The Mysterious Fluid

by Paul Vibert

  This is where I shall invoke the intervention of modern artillery.

  First, I take long-range canons that kindly send their cannonballs four leagues, which is sixteen kilometers; then I load them—by the breech, naturally—replacing steel cannonballs with balls of butter, cheese, grease and lard, in the middle of which I have wrapped meat, wine and liqueurs, which are less apt to freeze at low temperatures. To avoid my cannonballs being broken as they fall, I enclose them in a lattice of galvanized iron wire, very neat and elegant, as one might say of a hairnet. Then, the point of arrival having been determined by tests, I have them received in vast ad hoc nets suspended above the ground on poles, and filled with bran, so that the balls of butter, grease, etc will be received very gently, as if in cotton, and won’t break when they fall. In any case, the metallic lattice is there to prevent that. As the materials are not as heavy as steel cannonballs, it’s certain that I shall gain more distance.

  Finally in addition to these liquid and congealed materials, I shall have tins of conserves made in the form of conical bullets, and will thus easily send the majority of Potin’s products.124 That’s clear, as an old communard said.

  Now, I divide my 175 leagues by four and I find that I’ll requires slightly more than 43 stations between Juneau and Dawson City to supply all of the Klondyke, for, as soon as a foodball falls into the bran, it will be resent to the next post by the cannon, and so on. At each station, it will be soaked in frozen seal-oil to avoid friction and heating.

  As you see, I’ve thought of all the most important points, but that’s not all—and this is where I’m truly superior to Varicle, because I’m borrowing the practical element from his project.

  Once again, follow my reasoning closely—it’s marvelous.

  At every station, I set up a tethered balloon at an altitude of five hundred meters, and I put my cannon, solidly, fixed, in the gondola of the balloon; then, at that elevation, the trajectory falling rather than descending—it’s all there—I obtain double the distance, and I only need 22 stations to resupply the Klondyke at will, in the long interval of nine months of the year.

  This time, I believe that my demonstration, entirely luminous, will have converted my contemporaries. I ask nothing for myself, but I think that a joint-stock company with a capital of 25 million could easily look it in the face and realize dividends of 17.75% from the first year onwards. It would be salvation for the unfortunate gold-seekers.

  Oh, if, all the same, very modestly, I do ask something for myself I request the title of benefactor of humankind.

  III. A Voyage to the Moon. An astronomer in a cassock. Childhood memories.

  To Émile Zola

  My dear colleague,

  since you are a journalist,

  My dear fellow-member,

  since we both belong to the Societé des Gens de Lettres,

  My dear friend,

  since we both have the same ideas about justice,

  My dear Master,

  for I admire your courage and your great talent,

  Last year, toward the end of July, the newspapers published the following note, in the wake of a communication by our excellent friend and collaborator Alexandre Geoffroy,125 well known in the word of engraving for his erudition, as sure as it is varied:

  “In the church at Médan, near Verneuil (Seine-et-Oise), there is a stone baptismal font, octagonal in form, on one side of which is engraved a long inscription in French verse, containing the complete history, not only of the vessel that bears it, but also the church in which it is now set. The font, which, judging by the design of the moldings with which it is decorated, appears to date from the thirteenth century, originally belonged to the church of St. Paul in Paris, from which it was transported to Médan in 1494 by Henri Perdrier, the lord of the manor and founder of the church. That is what the inscription tells us.

  “Here is the text, as reproduced by our colleague Alexandre Geoffroy:126

  At this font were once baptized

  Numerous dukes and kings,

  Princes, Comtes, Barons, Prelates

  And other men of all estates;

  And in order that it should be known

  They made use of it in the royal

  Parish of St. Paul in Paris,

  Where kings once resided;

  Among other honorably baptized

  Herein were notably

  The wise king Charles the Fifth

  And his son who came after him

  The beloved Charles the Wise

  Sixth of that calm name.

  Now, was the aforesaid font

  Transported, I declare,

  By the lord of the manor in the fourth year

  Called the fourth—fourteenth,

  His soul in paradise reposed.

  Henry Perdrier was his name.

  God grant him grace.

  Here the lord began,

  After a short time

  To rebuild this church

  Which was in a poor state

  Such, that, as I hear,

  It was nearly a hundred years

  Since mass had been sung in it

  So poorly was it attended

  Now it is so well-procured

  That it has a parish priest

  And a large flock.

  God multiplies its wealth

  And we must say our prayers

  That Perdriers and Perdrières,

  To Paradise, free of cares

  Might go—and me too!

  Well, as the little village of Médan is the very one where you have spent your holidays since the war, and as I spent the first fifteen years of my childhood in Verneuil-sur-Seine, in the beautiful canton of Poissy, where there is another marvelous church, certain details of which date back to St. Louis, I resolved today to distract you from the melancholies of exile by telling you about an eccentric who lived in the village some thirty-five or thirty-six years ago, under the Empire, exercising there the modest profession of incumbent.

