by Emile Calvet
He bowed with sufficient distinction, and then, in a voiced whose sonority was altered by a slight tremor, he began his exordium.
“Mesdames et Messieurs, it is not appropriate either to my age or my slight experience to grasp the past in its scientific, industrial, philosophical, social and economic aspects, as the two illustrious scientists have just done, of whom I have the honor of being the most assiduous and devoted pupil...”
At this insidious preamble the physicist’s face lit up with a rather caustic smile, while the doctor’s took on a much more significant expression.
“…But I believe that, even in a modest sphere, it is always possible to educate one’s peers.”
“His peers are damnably in need of it,” Antius said to the physicist.
“In the world in which we live, in which progress seems to be overflowing in every form,” the orator continued, his voice having gradually recovered its normal tone, “the remembrance of a few details relevant to the period we are studying, would perhaps find them as incredulous as censors, if we had not taken the sage precaution of guaranteeing its accuracy with all the authority of which its contemporaries could have disposed.
“To begin with, the spectacle of a lawsuit that was being heard this very morning at the tribunal has furnished us, with regard to the important question of arbitration between citizens, terms of comparison that are entirely characteristic.
“Marveling at the rapidity, clarity and integrity of today’s judiciary operations, we heartily congratulated a group of honest citizens who were surrounding us, for not having lived in the epoch when disputes of that sort were gripped by formidably complicate gear, and by a trilogy of individuals who attempted to impede the mechanism even further.
“To the questions that were addressed to us from all directions—What are advocates, attorneys and bailiffs?—we were, to our great regret, unable to respond because of the urgent tasks that have brought us to the capital. We can take them up now with calm, precision ad impartiality.”
Gédéon, who had been a legal clerk for six months and in whom the military magistracy had always inspired an aversion of which he made no secret, continued as flows: “An advocate, Mesdames et Messieurs, was a citizen whom the exigency of circumstances condemned to live, during the best years of his life, in the insipid commerce of a host of dotards like Ulpien, Justinian, Tribonius, etc.
“As soon as he thought himself nourished by assiduous study of Roman Law and the Civil Code, he presented himself, clad in a sack of black wool and coiffed in a comical hat, before a group of peevish old men, and made them a speech peppered with barbaric words, the meaning of which, fortunately for him, he did not understand.
“If hazard determined that somnolence sometimes replaced ill humor in the venerable jury, the candidate was saved, for, on awakening, the judges would suddenly pronounce the dignus est intrare.31 From then on, he entitled himself the defender of widows and orphans. In reality, his role condemned him henceforth to substituting himself—temporarily, of course—for individuals of greater or lesser importance, from whom the courts sometimes demanded money, and sometimes liberty. His talent then consisted of casting a shadow over everything injurious to his case and lighting up everything favorable to it. Many could be seen passing off as white what was black, and vice versa.
“In spite of everything, they rendered veritable services in lending the support of their erudition, their eloquence and, above all, their aplomb to a number of timid individuals who often remained mute before the majesty of the court. Some of the cleverest turned their backs on the court to climb to the podium, and sometimes thus arrived in high positions of State, which they often filled with honor.
“Now, the picture will darken somewhat, and, in spite of my respect for the truth, I fear the agitation I might now cause to sensitive hearts, in sketching portraits of the other two individuals.
“The attorney was once the turnkey opening all civil lawsuits. He was the one holding the tiller and disposing, activating and animating the discussions I don’t suppose for an instant that you can believed that he did it solely for love of the art. Furthermore, if you adopt as true the proposition consecrated by experience that where there was profit is a lawsuit, that profit went to the attorney, you will be absolutely correct.
“You will then understand that, the more obscure, tortuous and envenomed a case was, the more right the attorney has to applaud his windfall, for it was almost certain that, in the end, when the two parties left the tribunal, shorn, bruised and lacerated to the quick by expenses of every sort, the origins of which sometimes go back to Philippe le Bel, he alone would see his purse significantly rounded.
“The bastion where he set up his batteries was a huge square room whose breadth caused moralists to shiver and philanthropists to groan. There, the gaze came fearfully to rest on four walls of green cardboard whose ensemble constituted, for imprudent risks, a necropolis of incomparable security.
“In those frightful surroundings, half a dozen young people with wandering eyes, some sitting opposite the others, bent over sheets of paper filled with barbaric formulas, delving into all the most obscure corners of the quarrel.
“Well, Messieurs, when the god of that Inferno had taken off his spectacles, untied his cravat and put away his black coat, he suddenly become an amiable, gallant, bustling man, full of distinction.”
Intoxicated by the applause, mingled with frank bursts of laughter, that greeted the beginning of his improvisation, and retaining after ten centuries a dull rancor for the misadventures he owed to the solicitude of the ministerial officer he had described, the young man let his imagination off the bridle entirely.
“With the third term of that paper-shuffling assembly, we enter into drama,” he said, in a somber voice. “The bailiff, Mesdames et Messieurs, was a carnivore of the most redoubtable species. That bloodthirsty animal was especially skilled in hunting men, an exercise that he carried out with as much cunning as ferocity. One did not go near him without being bloodily bitten. Better open the door to plague or cholera than that dismal and impassive biped, who only entered to sow terror and ruin.
