by Emile Calvet
“You will doubtless object that the method would seem to result in uniformity, but you will abandon that argument when you know that the number of models is very considerable, and that it is sufficient to modify a few details in an template to change the character of an item completely.
“The furniture in this room is in molded teak, which grows very abundantly in Indo-China, once very neglected. Thus prepared, teak takes on the rich and severe tint of old oak. The wall-decorations and carpet, which you appear to admire, are obtained very rapidly and cheaply in our electrical workshops, which obtain their raw materials from plantations and silkworm-factories throughout the world. But these furnishings are not here solely to provide ornamentation; they also have to contain a certain amount of linen.”
Seizing a handle of polished steel the schoolmaster drew out a batten, which revealed a pile of dazzlingly white perfumed linen, the sight of which would have sent the most ambitious housekeeper to the seventh heaven.
“I believe, mine host,” said Antius, “that you have united in this miraculous room all that the most difficult imagination could desire, or even imagine.” He smiled, and added: “So I assume that the elegant bell-rope suspended by the bed-head is quite superfluous.”
“That instrument, Doctor, is a telephone,” Herber replied, surprised by the mistake. It communicates with the nocturnal service-room, where the staff on duty is always ready to receive your orders.
“Now, Messieurs, the time has come to leave you to a repose of which you must be greatly in need, by reason of the great voyage you have made in recent days and the uninterrupted activity of the day, to which I must have contributed in no small measure.”
“Master,” proclaimed Antius, emotionally, “no language has terms profound enough to express the sentiments of gratitude that your generosity inspires in us. This morning, we were wandering desperately in the middle of the immense city. We could only envisage the future with a somber terror. Suddenly, a charming vision came to take us by the hand and lead us to your hearth, where we are suddenly surrounded by all the conditions of wellbeing, and where, although strangers, we are heaped with benefits. Thank you, Master!”
“That’s well said!” exclaimed Gédéon, in a strangled voice, seizing the schoolmaster’s hand, while the physicist, emotional for the first time in his life, maintained a silence and immobility that were even more eloquent.
“Goodnight, my friends; sleep well,” said Herber, whose self-composure was visibly weakening. He escaped outside.
“If there is ever a procession of good men, that one will carry the banner,” said the young man, passing his hand swiftly over his eyes.
“My friends,” said the doctor softly, “we’re all extremely tired; let’s go to bed. Sleep will restore our calm of mind. Tomorrow, perhaps, we shall be able to analyze coolly the strange things that we have seen today, and reflect on the mysterious power that has snatched us from our world to wake us up a thousand years later.”
They each retired to their own rooms. The cupboard contained varied collections of all the objects necessary to the most complicated nocturnal toilette.
After serious reflections on the matter of coiffure, the physicist had made the choice of a large yellow headscarf fastened in front of his forehead by a knot of expert symmetry, while the doctor, following the example of the king of Yvetot,20 pulled the large hem of a magisterial cotton bonnet over his ears.
Gédéon had no fear of exposing his hair—as coarse and bushy as a wolf’s—to the ambient air. After having turned his lamp down to a low level with the aid of a few turns of a lever, he plunged his fists under his pillow, saying: “The old world? I’ve had it up to here!”
XV. The Awakening, the Museum and the Library
Eight o’clock was chiming on the clock of the central building. The vibration of the final chime was still resonating when the physicist, whose existence was as regular as a chronometer, opened his eyes.
A large pool of sunlight covered the foot of the bed. “Fine weather for optical experiments!” he said, and sat up.
The sight of the unfamiliar objects that surrounded him plunged him into profound amazement.
“Am I the victim of a nightmare and have I not woken up?” he exclaimed. “My mind seems to be in a state of stable equilibrium, thank God. Let’s be rational, or at least try.
“It’s certain that the day before yesterday, Saturday the fourteenth of June 1880, I explained in my classroom the complete theory of the formation of images in mirrors, both concave and convex—a theory crowned by a thorough algebraic discussion. It’s no less certain that I lay down in this bed of my own accord, unless some genie or fairy has transported me during my sleep. Now, at no epoch in no country have genies and fairies taken an interest in men of my age and character. Besides which, I vaguely recall having come into this room—which is not mine, for it differs from it in form, size and especially richness—last night.
“Although I occupy a rather distinguished rank in the honorable educational profession, I do not have the means to put fifty thousand francs into the furnishing of my bedroom. I don’t know any of my colleagues who has a purse full enough and a head empty enough to permit this Babylonian luxury. What then, is this mystery, as I heard sung at the Opéra-Comique one evening when I had the bad idea of going to see a cut-throat musical?”
The professor slapped his forehead, and added: “But Antius is here. Let’s go and find him. He alone can provide an explanation of this strange adventure.”
After twenty minutes, the scientist had concluded his toilette. He went out of his room at a deliberate pace and knocked on the neighboring door.
“Come in,” said a clear voice.
Terrier opened the door and, like Lot’s wife, stood there petrified with astonishment.
The doctor, clad in a vast floral-patterned dressing-gown and still ornamented by his magnificent head-dress, was looking into a mirror as big as a coaching entrance and plying a razor, on which his gaze was fixed, with a sure hand.
