by Paul Vibert
As if its pretty girls were insufficient!
This telescope, the exact name of which is a photoheliograph, set up horizontally, was created and built, at enormous cost, with the express purpose of photographing the planet Eros—a pretty name for a planet!87
Everything had been anticipated with minute and—let’s say this loudly—truly scientific care. The image of Eros was to be captured by a mirror, while a clockwork mechanism of the greatest precision was to compensate for the inevitable displacement resulting from the motion of the Earth.
All that was well-planned, wasn’t it?
The great day—or, rather, the great night—of the inauguration arrived; the astronomical scientists attacked to the celebrated university of Harvard took aim and started their machine, beautiful, polished and functioning like a chronometer. They took several pictures, or photographs, of Eros, which posed obligingly, like a good little girl, as it passed in front of the telescope that was impatient to capture its charms.
In spite of the impatience of the honorable scientists, it was necessary to wait several more days for the prints to be developed and to obtain an appropriate result.
Everything worked out admirably and demonstrated—O prodigy!—that the planet Eros was inhabited, for one very large animal and one much smaller could be distinguished there, very visibly and very distinctly. Even more curiously, the two animals were found in every image, but in very different poses.
The larger of the two animals, a trifle blurred but four-footed, inevitably rendered our astronomers rather pensive; some affirmed that it proved the youth of Eros—ever young, like its name—and that these enormous beasts must be colossal cousins of our primitive mastodons.
Finally, it was decided to take further photographs of Eros, but the weather was bad, the nights dark and cloudy. They had to be patient for a few more days. Finally, they were able to catch Eros in the semicircle again and obtain new prints of supreme quality. As for the two giant animals, there was no more trace of them than in the palm of my hand.
One of the astronomers, however, remarked very judiciously that it would be wise, with the much-improved methods they possessed, to magnify the prints considerably. They set to work right away, and soon found themselves confronted by new and immense prints on which at least half a dozen tiny insects could be distinctly seen.
A further prodigy; they ran to find the university’s entomologists, one of whom declared that they must be mosquitoes, which tended to demonstrate that Eros possessed an atmosphere, but as one of them seemed to be jumping rather than flying he called them, in Latin, the jumping mosquitoes of Eros. Another scientist, attempting to determine their sex, lost his sight in the process.
Finally, as the matter created an enormous stir throughout the scientific worlds of the two Americas, an old professor of physics, who was very skeptical and only believed in the experimental method, secretly devoted himself to a scrupulous investigation, and did not take long to demonstrate peremptorily that a kitten had slipped into the photoheliograph on the evening of the first operation in pursuit of a mouse, and that it was simply them that had been mistaken for inhabitants of Eros, distant cousins of mastodons or mammonths.
There remained the jumping mosquitoes, however, but with a supplementary enquiry and further prints, much enlarged, the same scientists did not take long to demonstrate that it was simply a matter of fleas left behind by the cat.
Far from declaring himself satisfied, however, another zoologist—an entomologist who was the nephew of the one who had lost his sight—continued his micrographic studies of the prints of Eros and succeeded in proving that there were two distinct varieties of insects there. That was the day when science finally discovered that the parasite known by the vulgar name of flea is not the same in cats as in mice.
Which proves that scientists never waste their time!
But that did not prevent the photoheliographic telescope of the celebrated university of Harvard from turning the scientific world of the starry Republic upside-down for some time. Admit that there was cause enough—but the idea that Eros might perhaps be uninhabited leaves me distinctly melancholy…
Solar Eclipse
In America. Among the superstitious blacks
and the double-dealing whites.
Curious memories.
A few years ago—I’d rather not be more exact in order not to cause trouble for anyone—I found myself in America at the time of a famous eclipse of the sun, central and therefore almost total.
It is well-known that in the southern states of the United States—including New Orleans, Georgia and the Floridas—the black element is very numerous, and that the descendants of Ham are not far from ten million strong.
One evening a few days before the eclipse, among educated and enlightened friends, we were talking about popular superstitions, and my friends affirmed that all the excesses provoked by the ignorance of yesteryear did not appear to recur any longer.
“And why, if you please,” I continued, “should the legendary follies—or, rather, the crimes—of the year one thousand, when the end of the world was supposed to arrive, not be reproduced? Humankind is more advanced, you say? For an affranchised elite, certainly, the observation is true, but in the masses, you may be certain that as long as priests dominate the minds of women and children, all superstition will be perpetuated intact, which renders all crimes possible in a moment of panic. And don’t lose sight of the fact that some will commit those crimes in the ferocious naivety of their ignorance, while others will be glad to profit from the opportunity to find a pretext therein to satisfy their petty vengeances.”
“This time,” exclaimed a fat sugar-cane planter, “I believe you’re right, and that you’re speaking from experience.”
