Electric Life

by Albert Robida

  It was another Bretagne, a more primitive and severe Bretagne, that was revealed to them, with heaths that were melancholy in spite of the adornment of gorse, with the austere lines of its horizons, its rocky locations and its steep cliff.

  Ploudestan was far from possessing the pleasant features of Kernoël. It was a mere village of rude granite houses covered in thatch, on the edge of the sea, overlooking somber rocks, in a landscape of grandiose austerity. There was only one passable inn there, frequented by photopainters who came every summer to aim their cameras at the rocks and reefs of the tempestuous Baie de Ploudestan, and thus give us, by grouping their models, the inhabitants of Ploudestan, artfully arranged in ingeniously-staged scenes against appropriate backgrounds, in the magnificent photo-pictures that we admire in various Salons.

  At Ploudestan, Georges and Estelle went for a series of little walks. Sulfatin did not always go with them; he was increasingly preoccupied now, absenting himself quite often and leaving his patient in Grettly’s care.

  Where did he go during these mysterious absences?

  We are going to reveal that, along with—at whatever cost—the weaknesses of Sulfatin, that remarkable man whom we believe to be a new model.

  Ploudestan is situated on the edge of the National Park; three-quarters of a league away is Kerloch, a Tube terminus, which is provided with all the facilities that modern science provides for us. Every day, Sulfatin went to Kerloch and took possession, for an hour or two, of one of the Teles at the station.

  Let us penetrate with him into the telephonocope booth, which permits loved ones who have remained at home, or the factory or office that has been left behind, to be seen again, anywhere and at any time.

  Every day, Sulfatin asks for a connection to Paris, either to 375 Rue Diane-de-Poitiers in the Saint-German-en-Laye district, or Mademoiselle Sylvia’s dressing-room at the Molière-Palace. Mademoiselle Sylvia is also Sulfatin’s correspondent in Saint-Germain; 375 Rue Diane-de-Poitiers, a small but elegant brand new house, has the honor of accommodating the celebrated artiste Sylvia, the tragedienne-medium, the star of the Molière-Palace, who has been causing all Paris to flock to the former Théâtre-Français for six months.

  “Flock” is a manner of speaking, of course; even with the greatest successes, the theaters are often almost empty now that, with the Tele, one can see performances of any play without leaving home—without even getting up from the table if one wishes—to such an extent that auditoria have been considerably reduced and there has even been talk of getting rid of them completely, which would significantly diminish the expenses of theatrical enterprises and permit the price of domestic theater subscriptions to be lowered further.

  Sylvia, the tragedienne-medium, has brought the Molière-Palace four hundred thousand telephonoscopic subscriptions in six months, which have realized phenomenal profits in spite of the low cost of subscriptions.

  Previously, the Molière-Palace was somewhat in decline, in spite of its more or less fortunate endeavors and changes of genre. In vain, it had staged resplendent ballets, bringing together a superb ensemble of ballerinas di primo cartello and extremely remarkable mimes, and had engaged the most extravagant clowns, but the public was increasingly staying away, when the Molière-Palace’s director chanced one day to see Mademoiselle Sylvia, an extraordinarily gifted individual in terms of her mediumistic ability, in an evocation of Racine, on the stage of a small Spiritist theater. On listening to Mademoiselle Sylvia pronounce the lines of Phèdre with Racine’s own voice, evoked for the occasion, the director had glimpsed the tragedienne-medium’s commercial potential, and had hired her immediately.

  With its tragedienne-medium, who immediately became a star of the first magnitude, the Molière-Palace returned to the genre that had made its fortune and its glory several centuries before, to Classical theater—but introducing significant changes into the old dramas and ancient tragedies, fortifying them with new attractions. All the events that were narrated verbally in the course of the old plays, everything recited and everything that happened off-stage, was brought on to the stage, often furnishing depictions that were more interesting than the play itself, which was no more than seasoning. When the play did not furnish enough attractions, means to stuff it with them were found anyway. Thus were seen, on the transformed stage of the ancient and once overly solemn house of Molière, combats of ferocious animals, sieges, tournaments, naval battles, bullfights and hunts, with authentic prey.

