The Eternal Adam and other stories

by Jules Vernes

  I rushed up the Boulevard St Michel. I glanced at the clock on the station. It was only three-quarters of an hour slow. Progress, eh! And I dashed like an avalanche into the Rue de Noyon.

  There were two buildings that I didn’t know, that I couldn’t recognise. On one side I could see the home of the Industrial Society, with its buildings already old, hurling out through a tall chimney steam which was no doubt driving the mechanical compositors dreamed of by one of our wise colleagues. On the other side rose the Post Office, a superb building which contrasted strangely with the damp dark shop where, last night. I had succeeded in stuffing a letter through one of those narrow windows so likely to give one a crick in the neck.

  This was a last blow directed against my poor brain! I made off up the Rue St Denis, and past the Palais de Justice. Incredible – it was completely finished, but the Court of Appeal was still being held amidst the scaffolding.

  I reached the Place St Michel. Peter the Hermit was still there, calling us to some new crusade! I threw a sideways glance at the cathedral... The bell tower on the left wing had been repaired, and the cross on the tall spire, at one time bent by the western gales, stood up with the rectitude of a lightning conductor... I hurried on to the open space before the cathedral. It was no longer a narrow blind alley between squalid hovels but a large square, well laid out, surrounded by fine houses, which allowed it to show at its best that superb specimen of the thirteenth-century Gothic art.

  I pinched myself hard enough to draw blood! A cry of pain escaped my lips to prove that I was still awake. I looked in my pocket-book, to verify the name on my visiting cards. It was my own! So I was really myself, and not a gentleman who’d come direct from Honolulu to fall right into the capital of Picardy?

  ‘Let’s see,’ I told myself. ‘I mustn’t lose my head! Either Amiens has changed greatly since I was here last, or I’m not in Amiens! Go along with you!... What about the burst pipe in the Place Périgord? – So the Somme is only a couple of steps away, and I’ll go... The Somme! But if someone told me that it flows nowadays into the Mediterranean or the North Sea, I shouldn’t have the right to be surprised!’

  At that moment I felt a hand laid on my shoulder. My first idea was that I’d been recaptured by my keepers. No! I realised it was a friendly grasp.

  I turned round.

  ‘Well, good morning, my dear patient,’ came the affectionate voice of a portly gentleman, with a round smiling face. He was dressed in white, and I’d never seen him before.

  ‘Well, sir, to whom do I have the honour of speaking?’ I asked, determined to make an end of it.

  ‘What, you don’t recognise your own doctor?’

  ‘My doctor was Dr Lenoel,’ I replied, ‘and I... ‘

  ‘Lenoel!’ exclaimed the man in white. ‘Really, my dear patient, have you gone mad?’

  ‘If I haven’t, sir, you have,’ I replied. ‘So you can decide which it is!’

  I must have been honest to let him choose!

  He looked at me attentively. ‘Urn,’ he said, his cheerful face clouding over. ‘You don’t seem too well. But, never mind, never mind. I’ve the same interest as yourself in keeping you healthy! It’s no longer as things were in the time of Dr Lenoel and his contemporaries, worthy physicians to be sure... But we’ve made progress since then!’

  ‘Oh!’ I replied. ‘You’ve made progress... So now you heal your sick?’

  ‘Our sick! Have we had any sick since France adopted the Chinese system! Now it’s just as if you were in China. ‘

  ‘In China! That wouldn’t much surprise me!’

  ‘Yes, our patients pay us their fees only so long as they keep well! When they aren’t the cash-box shuts! So isn’t it to our own interest to see they never get ill? So, no more epidemics, or hardly any! Everywhere a flourishing health that we tend with pious care, like farmer keeping up his farm. Illness! But with this new system that would ruin the doctors – and on the contrary, they’re all making their fortunes!’

  ‘Is it the same for the lawyers?’ I asked, smiling.

  ‘Oh, no! You’ll understand that there wouldn’t be any trials, whereas, whatever one does, there are still a few small ailments ... especially among close-fisted people who want to economise on my fees! – Look here, my dear patient, what’s wrong with you!’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with me. ‘

  ‘You can recognise me now?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, so as not to contradict this strange doctor who might possibly be able to use it against me.