“Messieurs, a rapid and impartial account of a true story, which I have extracted with the utmost care from the annals of the 19th century, will show you, more clearly than the most energetic aphorisms, the individual in all his horror.
“A young man, the chronicle says, in whom all the qualities of the heart and mind were combined with bodily grace, had more imagination and appetite than money. One day, when the time came to settle a bill, he found himself short—a situation with which he was quite familiar. The creditor, convinced of the immediate impossibility of obtaining his due, succeeded by a diabolical artifice in extorting the unfortunate fellow’s signature—who, in signing a promise of payment whose due term seem to him to be half a century away, was committing one of those stupidities for which the recidivist merits internment in a madhouse.
“When one is due to receive money, time crawls; when one owes it, it flies. One fine day, or, to be perfectly accurate, one evil day, our man was snatched from the sweetness of morning sleep by raps brutally struck on his door. Now, at that moment he was plunged into delightful dreams. Sitting at a baccarat table, playing for high stakes in honor of his epoch, he had paid for a hand with his last fifty-centime piece. By an extraordinary stroke of luck he had drawn nine twenty-five times on the trot, and at each stroke his bank had doubled its value.
“Without being a transcendent force at mathematics, the player was not astonished by the height and diameter of the pile of gold and banknotes that the miraculous progression had amassed in front of him. Around the table, the cleaned-out players were offering a picture of consternation. Anyone can propose a banco, the fortunate banker thought, prudently, but not many capitalists can clear it, and he prudently ended the session. All the victims decamped in unison.
“Left alone, for he had sent the casino lackeys in search of a sturdy cart to take away his trea
sure, the new Croesus was wondering seriously whether, to utilize his capital, he ought not to finance the building of a submarine tunnel of which there as much talk at the time or, realizing his most cherished dream, he ought to found an empire in the Pampas, from which men of law, poets, musicians and etchers would be strictly banned. It was that the precise moment when he was weighing these serious questions that he as abruptly awakened.
“‘Is the cart big enough?’ he cried, pursuing his dream. But the sudden sight of the familiar objects that appeared successively around him tipped him out of the empyrean. ‘I’ll give whoever has just crushed my illusions a good ticking off,’ he said, as he ran to the door.
“He opened it abruptly and found himself face to face with a surly mug lodged between a black bicorn and a Bluebeard jacket. ‘Monsieur le Commissaire!’ cried the young man, losing his head, I swear it wasn’t me who unhooked the notary’s signboard in the Rue de l’Odéon and hung it on the shutter of his next-door neighbor, the bric-à-brac seller.
“‘I’m not the Commissaire,’ said the astonished visitor.
“‘Who are you, then? If you’re looking for the funeral director, you’re on the wrong floor.’
“‘I’m a bank employee,’ and I’ve brought you a bill for sixty francs.’
“‘It’s good of the bank to send me money,’ the young man replied, who believed it an unaccustomed gallantry of that organization. ‘I’ll drop in on the manager tomorrow.’
“‘I’ve come to collect sixty francs from you, in accordance with your promissory note,’ said the bicorn, who seemed quite flabbergasted.
“‘Then the bank will be disappointed, for I have no money,’ replied the imprudent signatory, suddenly enlightened.
“‘Very well, sad the man, in a detached tone. And, putting a little piece of white paper in the hands of the debtor, he went away shaking his head.
“‘Well, said the astounded young man, putting the piece of paper—which he assumed to be a receipt—in his pocket, ‘it’s easy to do business with that company; I’ll go there more often.’ And he went back to bed.
“Twenty-four hours later, his porter gave him a sheet of paper covered in communicatory formulas and demanding final payment of sixty-seven francs fifty centimes, signed Barnabé Cornefer, bailiff, usher etc.
“This Cornefer is mad! he thought. I can’t pay sixty francs and he wants to force me to pay sixty-seven! He examined the piece of paper carefully, to see whether it bore the postmark of Bicêtre or Charenton.
“A week later, a new summons couched in the same style. ‘If they expect to wear me down with their correspondence,’ the debtor said, ‘they’re mistaken.’
“Some time later, at about eleven o’clock in the morning, as he was putting the final touches to his toilette, and individual of criminal appearance suddenly presented himself to him, saying that he had come to seize him.
“Quick as lightning, the young man leapt upon and old buckler hanging on the wall, and shouted: ‘If you come near me, I’ll split your skull, which will give me a fair shot at this year’s Prix Montyon.’
“The malefactor recoiled, but suddenly straightened up. ‘My name is Nicolas-Barnabé Cornefer,’ he said, emphatically, ‘and I’ve come in my official capacity to seize your furniture, in response to a debt of sixty francs, represented by an unpaid promissory note, which I have already served three times, and whose expenses currently amount to thirty-seven francs sixty, double penalty included.’ And, turning around, he examined the room, including its darkest corners; then, sitting down without being invited, he started to write. Five minutes later, he got up and handed a piece of paper to a young man, addressing him by the title of ‘custodian of the seizure.’