  This worthy curé, tall, thin and sturdy, his beard and hair a dull red-blond, was very poor, but proud in his poverty, with a terrible accent. He was Alsatian, and never called my father anything other than Monsieur Vipère—and he called me, familiarly, Baul.

  One day, the local bigwigs, like Baroche, who was the Lord Chancellor and lived in Jusier, near Meulan, got the Empress to give him a cassock—but he was still just as poor.

  It’s true that the benefits weren’t rich in Médan at that time, but this man, who was no one-sou fanatic, said his mass in front of a single choir-boy and had almost as much faith as us—which is to say, none at all—had a vice that swallowed up his meager emoluments. Yes, he was an astronomer, and his money went on buying instruments that were, alas, insufficient to extinguish his thirst for science.

  He was crazy about the Moon; he loved it; he was scientifically enamored of it—and as I see that this love is shared by the great majority of Frenchmen, for every Sunday they do me the honor of listening to me passionately at La Bodinière when I talk about the lunar voyages of Cyrano de Bergerac or Edgar Poe’s Dutch cobbler, I dare to hope that you would not want to make an exception of yourself by not sharing this universal sympathy for our genteel astral neighbor. Selenite studies are very much in fashion just now, at any rate, like those concerning the planet Mars.127

  So, for years he had been calculating the effort necessary to overcome the resistance of the air and terrestrial attraction, and he had succeeded in discovering the exact formula for the cannon that he would need to send a cannonball to the moon.

  His despair was in not having the money necessary to construct the cannon of his dreams—which were doubtless somewhat chimerical.

  He said that by enclosing within a hollow cannonball another, similarly hollow cannonball, made of cast iron in order that it would not break on falling on the moon, one would be able to send a message to the inhabitants of the moon—if there are any— securely screwed within that central bullet, and thus provo
ke a response by the same means…all the more so because, on the Moon, the resistance of lunar attraction would be six times less to overcome. He had all the calculations to demonstrate how the lunar cannonball could return to us.

  The poor man lived in his starry dream: a dream that filled his life. When he told me all about it for hours on end, when I was only ten years old—he liked M. Baul Vipère very much—I listened to him with a gentle a tender compassion, and it did not fail to charm my imagination.

  In fact, was it as insane as all that? Recently, an English scientist determined that the Earth weighs 120 thousand trillion quintals, which would require a 10,000 horse-powers steam engine working for 70 billion years, which would consume 80,000 billion quintals of carbon, which would require 200 hundred billion wagons, to transport it. That’s surely comparable to the equally ridiculous dream that amused the poor rural curé of establishing a postal service between the Earth and the moon with the aid of cannonballs.

  And speaking of post, he received an astronomical journal, and for two or three months in succession, the post office made the mistake of sending it to my father, who received a great many periodicals. I ought to make honorable amends for my mischief; I had put all the numbers to one side and, the following year, on fixed days, with a new stamp stuck over the old one, I sent him his journal. The unfortunate fellow, so strong in astronomy—for he was truly outstanding on his favorite hobby-horse—was never able to understand why, for three months, his journal arrived exactly a year after it had been posted.

  What was his name? I’ve forgotten. When did he die? I don’t know. I’ve written several times to the mayor of Médan, enclosing return postage, but I’m still waiting, from which I conclude that the unfortunate mayor doesn’t know how to read or write, even to spell out the manual of simple and honest civility.

  But that’s all right; the rude and unpolished face of that old Alsatian curé and passionate astronomer remains engraved on my memory, and I’ve often thought about him during melancholy moments of remembrance of early childhood.

  So, when you return to Médan, my dear Master and friend, talk to the old folk then; it will amuse you, and they’ll certainly be more loquacious than Monsieur le Maire.

  Your very devoted,

  Paul Vibert

  P.S. At the last minute I received a belated letter from the mayor of Médan, which tells me that the brave Alsatian curé was named Maupert, that he stayed in Médan for twelve years and that he left in 1872 for Saint-Denis, where he has since died. That is the precision of my authentic story of the astronomer curé. Better late than never.

  New Houses

  I. When land becomes expensive. The telescopic house.

  How necessity renders landlords ingenious.

  All those who are familiar with New York and the famous southern sector of Manhattan Island, where the world of that most active of cities’ commercial and financial dealings is concentrated, have conserved the intense visual image of its tall buildings.

  Who does not remember the palatial Masonic Hall, so high and narrow that it is reminiscent of a vast red-brick column,128 and that other palace with twenty stories, similarly in brick, but stouter, as vast as a citadel, which is simply the offices of the Equitable, one of the big U.S. life insurance companies, which has the particularity, interesting for us to know, that the director’s son is the sponsor and organizer of French lecture-tours through the great Republic-when he has time!

  So, it is difficult to construct more elevated buildings, and yet the land that is in short supply there is selling for as much as six thousand francs a square meter.

  In Paris, where the City does not permit such high buildings, land sometimes sells for more than three thousand francs a square meter, and also has places where space is lacking, on the eve of the Exposition.