  ‘I’m not going to let you get ill,’ he continued, ‘for that would ruin me – Let’s see your tongue. ‘

  I showed him my tongue and I really must have put on a pitiful expression.

  ‘Um, um,’ he murmured, after examining it with a lens.

  ‘Tongue coated! – Your pulse!’

  I resignedly let him feel my pulse.

  My doctor took from his pocket a tiny instrument I’ve heard mention of recently: putting it on my wrist, he obtained on squared paper a graph of my pulse-beats which he read easily, like a post office clerk reading a telegraphic message.

  ‘The devil!’ he said.

  Then, producing a thermometer from nowhere, he stuffed it into my mouth before I could stop him.

  ‘Forty degrees!’ he exclaimed. (A hundred and four fahrenheit. )

  And as he mentioned that figure he turned pale. His fees were plainly in danger.

  ‘Well, what have I got?’ I asked him, still half suffocated by the unexpected introduction of that thermometer.

  ‘Um! um!’

  ‘Yes, I know that answer, but it’s one fault is that it isn’t precise enough. Well, what I’ve got, doctor, I’m going to tell you. I feel that I’m going off my head. ‘

  ‘Before the proper time, my dear patient!’ he replied pleasantly. To reassure me, no doubt.

  ‘Don’t laugh!’ I exclaimed. ‘I can’t recognise anybody – not even you, doctor! I feel as if I’d never seen you before!’

  ‘Well, well! You see me once a month, when I come to collect my little fees!’

  ‘No, no! And I’m beginning to wonder whether this town is Amiens, and this street is the Rue de Beauvois!’

  ‘Yes, my dear patient, it is Amiens. Oh, if you’d got the time to climb up the cathedral spire, you’d soon recognise the capital of our dear Picardy, defended by its ring of forts. You would recognise these charming valleys of the Somme, the Arne, the Selle. shadowed by these lovely trees which don’t bring in five sous a year, but which our generous aediles keep up for us! You would recognise these outer boulevards, which cross the river on two splendid bridges and make a green belt round the city! You would recognise the industrial town which since the citadel was pulled down has sprung up so quickly on the right bank of the Somme. You would recognise that broad thoroughfare, called the Rue Tourne-Coiffe! You would recognise... But after all, my dear patient, I don’t want to contradict you if it amuses you to say we’re in Carpentras, right down in the south of France!’

  I could plainly see that this worthy man was taking care not to contradict me openly – of course, you have to humour maniacs!

  ‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘listen to me... I’ll gladly take anything you prescribe... I don’t want to rob you of my money!... But let me ask you one question. ‘

  ‘Ask, my dear patient. ‘

  ‘Is today Sunday?’

  ‘The first Sunday in August. ‘

  ‘What year?’

  ‘The onset of madness characterised by loss of memory,’ he muttered. ‘That’ll take a long time. ‘

  ‘What year?’ I insisted.

  ‘It’s the year... ‘

  But just as he was going to tell me I was interrupted by noisy shouts.

  I turned round. A troop of loungers had surrounded a man: he was about sixty years old and looked very strange. This personage walked as though he were scared and hardly seemed able to keep on his feet. Anybody would have said that half of him was missin
g.

  ‘Who’s that man?’ I asked.

  The doctor, who had taken my arm, was saying to himself. ‘We’ve got to take his mind off his monomania, so that... ‘

  ‘I asked who that fellow is, and why that crowd is following him!’

  ‘That fellow! What, you’re asking me who he is? But he’s the one and only bachelor left in the Department of the Somme!’

  ‘The last?’

  ‘Not a doubt about it? And you can see how they’re hooting him!’

  ‘So now it’s forbidden to be a bachelor?’ I asked.

  ‘Almost, since they’ve been taxed. The older they get, the more they have to pay, and unless they manage to settle down that will ruin them in no time! That poor wretch you saw has had a largish fortune completely swallowed up. ‘

  ‘So he’s got an unconquerable aversion for the fair sex?’

