Electric Life

by Albert Robida

  “My love, it’s a solemn day,” she had said to her husband, putting on her celebratory expression. “Do you know what has happened to Estelle? Prepare yourself to hear some grave news. Don’t try to guess. Simply prepare yourself...”

  “I suspected as much,” replied Monsieur Lacombe. “I left a message asking about the result of hr examination, and you haven’t replied. She’s failed, of course—failed again!”

  “Such trifles are irrelevant!” said Madame Lacombe, with a superb shrug of the shoulders. “She won’t be an engineer, thank God! No, she won’t. This is it: our daughter has had a proposal of marriage. Personally, I’ve said yes, and when I’ve said yes, I hope that Monsieur Lacombe won’t say no!”

  “From whom?”

  “My future son-in-law,” said Madame Lacombe, emphatically, “is named Monsieur Georges Lorris—the only son of the illustrious Philox Lorris.”

  At that name, Monsieur Lacombe let himself fall into an armchair. It was the coup de théâtre that Madame Lacombe had planned. Content with the effect it had produced, she sat down facing her husband. “Yes, Monsieur Georges Lorris adores our daughter—as I suspected, you see—and Estelle is also in love with him.”

  “You’re dreaming! The son of Philox Lorris! Think of the distance there is between us and the great Philox Lorris…between our modest situation and...”

  “Modest, I agree—but whose fault is that, Monsieur? And then, enough of Philox, the great Philox, the illustrious Philox, the immense and vertiginous Philox—it’s not him that Estelle is marrying! It’s a young man, less immense but more amiable.”

  “But what about a dowry? Have you told him that...”

  “A dowry! We’re not concerned with such trivia. What a bourgeois you are!”

  The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Georges Lorris. He had never been to Lauterbrunnen-Station before. Until now, the young man had communicated with the Lacombe chalet solely by Tele. He was a little emotional; he was about to find himself actually in Estelle’s presence. What was she going to say? He was fearful. What if, unfortunately, her heart was not free…if she was going to reject him?

  He was soon reassured. Madame Lacombe’s welcome showed him that all would go well, and when Estelle finally appeared, utterly confused and pale with emotion, a gentle squeeze of the hand was the reply to the mute question posed by the young man’s anxious eyes.

  He spent a charming evening at the Lacombe chalet, and when he climbed back into an aircab at about eleven o’clock in order to return to the Interlaken Tube, the broad beams of the beacons’ electric lights, lighting the mountains fantastically, piercing the darkness of the valleys, making the enormous peaks sparkle like carbuncles and the glaciers gleam like diamond streams, seemed to him to be promises of a luminous future, illuminating a long and happy life in prospect.

  Understandably, Philox Lorris leapt up with anger and astonishment the next morning, when his son told him of his determination and asked for his consent. Philox had a violent fit of wrathful eloquence. What! His son had not waited until he had discovered the woman with doctorates in all the sciences, the scientific woman, the serious and mature bride that he had promised him! What! He was about to wreck all his plans, ruin all his hopes with this stupid marriage...

  “Selection! Selection! You don’t understand the great law of selection. But it’s only recently that science has proven the ideas of old correct, and recognized that selection was the bases of all aristocracy. Even in our era of excessive democracy, we’ve been forced to retreat and bow down before the force of the truth. My boy, the ancient aristocracies were right to show themselves hostile to misalliances!

  “Yes, it’s necessary to recognize, in all evidence, that the families of the rude soldiers and proud knights of ages gone by, in breeding with one another and always allying themselves, were fortifying the highest qualities of valor that distinguished them and legitimated their fine pride, and also their pretentions, for which they are reproached, to domination over those of less pure blood.

