The Eternal Flame

by Michel Corday

  Marianne promised to bring the two children to see him that afternoon, and while he was rejoicing she said, without transition: “Don’t you know Chérance, Papa?”

  He was sitting at his work-table, where beautiful vestiges of old marbles served as paperweights on thick piles of papers. He raised his arms and, his gaze mischievous and his mouth rounded beneath his bristling moustache, he cried: “I should think so! Oh, I don’t know anyone else who’s such a slave to his passion. You only have to wave a page of manuscript in front of him to make him fly around the world. In Paris, I’ve seen that demigod on his knees in front of my waste-paper basket, searching it for crumpled or torn fragments.”

  By virtue of a discreet modesty, he did not confess that Chérance was desperately covetous of the manuscript of Génie antique. Contal, who wanted to keep it in the family, was deaf to the all-powerful financier’s allusions, sighs, and expansive and pressing offers. Lowering his head, however, and peering over his spectacles suspiciously, he said: “Why the devil are you interested in Chérance?”

  “François has need of him.”

  In order to avoid the return of a perilous discussion, the young inventor got straight to the point. “Yes. My research is concluded. The advice and support of a financier would be useful to me. I’d be glad to have a letter of introduction to Monsieur Chérance.”

  Pierre Contal had a confused awareness of the nature of the work that his son-in-law’s had been doing for the last seven years, but he detested all the fruits of science. Far from applauding, he raised his arms again, waving his hands like a drowning man.

  “Don’t we have enough of these waves, vibrations, rays and radiations yet, in which we’re struggling like flies in a spider’s web?”

  François made no reply. What point was there is running the risk of irritating him needlessly? What point was there in exchanging once again the eternal arguments that the partisans and adversaries of progress threw at one another’s heads without ever convincing anyone? What was the point of reopening a trial in which the future would be the only judge?

  Standing in front of her father, Marianne leaned over him. “You have to write the letter, Father. Anyway, it’s very important for Monsieur Chérance too.”

  Contal murmured: “Nothing’s important.”

  However, he picked a sheet of paper out of a sheaf. He thought for a few moments, while caressing his lip with the end of his goose-quill. Then he started writing. Marianne and François exchanged triumphant glances.

  When he had finished, he said: “There. I’ve asked him to help you as he would help me, if I were mad enough to want to change the world.”

  With the edge of his hand he pressed the letter down on the blotting-pad, and he repeated, obstinately: “For it is madness.”

  François could not help himself. “But Father, many people will have less difficulty...”

  Certainly, in pronouncing that sentence he had no intention of opening a debate. Not at all. He knew full well that Pierre Contal had written to Chérance in spite of his convictions—and in a surge of gratitude, he had wanted to associate him with his work, to show him the benevolent consequences of that letter.

  But the great man misunderstood; he thought he was being challenged to a duel. Putting his spectacles down on the table, he fixed François with a hard stare. Keeping the letter in his extended hand, he said: “You’ll never recognize the definitive vanity of your efforts? I don’t believe your discoveries in science constitute progress. I don’t even believe in progress. But even admitting momentarily that it exists, don’t you feel that it will be as limited and restricted as the fate of the human species itself? Your science has taken care to warn us about that. It informs us that life will disappear from the frozen Earth. Even before the planet becomes a dead world, an icy bolide, humanity will have died out. Even if it were capable of improvement, which I don’t believe, there wouldn’t be time. I repeat, it would be madness to found hope in a future whose limits we already perceive.”

  Pierre Contal could not have suspected the effect of his words. He had just struck the inventor at his most sensitive spot, in his most secret and radiant hope. François choked, his heart congested. He could no longer contain himself. He was going to turn back on Pierre Control the very argument with which he adversary had tried to crush him. He would never again have such a chance to convince him, to show him the infinite possibilities of science. He would reveal to him the reckless anticipations that he had scarcely mentioned even to Marianne. At the risk of seeing the letter to Chérance torn up in spite, he would speak.