“Did you have a good night, my dear friend?” he said to the physicist, tranquilly, without turning round.
“It’s not to bring you news of my health that I’ve come here, Antius,” the professor replied. “I’ve come to find out what I ought to think about the strange mystery in which we’ve been enmeshed for twenty-four hours, if my memory serves me right.”
“My dear chap,” said Antius, “I’ve been thinking about it longer than you. It’s quite certain that we exist, for each of us can, like Descartes, say: Cogito, ergo sum. As for the solution of the problem, after a thousand conjectures, I have arrived at this conclusion, which explains nothing, but which it is essential to adopt, for the security of our minds: Let us go along with events, and not think about the past, at least until further developments.”
The doctor passed a brush laden with foam over his chin, and continued: “For the moment, I am, as you can see, devoting myself to an important operation, which requires solitude, and, without kicking you out, I invite you to go and wake my nephew, who will certainly not be racking his brains trying to fathom the mystery.”
Abashed, Terrier turned on his heel and went to knock on the young man’s door.
The latter, abruptly snatched from the early morning slumber of which an ancient poet has sung the praises, cocked an ear with the anxiety that grips a hare surprised in its covert by the baying of a pack.
Those raps brutally struck so early in the morning on a bachelor’s door can’t augur anything good, he thought. There’s no one in the world but my tailor and my boot-maker, after their money—or, rather mine—who would do such a thing. The Code certainly has a serious lacuna in not decreeing a severe penalty for people who come to wake their fellow citizens at such an hour. I have a great desire to have inscribed on my door the famous phrase of Dante: Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
A further series of raps cut this internal monologue short.
It’s surely the boot-maker, the
individual under siege continued. All the studies that my unlucky star has led me to make of creditors have convinced me superabundantly that, representing the importunity of a tailor as one, one can confidently represent that of a boot-maker as four. What is the reason for that extraordinary proportion?
Terrier’s voice became audible. “Do you intend to sleep until noon?” the professor shouted.
“That intention seems legitimate to me,” the young man replied. Having recognized the timbre of his former teacher’s voice, however, he propped himself up on his elbow.
All the splendors of the apartment were suddenly revealed to his eyes, and a profound astonishment was painted on his face. Meanwhile, the memory of the previous day’s events gradually took form in his mind, and he could only find, to summarize the present situation, one conclusion: “My creditors have been sleeping the eternal sleep for a long time, thank God. May they rest in peace!”
Reassured by this observation, Gédéon got out of bed and, after having put on the magnificent trousers that he owed to the generosity of the schoolmaster, he ran to the door and opened it.
“How are you this morning, my dear Professor?” he asked.
“Like the towers of Notre-Dame,” the physician replied, as he came forward, not disdaining hyperbole.
“In that case, I commiserate, for they’re exceedingly dilapidated.”
“Alas,” said Terrier, still preoccupied with the mysterious problem.
“Don’t worry—you’re not, yet.”
“Do you know what your uncle is doing at this moment?”
“I was about to ask you.”
“Calmly shaving his beard.”
“I don’t see anything culpable in that operation—no pun intended.21 But what does he think about our situation?”
“Nothing.”
“Then we should do the same, for, if a commentator of his ability remains mute, it’s because there’s nothing to discuss.”
“He’s clad in a superb dressing-gown and coiffed in a cotton bonnet as tall as a bell-tower,” the physicist added.
“I recognize that. He’s a man who doesn’t easily forsake his habits.”
“I’ll leave you alone; get dressed quickly,” said Terrier, who got up and went away with a distracted expression.
Gédéon ran to a marble bowl as big as an altar with a deep and broad excavation in the center. He pressed a lever in the middle of the upper face sat hazard, and a torrent of clear water ran into the basin
The bowl surely serves a dual purpose, he thought, for it can also serve as a bath.
After his ablutions, he dressed swiftly and came out of his room just as Antius was coming out of his. Uncle and nephew found themselves face to face.
“How superb you look this morning, Uncle,” said the young man.
“I was about to say the same,” replied the doctor, looking him up and down.
“See what time can do—in the old days, we’d only have met with bitter remarks.”
Alerted by this dialogue, Terrier came out to meet them. The three men went down to the main courtyard. On seeing them, the little girl, who was playing on the grass, came to embrace them, each in turn. Then she ran toward the museum, shouting for the curator.
The old man appeared in the main doorway, holding a retort in his right hand and a hygrometer in his left. Having placed his instruments carefully on the entablature of a column, he came to shake hands with the travelers, who advanced to meet him.
“Did you sleep well, Messieurs?” he asked.
“Like logs,” Gédéon replied.
“My friend Heber, who is visiting the work-rooms at the moment, will be very glad to wish you good day.”
“Have the pupils returned?” asked Terrier.
“Yes, Monsieur, since eight-thirty.”
“But we can’t hear any noise,” said the young man.