  “Yes, decadence commenced, for those old families on the day when the blood of proud barons was mixed with the blood of the rich, and it was repeated misalliances that killed the nobility! Scientific demonstrations are perfectly simple: let’s take a descendant of Roland the paladin, the son of thirty generations of superb knights. Let that son of knights marry the daughter of a tax-farmer, and all of a sudden, the cream of that knightly blood is annihilated in the fruit of the union, drowned by a flood of very different blood! Then, by virtue of atavism, the soul of maternal ancestors, petty shopkeepers or men of finance, brave traders in spices or concessionary tax-gatherers, will be reborn in the body of that descendant of the paladin Roland! What will cover the paladin’s pennon now? Let’s see! Something terrible, perhaps, something suspect or mediocre! Poor Roland—what a grimace he’s making on high!

  “You can’t pay too much attention to these questions, you see. It’s always necessary to think of one’s descendants, and not expose them to the risk of lodging in their bodies souls that one wouldn’t want for oneself. Today, we’re an aristocracy—the aristocracy of science! Let’s also think about founding, by means of carefully-studied selection, a truly superior race! I don’t want disagreeable ancestral rebirths in my family. I don’t want to take the risk of seeing reborn, in my own grandson, Philox Lorris’ grandson, the soul of a maternal grandpapa who might perhaps have been a worthy man, but a simple worthy man!

  “Research on atavism has established, and photography has furnished us with documentation for a century—entirely conclusive documents, with regard to physical resemblances—that children always reproduce a more-or-less distant family type, often absolutely feature for feature, but often also mixed with various features taken from several other types within one family or the other. Well, it’s the same for intellectual qualities; one also get’s them from one ancestor or several. There’s a kind of spiritual capital in a family, a reservoir for its descendants; Nature draws on that capital at random to fill a little new-born skull. She puts in more or less, so much the better if she has given good measure, so much the worse if she has been miserly. It’s a hazard of the fork; so much the worse if we only get scraps. In any case, she can only draw on the capital amassed by the ancestors and gradually augmented by the generations.

  “It’s up to us, therefore, to choose our alliances well, to bring to our family a supplement of qualities, to give our descendants a more abundant intellectual capital on which to draw. Listen, you know the Bardoz family: that name represents, on the father’s side, three generations of the most distinguished mathematicians; on the mother’s side, an astronomer and a great surgeon, plus a great-uncle who had genius, since he was the man who invented the electric Pneumatic Tubes that have replaced our ancestors’ railways. A fine family, isn’t it? Well, there’s a Demoiselle Bardoz, thirty-nine years old, with doctorates in medicine and law, and an archdoctorate in social sciences, a first-rate mathematician, one of the leading lights of political economics and also a brilliant physician! I’ve marked her out for you. I see her as the indispensable compensation for your weakness...”

  Georges Lorris made a gesture of fright and tried to interrupt his father’s speech. He attempted to give him a portrait of Estelle Lacombe.

  “Mademoiselle Bardoz doesn’t please you,” Philox Lorris continued, paying no attention to the interruption. All right—I have another. Mademoiselle Coupard, of the Sarthe, only thirty-seven, a most remarkable politician, a future Minister, daughter of Jules Coupard, of the Sarthe, the Statesman of the Revolution of 1935, elected dictator for three consecutive five-year terms, granddaughter of the illustrious orator Léon Coupard, of the Sarthe, who participated in eighteen ministries. A union of elite science and elite politics, so the finest ambitions will be permissible to our descendants: to arrive at taking a hand the direction of peoples, to influence the destiny of humankind by science or politics—that’s what we can dream of!”

&n
bsp; “This is the person I shall marry, and no one else,” Georges declared, handing a photograph of Estelle to his father. “Not Senatress Coupard of the Sarthe or the Doctress Bardoz. It’s Mademoiselle Estelle Lacombe of Lauterbrunnen-Station. She doesn’t have a doctorate and isn’t a politician, but...”

  “Just a minute,” said Philox Lorris. “I know that name. A Madame Lacombe came the other day, who said a heap of things to me that I didn’t really understand, who called me a boor, speaking to my phonograph, and finally made me a present of a pair of slippers she’d embroidered. Hang on—my apparatus took her photograph, like all visitors, while she was explaining the reason for her visit. Look, here it is. Do you know this lady?”