Another interlocutor, however—a bad-tempered little Englishman—said: “As for the blacks, all excesses are certainly to be dreaded, for those people are savages, after all, but I’ll wager that there wouldn’t be any excesses committed by whites, by the Europeans whose sons we are…”
“Then again,” interjected a gentleman who was an important person in the administration, “I give you my guarantee that all precautions will be taken: all the police, armed forces and volunteers convened and deployed—and at the first sign of trouble…” He made an energetic gesture to indicate that the perpetrators would be immediately hanged, long and short.
“Yes, lynch-law elevated to the rank of a social institution,” I said, laughing.
The worthy functionary shrugged his shoulders, with more-than-contestable politeness, and turned toward me. “A Parisian negrophile is a dreamer who knows nothing about this country; the blacks are not human, they can be machine-gunned en masse…”
Calmly, as everyone awaited my response curiously, I replied: “Permit me, Monsieur, not to reply here and now. You know that I do not allow anyone to insult a man in front of me; a black man is my equal and we shall continue this conversation on another terrain, whenever you wish. For the moment, though, on the eve of the total solar eclipse that is about to occur, I will say in front of all of the numerous intelligent people in this club who are listening to me, that there will be crimes committed by the blacks—always as a result of the superstitious education given to them by their priests—which will be sincere and naïve crimes, if I might be permitted those qualifications, while the whites will only commit cowardly ones to profit from the impunity of the moment.”
I thought for a moment that those worthy folk were going to lynch me on the spot.
“You’re too negrophilic—that’s an infamy; you’re slandering your race. You’re insulting us. How can you place civilized people beneath savages? You’re mad…”
Etc., etc.
I allowed the storm to pass and the threatening fists raised against me to fall back, an, after an imperious gesture from the functionary, was finally able to resume speaking. Knowing the Yankee mind, I said: “Please calm down, Messieurs. Let’s not argue—let’s make a bet…�
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“That’s it! Let’s make a bet. But what are you putting up?”
“Listen, Messieurs, I’m poor, but I’m so certain of winning that I’ll stake anything you wish. Make a list; I give you my word.”
Soon, the list came back to me with the names of my adversaries and the stakes adjacent to their names. They had taken pity on me; they had only wagered $4500 against me.
I had them, I tell you. The evening passed cordially, swilling champagne, and a jury of honor was appointed to judge the outcome, if necessary.
“As for your police,” I said to the functionary, “they’ll be overwhelmed and will get cold feet, just like the blacks and the poor people.”
“We'll see, all right?”
Three days later, at the appointed time, like a well-brought-up person, the famous total solar eclipse took place, and everyone thought it was the end of the world.
The police and the army were the first to panic, and were unable to do anything.
A certain number of black men killed their wives and children to prevent their suffering and then killed themselves, in the naïve belief that the world was ending. But a no less equal number of white men, Europeans or native-born Yankees, hastened to loot and pillage, to set fire to their enemies’ houses, and, under the pretext of humanity, to send their mothers-in-law ad patres.88 I put mothers-in-law in the plural, because many of them had been married several times, and were only too happy to liquidated at a stroke “all those old boilers,” as one of them—a heating-engineer89 by trade—put it.
That as the only bet I ever made and won in my life—and was never paid, anyway, for reasons that are too complicated to go into here.
Divine Prescience
New explanations. Physics and Chemistry.
Marvelous voyages undertaken in a cataleptic state.
Some time ago, at a friend’s house, I encountered an Indian priest of the religion of Cakya-Mouni, superb and imposing with his great white beard. After the usually introductions, I did not take long to perceive that I was in the presence of a truly superior human being.
“In Europe,” I told him, “you are reputed to be thaumaturges who seek to take advantage of the credulity of crowds.”
“That’s easy to say, but take note that, although I don’t defend the frauds and charlatans in one religion more than another, it’s necessary to avow that it would be appropriate to understand us before throwing stones at us.”
“That’s true. Admit, though, that all your pretensions of esotericism are only designed to throw dust in the eyes of naïve individuals.”
“Not at all; our esotericism is simply the representation of a scientific patrimony, so well-informed that it would be unjust to confuse with your Medieval alchemy—which nevertheless contained, along with the mystical follies inherent in the times, a sort of embryo of modern physical and chemical sciences.90
“That’s possible, but I’d like to have an example, all the same.”
And, with the ice broken, the conversation continued in this fashion, touching on numerous topics of more-or-less transcendent psychology. That was how, in threading the needle, we ended up talking about divine prescience.”
“A neat trick which you’d have a hard time explaining to me,” I said to him, laughing.
Calm and smiling, he replied: “Nothing easier, my dear Monsieur.”
“Well now, if you understood our Parisian argot…”
“Go on.”
“I’d tell you that you’re backing me into a corner. How can God, if he exists, see everything in the past and the future, throughout the infinity of worlds? Can you explain that to me in other terms than blind faith, scientifically?”
“Of course.”
The ladies, keenly interested, had gathered around us, and when the priest of Cakya-Mouni resumed in these terms, one could have heard a fly in flight in the large drawing-room in my friend’s house in the Place des Vosges.