  Furthermore, the tragedienne-medium, evoking in turn the spirits of the great artistes of old, brought an extraordinary variety of effects to the interpretation of great tragic roles. There was not only Sylvia performing; there was Clairon, there was Adrienne Lecouvreur, there was Mademoiselle Georges; there was Rachel or Sarah Bernhardt, returning to the theater of their former success, recovering their voices, extinct for a hundred or two hundred years, in order to declaim once again, in their own particular manner, the great tirades that had inflamed the spectators of yore.

  There was nothing more gripping—more tragic, even—than the change of perspective that was provided when the tragedian Sylvia, a tall woman of robust, even massive appearance, very calm and very bourgeois in appearance when the fluid was not radiating, after having occupied the stage rather coldly for some time, was suddenly transfigured, with a contraction wrought by a simple effort of will, as if by the shock of an electric pile, by the spirit that entered into her and, so to speak, expelled her own personality: by the spirit of a long-dead artiste, who suddenly reappeared on the boards trodden long ago, the theater of her former successes, who expelled or annihilated the soul of the living artiste in order to substitute her own, thus recovering a few hours of a new existence.

  Sometimes, on big days, it was the spirits of the authors themselves that Sylvia evoked, and one had the astonishing surprise of hearing, authentically, Racine, Corneille, Voltaire and Hugo speaking their own verses, sometimes introducing into their sublime works variants that had fallen into oblivion, or making changes marked by the seal of genius that was still making progress beyond the grave.

  From a good bourgeois family, the tragedienne-medium was a very simple woman outside the theater, living tranquilly with her parents, retired shopkeepers, who had never felt any evocative or suggestionistic power. Sylvia was a phenomenon, although her powerful mediumistic ability was ancestral in origin, for it came to her from a great-great-uncle whose strange abilities and liking for occultism and the sciences of the beyond, once ignored or abandoned to evident charlatans, had got him locked up as a madman.

  One evening, sitting and dozing in front of his Tele, Sulfatin had seen Sylvia making her debut as the great Hugo’s Doña Sol, and a lightning bolt had struck him: a veritable flash of inspiration. Forgetting that he was watching the performance from afar, by telephonoscope, Sulfatin, momentarily carried away by a sudden idea—absolutely scientific, of course—had tried to hurl himself toward the actress and had broken the Tele screen.

  The idea in question was this: what might he not do, if he could turn the astonishing power of the actress-medium to profit? If he could, thanks to her, evoke the geniuses of distant centuries, the powerful brains sleeping in the tomb, and make them speak, recovering lost secrets, piercing the mysteries of the darkened sciences of antiquity! Who could tell? After absolute rest, enjoyed for hundreds of years in the depths of tombs, might not those reawakened geniuses, brought up to date with modern progress, suddenly discover marvels of which our brains, accustomed to certain ideas, and drawn by other currents, could not think?

  In consequence, shrouding his plans in profound mystery, he had introduced himself into the house of the tragedienne-medium’s parents and had asked for Sylvia’s hand in marriage. The project was dragging on somewhat, Sylvia proving, in Sulfatin’s presence, to be very irregular in her moods, sometimes amiable and sometimes anxious, one day on the brink of consenting to the proposed marriage, but going back on her word the next day without giving any reason.
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  At the commencement of the Engagement Voyage, all Sylvia’s time being taken up by the performances of a spectacular new play, Sulfatin had been obliged to content himself with a correspondence by way of phonographic recordings, but now he needed to converse with the great artiste by Tele every day. Yes, truly, absence had developed in him a fault of which he had previously been unaware: he had become jealous, violently jealous, on behalf of science, and, thinking that someone else might have the same idea as him and obtain her agreement in his absence, he bitterly regretted not having placed ingenious and invisible items of photophonographic apparatus, which make surveillance so easy in certain instances, in the little house.

