“Poor Monsieur Sulfatin!” said Estelle.
“Bah! He’ll find an explanation,” Georges replied. “And you see, my dear Estelle, that the phonograph has its uses; it records oaths that one can have repeated eternally, or make them heard, by way of reproach, if they’re broken. It allows the delightful music of the voice of one’s beloved not to fly away and disappear, and allows our ears to be charmed as soon as we desire. Do you know, my dear Estelle, that I’ve taken several recordings of your voice without you suspecting it, and that, from time to time, in the evening, I give myself the pleasure of putting them on the phonograph?”
IV
Philox Lorris was getting ready to host the grand artistic, musical and scientific soirée, the mere announcement of which had overexcited the curiosity of all sections of society. In the presence of a select assembly, bringing together all of academic Paris and all of political Paris, all the notabilities of science and Parliament, the party leaders, ministers and the chef de cabinet, the illustrious Arsène des Marettes, a powerful orator, he intended, after the artistic part of the program, in the course of a rapid review of scientific novelties, to present his recent inventions and abruptly throw in the idea of the great national medicament, in order to interest the ministers, capture the sympathies of political society and launch forth all the newspapers, represented at the soirée by their editors in chief and reporters, on that immense, philanthropic and patriotic crusade for the regeneration of a weary and overstressed race, a palely enervated people, by means of the prodigious blaze of the revivifying sun of the great microbiocidal, purifying, tonic, anti-anemic national medicament, acting on bodies both by inoculation and ingestion!
Such is Philox Lorris’ goal. After the concert, in a lecture with demonstrations and experiments, Philox Lorris will expose his great project personally; the coup de théâtre will be the appearance of Sulfatin’s patient, Adrien La Héronnière, whom everyone knew and saw, a few months before, fallen to the last degree of physical decadence and degeneration. No suspicion of trickery can possibly arise in anyone’s mind; the man who furnishes the living and striking proof of the inventor’s assertions—the subject, in sum—is not some anonymous poor devil. Everyone has deplored the loss of that great intellect almost foundered in premature senility, but they will see Monsieur La Héronnière reappear, restored in the most complete fashion, physically and mentally: physically and intellectually repaired, having already become once again what he once was!
Philox Lorris has delegated the concerns of the frivolous diversions, the artistic part of the program, to Madame Lorris, assisted by Georges and Estelle Lacombe
“The great ministry of futility is yours,” he said to them, graciously, “and all its babble—but I intend it to be good, and I’m giving you an unlimited budget.”
Given carte blanche, Georges did not stint. He did not content himself with the simple phonograms adequate for the soirées of the petty bourgeoisie: ordinary musical recordings, the collections of “assorted singers” and “golden voices” that are sold by the dozen in shops, in the same way that boxes of “twelve famous tragedians” or “twelve favorite advocates” are sold for more serious soirées.
He consulted a few of the illustrious maestros of the day, and assembled, at great expense, phonographs of the most admirable male singers and the most triumphant cantactrices of Europe and America, in their most famous pieces. Not content with contemporary artistes, he procured phonograms of the artistes of old, extinct stars, lost heavenly bodies. He even obtained recordings from the museum of the Conservatoire of golden voices of the last century, both lyric and dramatic, collected when the phonograph was first invented. Thus, Philox Lorris’ guests would be able to hear Adelina Patti in her most exquisite creations, and Sarah Bernhardt declaiming the verses of Hugo, pearl by pearl, or roaring the ferocious cries of passion or Sardou’s dramas, and many other great artistes of yore: Madames Miolan-Carvalho, Krauss, Christine Nilsson, Thérésa, Richard, etc.
A few les scrupulous merchants tried to sell him pieces by Talma and Rachel, Duprez and La Malibran, but Georges had a list with a well-established chronology, and he did not allow himself to be taken in by those fraudulent recordings of voices extinct well before the phonograph—little deceits constituting veritable phonographic forgeries, by which so many bourgeois and salon dilettantes allow themselves to be fooled.
