Thus was annihilated my insulting hypothesis.
Curled up on the edge of the bed, careful not to wake Floriane, I reviewed that astonishingly connected dream, of a psychological logic undiminished by any of the incoherencies that ordinarily render dreams stupid. I rediscovered, point by point, the picturesque details, the amusing philosophy of the celestial administrator of justice, my canine neutrality cradled by Floriane. And—must I admit it?—the involuntary comparison that I established between my human condition, albeit loved by my wife, and that of the dog, adored by his mistress, leaving my uncertain as to the fate that ought to have been chosen for me.
It was Floriane who led me, even so, to remain attached to humanity. As the clock chimed eight, she opened her azure eyes wide, I closed mine in order that she would not imagine that I might have yielded to the curiosity of the telegram. Then she moved closer, putting her arms around me gently—which permitted me to pretend to wake up.
And, addressing me as tu for the first time, she said: “Did you sleep well? Did you have beautiful dreams?”
“More beautiful than you might suppose.”
“Are you still sulking?”
I did not reply, ashamed of myself.
“Here, read it, silly,” she said, crushing her breast against me in order to reach for the telegram and put it before my eyes.
I recommenced reading it with an apparent curiosity.
“You see, eh? You see that you were very silly to doubt your wife? But you’ll pay me for that sheet, you know. All the more so as I’ll no longer have many opportunities to put it on.”
“Oh! Why is that?”
“Because my dear...”
I anticipated, by the sudden solemnity that was inscribed on her face, an important declaration. I did not, however, expect the confession that her lips slowly let fall, inundating me with a limitless joy—as infinite as the space through which my dream had just made me travel.
“Because,” she said, slowly, “What we’ve been hoping for, for such a long time, has happened. I’m going to be a mother.”
“My love!”
“In seven months exactly, the doctor promised me, yesterday, we’re going to have a delightful little Jacques…unless it’s a Jacqueline…and you’ll see…you’ll see whether I can love him and care for him, our baby...”
“Like a true St. Peter pooch!”
“Yes, like a gift from Paradise!” she exclaimed, without seeking any further explanation, so much had her confession transported her.
Notes
1 IBN 978-1-61227-279-5.
2 ISBN 978-1-61227-280-1.
3 tr. as Caresco, Superman, ISBN 978-1-61227-254-2.
4 This date suggests that the author started to write the story in 1924, setting it a few months in the future, not long after the publication of the previous item in the sequence.
5 The French equivalent of the English nursery rhyme character of the old woman who lived in a shoe, and had so many children that she didn’t know what to do.
6 Fortune favors the brave.
7 Of the Légion d’honneur.
8 The heavy bombers employed by the Luftstreitkräfte during the Great War to bomb Paris during the latter part of 1917 and 1918, when they had largely abandoned Zeppelin raids.
9 Système D [System D] is a French slang term referring to a fast response to a challenge by means of hasty improvisation. Opinions vary as to what the D might stand for, but the likeliest suggestion is démerder [to get out of the shit].
10 I have left this insulting term for members of the medical profession untranslated in this instance because it shares a suffix with improvised title of the story. The term is derived by analogy with agricole [agricultural], and can thus be translated as “death-sowers.” As Tornada explains, biocole can therefore be construed as its opposite, “life-sower.” Couvreur was undoubtedly familiar with Léon Daudet’s scathing satire on the medical profession, Les Morticoles (1894), which was often bracketed in critical considerations of medically-themed literature with his own La Mal nécessaire (The Necessary Evil, Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-253-5) perhaps somewhat to his annoyance.
11 This term might be straightforwardly improvised from “macro” and “biosis,” especially given that Couvreur had previously described giant bacilli as “macrobes,” but it is worth noting that Herodotus had described a long-lived people named the Macrobians, and that the name had been borrowed by Edmond Haraucourt for reference to human beings transfigured by a serum invented by an unorthodox scientific genius in “La Découverte du docteur Auguérand” (1910; tr. as “Dr. Auguerand’s Discovery” in Ollusions of Immortality, Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-075-3). Couvreur might have read Haraucourt’s story as a serial in Le Journal, and would undoubtedly have loved it if he had.
12 Ramollot is the protagonist of a series of works by Charles Leroy, published between 1885 and 1899, featuring the humorous adventures of a Colonel of that name, an eccentric, unintelligent, loud-mouthed military man; his name was inevitably borrowed to describe an entire type. Barbon is similarly used as a general term for senile old men. It was already being used as a common noun in theatrical comedies in the days of Beaumarchais and Molière, and its precise origin is obscure.
13 The author must have forgotten that he had already attributed the surname Verdier to Mélanie, on the only occasion that he found it necessary to cite it.
14 This derivative of the name of the Medieval Persian scholar Al-Biruni was bestowed on a donkey by Jean de La Fontaine in one of his fables, and was taken up by other writers as an insult leveled at scientists in general, although the real Al-Biruni appears to have been a man of great intelligence and accomplishment, a supporter of the heliocentric theory of the solar system long before Copernicus, who measured the radius of the Earth accurately and made numerous significant contributions to geometry and algebra..