  ‘No – the fair sex have got an unconquerable aversion for him. He’s missed 326 chances of getting married. ‘

  ‘But still there are some girls to be married. I suppose?’

  ‘Very few, very few. No sooner do they reach marriageable age than they’re married!’

  ‘What about widows. ‘

  ‘Oh, widows! They don’t even give them time to recover. Before ten months have elapsed, off to the Hotel de Ville. Just now. I’m certain, there aren’t twenty-five widows available in France!’

  ‘But the widowers?’

  ‘Oh, them, they can take their time! They’re free from compulsory service, and they’ve nothing to fear from the tax-collectors!’

  ‘Now I understand why the boulevards are crowded with couples, young and old, conscripted under the cloak of marriage!’

  ‘Which has often been a flag of revenge, my dear patient!’

  I could not keep back a shout of laughter.

  ‘Come along, come along,’ he said, grasping my arm.

  ‘One moment – doctor, we really are in Amiens, I suppose?’

  ‘There, it’s taken hold of him again,’ he muttered.

  I repeated my question.

  ‘Yes, yes, we’re in Amiens!’

  ‘What year?’

  ‘I’ve told you already, in... ‘

  The sound of a triple whistle cut short his words. It was followed by a loud blast like a foghorn. A gigantic vehicle appeared down the Rue de Beauvois.

  ‘Stand clear, stand clear!’ the doctor shouted, pushing me to one side.

  And I fancied he added between his teeth, ‘Now all it needs is for him to break a leg! I’ll end up having nothing in my pocket. ‘

  It was a tramcar. I hadn’t so far noticed that steel rails furrowed the street, and I must say I thought this innovation quite natural, although at present there’s no more chance of a tramway than there is of a bus!

  The doctor beckoned to the conductor of the great vehicle, and we took our places on the platform, already crowded with travellers.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked, quite resigned, by now, to let things happen.

  ‘To the regional competition. ‘

  ‘At the Hotoie?’

  ‘At the Hotoie. ‘

  ‘So we really are in Amiens?’

  ‘Of course.’ The doctor threw an anxious glance at me.

  ‘And what’s the present population of this town since they started taxing bachelors?’

  ‘Four hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. ‘

  ‘And we’re in the year of grace?’

  ‘In the year of grace... ‘

  Another blast on the foghorn kept me again from hearing the reply which would have interested me so much.

  The vehicle had turned into the Rue du Lycée and was making for the Boulevard Cornuau.

  As we passed the College, whose chapel already looked like an ancient monument, I was struck by the number of pupils who were coming out for their Sunday walk. I couldn’t keep myself from showing a little surprise.

  ‘Yes, 4,000 of them!’ the doctor commented. ‘It’s quite a regiment!’

  ‘Four thousand!’ I exclaimed. ‘Well! And in this regiment how many show their ignorance of the classic tongues?’

  ‘But, my dear patient,’ the doctor replied. ‘Do call to mind your own experience. It’s a hundred years, at least, since Latin and Greek were given up in the lycées! Education is now purely scientific, commercial, and industrial!’

  ‘Can it be possible?’

  ‘Yes, and you know well enough what happened to that unfortunate pupil who carried off the last prize for Latin verse? Well, when he appeared on the platform somebody threw a Latin grammar at his head, and amidst all the excitement the Prefect was so embarrassed he almost bit him!’

  ‘And since then, no more Latin verse in the colleges?’

  ‘Not even half a hexameter!’

  ‘And Latin prose was banned at the same time?’

  ‘No, two years later, and with good reason! Do you know how, at the examination, the best of the candidates translated Immanis pecoris custos!’[iii]

  ‘No. ‘

  ‘Like this, "guardian of an immense blockhead". ‘

  ‘Go along with you!’

  ‘And Patiens quia aeternus?’[iv]

  ‘I’ve no idea. ‘

  ‘He is "patient because he sneezes"! So the president of the university realised it was high time to suppress the study of Latin. ‘

  My word, I shouted with laughter. Even the doctor’s expression could not stop me. It was clear that to his mind my madness was taking on an alarming character. Complete loss of memory on the one hand, and tempestuous maniacal laughter on the other! Now he’d got something to be concerned about!