  That was why, gradually, he started to run to the Tele at Kerloch Station three or four times a day, in order to enter into communication with the tragedienne-medium’s house or dressing-room, and even spending some of his evenings there, watching the performances at the Molière-Palace. During those times, La Héronnière was somewhat neglected, but Estelle and Grettly were there to keep an eye on the invalid.

  One evening, when everyone except for Sulfatin was gathered in the main room of the inn, where a few joyful photo-painters were expounding their theories about art, spiced with jokes, La Héronnière, who had seemed for some time to be plunged into laborious and dolorous mental labor, suddenly slapped his forehead and whispered in Georges’ ear: “I’ve got it! I’ve guessed why Dr. Sulfatin, having had precise instructions to sow discord, by any means whatsoever, between you and your fiancée, is ignoring that instruction completely. He’s already Philox Lorris’ deputy. Well, by getting you out of the way; or, rather, helping you to remove yourself voluntarily from the laboratories and business ventures—not to your liking, eh?—he’s…what was I saying? I can’t remember…oh yes! He’s hoping…he counting on remaining Philox Lorris’ only possible successor. A very sly plan, but clever. Do you understand, eh? That’s it!”

  La Héronnière could do no more after that mental effort; he was afflicted by a violent headache. Grettly put him to bed with a cup of chamomile tea.

  VII

  Meanwhile, Philox Lorris, relying entirely on the traitorous Sulfatin, had plunged back into his work, and had not even given the fiancés a moment’s thought for ten days. When the memory finally came back to him, in an interval in his labors, he suddenly recalled the letter that he had received a few days before.

  He was so unaccustomed to that backward mode of correspondence that the letter in question, thrown into a corner, had been forgotten. He had some difficulty finding it again. When he saw that Georges had changed the itinerary and that, while promising to make a short tour of the artificial volcanoes of Auvergne on the way back, he had preferred to go and waste his time in Bretagne, in purposeless walks devoid of utility, Philox Lorris was very angry, and immediately demanded explanations from Sulfatin. A reply soon arrived by phonogram. The hypocritical Sulfatin put all the blame on Georges, who was stubbornly rejecting his opinions and good advice.

  Philox paused momentarily, and then sent a phonogram to Sulfatin saying simply: “Where are we with the quarrel? It can’t come soon enough.”

  Sulfatin replied with a recording of a conversation between Georges and Estelle, collected by a little phonograph that he had cleverly hidden in the foliage while leaving the two young people together under the arbor at the inn. The conversation in question informed Philox Lorris sufficiently that the expected falling out was still far away, if it was ever going to happen at all.

  Oh, that ancestor, always reappearing! Philox Lorris said to himself. What’s to be done? Since Sulfatin isn’t up to it, I need to get involved myself, and try to put a spoke in their wheel.

  Having many things to do, Philox Lorris got straight to work, without any hesitation, in everything he undertook—and Georges soon saw the effect. One morning, as he was making arrangements to go out with a fishing-party after lunch, he received a small package and a large parcel, sent express from Kerloch. The little packet contained two phonograms, one bearing the stamp of Philox Lorris and the other the seal of the Ministry of War.

  Immediately taken to the phonograph, this is what the recordings said:

  The first: “Chemical Artillery of your regiment mobilized for maneuvers; sending orders received for you. Very sorry for the disturbance to your delightful Engagement Voyage.”

  The second: “Ministry of War, Twelfth Army Corps Reserve. Trial Mobilization and Extraordinary Maneuvers, 1936. Chemical artillery and offensive medical corps, poison gas torpedists,4 pump-operators and aerial torpedists all convened from 12 to 19 August. Order to report: Captain Georges Lorris of the 17th battery, 8th regiment of the Chemical Artillery will report at five a.m. on 12 August to the Military Chemical Base at Châteaulin to take command of his battery.”

  “Oh, great!” said Georges, irritatedly. “A call-up. What does this signify? This call-up wasn’t due until next year! I suspect that it’s Engineer-General of the Chemical Artillery Philox Lorris who’s had it brought forward, in order to inconvenience poor Captain Georges Lorris in his Engagement Voyage. I’ll bet that the parcel contains my uniform...dead right!”