When the great evening arrived, the entire vicinity of Philox Lorris’ house was illuminated, at nightfall, by the most prestigious explosion of electric lights, designed like a crown of flamboyant comets around and above the vast ensemble of the buildings of the house and laboratories. In consequence, something akin to a miniature version of the rings of the planet Saturn was formed above the quarter. Soon, the floods of light were traversed by the arrival of elegantly-proportioned high-speed aircabs bringing guests from all points of the horizon, aerial vehicles of the latest models. In the crowd, order was admirably kept by civic guards in helicopters constantly circulating over the landing-stages, maintaining airships not furnished with invitations at a distance.
The flood of notabilities of all sectors of society, in various uniforms or tuxedos, the women in superb diamond-encrusted gowns, expanded from the landing-stage into the salons by way of elegant staircases, replacing the elevators for the day.
It is sufficient for us to cast an eye over the notebook of a female reporter for the great telephonic journal L’Époque, whom we encounter at the entrance, to know the names of the principal individuals that with whom we shall have the honor of crossing paths in Philox Lorris’ reception-rooms.
Already arrived, among other illustrious individuals are:
Madame Ponto, the leader of the great Feminist Party, presently député of the thirty-third arrondissement of Paris.
Monsieur Ponto, the billionaire banker, organizer of so many colossal enterprises, including the great Franco-American Transatlantic Tube and the European Park of Italy.
Monsieur Philippe Ponto, the illustrious architect of the sixth continent, presently in Paris to make considerable purchases of iron and steel to reinforce the skeleton of the immense territories created by connecting up the Polynesian archipelagos across the arms of drained seas.
Monsieur Arsène des Marettes, député of the thirty-ninth arrondissement, the Statesman and great orator who holds the threads of all ministerial schemes in his hands.
Old Field-Marshal Zagovicz, ex-generalissimo of the European forces that repelled the great Chinese invasion of 1941 and annihilated, after eighteen months of combat in the great plains of Bessarabia and Rumania, two armies each of seven hundred thousand Celestials, provided with armaments far superior to those we then possessed and sent to conquer poor Europe by the Asiatic and American mandarins. That ancient debris of the wars of old is still admirably preserved, in spite of his eighty-five years, looming over the frail figures of our engineer generals, who are always poring over books, by virtue of his tall and ever-upright stature.
The celebrated photo-picto-technologist Albertus Palla, member of the Institut, the immense artist who obtained such a great success at the last Salon with his animated depiction of The Death of Caesar, in which one can see the characters move and daggers rise and fall, while the murderers’ eyes roll in expressions of ferocity that seem to be the final word of veracity in art.
His Excellency Monsieur Arthur Levy, Duke of Bethany, ambassador of His Majesty Alphonse V. King of Jerusalem, who has quit his splendid chalet at Bayreuth in spite of the attractions of that ravishing spa in Aerial Regatta Week.
Monsieur Ludovic Bonnard-Pacha, former receiver of the bankruptcy of the Ottoman Gate, director general of the Society of Bosphorus Casinos.
A few of the eight hundred armchairs of the Académie Française—which is to say, the most illustrious of the illustrious among our academicians of both sexes.
The most important journalist, the man whose protection or benevolence kings and presidents seek on mounting the throne, th
e editor in chief of L’Époque, Monsieur Hector Piquefol, who has just fought a duel with the hereditary Archduke of Danubia because of certain articles in which he rebuked him for his conduct, and who is negotiating at present with the recalcitrant ministers of the Republic of Bulgaria for the marriage of the young prince royal.
The honorable Mademoiselle Coupard, of the Sarthe, senatress.
The eminent Mademoiselle Doctress Bardoz.
A numerous group of former presidents of South American republics and islands, retired after having made their fortunes, including His Excellency General Menelas, who abdicated the throne of a republic in the Antilles after having realized all the funds of a State loan issued in Europe. The worthy general, in the high esteem that he professes for our country, did not want to spend his money anywhere but in Paris.