  And indeed my laughter might have continued indefinitely if the beauty of the scene hadn’t diverted my attention.

  We were going down the Boulevard Cornuau, now straightened, thanks to an amiable understanding between the authorities and the trades unions. To the left rose the St Roch Station. This building, after being so strangely knocked about during the works of construction, now seemed to justify that line of Delille’s:

  Its indestructible mass has wearied time!

  The tram-rails stretched on down the centre of the boulevard, shadowed by a fourfold line of trees that I’d seen planted. And now they seemed to have lived two centuries.

  In a few seconds we’d arrived at the Hotoie. What changes had been suffered by this fine walk where in the fourteenth century the youth of Picardy used to show off. It now displayed great stretches of lawn in the English fashion, large clumps of shrubs and flower-beds which disguised the rectangular form of the spaces reserved for the annual exhibitions. A rearrangement of the trees which yesterday were choking one another had given them space and air, and now they could rival the gigantic ‘Wellingtonias’ of California.

  There was a crowd at the Hotoie. The programme hadn’t deceived me. Here the Regional Competition of Northern France displayed a long series of stables, stalls, tents, kiosks of every colour and every shape. But today the Agricultural and Industrial Fair had closed. Within an hour the prize-winners – two-footed or four-footed – were to be ‘crowned’.

  I didn’t find the competition displeasing. It appealed to eyes and ears alike. The strident clatter of moving machinery, the hissing of the steam, the plaintive bleating of the sheep penned in their stalls, the deafening cackle of the poultry-yard, the speeches of the authorities whose pompous sentences resounded from the platform, the applause given to the prize-winners, the soft sound of the kisses which official lips placed upon their ‘crowned’ heads, the martial orders which echoed under the tall trees, and finally the vague murmur which rose from the crowd, all this combined to produce a strange concert whose charm I greatly appreciated.

  The doctor pushed me through the turnstile. The hour was coming when the Ministerial Delegate would make his speech, and I didn’t want to lose a word of this harangue which, if only it followed the current of progress, ought to be so new in substance and style.

  I ther
efore hurried into the centre of a large quadrilateral reserved for the machinery. My doctor bought at a high price several bottles of a precious liquid which had the quality of disinfecting the local water. I let myself be tempted by several boxes of a phosphorescent paste which had so completely destroyed the mice that the cats had taken their place.

  Then I could hear some complicated pianos which harmoniously reproduced all the strains of an orchestra from the opera. Not far away were some stone-crushers thunderously crushing stones. The harvesters were reaping the cornfields like a barber shaving a stubbly chin. Pile-drivers, worked by compressed air, were striking five-million-pound blows. Centrifugal pumps were working as though they meant to absorb, with a few strokes of a piston, the whole of the Selle river, reminding me of Moreau’s lovely verse about the Voulzie:

  A thirsty giant would drink it in a breath!

  Then on all sides there were machines of American origin, carried to the last extremes of progress. One was given a live pig, and out of it came two hams, one York and one Westphalian! To another was offered a rabbit, still quivering, and it produced a silk hat! This one absorbed an ordinary fleece and ejected a complete suit of clothes in the best style! That one devoured a three-year-old calf and reproduced it in the twofold form of a smoking blanquette of veal and a pair of newly polished shoes! And so on and so forth.

  But I could not stop to contemplate these wonders of human genius. Now it was my turn to drag the doctor along. I was intoxicated.

  I reached the platform, which was already sagging under the weight of the important personages.

  They had just been judging the fat men – as is done in America at every competition which takes itself seriously.

  After the fat man’s competition came that of the thin woman, and the prize-winner as she came down from the platform, her eyes modestly lowered, repeated that watchword of one of our wittiest philosophers. ‘They like the fat woman, but they adore the thin ones!’

  Now it was the turn of the babies. There were several hundred of them among whom those awarded a prize were the heaviest, the youngest, and the one who could bawl loudest! All were plainly dying of thirst and were calling for a drink in their own way, which was not at all pleasant.