  “It’s Estelle’s mother,” said Georges Lorris, on examining the little piece of cardboard.

  “Very good—I understand now. She even added that you were an amiable young man. I understand her preference. Well, I don’t give my consent. You’ll marry Mademoiselle Bardoz.”

  “I’ll marry Estelle Lacombe!”

  “Come on! At least marry Mademoiselle Coupard, of the Sarthe.”

  “I’ll marry Estelle Lacombe.”

  “Go to the Devil, then!”

  V

  Georges Lorris was not a man to be discouraged by a refusal that he had foreseen. He renewed his insistence every day, launching a daily assault upon Philox Lorris, who stubbornly threw the same two seductive incarnations of modern womanhood, Senatress Coupard and Doctress Bardoz, at his head.

  However, Madame Philox Lorris, having met the Lacombe family and having been immediately seduced by Estelle’s charm, had sided with her son. Let us say right away that if her little enquiry had not worked out to the advantage of the Lacombe family, she would have been very sorry to find herself in agreement with her husband, the great man, for the first time ever.

  It required four or five months of domestic strife to persuade Philox Lorris to abandon Mademoiselles Bardoz and Coupard of the Sarthe, and finally to consent to an Engagement Voyage.

  The Engagement Voyage, a wise custom unknown to our ancestors, replaced the honeymoons of yore some thirty years ago. The honeymoon, undertaken by young newlyweds after the ceremony and the traditional feast, could not serve any useful purpose. It came too late. If the young spouses, previously almost unknown to one another, discovered after the marriage, during that long and tiring voyage in one another’s company, that they had been mutually deluded, and that their real tastes, ideas and characters were only imperfectly concordant, they had no remedy for that dolorous misunderstanding other than divorce—and when they could not decide upon that amputation, which could not be accomplished without pain, or at least disturbance, it was necessary to bear for life the heavy chains of convicts of marriage.

  Today, when a marriage is decided, when everything is settled, the contract drawn up but not signed, the future spouses, after a light lunch that only brings together the closest relatives, depart for what is called the Engagement Voyage, accompanied solely by an uncle or an obliging friend. Free of any dread, they go with their discreet mentor to make a little tour of Europe or America, visiting the cities or, according to taste, the natural curiosities of lakes and mountains.

  In the bustle of the voyage—mountain treks, lakeside parties, aerial excursions and hotel dinners—the young fiancés have the time and opportunity to study one another and get to know one another. It is then, in that near-isolation as a couple for several weeks, that true characters are revealed, true qualities perceived, and minor defects divined—and major ones, if there are any. Then, if the proof has revealed a few incompatibilities to the couple, they do not persist. A single word from one of them on disembarkation is sufficient—with a slight signification to the escort, for form’s sake—and without any discussion or quarrel, the projected marriage is abandoned, the contract torn up, and they each go their own way, free and tranquil, sighing deeply with relief, with the sentiment of having avoided a great danger, ready to recommence the proof with someone else.

  Statistics tell us that in the last year, 1954, in France, only 22.5% of Engagement Voyages concluded with a negative result. 77.5% ended with a definitive marriage. Morality has gained by this change of custom; thanks to Engagement Voyages, the number of divorces has decreased considerably.

  “So be it,” said Philox Lorris, finally, wearied by the struggle and, in any case, absorbed by the cares of an important new invention. “Make your Engagement Voyage, since that’s your wish—but remember that it doesn’t commit you to anything. Afterwards, we’ll see...”

  Georges Lorris did not need the permission to be repeated twice. He raced to Lauterbrunnen-Station and, having taken the necessary steps and made the necessary arrangements, fixed the departure date himself.

  “Afterwards, we’ll see,” Philox Lorris had murmured, when giving his consent—and a sardonic smile had passed over his lips. The pessimistic scientist was convinced—his personal experience, alas, had led him to believe—that no affection can resist the thousand annoyances of a voyage undertaken together, for two young people almost unknown to one another. He recalled his own honeymoon voyage—for in those days, the custom of the Engagement Voyage had not yet been adopted. He had come back having quarreled with Madame Lorris after only five days of travel, but too late for each of them to go their own way unceremoniously; the Maire and the Curé had done their work.