  Well, to remedy this inconvenience, in Paris, London and New York, bold architects and engineers have thought of building fourteen-storey houses in Paris, seven above ground and seven below, and forty-story houses in New York, twenty above ground and twenty below. Given the present progress of science, nothing is simpler.

  Thus, with respect to elevators, so costly to install, whether they be electric or hydraulic, everything is resolved with a simple system of counterweights, and when one goes up, the other goes down—it works automatically.

  The question of lighting for the subterranean floors is entirely resolved with electricity, and even with acetylene. As for the view, I’m aware of the objection. It’s simply a matter of combining the system of the camera obscura with that of the spy-holes found in all the windows of Belgian houses. All the way to the seventh underground floor, with a simple ad hoc reflector, everyone can see quite clearly what is happening, and who is passing by, in the street.

  Now if this system, already put into practice a long time ago in the City of London for two subterranean floors, will be useful to landlords, it will be no less so to the public. Those who like noise, movement and dust will continue to live in the stories above ground, but the others—and they are numerous—will live on the lower floors: the amorous, young married couples, in order to spend their honeymoon in devout meditation, far from noise and the indiscreet and profane eyes of the indifferent; scientists and writers, in order to work without being incessantly disturbed. And these men of science and labor will have no need to consult their electric clocks or hear them chime; by darting a glance at the reflector they will see a swarm of joyful young women filling the street, laughing and chattering; they will even be able to press a button and hear them, with their microphones, and then they will say to themselves: why, it’s midday, the time when the little seamstresses leave their workshops and go to lunch. Later, seeing the cafes fill up, they will say to themselves: why, it’s absinthe time, six o’clock…and so on.

  But that’s not all. It’s obvious that the system will also render the greatest service to physicians, always on the lookout to satisfy the latest fantasies of their patients. Those who desire a cure of air and natural light we go to live five or six stories above ground, but those who need calm and rest for their nerves—and they are numerous—will live seven floors underground; thus, both will be promptly put on their feet again.

  I might be mistaken, but it seems to me that this system of housing, which I shall gladly call telescopic, half above and half below the ground, is bound to render great service to all classes of society.

  “But,” the enemies of all progress will say, “people will become anemic living underground like that.”

  To that it’s easy to reply, firstly that those floors will always be inundated with light, thanks to an abundant distribution of electricity, and secondly, that there are many workers, busy individuals, in a great city like Paris or London, who only go home to sleep, and it won’t make much difference to them.

  “But what about Sunday?”

  “Well, on Sunday, they can go out for a walk, and those who stay at home to rest will enjoy perfect tranquility.

  Now, it’s obvious that it’s always necessary to be honest, and I’m in favor of telling the truth. Those who live on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors underground ought to go out go out occasionally, for I know an eccentric in London, a former champagne-merchant retired from business, who had kept his shop in the city near Pater Street, and who had his apartment there. He only had two underground floors, but it’s only fair to add that he never went out. Well, after six months, as it was more-or-less poorly lit, his superb red hair and magnificent flavescent beard, under the inevitable influence of discoloration and anemia, had become reminiscent of barbe de capucin—the salad vegetable that’s grown in barrels in cellars.129 But he was an eccentric, and I persist in believing that fourteen-story houses, half of which are underground, will have a great and legitimate success during next year’s Exposition Universelle.

  Author’s note: This chapter was, of course, written in 1899, and I ought to admit that, with their stick-in-the-mud attitude, my compatriots did not, ala
s, prove me right. But what do you expect? One day or another, it will become imperative, and it will probably be for the next exposition. It’s necessary to console oneself for the indifference and ingratitude of one’s contemporaries—but don’t push me too far, or I’ll take my invention abroad!

  II. Houses in flesh and bone.

  Jonah’s whale and the elephant in the Place de la Bastille.

  The influence of violet light on animals.

  A new and curious application.

  As the most idiotic legends of all cosmologies always had a rationale of some sort to begin with, I confess that in my youth the filthy adventure of Jonah—one of the twelve minor Jewish prophets, if I’m not mistaken—had the ability to interest me very keenly.

  To me, with the evocative power of a childish imagination, it seemed that the more-or-less legendary story in question, which, it’s said, dated back to the ninth century before Christ, happened only yesterday, and, while closing my eyes, I loved to relive in thought the time spent by that brave man in the stomach—for the belly seemed impossible to me—of the great marine mammal: the whale, to call it by its name. But that’s enough; I’ll go on.

  Was he comfortable? Could he sit down? Didn’t he feel ill? Could he breathe and see clearly through the esophageal tube? So many questions, which interested me keenly. It’s true that, fundamentally, it was all very speculative and just for fun, for my parents had brought me up too well for me to believe in all that nonsense; but still, it was, for my young imagination, a motive for cerebral sport that was not without charm.

  Later, I always regretted arriving in the world too late to have been able to see the great white(?) elephant of the Place de la Bastille. When it was demolished, thousands of rats emerged, which escaped and spread throughout Paris, which proves that it too was inhabited inside, just like Jonah’s whale.