  “But how do you know that the human race will disappear?” he said. “With the infinite energy that it will have at its disposal, humans will be able to do anything. When solar energy declines, how do you know that they won’t move the Earth out of its orbit, and launch it into the zone of attraction of another of those suns that star our night, which will pour light, heat and life upon them in its turn? Thus, moving from sun to sun, the Earth will be assured of an eternal youth. The human race will no longer disappear, and it will never cease to improve itself.”

  But Pierre Contal, his eyes round, showed so much surprise, and even anxiety, that François put out his hands in a gesture of appeasement.

  “Naturally, it’s only an intellectual anticipation, a mere possibility. The time for such an attempt hasn’t yet come. But to know what is possible, to know that one has the energy necessary to do it—isn’t that something? From now on, isn’t such an assurance capable of sustaining people? Can’t they extract some comfort from the conviction that their race will live forever, that their efforts are permanent, that their progress will accumulate endlessly, toward perfection? Never has such a vast hope been made to gleam in their eyes. Doesn’t such a view explain the intuition of the divine that’s in all souls, the promise of eternity that’s in all religions? Might not this faith in human destiny become the supreme creed?”

  Pierre Contal shook his head. “You said it yourself: it’s only a dream. I don’t believe that it’s capable of affecting people, influencing their actions, reacting upon their lives. They’ll make fun of it. There’s no proof, in any case, that if they had an eternal future ahead of them, they’d employ it to improve themselves. You know my opinion on that point. And if your anticipation obtains any consistency, it might, on the contrary, plunge them into a tragic despair, because they’ll perceive the perpetuity of their wretched condition.”

  Then, as if secretly satisfied to have snuffed out François’ enthusiasm with the final word, he handed the young inventor the letter to Chérance.

  III

  François was introduced into a drawing-room the size of a museum, with the elegance of a boudoir. He was waiting for Chérance. The financier, who lived in a Louis XV mansion in the vicinity of the Bois de Boulogne, had the whim of only accommodating furniture of that period—and before those fine marvels, François felt the satisfaction one experiences in caressing a pearly, finished, perfect work of art with one’s gaze or one’s fingers.

  Sensitive to consideration and small attentions, he congratulated himself on Chérance’s methods. The financier could have given him an appointment, without any urgency, in his offices in the Champs-Élysées. On the contrary, scarcely had he received Pierre Contal’s letter than he had offered François, by telephone, a meeting at his home that same afternoon. And yet, great barons of his sort hardly were ever their own masters.

  He smiled at an impish thought. It haunted him every time he had to approach some highly-placed person. He thought he had found a means of not being intimidated. It was sufficient for him to remember deliberately that the great man had been a little baby like everyone else: a chubby babe in arms lavished with caresses babbling adorable nonsense; a baby who had no other concern but to sleep, eat, drink and excrete. Then, the severe features and the prestigious mask were no longer imposing. One simply thought: this is what age has made of a plump bonny baby...

  A door opened, reveal
ing Chérance. He was short, slim, bald and elegant. He had a small black moustache, a firm gaze and an imperious chin. He looked to be about fifty. Frank and cordial, he held out his hands to François. “I have the greatest admiration for your father-in-law. I’d do anything to oblige him. Oh, I envy you, young man, living in the intimacy of such a genius...”

  François remembered Chérance’s passion. For him, living in the intimacy of Pierre Contal would be to have the ability to glean at his ease the slightest scraps of handwriting, even from the waste-paper basket.

  The financier continued: “Let’s see—I believe it’s a matter of a discovery. Come and tell me about it.” His voice, a trifle hoarse, was alert and seductive. François forgot to imagine Chérance as a little baby. Immediately, he felt conquered, and he was happy to be subjugated.