A few monarchs of various provenance, in voluntary or obligatory retreat.
A few international billionaires: Messieurs Jeroboam Dupont of Chicago, Antoine Gobson of Melbourne, Célestin Caillod of Geneva, the wealthy owner of a few principalities still administered by kings and princes who have simply become his employees and salaried according to their rank and illustriousness of their family, etc., etc.
Monsieur Jacques Loizel, one of the representatives of the new financial and industrial feudalism, the adventurous businessman who, after having had, in a few affairs mounted with the impetuosity of his youth, eight hundred thousand ruined shareholders behind him—but with him—gave proof, after his return to big business after having purged a few petty convictions with a voyage abroad and allowed his overly imprudent ardor to cool, of such a luminous genius for the organization and management of corners in raw materials that he recovered by himself in a few years the millions lost in the overly audacious and ill-conceived speculations of his early youth.
The great socialist Évariste Fagard, the “Jan van Leiden”6 of Robaix during the great socialist experiment of 1922, who reverted to healthier ideas after making his fortune in the great upheaval, and now lives on his modest income, in slightly disillusioned wisdom, sheltering in philosophy in a charming little mansion in Calvados, where, like a respected patriarch, he lives surrounded by his numerous family and his numerous tenant farmers and agricultural engineers, watching with a benevolent but slightly ironic smile, the eternally-unfolding procession of human error.
A few relics of the ancient nobility, insignificant individuals whom Philox Lorris continues to treat with benevolence and often honors with invitations to his receptions or dinners because of the memories they represent, even though they do not occupy very elevated situations in the new world, where they are mostly very minor employees in ministries or subaltern engineers with no future.
Monsieur Jean Guilledaine, a first-rate scientist, medical engineer of Philox Lorris Inc., the principal collaborator with Philox Lorris in his research in bacteriology and microbiology, including the discovery, among all the representatives of the innumerable family of bacilli, vibrions and bacteria, of the “microbe of health,” and in the studies related to its propagation in cultures and inoculations.
The host of guests had spread out through the different reception rooms of the house, where they were able to examine a few of the company’s recent innovations. In order to offer his guests a few slight distractions before the commencement of the musical program, Philox Loris displayed previously-made telephonoscopic recordings on the large Tele in the main hall of important events that had occurred since the perfection of the apparatus: historical scenes, catastrophes, orators at the tribune in great sessions, episodes of revolutions and battle scenes, all of keen interest. Then, the receptions rooms being full, the musical program began.
There are no longer any musicians and orchestras in the drawing rooms of our era for concerts or balls—a great economy of space and money. With a subscription to one of the various musical companies that are fashionable at present, one receives one’s musical provision by wire, either in the form of the old songs of the masters of yore, performances of grand operas ancient and modern, or dance music—old waltzes and quadrilles by Métra, Strauss and Waldteufel, or the masters of today.
The machines replacing the orchestra and bringing music into the home are very simple and perfectly constructed; they can be regulated—which is to say that their volume can be moderated or increased, according to whether one likes music that is vague and distant, that which makes one dream when one has time to dream, or the musical din the deafens you rather painfully at first but violently empties your head in the blink of an eye of all the preoccupations of our hectic existence.
It is, of course necessary, as far as possible, to place the apparatus out of reach, in order not to permit some distracted guest from turning up the volume to maximum, as sometimes happens, at an inopportune moment, and producing a disagreeable shock in the midst of the conversations.
Music is sometimes abused; a few impassioned individuals play their musical phonographs during meal-times, a moment generally consecrated to listening to telephonic newspapers, and refined individuals sometimes go so far as to soothe themselves by night with music played on a household phonograph cranked up to deafening volume.
There is nothing surprising about that frenetic consumption. After all, with few exceptions, the enervated people of our era are much more sensitive to music than our forebears with calmer nerves, healthy people rather disdainful of vain noise; today they vibrate at the slightest note, like Galvani’s frogs in response to the electric pile.
