Electric Life

by Albert Robida

  As one can easily guess, Arsène des Marettes has suffered. Alas! The leader of the League to recover Masculine Rights is a victim!

  Once, in the distant time of his youth, Monsieur des Marettes was married. Thirty-two years ago, he had a few serious disputes with Madame des Marettes, a frivolous and capricious spouse—fickle, even, so it was said. In consequence of serious discord, Monsieur and Madame des Marettes each left the conjugal domicile one day, without a word to one another. Monsieur des Marettes left to the right, Madame des Marettes to the left.

  That was the beginning of an era of sweet tranquility. Arsène des Marettes was able to recover his spirits, return to his cherished studies and devote all his time to the struggle by means of speech and the pen against all tyrannies.

  For some time, the two spouses sometimes encountered one another in drawing rooms, while traveling, or at seaside resorts; after an exchange of scowls, each of them would swiftly turn on their heel. Then Madame des Marettes disappeared, and Monsieur des Marettes, to his great relief, heard no more mention of her.

  Stretched out in a large armchair, the author of the History of Annoyances Cause to Men dozed off, thinking about the book that would crown his career and set his glory definitively on a solid foundation. He saw, in his evocative reverie, the procession of great feminine figures of all time; those women whose pernicious beauty or intelligence had too often influenced the course of events and the destiny of empires; those women who were, according to Monsieur des Marettes, in every land and in every epoch, by virtue of their sins or even their virtues, all more or less deadly to the repose of peoples.

  Look! It’s the dawn of time. There’s Eve in the lead, the first, whose sin and its incalculable consequences there is no need to recall; blonde and smiling Eve, walking at the head of a cortege of sparkling and fulgurant apparitions: Semiramis, Helen, Cleopatra and many others; queens, princesses, tyrannical wives; tormentors of placid monarchs, jealous brides bringing chaos to the States of unfortunate inoffensive princes; terrible Merovingian queens and haughty duchesses of the Middle Ages, bringing or carrying ruin and devastation from province to province—favorites, in sum, who, by their intrigues or simply the play of their pretty eyes, softly veiled by blonde lashes, launch peoples against one another!

  And among those historic figures, other women of all epochs, bourgeois women of modest status, who, in the restricted circle of private life, for want of peoples to torment, and the destinies of nations to wreck, are obliged to content themselves with governing their households more or less despotically...

  Oh, Great God! Those minuscule tyrannies exercised in that infinitesimal theater, contained between the four walls of an apartment instead of being spread between the frontiers of a vast kingdom, are perhaps even harsher, those whose yoke weighs more heavily, always without remission or truce...

  Poor Arsène des Marettes knows that only too well from experience.

  By a strange phenomenon, all those apparitions, empresses or favorites, great ladies or housewives, from Helen to Madame la Pompadour, all have the face of Madame des Marettes, such as she was during her flight thirty-two years ago, such as her vindictive spouse remembers her! Eve herself, the first of all, is already Madame des Marettes, who was a pretty blonde once, with eyes full of languor; the proud Semiramis is Madame de Marettes, seeking to impose her authority cruelly; Frédégonde is the wrathful petite Madame des Marettes, fighting tooth and nail and incessantly breaking the household plates; Marguerite de Bourgogne is Madame des Marettes again; Mary Stuart, who had a sharp tongue and who annoyed Elizabeth of England, who lacked a husband, greatly, is Madame des Marettes, hurling abuse at her husband from the first day of the honeymoon, changed into a vinegar moon; Catherine de Medici, the terrible mistress of cunning poisons and elixirs of short life, is Madame des Marettes, serving her husband’s guests, grave magistrates, carafes of Hunyadi-Janos7 with the wine!

  All of them—all, to the very last ranks of the procession—have the features of the terrible Madame des Marettes. It is always the same, always the same unforgettable blonde face, that has been haunting Arsène des Marettes’ dreams and nightmares for such a long time.

