by Emile Calvet
They experienced a vivid sensation of wellbeing as they passed beneath the dense crown of foliage, which extended all the way to the horizon and protected the morning coolness against the blaze of the sun. After a few steps, they let themselves fall on to a large bench with an angled back, the intelligent design of which facilitated rest and sleep equally.
“It would be good to live here,” said Gédéon, “if one only had an income of thirty-five thousand livres!”
“What you just said is meaningless, at least with regard to income,” Antius replied. “Everything we’ve seen has thrown our ideas on that subject into the deepest confusion.”
“Certainly,” the physicist added. “We can’t yet affirm anything about the relative value of metals. Gold is abundant here, as those massive moldings ornamenting the ridges of the monument testify. In any case, I approve unreservedly of the employment of that metal, which is virtually unalterable by the air. On the other hand, the fabrication of diamonds furnishes our descendants with first-rate pivots and optical lenses of great power.”
Since the travelers had sat down on their rustic bench, which, by virtue of the phenomena they had witnessed, threatened to become for them the raft of the Medusa, the causeways had become less deserted. Clad in light fabrics, whose usual colors spanned all the shades of the pastel scale extending from dazzling white to bright bistre, groups were gradually emerging from the verdure of the bushes, as if some magician had suddenly animated and multiplied the white marble statues that had previously been the only inhabitants of that luxurious solitude.
The doctor, who had been watching the pedestrians for some time with sustained attention, suddenly turned to his two companions. “I’ve noticed something odd,” he said, “which is entirely to the advantage of the city’s inhabitants. You’ll notice, if you haven’t already made the observation, that the people offer, without exception, manifest signs of strength and health. I conclude directly that today, the education of the body marches in parallel with that of the mind.”
“For vigor, health and nobility of attitude, the women lose nothing by comparison with the men,” said Terrier, pointing at a group of magnificently-dressed young women, who were examining the bushes filled with bright flowers as they came forward.
When they came abreast of the three men, a slight smile brushed their lips, provoked by the eccentricity of their clothing.
V. A Fortunate Incident
Suddenly, a little girl, who seemed to be about ten years old, emerged from the group of young ladies and ran towards the travelers. She stopped abruptly in front of the physicist.
Her anxious mothers hastened after her. “Lydia,” she called, softly, “why are you disturbing these foreigners?”
But the child, her eyes fixed upon the respectable professor’s hat, was not listening.
The young woman blushed. “Please excuse her, Monsieur,” she said. “The child, barely eight years old, is unaware of her lack of deference.”
“The charming little girl is still at the happy age at which speech is only guided by the eyes or by the heart,” the scientist replied, “and I cannot blame her for her astonishment. I confess, moreover, that this headgear, which is adopted by almost everyone in my country, must appear strange everywhere else. On the other hand, Madame, if our costume can provoke surprise, and perhaps amusement, among the inhabitants of this admirable city, which we have entered today for the first time, the spectacle of your wealth and civilization has impressed us greatly, and it is not without fear that we find ourselves in absolute isolation here.”
“Your anxieties are exaggerated, fortunately,” the young woman said, “for all strangers are welcomed benevolently here. All arms and all minds find it easy to be occupied in our society, and, as the ancient fabulist said, work is the resource of which there is no lack.10 I don’t doubt, Messieurs, that by exercising your professions you will soon succeed in winning esteem and prosperity. I am glad that my child’s naïve curiosity has given me the opportunity to help you glimpse a better future than the one you seem to fear.”
“We thank you, Madame, and are ready to make every effort to make ourselves useful. In the society from which we hail, we had a certain status in the liberal professions, and, in spite of the incontestable superiority of the milieu into which we have been suddenly projected by the most extraordinary events, we hope that, after a profound examination, we might be good for something.”
“Monsieur,” said Terrier, indicating the doctor, “is a physician, and his scientific works have become classics.”
Antius removed his cap.
“Our young friend,” the physicist added, indicating the young man, “has not yet made a choice of career.”
Gédéon bowed naively.
“For my own count, Madame, I have been a teacher of physics and chemistry for thirty years.”
“You are a colleague of my husband,” the young woman replied, excitedly, “and that fortunate coincidence gives me a duty to procure you the means of utilizing your talent and put these messieurs in communication with those who might be useful to them. I can’t go to the School right now, for I’m taking the child to the baths, but my presence is unnecessary. This is what you need to do. The School governed by my husband is ten minutes’ walk from here. As soon as you have rested, go along the avenue as far as the Museum Square, which contains several remarkable monuments, including the Museum of Antiques, which you will recognize easily by its imposing aspect. The School, which is next door to the Museum, bears a very visible inscription in the middle of the fronton, which will guide you. You may go in with confidence and ask for the director, who will welcome you with the frankest cordiality. It will be sufficient to tell him about our conversation for him to be entirely at your disposal.”
“Madame,” said the doctor, “please accept our profound thanks, for this has been a providential encounter.”
