by Emile Calvet
“Yes, Monsieur, that of the right bank and that of the left.”
“That organization seems to me to be very inconvenient for administrators who live a long way from the center.”
“No one complains,” the pedestrian replied, “for our means of communication are so multiform and so rapid that one can be transported between any two points in the city in a very short time.”
“We’re now in considerable difficulty in divining the purpose of this building,” Terrier observed.
“Messieurs,” the citizen said, in a very courteous tone, “it is a duty for each of us to place himself at the disposal of strangers, and if you would do me the honor of accepting me as your guide, I shall show you the principal parts of the palace.”
“A thousand thanks, Monsieur,” the physicist replied. “We’re profoundly grateful for your kindness.”
“Every quarter of Paris possesses a communal house,” said the obliging individual, who was now advancing toward the edifice, surrounded by the strangers. “There is even a very praiseworthy competition between citizens to ornament and equip their respective citizens with the largest quantity of amenities. Everyone has the right to enjoy all the advantages that these meeting-places can offer, which, over and above any other function, has that of linking the inhabitants together with bonds of fraternity.”
“That’s very fine in itself,” the doctor approved.
“Furthermore, it frequently happens that one quarters offers a feast to another, and general sympathy can only gain from that indefinite expansion.”
“That is certainly the most admirable thing that your city has offered to us,” said Terrier, who was normally miserly with superlatives.
“In addition, Messieurs,” the citizen continued, “every communal house has a library, a museum, a conference hall, a ballroom and concert hall, several lecture rooms, a free bank, a justice of the peace whose officers are nominated periodically by their fellow citizens, a laboratory of physical and natural sciences, an observatory, a hundred luxurious bathrooms, an extensive gymnasium, a grassy park for the children and a dispatch room bringing the most recent news from all over the world.”
The visitors passed under the porch at that moment. A large, rather deserted entrance hall extended before them. Several signs set up at intervals indicated the way to the lecture rooms, the courtroom, the conference halls, the library and the ballroom.
Conducted by their guide, the travelers went into a broad corridor that extended beyond long curtains, at the far end of which were several scientific establishments.
The professor was heading straight for the physics hall when the doctor held him back, saying that time was pressing. They turned round and went up a monumental staircase to the first floor, where they were able to cast a rapid glance over the museum and the collections of physics, chemistry and natural science. The mineralogical display cases, filled with precious stones of extraordinary size, would have given vertigo to people whose faculties had not already received so many rude shocks.
Conducted to the top of the edifice, they advanced to a platform in the middle of which an elevated observatory was constructed, equipped with a host of advanced instruments whose mechanism was unknown to them.
At that height, the panorama was admirable. Their gaze plunged into the mass of verdure that surrounded the capital. At their feet, a swarm of children and young people moved hectically in frantic gymnastic exercises, in the midst of a crowd of spectators, who were following their capers with evident interest.
The visitors, still preceded by their guide, went back down to the avenue.
“I greatly regret, Messieurs,” said the latter as he parted from them, “that you have not been able to visit our communal house at the time of its greatest animation—which is to say, in the evening. You would have been able to attend several instructive or amusing sessions in succession, and you would have been welcomed by all the families in the quarter. If, however, these meetings can offer you any pleasure, I would be delighted to have the honor of introducing you to them.”
The doctor and his companions, having testified their gratitude to the benevolent citizen who had put himself at the disposal with so much affability, continued on their way.
After walking for twenty minutes, they found themselves at the end of the monumental bridge, and when the three-quarter hour sounded on the clock of the school museum they were climbing the staircase that led to the monument’s main courtyard.
At that moment, Madame Herber emerged from a clump of flowering bushes, from which she had gathered an abundant harvest. “Have you had a good walk, Messieurs?” asked the young woman, coming toward them.
“Yes, Madame, a very pleasant, and also very instructive walk,” Antius replied.
Herber soon appeared and asked with interest about his guests’ itinerary. “I told you, Messieurs,” he added, “about the arrival of my friend Guillaume Dryon. I shall have the honor of introducing you to him very shortly. I’ll let him know about your visit this evening.”
The strangers bowed gratefully.
“Dinner is served,” said Madame Herber.
The doctor offered her his arm and went into the vestibule at a processional pace.
The institution of communal houses and its advantages from the viewpoint of sociability provided a topic of conversation for a significant part of the meal.
They were on the point of leaving the table when Antius suddenly broke the silence he had maintained for some time.
“My dear host,” he said, with a kind of brusque joviality, I have only been able to testify as yet a small part of my admiration for the happy concord that reigns among the inhabitants of the city—a sentiment of which the cause and effect can equally well be explained by incessant frequentation, but there is one point that remains enigmatic for me.”
“What is that, Doctor?”
“The amenity of mores notwithstanding, do your fellow citizens always conserve calmness and reciprocal politeness in political debates?”