  Thus mingling his petty personal memories, always painful, with historical reminiscences, Arsène des Marettes sees filing before him, so to speak, all the chapters of his work, now so far advanced, the historical part and the philosophical part, in which, from deduction to deduction, from observation to observation, with his penetrating analysis, he shows us the psychological phenomenon that has long preoccupied thinkers: woman always remaining woman, always identical to herself, always alike, in all places and at all times, in all ages and all climates, although man presents so much variety of character, according to his race, epoch and environment.

  And Monsieur des Marettes is satisfied, and he is happy, and he thinks of the effect that the great History of Annoyances Caused to Men will produce, the profits that will flow from it, the ideas of masculine revolt that it will awaken.

  Suddenly, the Tele bell—that eternal ding-ding that we hear resounding at every minute, which never lets us rest, which always reminds us that we are part of a vast electric machine traversed by millions of wires—snapped Monsieur des Marettes out of his historico-philosophical reverie.

  He started in his armchair, reached out his arm and mechanically pressed the button on the receiver.

  “Hello! Hello!” said a voice. “Is Monsieur le député Arsène des Marettes at Monsieur Philox Lorris’ soirée? He is requested to come to the apparatus...”

  The call was for him. The great historian immediately woke up and replied: “Hello! Hello! Here I am. Who’s asking for me?”

  The Tele screen suddenly lit up, and after a few seconds of fluttering adjustment, an image formed. It was a lady sitting in Monsieur des Marettes’ study, in his austere retreat on the heights of the Montmorency quarter, the thirty-second arrondissement: a lady of a certain age, quite tall, with emphatic features and bushy eyebrows designing a black arch above a nose with an aquiline curve.

  As if petrified, Arsène des Marettees let himself fall into his armchair. In spite of the years and the changes inflicted by age, he had immediately recognized her: it was the woman of his dream, always the same, the eternal enemy, Her, in sum: Madame de Marettes!

  She had been blonde then, slimmer, more cheerful; it did not matter—he recognized her instinctively, after an absence of thirty-two years, in the majestic lady, a trifle thick-set, slightly heavier in the expression but still domineering, who was in front of him.

  “Well, yes, my dear Monsieur des Marettes, it’s me,” the lady said. “You can see that I’m of good character; I’m the one who has made the first move, setting aside my legitimate grievances. The moment has come to forget our slight disagreement the other day...”

  “The other day” was thirty-two years ago, Monsieur des Marettes thought—but he did not have the strength to make the remark.

  “I’m glad to see the effect the sight of me has on you, my love,” the lady continued. “That emotion speaks in favor of your heart. I can see that you haven’t entirely forgotten me—isn’t that so?”

  “Oh, no,” murmured Monsieur des Marettes.

  “What a long misunderstanding—and what a dolorous error you made! But I suppose that solitude has improved you...”

  Monsieur des Marettes sighed.

  “I hope that you’ve ended up recognizing your faults, my love—let’s say no more about it; I’m ready to pass the sponge over all of that. I’ll forget, my love; I’ll forget and resume my place at the hearth. Oh, I can understand your emotion. Pull yourself together, Arsène, you’re at a soirée; give my best regards to Monsieur and Madame Philox Lorris. Go—in the meantime, I’ll move in!”

  The connection was broken. Madame des Marettes disappeared.

  For a few moments, Arsène des Marettes remained in his armchair, speechless and breathless, like am man struck by lightning. Finally, he sighed, raised his head
and made a gesture of resignation.

  “All right; she’s come back—so be it. After all, my book was ending a trifle feebly—it was weakening. In the company of Madame des Marettes, inspiration will come! It will all work out for the best; my conclusion, the last part of my History of Annoyances Caused to Men by Women, from the Stone Age to the Present Day, is the most important thing; with Madame des Marettes’ aid, it’s bound to be something earth-shattering!”

  VI

  Sulfatin, having finally located his ex-invalid Adrien La Héronnière in the billiard-room, in the middle of a game with his nurse, the stout Grettly, rejoined Philox Lorris in the middle of a group of serious guests who had given the concert a miss. Mademoiselle Bardoz, the knowledgeable doctress, was there, and Mademoiselle the Senatress Coupard, of the Sarthe, who were discussing certain matters of science with Philox Lorris.