“I’m glad to be able to be useful to you. I shall soon see you again at the house, where you will be able to discuss and ripen your future plans, for you will remain our guests.”
With a gracious gesture of farewell, the young woman took her little girl away, and they drew away at a run, while the travelers, touched by her generosity and marveling at her grace, remained under the influence of an indescribable emotion.
“It’s certain,” said Gédéon, in an agitated voice, “that encountering the young lady will bring us good fortune, or Providence would be both blind and deaf. And to think, my dear Master, that it is to your topper that we owe our salvation!”
They got up. Confident and joyful now, they set off at a rapid and steady pace in the direction indicated.
From time to time, the pedestrians looked with astonished eyes at the travelers, who no longer paid any heed to the sensation that their costume provoked.
They had scarcely covered five hundred meters when their gaze was embraced by the full extent of a vast and magnificent circular plaza, bordered by palaces of an incomparable richness. In the center of the immense circle stood a pyramid whose dimensions were at least quadruple those of the previous one. Its decoration was much richer, although it appeared, according to the decoration of the side facing them, to have the same instructive function.
Between the center and the periphery the gaze took in a considerable number of statues, gushing fountains and white marble vases overflowing with rare flowers. All these works of art rested on a thick carpet of grass, which extended to the thresholds of the monuments. The dazzling sunlight was interrupted by a dense crown of foliage produced by several circular rows of gigantic trees. The travelers were about to cross the area that separated them from the square when their attention was caught by a few sonorous and precipitate musical notes apparently produced by the horn of a harmonious brass instrument.
They turned their heads and retreated swiftly to the edge of the pathway.
A gigantic three-tiered vehicle loaded with passengers was heading toward them at high speed. The powerful machine, rest
ing on compressed rubber wheels, was moving in profound silence. Soon, it went past their dazzled eyes like a lightning-bolt. Only a few crepitations accompanied by sparks, escaping from the central axle, reached their ears. Even so, Gédéon was able to read, on an elliptical band that extended along a lateral panel from front to rear, the words Electric Omnibus pointed in golden letters a foot high on a blue background.
The various compartments of the monumental vehicle were furnished with pale brown leather divans, on which some passengers were sitting, while others were walking back and forth on the circular balconies surrounding the various tiers.
“It would be very pleasant to travel like that,” said the young man, scarcely recovered from the shock, “but I pity distracted people crossing the road!”
“It’s a mode of transportation that recommends itself by three essential qualities: speed, elasticity and silence,” observed Terrier. “What superiority over the ancient public carriages, so deformed, whose victims, piled up and shaken as if in a sieve, experienced the temperature of Senegal in June and that of Kamchatka in December. Furthermore, if all the vehicles crossing the city are established on an analogous model—as we have every reason to suppose, given the perfect cleanliness of the roadway—there is no reason why the duration of the surface should not be indefinite.”
“Undoubtedly,” Antius approved.
“I expect that river-dwellers are as favored as road-travelers,” continued the professor, a great lover of silence who had never lived in any but macadamized streets and had routinely had it inscribed in his lease that he had the right to decamp on the day he saw a pavement being laid outside his door.
Meanwhile, the animation of the boulevard was increasing continually, and public and private carriages were going in all directions.
Nine o’clock chimed on the flanks of the pyramid that stood in the center of the Museum Square.
“I believe,” Gédéon observed, alarmed by the immensity of the plaza, “that it will be difficult for us to locate the hospitable building—but we can ask for directions. There’s a fellow coming toward us smoking a panatella, whose blue smoke attests to its quality. I’ll ask him.”
The pedestrian was no more than three paces away when the young man addressed a profound bow to him, exaggerating the gesture.
The city-dweller stopped and took off his hat.
“Monsieur,” said the young man, “could you point out the School building to us? We’re going to see the director.”
“The School, Monsieur, is on the other side of the plaza, in the direction of the central pyramid.”
The travelers advanced rapidly into the middle of the square. Five minutes later, they were beneath the vault of the trees again.
Gédéon, who was marching in the lead, suddenly stopped, mouth agape.
VI. The School
The two scientists were a few steps behind when the young man abruptly turned round and showed them a black marble frame in the idle of which shone, in golden letters, the word School.
Facing them, over an extent of two hundred meters, a vast two-story building opened in the shape of a horseshoe around a lawn. The central part of the edifice bore a monumental dome crowned with statues, presenting the most grandiose architecture.
The monument, whose base was raised several meters above the level of the promenade, communicated freely with it by a large and magnificent stairway. The two wings ended twenty meters from a balustrade that overlooked the place by several feet.
To the right of the School, a vast monument of an admirable architecture, the base of which was at exactly the same level as the neighboring establishment, rose up behind luxuriant flower-beds.
They traversed a broad strip of asphalt covered with sparkling mosaics and climbed the staircase.
The door of the central block was open. They followed the semicircular pathway that went around the lawn and son found themselves in front of a huge open door with two battens. They went in.
