Electric Life

by Albert Robida

  VI

  The ocean waves are gently beating the sparkling and gilded sand of a narrow creek, bordered with fine rocks, sheer in places, dotted with masses of verdure, sometimes suspended above the waves. It is beautiful; everything is smiling today; the sun is shining; the murmur of the waves, like a slow, soft song, rises up amid the foam-flecked rocks.

  In the depths of the creek, near a few boats hoisted on to the strand, a few old fishermen’s cottages are visible, covered with russet thatch, above which, at the summit of the rocky escarpment, three or four standing stones, phantoms of ancient times, raise their grey and mossy heads against the sky. In the distance, on the edge of a capricious and cascading little stream, a large town half-hides its houses beneath the shade of oaks, elms and chestnut-trees, pierced by a beautiful church steeple, slender and sunlit.

  A profound calm reigns over the entire region; from one end of the horizon to the other, as far as the eye can see above the lines of blue-tinted hills, where other bell-towers surge forth at intervals, there is no trace of factories or industrial establishments spoiling every corner of nature, polluting the waters of rivers with their noxious excreta, soiling everything around from top to bottom, including the clouds in the sky, no Tubes cutting through the countryside with annoying rigid lines, none of the tall buildings indicative of sectors of electricity, no aerial landing-stages, and not the slightest trace of air traffic in the blue sky.

  Where are we, then? Have we gone back in time five hundred years, or are we in a part of the world so remote and so neglected that it has not yet been penetrated by progress?

  Not at all! We are in France, on the Breton shore, in a detached corner of the former départements of Morbihan and Finistère, which form, under the name of the National Park of Armorica, a territory submissive to a special regime. Very special, in fact. By virtue of a law of social interest, passed fifty years ago, the entire extent of the National Park has been isolated from the great scientific and industrial movement that was then turning everything upside-down so rapidly and radically transforming the surface of the Earth, mores, characters and needs: the habits of life in the human ant-hill.

  Thanks to the conservatory law that so wisely thought, in the midst of the universal upheaval, in that breathless race toward progress, of keeping a corner of the old world intact where people might breathe, the National Park of Armorica is a region forbidden to all the innovations of science, barred to industry. At the fence marking the frontier, progress stops and does not pass; it seems that the clock of time has broken down; a few leagues from cities in which our scientific civilization reigns in triumph and full intensity, we find ourselves transported back to the Middle Ages, or the tranquil and somnolent nineteenth century.

  In this National Park, where the immense calm of the provincial life of yore is perpetuated, all those enervated and overworked by electric life, all the fatigued and anemic brains, come in search of reparative relaxation in which to refresh themselves, forgetting the crushing preoccupations of the study, the factory or the laboratory, far from any absorbent and enervating machine or apparatus, with no Teles, no phonos, and no Tubes, beneath a sky empty of all traffic.

  How do the fiancés Georges Lorris and Estelle Lacombe, with Sulfatin and is patient La Héronnière, come to be here, instead of studying according to the instructions of Philox Lorris, the electric blast-furnaces of the Loire basin or the artificial volcanoes of the Auvergne?

  As soon as he had installed Estelle in a wicker armchair, Georges Lorris carefully folded up Philox Lorris’ instructions, put them in his pocket and went to say a few words to the pilot. Immediately, the airship, which had taken a southerly direction, veered slightly to starboard and set a course directly westwards. Presumably, Sulfatin, who was taking his patient’s pulse, did not notice, for he did not make any objection.

  The weather was superb, the atmosphere, perfect in its limpidity, permitted the eye to perceive the slightest details of the immense panorama that seemed to be unrolling with vertiginous rapidity beneath the airship: chains of hills, yellow and green fields, capriciously cut by the meanders of rivers, forests displayed in large dark green patches, villages, towns, fairgrounds, groups of elegant villas, the outskirts of some rich city divinable in the distance by its crown of aerial vehicles, industrial agglomerations, strangely-formed black factories enveloped by an atmosphere of thick smoke whose coloration sometimes sufficed to indicate the kind of industry being exploited...