  “I’ll leave you with these demoiselles,” Philox Loris whispered to his son. “You’ll see that they’re real women, whose minds aren’t simply nonsense-mills. There’s still time…there’s still time, you know; you can choose either of them…it doesn’t matter which.”

  “Thank you.”

  Adrien La Héronnière had certainly changed a great deal in a few months; under the influence of the famous national medicament tested on him by the engineer Sulfatin, in accordance with the instructions of Philox Lorris, he had rapidly reclimbed the slope down which he had slid. Fallen to the utmost degree of decrepitude, he had been seen gradually to recover all the appearances of vigor and health. The vital fluid, previously evaporated in its entirety, seemed to have come back forcefully. Adrien La Héronnière, once placed like a human larva in Sulfatin’s incubator, and then laid down like a broken doll in a rolling armchair, had become a man again; he walked, acted and thought like a citizen in full possession of his faculties.

  Philox Lorris wanted allow Monsieur des Marettes and his guests to admire these truly marvelous results; he wanted to show them this human ruin solidly repaired. But Adrien La Héronnière, who had recovered his intelligence and his business sense along with his vigor, was already arguing hotly with Sulfatin.

  “My dear friend, I’m cured, that’s agreed, but if I agree to pay you immediately, canceling our agreement, the formidable sums stipulated in a period when I didn’t have all my means and couldn’t dispute your conditions, it seems only just to me to demand in compensation my share in the affair of the great National Medicament...”

  “Not at all,” declared Sulfatin. “Our contract subsists; I won’t cancel it; you’ll pay me the stipulated annuities on the due dates. Besides, my dear chap, you’re under a misapprehension; you’re only repaired superficially and temporarily; the treatment has to continue...”

  “Permit me…what if I want to cancel?”

  “So be it—but pay the annuities and the forfeit...”

  “I won’t cancel, then, but I’ll sue you for having tested medicaments on me of whose beneficial effects you couldn’t be sure...”

  “Since those medicaments have put you back on your feet...”

  “You ought to have tried them on others first. In sum, I was an experimental subject to you, on whom you operated tranquilly, but instead of being paid to serve in your experiments, I paid you. That seems to me to be abusive. We’ll take it to court, I’m not just anyone; I’m a known invalid, I have a notoriety; the effect for the launch of your product is therefore much more considerable; I want to come in on the affair, or else we’ll take it to court!”

  “In the meantime,” said Sulfatin, impatiently, “as, by virtue of our contract, you’re still under my direction, you’re going to come with me, or I’ll have you drink other medicaments and put you back in the state you were in when I started. That’s my right…I’ll put you back in your incubator—you won’t be an inconvenience there. I’m committed by our contract to keep you alive; that’s what I’ll do—and that’s all!”

  “Come on, don’t argue,” said Philox Lorris, impatiently. “Monsieur La Héronnière will have a share of the business; I agree to that, it’s settled. Besides which, here’s Monsieur des Marettes, seemingly annoyed...”

  Indeed, in the small drawing room, Monsieur des Marettes was pacing back and forth in apparent agitation, murmuring indistinct phrases:

  “Irreducible spirit of domination…served by a dangerous, pernicious charm…profound cunning hidden beneath a varnish of false innocence…Woman, artificial creature of artifice...”

  “Aha!” said Monsieur Lorris. “I’ve no need to ask your for explanations, Great Man; I recognize the portrait: you’re working on a speech designed to batter a breach in the pretentions of the Feminist Party...”

  Monsieur des Marettes passed his hand over his forehead. “I beg your pardon, Messieurs, I forgot where I was… what were we saying?”

  “We were saying,” Philox Loris went on, “that I had to introduce to you a man whom you knew, a few months ago, to have fallen, by virtue of excessive modern stress, into lamentable senility. Look at him now!”

