Electric Life

by Albert Robida

  “I don’t understand at all!” said Georges. “We got first class recordings, that goes without saying. It’s utterly unexpected and incomprehensible...”

  “All the more so,” Estelle added, “since, I must confess, I permitted myself to try them out yesterday on Madame Lorris’ Tele. They were admirable, with no trace of hoarseness...”

  “You played the Patti recording?”

  “I confess...”

  “And no hoarseness?”

  “The entire piece was delightful! I gave the recordings to Monsieur Sulfatin, and I’m looking for him in order to ask him...”

  Georges, who had reached Sulfatin’s study while this conversation was in progress, came back swiftly with several recordings in his hand.”

  “I’ve got it,” he said. “I have the key to the enigma. Sulfatin has spent the night with our musical phonograms in the open air, on the veranda. Here’s a few he left behind; it was a cold night and all our phonograms have caught colds—all our recordings are ruined!”

  “That animal Sulfatin!” cried Philox Lorris. “Now my concert’s ruined! It’s stupid! My soirée’s descending into ridicule. The entire press will report our misadventure! Philox Lorris Inc. has no shortage of enemies; they’ll roar with laughter. What’s to be done?”

  “If I might venture...” said Estelle, timidly.

  “What? Out with it! Hurry!”

  “Well, Monsieur Georges has made copies for me of the recordings of some of the best parts of the program, those I played yesterday. I’ll run to fetch them; those haven’t passed through Monsieur Sulfatin’s hands, they’re definitely perfect...”

  “Run, girl, run! You’ll save my life!” cried Philox Lorris. “Oh, music! Pretentious noise, absurd racket, how right I was to mistrust you! If anyone ever asks me to put on another concert, I’ll have them skinned alive!”

  He returned very rapidly to the main hall and offered all his excuses to his guests, putting the blame on a laboratory assistant’s error. Then, Estelle having arrived with her own recordings, he put her in charge of displaying them on the telephonoscope herself.

  Estelle was right; her recordings were excellent; La Patti did not have a cold, Faure had not lost his voice; the singers and cantatrices were able to employ the full amplitude of their voices and cause the sublime harmonies of the masters to resonate magnificently. As each celebrated diva and each illustrious tenor appeared on the Tele, a frisson of pleasure ran through the rows of guests, and the ladies were practically fainting in their armchairs.

  Once again, Sulfatin, the man who was never distracted, had suffered a distraction. For a man of a new, unique, improved model, shielded from all the imperfections that our ancestors have bequeathed to us in launching us upon the earth, it must be confessed that Philox Lorris’ secretary was going down considerably in his estimation. All things considered, the artist ancestor of his son Georges was doing less damage in the latter’s brain; the chemical formula by means of which Sulfatin had been created was doubtless not yet sufficiently perfect. Absolutely furious, Philox Lorris promised himself to give his secretary a good dressing down.

  V

  Among all the notabilities of politics, finance and science that Philox Lorris hoped to interest in his ideas, there was one man all-powerful by virtue of his influence and position, whom it was most important of all to convert. That was député Arsène des Marettes, the maintainer or bringer-down of ministries, the great leader of the Chambre, the head of the Masculinist party opposed to the Feminist Party, the Statesman who, since the admission of women to political rights, had tried o raise a barrier to feminist pretentions, to erect a dam against the encroachments of women, and who had recently created for that purpose the League for the Emancipation of Men.

  That cause, of a veritable urgency, had naturally given rise in the Chambre to a violent protest from Mademoiselle Muche, the député of the Clignancourt district, supported by the most distinguished orators of the Feminist Party and a few turncoats betraying the noble Masculinist cause out of shameful weakness.

  Monsieur des Marettes had expected that, however, and was prepared for it. Courageously, to defend his work, he had stood up to the storm, in the tumult of a session such as had rarely been seen since the great days of the last Revolution. He went up to the tribune four times, in spite of the mot furious clamor, in spite of several slaps and a certain number of scratches received from the most reckless députées, and passed, by a 350-vote majority, a motion approving the attitude of strict neutrality observed by the government with regard to the question.