  For some time they followed the Paris-Brest Tube, at an altitude of six hundred meters, crossing the path of several Breton airships and omnibuses, and Sulfatin, who was studying the landscape with the aid of binoculars, said nothing. They passed over the cities of Laval, Vitré and Rennes, identified by Georges in a loud voice, without his making any observation.

  It was Estelle, as plunged into a charming dream, who suddenly let go of Georges’ arm.

  “My God,” she said. “I was so happy that I wasn’t thinking about it—but we’re not going to Saint-Étienne?”

  “To study the electric blast-furnaces, forges, rolling-mills, industrial establishments and artificial volcanoes, etc?” replied Georges, smiling. “No, Estelle, we’re not going there.”

  “But what about Monsieur Lorris’ instructions?”

  “I don’t feel in the mood just now for that sort of occupation. I’d be obliged to do too much violence to my brain, which is at present entirely closed to the beauties of science and industry...”

  “However...”

  “Do you want to see me become a second La Héronnière? I want, for a while—for as long as possible—to ignore all those things, unless you want to plunge yourself into those pleasures. I don’t want to hear any more mention of factories, blast-furnaces, electricity, Tubes…all the modern marvels that make our lives so hectic and so feverish.”

  The airship set down on the last aerial landing-stage at the edge of the National Park, without Sulfatin raising the slightest objection. It was six o’clock in the evening when the travelers reached the ground; immediately, Georges Lorris led his companions to a bizarre vehicle with a yellow carcass, drawn by two vigorous little horses.

  “Why, it’s a diligence!” Estelle exclaimed. “I’ve seen them in old pictures. They still exist! We’re going to travel in a diligence—what joy!”

  “As far as Kernoël, a delightful place—you’ll see. You haven’t reached the end of your surprises yet. In the National Park of Bretagne, you’ll no longer find anything with which you’re familiar. What surprises me is that our friend Sulfatin isn’t saying anything, and isn’t protesting against the violations of the program. His silence amazes me—but these scientists are so distracted that perhaps Sulfatin thinks that we’re in an aircab!”

  Two hours of travel along charming roads, in which nothing resembled the décor of modern civilization: tranquil little villages with thatched roofs, granite calvaries with sculpted figures grouped at the foot of the cross; inns indicated by sprigs of mistletoe, herds of pigs guarded by old swineherds with fantastic silhouettes, truly surprising apparitions that seemed to have surged from the depths of the past or stepped out of old paintings in a museum: that was all that the eye could see, scanning the side of the road. Estelle, leaning out of the side-window of the diligence, thought that she was dreaming.

  On doorsteps in the villages women were turning spinning-wheels: genuine spinning-wheels, of a sort that one only saw in old pictures. Even better, on the banks beside the road, women sitting on the ground were plying ancient distaffs.

  “When one thinks,” said Sulfatin, “of the great factories of Rouen, where forty thousand bales of wool go in every morning to be washed, carded, dyed and woven, to emerge in the evening transformed into shirts, waistcoats, stockings, shawls and bonnets!”

  Sulfatin was not as distracted as they had thought. Georges looked at him in surprise. What! He knew where they were going, and hadn’t objected!

  At all the inns along the route, accor
ding to the ancient custom, the postillion stopped to exchange a few words with the maidservants, who ran to the door, and to take a large bowl of cider with a small glass of eau-de-vie.

  Finally, after many changes of décor each more surprising and quaintly outdated than the last, the driver used the end of his whip to point out a church steeple looming over a hill to the passengers. It was the small town of Kernoël, set in a golden frame of gorse, on the edge of a little river that was wending its way to the sea half a league away. Click clack! With a loud noise of rattling iron and whip-cracks, the diligence went through the town at a gallop.

  It is a pretty little town, in the old-fashioned mode, with its frame of broken mossy ramparts, shaded by tall trees, with a beautiful grey and yellow church at the top of the hill extending its protective shadow over a crowd of old roofs, with tortuous streets and serried ranks of houses with slate gables, all of whose beams are supported by fine figures of bearded saints, by bizarre animals, or terminated by gross heads pulling comical faces at the passers-by.