15 In mythical symbolism, Phoebe was associated with the moon in much the same way that Phoebus (Apollo) was associated with the sun, so this remark might refer to a technology of gentle illumination, although the use of the verb rafraîchir [refresh, or cool] would be odd in that context, and the reference is more likely be to air-conditioning technology for use in the hot Parisian summer.
16 The reference is to the fraudster Thérèse Humbert, who lived for twenty years on the pretence of being the heir of a fictitious American millionaire, whose wealth was allegedly contained in a safe—which ultimately turned out, when opened in 1901, to contain nothing but a brick and an English halfpenny.
17 The Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, a private foundation that maintains numerous residences for foreign students, began its operations in 1925.
18 A Taoist deity primarily known for slaying demons.
19 The author adds three footnotes to this paragraph referring the reader back to the stories translated in the present set of three volumes as “The Androgyne,” “The Phosphorescent Waltzer” and “An Invasion of Macrobes,” conveniently forgetting that neither the professor nor the greater part of Paris survived the events related in last-named story.
20 Daikoku is conventionally depicted as a cheerful, plump individual standing or sitting on two bales of rice, carrying both a treasure-sack and a magic mallet. The latter object has, of course, no connection with the hammer of Soviet symbology, which represents industrial labor, while the sickle symbolizes agricultural labor. Daikoku’s mallet is sometimes reckoned to grant wishes when it strikes the ground, and sometimes construed as a phallic symbol.
21 Tribesmen from north-western Tunisia whose raids into French Algeria sparked the French invasion of Tunisia in 1881 and who continued to rebel against French rule during the subsequent protectorate.
22 Morille [morel] can be translated without injuring the wordplay because it retains the initial mor-. Brandade de morue is mashed salt cod and potato steeped in olive oil and baked.
23 A huitre [fine] de claire is a particular variety from Marennes-Oléron, u
sually treated in advance of consumption by immersion in shallow fresh water. The pun is ridiculously esoteric, but justified as an inversion of the implication that might usually be taken from the comment that Monsieur de Clair’s ability justifies his surname.
24 The Italian esthetic philosopher Ricciotto Canudo hailed cinema as the seventh art in a manifesto published in 1911, the first five being those listed by G. W. F. Hegel in Vorlesinugen über die Ästhetik (1835; tr. as Lectures on Aesthetics)—architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry—and the sixth being dance.
25 Antoine Deibler (1863-1939) was the French executioner throughout the early decades of the 20th century, executing 395 men in a 54-year career.
26 I have substituted the generic name of the marmosets, since the animal used by Tornada in his experiments, which he calls an ouistiti, is clearly a South American marmoset. The original text has arctopithèque here, which must be an error, since that French term only seems to have been applied to the obsolete genus Arctopithecus, consisting of edentates, or sloths. There is also an obsolete genus Arcopithecus, but that consisted of African green monkeys, so it is unclear how the error arose, although there is a book by one Ludwig Hopf (not the mathematician of that name) published in English translation in 1891 that mentions Arcopithecus and marmosets in the same sentence, in such a way that they might be confused.
27 Blanche of Castille, the mother of Louis IX, served as his regent during his youth, and again while he was fighting in the crusades. She actually died in Paris in 1252, having fallen ill at Melun, and was buried in Maubisson Abbey.
28 Antoine Houdar de la Motte, in one of his Fables nouvelles (1719).
29 A series of children’s books launched by Hachette in 1856, inaugurated by the works of the Comtesse de Ségur, following up an earlier series of illustrated children’s books with uniformly pink covers. It still exists, its name having long since become a common term for juvenile literature in general.
30 The painter and illustrator André Devambez (1867-1944) was a friend of Couvreur’s; he illustrated the serial version of Une Invasion de macrobes.
31 Long-time readers of Couvreur’s work might have remembered that his first novel, Le Mal nécessaire (tr. as The Necessary Evil, q.v.), opens at an estate called Les Bolois, whose physical description is almost identical to this one, although it is in the possession of a very different character.