  He followed the charmer into his study. The financier had resisted contemporary fashion, which demanded a cold, surgical sobriety, the nudity of an operating theater. On the contrary, here, once again, everything bore the charming imprint of the eighteenth century. And Chérance, sitting behind his desk, his features delicate and his expression proud, evoked some minister of the ancien régime just as faithfully. Without a doubt, however, his power was more extensive than that of a Choiseul or a Necker, for one could be certain that the aristocracy of industrial finance governed governments.

  François summarized his invention as clearly as possible. Chérance, his forearms leaning on the desk and his hands linked, seemed extremely attentive. He not only had the gift of comprehension, but the even rarer one of listening. He refrained from interrupting the brief speech. Perhaps, entrenched in the hard struggle of business affairs behind his mask, he was even exaggerating his impassivity.

  When François indicated the industrial consequences of his discovery, however, the financier betrayed his emotion. A surge of blood reddened his forehead, inflating the temporal vein. In a casual voice, however, he said, simply: “In brief, you’re offering us an inexhaustible and gratuitous source of electricity?”

  “For the moment,” François agreed, “that is indeed the best formulation.”

  Rapidly and precisely, the financier elucidated the points that seemed to him to be essential. “Will your apparatus be expensive, difficult to construct?”

  “No dearer or more difficult to construct than a simple microscope..”

  “And the operation? Complicated? Dangerous?”

  “Neither.”

  “You have your patents, of course?”

  “An agent at the Center for Studies in Physics is taking care of it.”

  “You have a working model?”

  “Of course,” said François. “If you have a spare moment, I’d be happy to show it to you right away. I had the intention of making the proposal. Bellevue is five minutes away by car.”

  Chérance rang for his chauffeur and rose to his feet. “Agreed.”

  As they went through the drawing room, François complimented its perfection.

  “Yes,” agreed the financier. “It’s necessary for an era to be already remote in the past before one can really collect its flower. It’s only then that one can choose the excellence that it has produced, which has stood the test of time and taste.”

  Scarcely were they in the car, however, than he returned to François Thibault’s invention.

  “Is Thuilier still the director of the Center?”

  “And Lavolige the deputy director.”

  “Both members of the Institut, aren’t they?”

  François nodded his head, smiling. “Both of them.”

  It seemed to him to be improbable that Chérance was fetishistic about official titles, but the financier doubtless judged it prudent to have the discovery certified by orthodox scientists before launching it into the world. He wanted the testimony of two members of the Institut. Discreetly as he had revealed it, his desire was evident.

  François wanted to show him that he had anticipated that. “This morning, I told the gentlemen in question that I was coming to see you this afternoon, and that you might perhaps come to my laboratory, so I think they’ll both be there.”

  He was mistaken. Thuilier, the director, was indeed present at the rose-petal experiment, but the deputy director, Lavolige, did not put in an appearance. “Monsieur Lavolige must have forgotten,” François explained to Chérance. “You must excuse him—he’s very distracted.”

  Lavolige was, indeed, distracted by nature—but, far from seeking to vanquish it, he cultivated his weakness. He knew that Ampère had used the back of a cab as a blackboard, that Henri Poincaré took a bed sheet traveling instead of a nightshirt. He had, therefore, unbridled his own distraction in order to bear a stronger resemblance to a great scientist. He missed meetings and engagements, and broke his promises. Then, mild, disheveled, wheedling, desolate and almost sincere, he begged forgiveness, blaming a life overburdened with work and a brain overladen with thought.

  To tell the truth, the little eccentric steered his boat very cleverly; his thoughtlessness served his interests and his passions. In forgetting Chérance’s probable visit, he was satisfying both his jealousy and his prudence. He was avoiding praising a discovery of which he was enraged not to have been the author, and he was also avoiding adding his patronage to it, perhaps prematurely, in the presence of an important individual.

  By contrast, Thuilier warmly celebrated François Thibault’s invention. Stern and dark, perfectly handsome, he had the air of sad disdain and cruel gentleness that is attributed to Asiatic princes. Rich and laborious, he was ravaged by ambition. He had hesitated over his vocation for a long time, taken several different paths, always searching for the one that would lead him most rapidly to the top. Finally, he had devoted himself to the Center for Studies in Physics. He had given it his time, his effort and his money. He had expected, in exchange, influence, titles and honors.