  “What a pity!” said Estelle. “That’s our poor voyage ended...”

  “Bah!” said Sulfatin. “The maneuvers are being held at Châteaulin? Well, Châteaulin’s not far from here, only a short distance from the National Park; we can watch the maneuvers. We’re looking for distractions, and here’s one—and we’ll have the pleasure of contemplating the brilliant Captain Lorris in his uniform, at the head of his battery...”

  “But there’s nothing picturesque about our operations in the Chemical Artillery.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” said Estelle. “We’re going to watch the maneuvers.”

  “Provided that there’s no danger,” the prudent Grettly put in.

  “If you’re there, my dear Estelle, I’ll endure my annoyances patiently, and I’ll try to ensure that my battery distinguishes itself in the mock-battles,” said Georges, laughing.

  It was agreed that Georges would leave at ten o’clock that same evening for Kerloch, from which a Tube train would take him to Châteaulin. The charming Estelle and Grettly, accompanied by Sulfatin and La Héronnière, who had tired himself out mentally in the efforts he had made to divine Sulfatin’s plans, would make their way to Châteaulin during the morning of the following day.

  Today’s armies are extraordinarily complicated organisms, all of whose cogs and springs need to work with absolute precision and reliability. In order for the machine to function properly, it is necessary for all the elements comprising it and all its various accessories to fit together with the greatest possible neatness, with no hitches or friction.

  That is essential, alas, now more than ever. Progress, which, in accordance with the assumptions of the dreamers of previous centuries, ought to have ameliorated everything—people and institutions alike—in its triumphant march through the civilizations, and brought about universal Peace, has in fact, by multiplying contacts between nations, and hence conflicts of interest, also multiplied the causes and occasions of war.

  Today’s customs, habits and ideas differ from the ideas of old as much as the political world, in its present constitution, differs from the old world. What was the petty Europe of the nineteenth century, reigning over continents by virtue of the power furnished to it by its sciences, perhaps in an embryonic state, but of which it nevertheless had a monopoly? Only Europe counted. Now, Science, having expanded like a great flood almost everywhere, almost equally distributed over the entire surface of the globe, has brought all peoples to the same level, or very nearly: the scorned ancient nations of Asia as well as nations newly born from a few dozen emigrants or nuclei of convicts and outlaws in the distant solitudes of the oceans. Now, the entire world counts, for everyone has the same explosives, the same improved machines, the same means of attack and defense.

  Ideas have changed no less. O dreamers of universal harmony between peop
les, mild Utopians, innocent and naïve historians, who criticized the violence of old: the wars of conquest undertaken by ambitious princes with a view to increasing their territories with a few provincial scraps as well as wars ignited by the vanity of nations with no motives of interest, solely to establish the supremacy of one race over another! O sweet dreamers! O poets! It is no longer a matter of such trivia—the quarrels of princes or peoples, little wars of monarchs, in the chaos of the Middle Ages, fighting over the possession of some meager duchy, the internal troubles of nations in the process of constituting themselves, or even major wars undertaken for the establishment or conservation of a certain equilibrium between the nations! All stuff and nonsense!

  Those struggles, those bloody quarrels that you criticized so vigorously, were nevertheless manifestations of a confused idealism reigning over minds; the most aggressive warmongers in those days spoke only of rights, always believing or claiming that they were fighting for the rights, or the liberty, or even the fraternity of peoples. Today, Realism reigns supreme! We make war as much, and even more, than before, not for hollow ideas or dreams but, on the contrary, with a view to some serious and palpable advantage, some significant profit.

  Is the industry of one nation in jeopardy because another nation, neighboring or distant, possesses means furnished by nature or industry to produce goods more cheaply? A war will decide who will get what remains of the market, by means of the destruction of the industrial centers of the losing side, or by some fine treaty imposed by torpedo-blasts.

  Dos our commerce need outlets for the superabundance of its products? Bellona, with her powerful engines, will take charge of opening them up. The commercial treaties thus imposed will not last long; so be it—but in the meantime, they will create the wealth of a generation, and when they are torn up, we shall find many other opportunities!