“Political debates?” said Herber, astonished. “What do you mean by that expression?”
The strangers looked at one another with amazement.
“I would like to know,” Antius said, “whether everyone is in accord with regard to the form of government.”
“Of course,” said Herber, laughing.
“I must say, my dear Master,” Antius added, “the two words you have just pronounced surprise us more than everything we have seen until now.”
“Messieurs,” the schoolmaster declared, gravely, “I don’t know how public affairs are conducted where you come from, and I don’t know exactly what you mean by government, but here and throughout Europe there is absolute agreement on the matter. Our laws are wise, humane and above all preventative. Everyone bows down before their sovereign authority. Their application is confided to those who offer to take charge of it, and who, to that end, submit themselves periodically to the ballot of their fellow citizens. Everyone appreciates the devotion of those generous individuals, voluntarily undertaking tiresome and monotonous work, which condemns them to a situation that is rather obscure and not much sought-after.
“The unanimity of opinions regarding everything that concerns public life, which appears to surprise you, is the result of the development of the education of the masses. Politics, which is now gathered into the scientific domain, and thus only occupies a very restricted place here, protected, in consequence, from the ever-unreliable suggestions of passions, is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the intellectual domain, and is firmly attached to the fixed laws of reasoning. True ideas no longer have any contradictors, false ones no champions. Hence, general agreement.”
“If I’m not mistaken,” said Antius, “thinkers once declared that the important terminus of social progress in question would never be attained.”
“The fundamentals of the problem then being very incomplete,” the schoolmaster replied, “the conclusions were necessarily false.
What philosopher of the 19th century, for instance, could affirm that science would create a new force, the immediate effect of which would be an extraordinary increase in wealth, and the diffusion of which would overcome the crucial obstacle that paralyzed all economic efforts—the proletariat?”
The schoolmaster became pensive, and added: “However, the conception of that economic equilibrium would have seemed less strange if the speculations had considered the complete analogy that history offered, in terms of the continual elevation of the social level, always in proportion to scientific development. Why, in their ignorance, did they dare to set limits to progress and justice?”
The strangers, absorbed in their own thoughts, remained silent.
The tinkling murmur of the foliage, agitated by the evening breeze, became audible.
Herber invited his guests to go down to the terrace.
Having taken leave of Madame Herber, who had decided to put her daughter to bed in order to spare her the fatigues of a session whose duration it was difficult to foresee, Antius and his companions followed the schoolmaster.
When they arrived at the balustrade overlooking the square, the strangers perceived numerous groups heading for the west wing of the school. A few people following the path circling the plaza greeted Herder and his guests respectfully as soon as they were within range.
When they reached the pilasters that ornamented the base of the great staircase, most of the strollers stopped in order to take cognizance of a printed notice—a fact that excited Gédéon’s attention. Curious to know the reason for these multiple pauses, the young man watched the bottom of the stairway indifferently for a while, and then descended rapidly to the causeway. He then saw an immense poster sixed to the wall, on which the following program could be read:
THÉTRE DE L’ÉCOLE DE LA PLACE DU MUSEUM
Today, Monday 16 June 2880, 8 p.m.
LECTURESON
THE 19TH CENTURY
by Messieurs
J.-B. TERRIER, PHYSICIST
A.-J. ANTIUS, DOCTOR IN MEDICINE
& GÉDÉON CAHUSAC, ARCHEOLOGY STUDENT
The two scientists will talk about the scientific, industrial, political, social and economic conditions of that remarkable historical period.
The young antiquary, having recalled a few interesting details of the 19th century, will offer a general description of old Paris.
“There are titles that my original contemporaries would have had the ignobility to refuse me,” the reader exclaimed. “Now it’s a matter of meriting them.”
And he rejoined his companions.
While the physicist and the schoolmaster were exchanging impressions regarding the advantages that astronomy had obtained from the progress of optics, Gédéon approached his uncle.
“I’ve just seen the poster,” he said.
“Well?”
“Do you know the titles they’ve given me?”
“No, I don’t.”
“They’re calling me an archeologist and an antiquary.”
“My word,” said Antius—that’s the first extravagance I’ve discovered in the new world.”
XIX. The Two Scientists’ Speeches
Eight o’clock was chiming when Herber and the guests went to the theater in which each of the strangers in term was to present a different description of the old world from which a mysterious force had abruptly separated them, to hurl them into the midst of a new society a thousand years later.
The strangers traversed the right wing of the central building. Scarcely had they set foot in the interior courtyard than the large bays of the cupola, glittering with light, struck their gaze.
As they drew nearer to the monument, the dull and confused sound of conversations that reached them gained in intensity to such an extent that the schoolmaster declared that the hall must already be full.
Because the monumental door reserved for the public opened to the exterior, the access to the edifice from the interior courtyard was almost deserted. Only a few invited intimates of the school could be seen among the quincunxes, walking rapidly toward the hall, going up a marble staircase and disappearing behind the long curtains.