  He was certainly excited, at present, by the prodigious discovery and its infinite consequences, but he wanted to claim the merit and the glory of it for the Center, and, in consequence, its Director.

  François was as cheerful about Thuilier’s panegyric as Lavolige’s absence. “Everyone has his line. It’s human nature.” He watched Chérance carefully. Standing up straight, elegant and businesslike, his hands clasped behind his back, the latter was meditating before the apparatus.

  Evidently, the man, sated with money but still avoid for power, must see it as the most formidable instrument of domination. Soon he would have the fate of the kings of energy—those of oil, coal and explosives—at his mercy. He would be the master of those masters of the world. In his eyes, that simple metal tube must shine like the emblem of unlimited power, the scepter of an unparalleled empire.

  Only the redness of his forehead and the throbbing of his temples betrayed that feverish pressure of avarice. Suddenly, he seemed to wake up, spun on his heel, congratulated Thuilier in a few well-chosen words on the glory that would soon illuminate the Center. Then, leaving the director pale and swooning with pride, he took François by the arm and drew him on to the terrace, where he strode back and forth with a sustained stride.

  “Well,” he said, “it’s extremely interesting. To exploit your patents, we’re going to form a little company. I’ll have associates. We’ll make an appeal to the public. It’s necessary to be among friends to conserve the independence of the enterprise, to remain the masters. You’ll be assured of the technical directorship, a seat on the board, dividend-paying shares. In sum, we’ll give you the lion’s share. You can count on me.”

  François stammered thanks. Chérance cut him off. “Ah! By the way, what shall we call your apparatus? That’s quite important. Have you given it a name?”

  The inventor smiled. “When my wife and I talk about it—which is today, nearly every day—we call it the press. You get it? It liberates and spreads the energy stored in grains of matter, as a press liberates and spreads wine, the energy contained in the grapes. But the term might be confusing.
..”

  “I fear so.”

  “Yes. It’s a little pet name. For the public, I’d prefer to call it the Starter: that which provides impetus; which releases concentrated and constrained energies that are ready to surge forth.”

  “Excellent!” exclaimed Chérance. “The Starter—very good. And it’s an English word that has become French, already international, which will be immediately understood by all those who speak either of the two languages—five hundred million inhabitants, a third of the planet.” Still holding his companion by the arm, he continued to draw him along the terrace, indifferent to the horizon of Paris, blurred by heat-haze and the smoke of factories. “And for the Company, do you have a name? That’s also very important. You must have given it some thought...”

  “Not so much. In sum, we’re liberating universal energy. That ought to be the name of the Company.”

  “No, no,” the financier protested, sharply. “It’s weak, banal, trite. It might be the name of a bank.”

  “There’s also cosmic energy—the meaning is identical, but the tern’s more elevated.”

  “Yes, yes, obviously,” Chérance acquiesced, unenthusiastically.

  “I’ve also thought about Sidereal Energy. The name isn’t exact, because it seems to indicate recourse to the stars, when I’m using certain solar rays. It’s much later, in millions of years, when the sun deteriorates, that people will have recourse to the rays of the other suns that are the stars. Already, their astonishing power has been recognized. What are called penetrating rays...”

  Chérance interrupted him. “Sidereal Energy...that’s perfect. Let’s not seek any further. It’s sonorous, musical, and a little mysterious—in sum, as you say, it has the implication of the future. Perfect, perfect.” He stopped beside his car. Before getting into it, he said: “Time’s pressing. Very soon—tomorrow, no doubt—you’ll hear from me. Au revoir, my friend. I needn’t stand on ceremony with you, need I? Give my regards to Pierre Contal. Tell him that he can be proud of you, that he has a son-in-law worthy of him.”