  The great orator emerged from the conflict in a better position than ever, and it seems that nothing can henceforth be done in the Chambre or in the country without him. The success of Philox Lorris Inc.’s two great projects—the adoption of the monopoly of the great national medicament first of all, and then its counterpart, the complete transformation of our military system, army and equipment and the large-scale organization of Offensive Medical Corps, for impending miasmatic warfare—depend on the sympathy, or at least the neutrality, of Arsène des Marettes.

  Philox Lorris is certain of the eventual triumph of his ideas, but to get there rapidly, he must persuade Arsène des Marettes to share his views, so all the scientist’s attentions are devoted to the illustrious Stateman. As soon as he has seen that Arsène des Marettes is tiring of the music and beginning to get drowsy, lulled in spite of himself by the great arias of the telephonoscopic operas, Philox Lorris has taken the député into a small private room in order to have a serious chat during the procession of futilities constituting the artistic part of the program.

  “I’m very intrigued, my dear master,” said the député, “and I’m wondering what new astonishing scientific revelations we can expect on your part. Rumor has it that you’re about to turn science upside-down again...”

  “I do, in fact, have a few small novelties to expose in a little while, in a short speech, with supportive experiments, but it’s precisely because my novelties have both a humanitarian and political character that I’m not sorry to have this opportunity to have a little chat with you before my lecture. I’d be singularly flattered to obtain the approval of a Stateman like you...”

  “Your new discoveries have a humanitarian and political character, you say?”

  “You can judge for yourself! First of all, my dear député, be kind enough to look slightly downwards to your right.”

  “At this complicated apparatus?”

  “Yes. In the center, among all those alembics, jointed tubes, outlets, copper spheres, can you see the reservoir of sorts to which everything leads?”

  “Perfectly,” said Monsieur des Marettes, getting up to tap the apparatus with his finger.

  “Don’t touch,” said Philox Lorris, negligently. “There are enough pathogenic cultures in there to infect an area forty kilometers in diameter at a stroke.”

  Arsène des Marettes took a hasty step backwards.

  “If the ladies and gentlemen listening to our Tele-concert had any suspicion,” Philox Lorris continued, “that it would only require the slightest imprudence in here to cause the explosion of a redoubtable epidemic, I imagine that their attention to the trilling of cantatrices would suffer, but we won’t tell them for a little while. Here, in this apparatus, there are various cultivated miasmas, brought by mixtures and amalgamations, combinations and preparations, to the utmost degree of virulence and concentrated by special methods—all with an objective that I shall reveal to you shortly. Now, my dear friend, be kind enough to look to your left...”

  “At this apparatus as complicated as the one on the right?”

  “Yes. That assembly of alembics, tubes, bottles, valves...”

  “It has a reservoir in the middle too.”

  “Exactly! Consider that reservoir.”

  “Even more dangerous than the other, perhaps?”

  “On the contrary, my dear, député, on the contrary! To the right there is disease; it’s the o
ffensive arsenal; they’re the most harmful miasmas, which I am ready, at the first sign of war, to launch into enemy territory for the defense of our fatherland. To the left there is health; it’s the defensive arsenal; it’s the benevolent medicament that defends us against the assaults of disease, which repairs damage to our organism and the universal wear and tear caused by the excessive stresses of our electric life.”

  “I like that one better!” said Arsène des Marettes, smiling.

  “You know,” Philox Loris went on, “how we moan about all the rapid corporeal wear and tear of our breathless century? No more legs!”

  “Alas!”

  “No more muscles!”

  “Alas!”

  “No more stomach!”

  “Thrice alas! That’s certainly my condition.”

  “Only the brain still functions adequately.”

  “Of course. How old do you think I look?” Arsène des Marettes asked, piteously.

  “Between seventy-two and seventy-eight, but I expect you’re much younger.”

  “I’m fifty-three!”

