eight planets, and that
man
will have discovered one or several beyond Neptune.