  O astonishment! There are even street-lanterns suspended above the crossroads! Lanterns that a man brings down by tugging on the rope, and which he gravely lights with the stub of a candle that he carries in a little lantern of his own. It’s truly unimaginable! The entire population is in the open as the diligence goes by, the shopkeepers rushing to their doorways, the housewives at the windows.

  Our travelers admire the worthy folk’s costumes. A pox on modern fashions! The natives of the region are as many mockeries of new ideas. They have remained faithful to the old customs of their ancestors. The men have smocks and gaiters, embroidered waistcoats and broad-rimmed hats. The women wear blue or red corsages with large velvet sleeves, narrow skirts with heavy pleats, beautiful white collarets and head-dresses with broad wings. It is superb, and no longer seen anywhere else, except in operas.

  The diligence stopped in the main square, at the Grand Saint-Yves Inn, flanked to the right by the Cheval Rouge and to the left by the Écu-de-Bretagne. A plump bustling hostess and maidservants with joyful faces greeted the travelers as they get down from the diligence. They were given large rooms overlooking the street on one side and on the other, a picturesque courtyard surrounded by various detached buildings with spiraling staircases, stables and garages with old wooden pillars, cluttered with vehicles: omnibuses, cabriolets and other antique boneshakers.

  Estelle had two rooms, a small one for Grettly and an immense one for herself, with naked beams, a huge fireplace and antique furniture. Crude lithographs of the Middle Ages, retracing the misfortunes of Geneviève de Brabant3 ornamented the walls, with wallpaper patterned with large flowers.

  The next day, a new existence commenced for our travelers. It was market day, and the market was held in the main square in front of the Grand Saint-Yves; they were woken up by the noise and watched from their windows as the vegetable-carts filed past, along with donkeys laden with baskets of apples, cabbages and onions, farmers pulling pink pigs in little carts, and peasant women guiding flocks of chattering geese with poles.

  Estelle and Georges, followed by Grettly, were soon in the square, strolling among the peasants and the vendors, the milkmaids and petty local traders selling boxes of carrots or pairs of ducks. Sulfatin and his invalid joined them. All the little street scenes seemed extremely curious to the ultra-civilized individuals; they made lengthy pauses in front of a milkmaid measuring her milk, an ambulant knife-grinder sharpening the peasants’ knives, and the blacksmith in the process of replacing a horseshoe—a new spectacle full of interest for the airship-riders.

  After a lunch that threatened to go on forever, because maidservants carrying new dishes constantly surged forth from the kitchen, from which odorant fumes escaped, the travelers went along the river-bank toward the sea, by way of an exceedingly irregular path passing alongside beds of reeds and over little sandy inlets under the trees, where the beating of washerwomen in blue dresses resounded, across rickety wooden bridges thrown from crag to crag, beneath old mossy mills whose huge green-tinted wheels were turning slowly with the current, pouring out sparkling rivulets.

  Grettly was in heaven. She had found true nature again, without any trace of those electric wires extended like an immense net, with meshes intersecting by the thousand, which covered the rest of the world. From time to time she raised her head, surprised and charmed on no longer seeing the sky furrowed by our high-speed aerial vehicles. She darted envious glances at the Breton women who were walking barefoot along the bank, and hr happiness would have been complete if she had been allowed to take off her shoes, as she had done—in order not to wear them out—during her childhood in the mountains.

  At least there was no need for insulating slippers, and one had nothing to fear from the dangerous whims of Electricity!

  Philox Lorris would certainly have given evidence of sharp discontent if he had been able to see, that afternoon and on all the days that followed for a fortnight, Georges Lorris lying on Kernoël Beach beside Estelle Lacombe, in the shade of a rock or a boat, or lying in the grass higher up at high tide, at the foot of a standing stone, with Estelle at his side, spending pleasant days chatting in charming intimacy, or reading—oh horror!—instead of the Annales de la Chimie or the Revue Polytechnique, some volume of verse or collection of Breton legends and traditions!