“I say that God always sees the entire past and the entire future, not because he is God, but simply because he has advanced knowledge of the physical sciences…”
“You’re making fun of us.”
“That’s not in my character,” the priest went on, with a genuine sentiment of sadness and mild reproach, which hurt me. “Look, I who am speaking, who am not God but only one of his most humble servants, can show you the past and enable you see the future, at will…”
These words were spoken so naturally and confidently that a little frisson ran over the shoulders of the pretty women who were there, attentive and charmed.
“And you can go as far back into the past as forward into the future?” a young blonde, who appeared to come from Germany, hazarded to ask. “You can show us what was happening on Earth a thousand or two thousand years ago?”
I can show you what was happening on Earth, lovely lady, a hundred thousand years ago, or a hundred billion…”
This time, there was a moment of amazement in the drawing-room, and anyone able to read what was in those ardently eyes fixed on the old man’s noble face would have seen very clearly what everyone was thinking.
The man’s mad.
He divined that, and continued, smiling: “Listen to me, ye of little faith, not religiously, but only scientifically. You all know that light takes a certain time to travel through space, and that merely traveling the radius of our telescopic horizon takes it 1,503,000 years, according to the calculation of Prince Grigori Stourdza91 himself.”
“That’s perfectly accurate.”
“We can go much further by means of thought than our telescopic radius, but let’s stick to those fifteen hundred thousand years. If I want to enable you to see the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, the death of Cakya-Mouni, or Zoroaster or Jesus Christ, a feast in Babylon, Adam and Eve’s breakfast or the latter’s conversation with the serpent, a very simple calculation as to the duration of the progress of light tells me to which star I need to transport you in order to arrive half an hour before the sight of the event in question, which will unfold in our visual field.”
“Superb—but how are you going to take us there?”
“I shall put you to sleep, and only transport your spirit there.”
“And it will be able to see?”
“Perfectly, for a spirit does not have our physical imperfections, and sees clearly, because nothing is lost in the infinity of time and space! Stand at that well-lit window, lovely lady, and through that window, in five hundred billion trillion years, at any point whatsoever in the infinity of space, a man as knowledgeable as I am in the sciences called esoteric, because they are not widespread, will be able to contemplate you in the full glow of your youth and radiant beauty…”
We all uttered an exclamation of surprise and admiration. Recovering from my amazement, however, I said: “So much for the past—but what about the future?”
“That takes longer, but is just as simple. It’s sufficient to be a good chemist and to follow by means of calculation the necessary, inevitable and ineluctable transformations of bodies and atoms to know at what point the Earth, the world, or the universe will be in five hundred billion centuries. It’s merely a question of knowing and applying chemical formulae.”
“I’d like to make one of those voyages into the past with you, if you’ll put me to sleep.”
“Tomorrow, at my house, at two o’clock.”
The following day, I was at his house at ten to two, and at ten past two, transported to another world, according to my desire, I saw Adam and Eve in the Earthly paradise, just as I see my concierge bringing up my mail every morning.
When we arrived at the famous scene of our poor grandmother’s seduction by the serpent, however, my spirit uttered a strident cry, and I said to the old priest of Cakya-Mouni: “Look—I understand now why Eve succumbed. The serpent has feet resembling legs and forearms. It’s not like today’s serpents—as my father has always written and affirmed, for the last thirty years, according o the explanation of the text
s themselves.”
“Obviously. It’s an illustration of one of the celebrated and curious laws of transformism.”
Beside myself, my spirit could not help saying: “It’s wonderful how travel forms youth; now I understand divine prescience of the original sin. It’s true that travel isn’t yet at everyone’s disposal, but every day, the progress of science is destroying the supernatural and the marvelous, by explaining very simply….”
“When I woke up and found myself in the modest drawing-room in the priest of Cakya-Mouni’s house, after the thanks and congratulations customary in such circumstances, I couldn’t help thinking: That’s nothing; if I could inaugurate these voyages for the Exposition, it would steal the show and make a huge fortune!
Author’s note: From one viewpoint, it is clear that in the recent past, wireless telegraphy, combined with Röntgen, have proved my old Indian priest absolutely right, and that explain the astonishing experiment that he carried out before me and on me.
Thus, on April 22, 1901 I received the following telegram from Nice:
“Experiments with wireless telegraph are continuing apace; at Biot they have been crowned with the greatest success.
“Among the trials bearing on the very fact of the transmission, it is necessary to highlight those concerning its speed, which have given a result of 605 words an hour. Verse, not prose, was transmitted in this experiment.
“In addition, it has been possible to obtain the conviction of the possibility of a double transmission from the same point, at the same time, via the same antenna, by means of two transmitters. Similar experiments at sea will be carried out in the next few days. A cruiser put at the disposal of the commission has just arrived at Villefranche.
“In respect of the possible interception of a dispatch, something to be expected of the experiments currently being made, have no doubt on that subject. A dispatch transmitted from Biot to Calvi has been intercepted at Villefranche in every detail, with perfect clarity—which did not prevent it from reaching Calvi is a similar condition.”