“Absolute silence is maintained during classes. That precious habit is the most powerful auxiliary of our instruction. It is also the indispensable basis of go education. Later, a man who has become habituated to silence in his youth instinctively conserves a great respect for language, and generally only says sensible things, for mind and intelligence are primarily formed by meditation. A person who reflects embraces a world of ideas in a few minutes; hence his superiority. An individual who talks loudly is often, and fatally, a fool.”
The curator’s age maxims were interrupted by the cries of the child, who launched herself away from the group to run to her mother. Madame Herber came toward the strangers, who bowed simultaneously. Antius appointed himself the interpreter of his companions’ gratitude.
“Messieurs,” said the young woman, “the bell for the morning meal will ring at eleven o’clock precisely; you don’t, therefore, have time to venture far from the house, but fortunately, we have means of distraction here capable of occupying your attention for two hours. I invite you to visit our museum; it contains collections worthy of the interest of scientists.”
The doctor and the physicist thanked their benefactor’s wife profusely, and, followed by Gédéon, who had only welcomed the proposal with a mediocre enthusiasm, they advanced toward the peristyle, preceded by the old master, who was ready to show them found the theater of his operations.
When they arrived at the main door, they rapidly climbed the steps of the monumental stairway. The curator carefully picked up the instruments he had set down and introduced his guests into the vast entrance hall where they had met him for the first time the day before. He headed then toward a large arched door in the middle of the right-hand side wall and opened its two battens.
The travelers stepped through, and could not retain an exclamation of admiration. They found themselves on the threshold of an immense rectangular room whose ceiling, covered with rich allegorical paintings, appeared to be sustained by paired Corinthian columns adjacent to the four walls. On the upper entablature, a triple row of Florentine bronze busts arranged in chronological orders represented al the scientists who, from the remotest antiquity to modern times, had made themselves illustrious by some useful invention.
“We’re in the physics hall,” said the old master, simply.
The expert eye of the physicist had already succeeded in recognizing, lost in the midst of apparatus that was unknown to him, a whole series of instruments used in the 19th century.
The order and brightness of the collections attested to both the care and competence of the curator. The latter could not repress a smile of legitimate pride on seeing the ecstatic admiration of his guests.
“All our instruments,” he said, “are grouped methodically. The left hand side of the hall contains all the apparatus concerned with weight, statics, hydrodynamics and gaseous fluids. To the right are those of heat and electricity, facing us, of optics, and behind us those of acoustics. The museum is of genuine historic importance, for we conserve a host of instruments that are only valuable by virtue of their antiquity, such as steam engines, old electric piles and the ancient apparatus of spectral analysis.”
“If circumstances don’t take us to the antipodes,” exclaimed the physicist, “we shall make frequent visits here.”
“You will always be welcome, Messieurs,” said the old man. “As you can only cast a rapid glance over the ensemble today, we can, if you wish, go into the technology hall.”
The four men traversed the length of the vast room. Having arrived at the far end, the curator opened a large door and they penetrated into an arched gallery so vast that the first room seemed to be its antechamber. There were grouped all the machines of contemporary industry.
They went forward, parading their eyes over all the marvels.
Suddenly, the physicist shuddered and grabbed the doctor’s arm. He had perceived, set up in an immense display-cabinet, the models of all the apparatus that human genius had successively created to reach the solution of the capital question of aerial navigation—a problem whose definitive solution had spread wealth throughout the ent
ire world.
The antique hot air balloon was followed by aerostats, inflated in turn by hydrogen and lighting gas, constituting the entire series of apparatus less dense than the atmosphere, the modest role of which had been necessarily limited to ascensions motivated by pure curiosity or to more useful experiments in hygrometry, electricity and atmospheric pressure.
A long file of instruments of every shape and size attested to the number and ingenuity of the seekers who had pursued the problem of aviation. Some had been propelled by the movements of rectilinear generators, others by circular movements. The initial force animated, in turn, planes, springs, helices and metallic elytrons. The later models, laden with miniature goods and travelers busy with all kinds of occupations, testified that the accumulation of effort had finally produced practical results.
Twice over, the curator, astonished by their persistence, had said in a loud voice that time was getting on and that they still had two halls to visit before the library. No one appeared to be listening. By dint of obsession, however, he succeeded in extracting them from their examination and taking them back to the vestibule.
The entrance to the chemistry and mineralogy displays was opposite the door to the physics hall. They went in. The room lost nothing in size or richness to its predecessor. The most precious stones, the rarest minerals, the most perfect crystals and the most delicate preparations abounded there. A heap of diamonds as big as a fist darted fulgurant flashes at their dazzled eyes.
Preceded by their guide, they went into the natural history display, whose extent equaled that of the technology hall, of which it formed a symmetrical reproduction. An enormous quantity of animals of every sort, perfectly conserved, populated that immensity.
“Here,” said the old master, “there are several species that have virtually disappeared, notably in the family of ferocious animals, which humans have hunted to their ultimate lairs—thus, we conserve them with a care that is not exempt from anxiety for the future.” Monsieur Ravan added: “It’s half past ten, Messieurs. We’ll go up to the library, where we can wait for the moment to go to table.” And he took his delighted visitors to a large marble staircase that led to the first floor.