  To cap it all—a subject of no less considerable astonishment—Sulfatin was there too, a pipe in his mouth, launching clouds of smoke into the air, while his patient Adrien La Héronnière collected seashells or made bouquets of flowers with Grettly. La Héronnière was no longer the lamentable overstressed individual that it had been necessary to install in a mechanical incubator for three months; he was quite well. The treatment prescribed by the medical engineer Sulfatin and, more especially, the regime of the National Park, were working wonders.

  The intimacy of the Engagement Voyage was far from having produced the quarrel that Philox Lorris had judged to be inevitable—on the contrary. The two young people spent very enjoyable days in long conversations, making mutual confidences, revealing themselves more completely to one another, so to speak, recognizing in their tastes, their thoughts and their hopes a conformity that permitted the augury for the projected marriage of a long and happy future.

  In a fine old church filled with naïve religious statuettes, with little ex-voto ships suspended from Gothic vaults, they attended mass and vespers in the midst of a population clad in Sunday clothing. After vespers, there was dancing in the square; on a stage made of planks set on barrels, bagpipers drew shrill sounds from their instruments. Breton men and women, forming immense circles, spun and leapt and sang old simple and naïve old songs.

  The joy of living in primitive times

  Of listening to happy and plaintive songs...

  Georges and Estelle, drawn by the sympathetic current of the fine old customs, joined in the round dances, along with a few foreigners taking rest cures, and even Sulfatin seemed to join in wholeheartedly. His patient watched, not daring to take the risk; Grettly pushed him into the round and made him take a few turns, after which he went to collapse, breathless, on a wooden bench near the cider barrels, among the people who exhausted by dancing.

  Estelle is entirely happy. Every second day the postman brings her a letter from her mother. The postman! That occupation is almost totally unknown now, except in the National Park of Armorica. Everywhere else, people prefer telephonoscoping, or at least telephoning; important messages are sent in phonographic recordings, arriving via pneumatic tube. Thus, there is no longer anyone who writes, except for the utterly ignorant in remote rural areas. Only Estelle knows the emotions of mail time, for Georges Lorris does not receive letters. He wrote to his father after a few days spent at Kernoël, but Philox Lorris has not replied. Perhaps he has not yet had time to open the letter.

  Sulfatin also receives his correspondence—not letters, but veritable parcels brought by diligence, packets of phonograms that he has the phonogra
ph carried in his baggage read to him. He replies in the same fashion—which is to say that he speaks his replies and then sends the phonographic recordings in parcels. The correspondence is thus rapidly expedited and Sulfatin is the master of his time thereafter.

  To Georges’ great surprise, the imperturbable Sulfatin continued to say nothing, not protesting against the sojourn in the backward region of Kernoël. He completely forgot Philox Lorris’ instructions; a new Sulfatin was revealed: a cheerful, amiable and charming Sulfatin. He did not seek to disturb the placid joys of the pleasant days in any way, and made no effort to provoke quarrels—which would not have been easy, in any case—as he had been expressly ordered to do by Philox Lorris. Very strange!

  Georges, who had prepared himself to engage in a violent battle against the severe Sulfatin, rejoiced in not even having to begin the struggle. Only Sulfatin’s patient, Adrien La Héronnière, before whom Philox Lorris had not hesitated to speak when he had explained his intentions to Sulfatin, racked his brains in the attempt to divine the motive for such a complete infraction of his employer’s instructions. Although any mental operation, and any slightly complicated linking of ideas, was still hard work for him, La Héronnière strove to reflect on that subject, but only earned himself terrible headaches and admonitions from Sulfatin.

  After a fortnight, Sulfatin suddenly changed; he seemed less cheerful, almost anxious. Under the pretext that he was beginning to get bored at Kernoël in surroundings that were too familiar, he proposed that they go to Ploudestan, at the other end of the National Park. To satisfy him, Georges agreed willingly. They left Kernoël. Piled in a wretched omnibus, shaken by stony roads, negligently treated, the travelers endured fifteen long leagues.