“The latter, thinking that it was a practical joke, abused the bird of prey roundly with all the wealth of his vocabulary. At the nineteenth epithet, the dazed bailiff left, exclaiming: ‘Confronted by the debtor’s refusal, we’re going to effect a garnishee.’
“The young man, who had been living in a nightmare for some time, had the good idea of going to obtain advice from Maître Desiflard, a respectable lawyer and friend of the family, who, on this occasion, manifested a grandeur of soul that one very rarely observed in those days in notaries.”
“What audacity, to recount his own adventures thus before two thousand people,” said Antius to the physicist, in a low voice concentrated by anger.
“After having gratified his client with a long series of reproaches, recommendations and maxims,” Gédéon went on, “he put in his hands a sum more than sufficient to extract him from the merciless claws of all the carnivores by whom he had been attacked. The imprudent signatory ran to the bailiff’s lair and, with a brutality for which he will long applaud himself, snatched his papers, the nominal value of which had become insignificant by comparison with the expenses—or, to put it another way, judiciary extortions—with which they had been loaded.
“From all that, he learned a lesson: that of knowing that in a country that pretended to be civilized, the mot insignificant debt could, thanks to the artifices of a vampire now fortunately extinct, take on colossal proportions.”
Although relying on ideas, incidents and principles very distant from the contemporary morality reigning in the new world, the general meaning of that burlesque story of times past had been grasped perfectly by the audience. Thus, Gédéon’s improvisation, already frequently interrupted by bursts of laughter fired in all parts of the hall like sonorous rockets, determined at that moment such a fit of general hilarity that he was obliged to suspend his speech temporarily.
When calm had gradually been restored, he picked up the threat of his discourse.
“I have had the honor,” he said, “of introducing a few characteristic types, whose existence our forefathers, in their error, thought to be absolutely necessary to the happiness of humankind. I will not say anything more about the ensemble of individuals and institutions, which presented the same paradoxical character, for the exhaustion of that subject would take the youngest members of this assembly to the limits of old age. After having painted an epoch from the viewpoint of its prejudices, it seems reasonable to trace the scenery in which they struggled.”
And, the splendors of new Paris stimulating his imagination, he launched into a parallel comparison, in which fancy occasionally took the place of exactitude.
“I shall not surprise anyone,” he said, “by affirming that, from the viewpoint of general appearance, old Paris cannot by any means be compared to our present-day Paris. It is, however, necessary not to lose sight, if one wants to do it justice, of the fact that the Parisians of the 19th century arrived at the same conclusions when they compared their city, whose progressive embellishments they were continuing, with the old city of the Middle Ages, which, drowning in filth, was stifling within its walls. That observation reminds us that in this world, everything is relative—a principle that history makes evident perennially.
“One can even add that the first of the profound transformations that gradually led the capital to the state of magnificence that it enjoys today, took place in the precise period that is the subject of this series of lectures.
“Of course, we find ourselves facing a singular contradiction in observing that the activity of contemporary administrators was particularly devoted to the periphery of the city, while, on the other hand, the central part conserved its ancient appearance almost entirely.
“Where those magnificent avenues as broad as rivers, covered with verdure, works of art and majestic trees now extend, narrow and noisy streets crawled, bordered with tall houses in which the unfortunate citizens, cloistered in cells and deprived of breathable air, rivaled one another in etiolation.
“The public highways of central Paris were incessantly furrowed by a feverish crowd, cleaved with difficulty by strangely-shaped public carriages known as omnibuses. These primitive contraptions were governed by two men, one of whom stationed at the rear, piled up the victims, while the ot
her, perched on a high, narrow and isolated seat, directed the horses and required prodigies of skill not to crush a hundred people on every journey.
“The catalogue of heavy and crude vehicles that made the pavement resonate unremittingly with the most horrible racket would be of no interest to the audience. Of all the revolutions that has transformed the old world, Mesdames et Messieurs, perhaps the most marvelous is the one that has developed the river in such proportions that contemporaries would never have dared to imagine. How astonished the Parisians of the Iron Age would be if they could dart a single glance over that magnificent expanse of water, on those majestic bridges, and most of all that admirable lake, about which the majority of them would not even have dare to make a joke.
“Many people would refuse to admit as real a scene representing that river two hundred meters wide, encumbered by deformed boats and encased by gray and monotonous walls. However, in those miserable conditions, nautical sport developed with an intensity and perfection that the young people of today, under penalty of ingratitude to their ancestors, ought to rate highly.
“We shall abandon to them all superiorities regarding the splendor of their schools and the sum of pleasures that a more advanced civilization has reserved for them. We shall not even attempt a description of our ancient colleges, which were equally reminiscent of prisons, a monasteries and barracks, especially of the harsh life that young people led there between the ages of ten and twenty. We shall take a young man at the expiration of his punishment and already launched into that legendary region known as the Latin Quarter, whose ruins are beneath our feet at this moment.