  “We’re all venerable today at forty—but don’t worry, there’s something in there that will make you almost as good as new again. You’re beginning to sense the importance of what I’m telling you, aren’t you? But I need my collaborator Sulfatin and his patient, a former wreck that you knew once and are going to be astonished when you see him again, I dare say. Permit me to go in search of him...”

  Sulfatin had disappeared as soon as the concert began. Philox Lorris, who would have liked to have done the same, having no interest in the musical racket, had not been alarmed by that. Undoubtedly, Sulfatin had preferred to chat in some corner with people more serious than music-lovers. A few groups of guests, illustrious French or foreign scientists for the most part, were indulging in serious discussions in the smaller rooms while waiting for the scientific part of the program—but Sulfatin was not with them.

  Where could he be? Might he have gone to get a little air on the platform?

  Philox Lorris investigated. Sulfatin, not much given to contemplation, had not gone to admire the electric illumination of the house, projecting its beams of light far into the celestial depths above the stellar crown of a thousand Parisian beacons.

  I’ve got it, Philox Lorris said to himself. What was I thinking? Of course! Saulfatin had an hour to himself; instead of staying at the concert, yawning, my worthy friend has gone to work...

  The compartment of the main hall where Sulfatin’s personal laboratory was located, had been reserved; all the apparatus that might have inconvenienced the crowd had been piled up there. Philox Lorris ran to it and knocked loudly on the door, thinking that Sulfatin was shut up in there.

  No reply.

  Mechanically, Monsieur Lorris reached out for the door handle, and the door, which was not locked, opened silently.

  At first, in the clutter of apparatus, Philox Lorris could not see his collaborator; to his great astonishment, he heard a woman’s voice speaking rapidly in an angry tone; then Sulfatin’s voice rose up, no less furious.

  Who the devil can Sulfatin be berating like that? thought Philox Lorris, amazed and momentarily hesitant as to whether to go on, torn as he was between curiosity and the fear of being indiscreet.

  “First of all, my good man,” said the woman’s voice, “I tell you that you’re beginning to annoy me by calling me all the time on the telephonoscope; it’s quite enough to see you turning up every day behaving like a surly scientist. Although your conversation is amusing…nevertheless, I’ve had enough!”

  “I don’t behave like one of those idiots who run around you at the Molière-Palace,” Sulfatin replied, “but enough prevarications—you’re going to tell me right now who the gentleman was who just made himself scarce. I want to know!”

  “I tell you that I’ve had enough of your incessant scenes! I’ve had enough, in fact, of your surveillance, by Tele or in person. Do you know that you’re insulting me with all your machines that record my actions and gestures; I won’t put up with it any longer. People are laughing at me at the theater!”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “I can’t do anything in my own home, receive anyone, talk to friends, without some apparatus surreptitiously aimed at me taking photographs or recording what I say and do phonographically. And then, when you have your recordings, when your phonographs repeat what’s said here, there’s no end of sulking and scenes. I’ve had enough!”

  “Once again, who was that man?”

  “He’s my pedicurist! My boot-maker! My notary! My uncle! My grandfather! My nephew! My hairdresser!” cried the lady, volubly.

  “Don’t make fun of me. Come on, Sylvia, my dear Sylvia, I beg you…remember...”

  Philox Lorris, advancing slowly, could see Sulfatin now; he was alone, wailing and gesticulating in front of the big Tele screen, in which a lady was visible who seemed no less excited than he was—a large plump brunette whom the scientist recognized as the star of the Molière-Palace, Sylvia, the tragedienne-medium, whom he had seen several times in her great roles in revised classics.

  Well, well! Philox Lorris said to himself. So what I’ve been told is true. Sulfatin’s been led astray. Who would have thought it? Who would have believed it?

  Sulfatin was weakening now, his voice softening; there was no more anger in his words, merely a tone of reproach.

  “I’m only asking you for an explanation... My God, you must understand…Sylvia, I beg you, remember what you told me before, what you swore to me...”

  The lady on the Tele had a fit of nervous laughter. “What I swore? Theatrical oaths, Monsieur, if it’s necessary to tell you so as to put an end to all your scenes of jealousy, theatrical oaths! That doesn’t count!”