  Philox Lorris led the ex-invalid into the full glare of the light.

  “It’s dear old La Héronnière!” exclaimed Monsieur des Marettes. “Is it possible? Is that really you?”

  “It’s really me,” replied the ex-invalid, smiling. “You can believe our eyes, I assure you.” And La Héronnière struck his breast forcefully. “The chest is sound, I affirm; the stomach worthy of all eulogies—I won’t say anything about the brain, purely out of modesty.”

  “You’re steady on your legs? One can really believe it, in truth! You’re no longer in your second childhood, then?”

  “As you can see, my good friend.”

  “He’s come a long way” said Philox Lorris. “We’ve snatched him from his dying breath, in order that the example should be more persuasive. Oh, we’ve had difficulty; at first, we had to keep him in an incubator and restore him gradually to a condition in which he could take inoculations. Now, you can see him, touch him, make Monsieur La Héronnière move—there’s no trickery. Look—he’s solid, he moves, he speaks. Come on, La Héronnière, move, then! Lift that armchair for me. Look—he’ll juggle with that divan... Good! Now let’s pass on to the intellectual faculties, to the memory. What happened to 2%s the day before yesterday…? Good, good, enough! Monsieur des Marettes is convinced. Now you’ve seen the result, we’re going to explain how it was obtained. Sulfatin, fetch me those little flasks over there. Not that way—that’s the miasma apparatus; pay attention, my friend! Don’t touch the taps…you’re terribly distracted, you know.”

  Indeed, Sulfatin had not yet recovered from his recent disturbance. Once the cold and measured man par excellence, he was now agitated, frowning repeatedly and moving stiffly.

  “This, then,” Philox Loris continued, when Sulfatin had handed him the two flasks, “is the great medicament that I hope to denominate national; in this minuscule flask there is the liquid for the microbiocidal inoculations, and in this flask, the same liquid, considerably diluted and mixed with different preparations, which make it the most powerful of elixirs. One inoculation per month of the microbiocidal vaccine, two drops of the elixir morning and evening—that’s the very simple treatment by which I shall undertake to change a population of overstressed, highly-strung anemics into solid, equilibrated and healthy individuals, in whose veins a torrent of new blood will circulate, charged with red corpuscles and devoid of all bacilli, vibrions and microbes. But I need the support of eminent politicians, Statesmen like you, Monsieur le député; I need governmental intervention, the authority of the State, in order for my great discovery to produce the results I expect of it. Permit me to explain to you briefly the idea that I shall shortly develop in my lecture...”

  “Explain!” said the député.

  “A law of which you are the promulgator. Monsieur le député, a law for which your seductive eloquence will win votes from all the fractions of Parliament, will make my great National Medicament compulsory and guarantee Philox
Lorris Inc., under government supervision, a monopoly on its manufacture and exploitation. Needless to say, Monsieur le député, advantages will be reserved for the friends of the enterprise who have supported it with their high influence...I’ll go on. We organize inoculation and sales services. Every French citizen is vaccinated once a month with the microbiocidal liquid and he takes away a bottle of the medicament. The obligation is not at all vexatious—so many things are obligatory today, the State can easily intervene once more and impose its direction when the public interest is obvious. By virtue of that beneficent and truly salutary law, you’ll quite simply be decreeing obligatory public health! Are you convinced, my dear député?”

  “I bow down in admiration,” Monsieur de Marettes replied. “In four days, when the Chambre resumes, I shall move a proposal…but what’s that strange odor?”

  “I’ll send you a draft of the projected law…yes, you’re right, what a singular odor! Sulfatin…good God! You’ve touched the outlet…look, wretch—there’s a leak!”

  “A leak! Where is it?” demanded Monsieur des Marettes.

  “In the reservoir on the right—the one with the miasmas for the Offensive Medical Corps…my other great project.”

  “Double damnation!” moaned Monsieur des Marettes, knocking over chairs as he tried to get to the door. “Quick, my aircab…I’m expected at home…I don’t feel well...”