Philox Lorris could not be content with a concert sent telephonically by the musical companies; he offers his subscribers the overture of a famous German opera of 1938, recorded for Tele during the first performance, with the composer—who died covered in glory in 1950—conducting the orchestra. During that performance by Tele of the work of Richard Wagner’s grandson, Estelle Lacombe, who was sitting beside Georges in a corner, suddenly squeezed his arm.
“Oh, my God!” she said. “Can you hear it?”
“What?” said Georges. “That algebraic and hermetic music?”
“You don’t notice anything?”
“It’s necessary to have heard it at least thirty-five times to begin to understand...”
“I listened to it yesterday—I tried to record it to see...”
“Gourmand!”
“Well, today it’s quite different. There’s something…the music’s grating, the notes appear to be hooking on to one another. I can assure you that it’s not the same as yesterday...”
“What does it matter? No one’s noticed. Personally, I thought it was one of the beauties of the orchestration; listen, in order not to applaud too loudly, people are enraptured.”
“Nevertheless, I’m worried. Monsieur Sulfatin had the recordings; what might he have done to them? He’s been so distracted for days. I’m going to look for him.”
When the final notes of the overture of the famous opera had faded away beneath a formidable outburst of applause, the engineer in charge of the musical program put a song from Faust on the Tele, sung by a celebrated cantatrice of the French Opera of Yokohama. The cantatrice appeared in the telephonoscope personally, in a recording made ten years before at the time of her greatest success, perhaps a trifle affected in pronouncing the first notes, but very pretty.
After listening to a few notes in astonished silence, a sudden murmur rose up and covered her voice; the cantatrice was horribly rusty. The piece unfolded in a succession of croaks each more atrocious than the last; instead of the remarkable artiste with the delightful voice, there was someone singing with a cold in the head. In the Tele, however, she was still smiling, as blooming and triumphant as ever!
The engineer, in response to a signal from Philox Lorris, quickly switched off the piece from Faust and put the great air from Lucia, sung by Adelina Patti, on the Tele.
At the mere sight of the nineteenth-century Italian nightingale on the screen, the murmurs stop, and for five minutes, the enraptured music-lovers modula
te bravoes by leaning back in their armchairs in anticipated delectation.
Ding! Ding! La Patti sings the first notes of her song...
There is a stir; people look at one another without saying anything. The piece continues...
There is no more doubt about it; like the first cantatrice, La Patti has a terrible cold; the notes catch in her throat or are marred by a lamentable hoarseness. It’s not a mere frog that the nightingale has in her throat—it’s an entire gang of tomcats screeching and wailing in every possible tone. What amazement! The frightened guests look at one another, there is whispering and suppressed laughter, while, on the Tele screen, Lucia, smiling and graceful, continues her snuffling cantilena imperturbably.
Philox Lorris, preoccupied with his great project, did not perceive the accident immediately; when he realized, from the murmurs of the assembly, that the concert was not going well, he had the third item on the program started. It was the singer Faure, of the last century. From the very first notes, it was all over for poor Faure; he was just as congested as La Patti or the star of the Yokohama Opera. What did it all mean? They passed on to actors. Alas, Mounet-Sully, the powerful tragedian of yore, appearing in the monologue from Hamlet, had lost his voice completely; Coqeulin cadet, in one of the funniest pieces of his repertoire, was equally inaudible. And so on. Strange! What kind of joke was this? Was it a trick?
Furious, Philox Lorris had the Tele switched off and got up to look for his son.
For their part, Georges and Estelle were looking everywhere for Sulfatin. Philox Lorris stopped them in a small drawing room.
“Well?” he said. “You were in charge of the musical program; what does all this signify? I give you carte blanche with regard to expenditure; I want the foremost artistes of today and yesterday, and you give me nothing but people with colds!”
Electric Life Page 14