  “That doesn’t count!” cried Sulfatin, roaring with fury. “Slut!”

  A loud noise of breaking glass made Philox Loris jump. Sylvia’s image disappeared; the Tele screen had shattered into pieces. Sulfatin had just thrown a chair through the Tele, and was now stamping on the debris.

  “Slut! Tramp! Oh, that doesn’t count does it! Here, catch!”

  Philox Loris fell upon his collaborator. “Sulfatin! What are you doing? Come on, Sulfatin, I’m blushing on your behalf! This is shameful!”

  Sulfatin stopped abruptly. His features, contracted by fury, relaxed and he stood in front of Philox Lorris, crestfallen.

  “An accident,” he said. “I believe I’ve got a toothache…I need to go to the dentist’s.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing! You leave my musical phonograms to deteriorate on your balcony, and now you’re breaking apparatus. A fine way to carry on! But that’s not the question, my friend; recover your senses and think about our great affair. Where’s Adrien La Héronnière?”

  “I…don’t know,” Sulfatin stammered, passing his hand over his forehead. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “But his presence is necessary!” Philox Loris exclaimed. “We need him for the demonstration of the infallibility of our product. It’s terrible to be as badly supported as I am! My son is a sentimental simpleton, he’ll never make a passable scientist…I’ve renounced the hope of ever seeing the spark in him. And now, you, Sulfatin, I thought you were a second me, but you’re also occupying yourself with stupidities! Come on, what have you done with La Héronnière? What have you done with our patient?”

  “I’ll go and see. I’ll find out...”

  “Hurry, and come back with him immediately—to my study…Arsène des Marettes is waiting for us. Quickly; the musical program is coming to an end—I’ll go ask Georges to add a few more items.”

  In the meantime, while Philox Lorris was running in pursuit of Sulfatin, during the scene at the Tele, Arsène des Marettes, left alone, had fallen into a slight doze in his armchair. The illustrious Statesman was tired; he had been working hard during the Chambre’s vacation, firstly on a phonographic edition of his speeches, for which he had been obliged to review the origina
l phonograms one by one in order to modify an intonation here and there or perfect an oratorical flourish, and then on a great work that had been in progress for many years, which, in addition to the enormous erudition it demanded and an extraordinary quantity of historical research and documentary study, required long and deep thought, hollowed out in profound and solitary meditation.

  The work in question, of immense and universal interest, destined for a Library of Social Science, bore the magnificent title:

  A History of Annoyances

  Caused to Men by Women

  From the Stone Age to the Present Day

  A Study of the Eternal Feminine through the Centuries

  Subdivided into Several Parts:

  Book I: Distant Sins and their Deadly Consequences.

  Book II: Hypocritical Tyranny and Overt Domination.

  Book III: The General Development of Domineering Tendencies in Private Life.

  Book IV: The Troubled Epochs and their True Causes: The Frivolous and Bloody Centuries.

  Book V: The Queens of the World

  Book VI: The Increasing Evil of Feminist Power since the Accession of Women to Political Functions.

  Is there, we wonder, any subject vaster and more exciting, which raises more important problems and more relevant to the eternal preoccupations of the human race? The work in question, which begins with the debut of humankind and shows us the long and dolorous consequences of original sin, is bound to revolutionize all the notions of history. In fact, Arsène des Marettes intends a new historical school, less dry, less political, more realistic and simpler.

  We must expect veritable revelations, a complete overhaul of old ideas admitted by tradition. The light of history will finally clarify many causes hitherto obscure or unperceived, and make people and races appear in their true colors. This gigantic work will give rise, on the day of its publication, to violent polemics; Arsène des Marettes expects that, but he is armed for the fray and he will valiantly sustain what he believes to be the good fight. Already, on the basis of vague indiscretions, the Feminist Party, very active in the Chambre and in the country, attacks Monsieur des Mariettes at every opportunity; he has already struck a first blow in retaliation by creating the League for the Emancipation of Men, and he has sworn to launch his History of Annoyances caused to Men by Women before the next elections.