At the same moment, a lateral door opened and a white-haired old man appeared on the threshold, whose attitude, simultaneously dignified and affable, was not compromised by the presence of an enormous feather duster that he was clutching under his arm.
“The Messieurs have doubtless come to visit the collections,” he said, depositing his pacific weapon on an armchair. “I am at their disposal.”
“We thank you for our benevolence, Monsieur,” Antius hastened to say. “We have come to speak to the director of the establishment.”
“Very good, Messieurs. I shall have the honor of taking you to the honorable Monsieur Herber. He will be delighted by your visit, which he was not expecting for several days.”
“He’s expecting us?” said Gédéon.
“Yes, Monsieur, for you’re doubtless members of the Schoolmasters’ Conference that is due to open on July first? Each of the eighty schools in the city is to offer hospitality to forty members, and your lodgings are already prepared. You must be very tired after such a long journey, for I judge that you must have taken at least three days to come from your homeland.”
“Why do you assume that we’re come so far?” asked Terrier.
“Your costume is sufficient indication, Messieurs, for it’s very similar to that worn in the Marquis Islands.”
Under Antius’ severe gaze, Gédéon repressed a burst of laughter.
“We are indeed employed in education,” said the physicist, who, by reason of his top hat, appeared to have given specific rise to his interlocutor’s hypothesis. “Have I the honor of encountering a colleague in you?”
“A former colleague, yes, Monsieur, for I retired ten years ago, but as inaction wearied me far more than work, the governors, at my request, entrusted the position of curator of the school collections to me, and I am very happy therein. Now, Messieurs, I shall have the honor of taking you to the Master, who has not left the School this morning, for he would have warned me if he had gone out.”
The old functionary came down the steps of the perron slowly and took a pathway symmetrically connected to the one the three travelers had followed. They followed him.
On the side of the peristyle, lodged between two enormous Corinthian columns, a marble group attracted the attention of the two scientists. In the middle of the pedestal a seated woman with a majestic and serene head placed her right hand on a terrestrial globe while the left was extended over a stack of folio volumes. That respectable allegorical form did not have the merit of novelty, and the two scientists would have gone straight past if their curiosity had not been provoked by the details of the work. The underpinning and the pedestal were, in fact, ornate instruments whose nature and usage were absolutely unknown to them.
While they lost themselves in conjectures Gédéon had caught up with the old man and was walking beside him. “What strikes me most about your establishment,” the young man said, “is its extent.”
“What you see here, Monsieur is only a fifth of it.”
“A fifth!”
“Yes, Monsieur. Behind the hemicyle there is a courtyard four hundred meters wide and three hundred deep. It has magnificent shade. On the right hand side are the classrooms, on the other, the gymnasium and the theater. It’s the disposition generally adopted in our establishments.
“You could accommodate a regiment, then!”
“A regiment? You’re employing an old word that has fallen into absolute disuse. It refers to a group of armed men that were known as soldiers.”
“That’s right. What do you call armed men nowadays?”
“Men of that profession—or, if you prefer, men destined to fight one another—no longer exist in the civilized world.”
“My word—that’s what Monsieur Terrier predicted one evening at table, a thousand years ago.”
“Which proves, Monsieur, that there were men of good sense in the olden days.”
“I ought to add that I am of the same opinion.”
“Pardon me—you are of the same opinion.”
“I should say that I was of that opinion, for it was in response to my comment that he uttered that memorable prophecy.”
The old man stared at Gédéon. “Is it permissible to make fun of men of my age and profession in your country, young man?” he asked, severely.
“I beg your pardon,” said Gédéon, realizing that he had nearly compromised everything. “I’m explaining myself badly. I meant to say that one day, wondering whether the ancients could have foreseen the fraternity that is no longer a vain word today, I consulted books by the greatest minds of the era.”
“I understand. But I’m unfamiliar with that philosopher. When did he die?”
“Die!” exclaimed Gédéon. “In fact, I don’t know exactly when he died, but I know that he was definitely alive in the year 1880.”
“Well, if he didn’t die before 1920, we can obtain his complete biography, if you wish, from the Necrological Palace.”
At that moment, the two scientists abandoned their examination and hastened their steps in order to catch up.
A few minutes later, the four men went into a large vestibule whose hemispherical ceiling, painted blue and speckled with brilliant dots, represented the sky of Paris, Around the walls were a series of large red-upholstered divans. A modestly-sized oak box with a copper funnel in its center was fixed to the wall. The former teacher went to the instrument and pressed an ivory button. Immediately, a clear, strong and perfectly articulated voice emerged from the metal opening.
“I shall be in the laboratory all morning.”
The travelers’ astonishment was immense.
“Unless Monsieur is a ventriloquist,” the young man murmured, “I don’t understand at all.” In a louder voice, he asked: “Is Monsieur Herber nearby?”
“He’s four hundred meters away at present,” said the curator.