  On disembarking from the Tube, Monsieur and Madame Philox Lorris sent advocates on campaign to obtain a divorce by mutual consent, but that necessitated a host of measures and steps, disturbances, meetings with lawyers, sessions with clerks and judges—and the volcanic Philox, pressed by his inventions and discoveries, did not have time to waste so absurdly.

  Having concluded his endeavors improving the apparatus of aviation, he had set up immense workshops for the construction of airships and airliners in incombustible celluloid, with aluminum frames, and had thrown into circulation, with prodigious success, the aeroflechette, which he had invented—or, rather, of which he had discovered the principle while still at school, by devoting himself, on holidays, to vertiginous flights in the college aerofleche.

  The new vehicle, so perfectly safe and so easy to maneuver that it could safely be put into the hands of children in order to allow them the first flap of their wings, not only made the fortune of Philox Lorris, but those of manufacturers in every country, who immediately launched quantities of similar aircraft that came very close to being counterfeit—but the inventor had other things on his mind than lawsuits. Good God! The time that would have taken! Applying his faculties to projects of another sort, Philox Lorris was in the process of setting up a major business in phonographic publication.

  O Bibliophonpohiles! You are familiar with those Philox Lorris phonobooks, those bedside recordings to which you have listened so frequently, which we all love to take up on long winter evenings, at times of rest as well as on nights of insomnia! All erudite individuals consider those superb editions of literary masterpieces precious within their phonolibraries, so admirable clear and pure in their diction, recorded so perfectly—according to the authors themselves, for contemporaries, and according to the most celebrated artists, lecturers and readers, for classic works.

  It was then that Philox launched his Universal History, in a dozen recordings, and his famous Poetic Anthology of ten thousand phonographic morsels, contained in a box borne on an antique column and surmounted by a bust of Homer, Dante, Hugo or Lamartine, according to taste. He launched his mechano-photographic Encyclopedia, of which he sold three million exemplars in ten years, and a Baccalaureate Handbook in four thousand phonographic lessons, without prejudice to his library of modern novels, recordings guaranteed for three months for sale, or supplied at one volume per month to subscribers but the Phonographic Library that he had founded as a joint stock company.

  Thus occupied, his mind possessed by a thousand various enterprises in addition to his research and work in progress, Philox Lorris could s
carcely hang around the Palais de Justice. He could scarcely steal enough time from science to confer with his lawyer by telephone once a fortnight.

  While the divorce dragged on, Philox made a few concessions, behaved a little more graciously at home, and eventually came to an accommodation with Madame Lorris, in order to have his mind free and to be able to devote himself more completely to his laboratory. When he had a little more time at his disposal, and all the industrial affairs he had launched were able to do without his direction, hostilities recommenced—but other preoccupations of research and new discoveries took hold of him again, and the project of divorce languished again.

  The household went on thus, from quarrel to reconciliation, until the day when Philox perceived that the quarrels were ultimately working out to the advantage of science, since his habitual arguments with Madame Lorris were like whiplashes to his intelligence, which was impeded and weakened in idleness and tranquility, and overexcited his nerves.

  Thus, Philox Lorris, fortified by his personal experience, said to himself: We’ll see. The voyage will result in annoyances, the annoyances will produce little disagreements, the little disagreements will cause disillusionment, and the disillusionment will provoke great quarrels! Moreover, I’ll make provision to give birth to those annoyances and little disagreements. We shall certainly see!

  He took charge of all the preparations for the voyage. Instead of putting his luxury airyacht at the disposal of the fiancés, he gave them a simple airship, comfortable but summary, and chose the two young people’s companions himself. Georges Lorris, entirely possessed by his hopes, and glad to see his father softening, made no objection and accepted all his arrangements.

  The engagement lunch was held at the Lorris house. Monsieur and Madame Lacombe arrived with Estelle by the morning Tube train.