Herber led the strangers toward the most distant part of the theater, and then stopped in front of a door whose two battens were moved by a lever. A short staircase covered with a thick carpet took the four men into a private room behind the stage, where several individuals had already gathered.
The schoolmaster introduced his guests in turn, and then told the travelers the names of his friends, who, with few exceptions, were among the most illustrious in modern science.
Antius and his companions, already identified as antiquaries of an incomparable erudition, were welcomed with respectful sympathy.
The conversation had been going on for a few minutes in the most cordial tone when Herber, who had disappeared momentarily, came back into the room and asked for permission to open the session. The two scientists having declared that they were at the disposal of the audience, the door at the back of the stage was opened wide.
A brightly-lit hall overflowing with spectators met the strangers’ eyes. The balconies, occupied in advance by the ladies, dressed in their bright summer clothes, unfolded around the room like brilliant strings of pearls. The entire auditorium was admirable in its architecture. Rows of vast, comfortable and widely-spaced armchairs rose gradually from the parquet and stooped in front of a circular wall of elegant boxes separated by columns of white marble supported by groups of allegorical figures. Above them, two vast sloping balconies permitted every spectator to have a view all parts of the hall. The panels, covered with pink velvet and separated by golden frames of the purest design, caressed the gaze. The ceiling, charged with bright mythological paintings, opened in the center to allow a glimpse of the depths of the sky, bathed with pale twilight. Four powerful electric elements fixed in the friezes and imprisoned in faintly tinted globes poured floods of pale blue light over the spectators.
At the edge of the stage an elegant podium, raised by a few steps, awaited the orators.
At Herber’s invitation, the travelers set themselves at the head of the procession and, under the fire of the gazes of the entire audience, went to take possession of the three chairs of honor disposed at the back of the stage, while the schoolmaster’s guests headed for a row of seats that extended in a semicircle on both sides all the way to the front of the stage.
A profound silence suddenly fell. The schoolmaster approached the physicist and, with a gesture full of courtesy, invited him to go up to the podium.
The professor got up and, with the assurance given by frequent public speaking, marched forward. After a profound bow that enveloped the entire auditorium, the scientist began his speech.
“Mesdames et Messieurs,” he said, “the magnificence of the civilization and the scientific knowledge of the 29th century, the source of the general wellbeing that surrounds us, ought not to make us forget that our conquests, as much from the speculative as the material point of view, are the result of the endeavors and efforts of past centuries, associated with those that we have been able to furnish ourselves to ensure the fatal and sovereign march of progress.
“Thus, the precise examination of an epoch, in its intellectual, social and economic aspects, offers a keen interest, as much by virtue as the ensemble of comparisons that flow therefrom as the information it includes, if one makes a careful study of the relations linking effects and causes.
“The corresponding period of the 19th century, to which our endeavors have attached us and of which it is permissible for us to trace a rigorous description, will be exposed here in various facets by two men whose entire existence has been consecrated to science and who, thrown suddenly into the life of the great city, for which nothing has prepared them, have been called by a providential hazard to the hearth of a generous man, to whom they are glad to be able to offer at this moment the public expression of their gratitude.”
At the last words, p
ronounced in an emotional voice, all gazes converged on the schoolmaster, in whom surprise appeared to overwhelm any other sentiment.
“Doctor Antius,” the physicist continued, “intends to explain the condition of the natural sciences toward the end of the 19th century and cast a general glance over the political, social and demographic aspects of the historical period that we have studied with so much care, and in incomparable conditions of certainty.
“Finally, on the perhaps-imprudent insistence of a young woman whose charm permits no resistance, our young companion with paint a picture of old Paris, which he has searched in every direction, and his narration, in default of any other merit, will certainly have that of an irreproachable exactitude.”
The doctor and his nephew were briefly the focus of the assembly’s attention, and stood up to that entirely benevolent scrutiny with sufficient self-composure.
“The honor of establishing the state of physical science among our ancestors, from the double viewpoint of theory and applications, has been reserved for me. I shall strive to maintain the conciseness, clarity and method that such subject-matter demands.”
After a momentary pause during which his eminently disciplined mind had condensed and organized the elements of his discourse, the professor continued: “All historians have recognized that, if the 17th century fixed the French language definitely, thanks to the literary monuments that illustrated it, the following century, by means of its scientific discoveries, which it only possessed in the condition of seeds, prepared for the enormous industrial development of the 19th century”
Developing the essential elements of that theme, as vast as it was profound, the physicist showed his attentive audience the application of the expansive force of vapors in the experiments of Denis Papin and the conceptions of Salomon de Caus, and excited a profound emotion by describing the heroic efforts of Robert Fulton to endow his contemporaries with steam navigation, which, by mastering the two redoubtable elements of winds and contrary currents, ensured rapid and regular communications with the most distant regions.