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION
105 Adolphe Ahaiza. Cybele
102 Alphonse Allais. The Adventures of Captain Cap
02 Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm
14 G.-J. Arnaud. The Ice Company
61 Charles Asselineau. The Double Life
118 Henri Austruy. The Eupantophone
119 Henri Austry. The Petitpaon Era
120 Henri Austry. The Olotelepan
103 S. Henry Berthoud. Martyrs of Science
23 Richard Bessière. The Gardens of the Apocalypse
26 Albert Bleunard. Ever Smaller
06 Félix Bodin. The Novel of the Future
92 Louis Boussenard. Monsieur Synthesis
39 Alphonse Brown. City of Glass
89. Alphonse Brown. The Conquest of the Air
98. Emile Calvet. In A Thousand Years
40 Félicien Champsaur. The Human Arrow
81 Félicien Champsaur. Ouha, King of the Apes
91. Félicien Champsaur. The Pharaoh’s Wife
03 Didier de Chousy. Ignis
97 Michel Corday. The Eternal Flame
113 André Couvreur. The Necessary Evil
114 André Couvreur. Caresco, Superman
115 André Couvreur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 1)
116 André Couvreur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 2)
117 André Couvreur. The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 3)
67 Captain Danrit. Undersea Odyssey
17 C. I. Defontenay. Star (Psi Cassiopeia)
05 Charles Derennes. The People of the Pole
68 Georges T. Dodds. The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men
49 Alfred Driou. The Adventures of a Parisian Aeronaut
-- J.-C. Dunyach. The Night Orchid;
-- J.-C. Dunyach. The Thieves of Silence
10 Henri Duvernois. The Man Who Found Himself
08 Achille Eyraud. Voyage to Venus
01 Henri Falk. The Age of Lead
51 Charles de Fieux. Lamékis]
108 Louis Forest. Someone Is Stealing Children In Paris
31 Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega
70 Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega & The Shadowmen
112 H. Gayar. The Marvelous Adventures of Serge Myrandhal on Mars
88 Judith Gautier. Isoline and the Serpent-Flower
57 Edmond Haraucourt. Illusions of Immortality
24 Nathalie Henneberg. The Green Gods
107 Jules Janin. The Magnetized Corpse
29 Michel Jeury. Chronolysis
55 Gustave Kahn. The Tale of Gold and Silence
30 Gérard Klein. The Mote in Time’s Eye
90 Fernand Kolney. Love in 5000 Years
87 Louis-Guillaume de La Follie. The Unpretentious Philosopher
101 Jean de La Hire. The Fiery Wheel
50 André Laurie. Spiridon
52 Gabriel de Lautrec. The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait
82 Alain Le Drimeur. The Future City
27-28 Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny. The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (2 vols.)
07 Jules Lermina. Mysteryville
25 Jules Lermina. Panic in Paris
32 Jules Lermina. The Secret of Zippelius
66 Jules Lermina. To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers
15 Gustave Le Rouge. The Vampires of Mars
73 Gustave Le Rouge. The Plutocratic Plot
74 Gustave Le Rouge. The Transatlantic Threat
75 Gustave Le Rouge. The Psychic Spies
76 Gustave Le Rouge. The Victims Victorious
109-110-111 Gustave Le Rouge. The Mysterious Doctor Cornelius
96. André Lichtenberger. The Centaurs
99. André Lichtenberger. The Children of the Crab
72 Xavier Mauméjean. The League of Heroes
78 Joseph Méry. The Tower of Destiny
77 Hippolyte Mettais. The Year 5865
83 Louise Michel. The Human Microbes
84 Louise Michel. The New World
93. Tony Moilin. Paris in the Year 2000
11 José Moselli. Illa’s End
38 John-Antoine Nau. Enemy Force
04 Henri de Parville. An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars
21 Gaston de Pawlowski. Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension
56 Georges Pellerin. The World in 2000 Years
79 Pierre Pelot. The Child Who Walked On The Sky
85 Ernest Perochon. The Frenetic People
100. Edgar Quinet. Ahasuerus
60 Henri de Régnier. A Surfeit of Mirrors
33 Maurice Renard. The Blue Peril
34 Maurice Renard. Doctor Lerne
35 Maurice Renard. The Doctored Man
36 Maurice Renard. A Man Among the Microbes
37 Maurice Renard. The Master of Light
41 Jean Richepin. The Wing
12 Albert Robida. The Clock of the Centuries
62 Albert Robida. Chalet in the Sky
69 Albert Robida. The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul
95 Albert Robida. The Electric Life
46 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Givreuse Enigma
45 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Mysterious Force
43 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Navigators of Space
48 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. Vamireh
44 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The World of the Variants
47 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Young Vampire
71 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. Helgvor of the Blue River
24 Marcel Rouff. Journey to the Inverted World
09 Han Ryner. The Super
humans
106 Brian Stableford. The Conqueror of Death
20 Brian Stableford. The Germans on Venus
19 Brian Stableford. News from the Moon
63 Brian Stableford. The Supreme Progress
64 Brian Stableford. The World Above the World
65 Brian Stableford. Nemoville
80 Brian Stableford. Investigations of the Future
42 Jacques Spitz. The Eye of Purgatory
13 Kurt Steiner. Ortog
18 Eugène Thébault. Radio-Terror
58 C.-F. Tiphaigne de La Roche. Amilec
104 Louis Ulbach. Prince Bonifacio
53 Théo Varlet. The Xenobiotic Invasion (w/Octave Joncquel)
16 Théo Varlet. The Martian Epic; (w/André Blandin)
59 Théo Varlet. Timeslip Troopers
86 Théo Varlet. The Golden Rock
94 Théo Varlet. The Castaways of Eros
54 Paul Vibert. The Mysterious Fluid
English adaptation and introduction Copyright 2014 by Brian Stableford.
Cover illustration Copyright 2014 Mandy.
Visit our website at www.blackcoatpress.com
ISBN 978-1-61227-281-8. First Printing. May 2014. Published by Black Coat Press, an imprint of Hollywood Comics.com, LLC, P.O. Box 17270, Encino, CA 91416. All rights reserved. Except for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The stories and characters depicted in this novel are entirely fictional. Printed in the United States of America.
The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 3) Page 30