Martyrs of Science

by S. Henry Berthoud

  “Not to mention that they’re not as high-quality, for a true gourmet, as the choice nests that come from Java and Sumatra,” Azrael interjected, taking a small watch from his pocket.

  Not only did that watch indicate hours, minutes and seconds, but it was also a thermometer, a barometer and a compass, although it was only as big as a twenty-franc coin.

  “In half an hour our Prussian friends will be arriving, famished,” he went on. “Come on, Monsieur Carême-Dugléré, let’s pay attention to the menu for our dinner.”

  “Would the Messieurs like caviar, clam pâté and Chinese shrimp canapés for hors-d’oeuvre?”

  “All that’s a trifle vulgar, but exquisite,” observed Azrael. “Accepted. Let’s pass on to the soup.”

  “Bird’s-nest soup?”

  “So be it.”

  “For the next course, I propose offering you a Yangtze unicornfish and an elephant’s trunk, Hong Kong style. Four young elephants fed on wild thyme and aromatic plants have just arrived from India.”

  “And what will you give us for an entrée?”

  “Lophophore palates and a fish of your choice. As a roast, would the Messieurs like a Madagascar monkey with truffles, or a pheasant?”

  “The monkey’s more delicate, provided that it’s a black-fronted Maki; its relative, the mococo, is bitter.96 Let’s see—it only remains to decide on the fish. What are you going to serve us? I’m tired of the vulgar fish reared in your parks; I’d like something less commonplace—a mackerel, for example, brought to the table alive in the Roman manner and cooked before the eyes of the guests, so that they can enjoy the metamorphoses to which its beautiful colors are subjected.”

  “Nothing simpler. I’ll go down in the diving-bell myself; if the Messieurs will deign to accompany me, they can choose the item that suits them.”

  “Gladly.”

  Without giving me time to hesitate, Azrael and Carême-Dugléré led me toward a kind of small square building that was at the edge of the sea. We went into it through an elegant door that was carefully closed and sat down in armchairs. Carême-Dugléré pulled a cord and we immediately descended to the sea bed. An electric lamp illuminated in the water in front of a large window of thick glass did not take long, thanks to its dazzling glare, to attract thousands of fish of a hundred species. Azrael pointed at a gigantic mackerel, and an ingeniously-disposed net moved by a simple electric mechanism immediately fell upon the poor fish and captured it.

  “Let’s go back up now,” said Azrael. Before he had finished speaking he opened the door of the diving bell and we found ourselves back on the quay.

  “The fish we’ve just caught will only come out of the sea to be transferred to our table,” said Azrael, “and will thus furnish us with delicious meat. But we still have twenty-five minutes to spare before we go take our seats. Would you like to go fishing ourselves in the meantime, in the Seine?”

  That’s a singular idea! I thought, privately, while Azrael signaled to a locomobile to come and pick us up. I have never been able to understand the stupid pleasure of throwing a hooked line into the water, on which nothing ever comes to bite except a bleak or a gudgeon, and I thought it very bourgeois of my friend Azrael to propose such a vulgar means of killing time.

  In two and a half seconds the locomobile took us to the Pont-Neuf—which did not prevent Azrael from chiding the mechanic for his slowness.

  I was scarcely listening to that reprimand, which would have seemed excessive at any other time, because the sight presented to me by the Seine made me squint in amazement.

  In fact, the Seine was covered with boats, which served as both habitations and boutiques for thousands of fishermen clad in the most picturesque fashion.

  “Let’s see,” said Azrael. “Where’s Master Nicolas, who looks after my flock of herons and pelicans? Good! He’s seen me—here he comes.”

  In fact, an elegant yawl, moved by an internal mechanism, came flying over the water, landed at the foot of the statue of Henri IV, took us aboard and ferried us to a boat moored under the Pont des Saints-Pères. We had scarcely stepped down when thirty herons and pelicans ran toward Azrael, surrounded him and lavished their caresses on him, as dogs might have done.

  “Master Nicolas,” asked me friend, while returning the birds’ caresses, “I can’t see my pelican Flock.”

  “Flock isn’t very well,” Nicolas replied. “Yesterday, the gold ring that I’d attached to his neck so that he wouldn’t swallow the fish he caught and kept in the pouch of his beak came loose. Instead of bringing back the fish, the glutton swallowed them all, with as much slyness as greed. I hope his indigestion isn’t serious, though; I wouldn’t want to see it prolonged, for all the world, for I don’t know another pelican in Paris that can fish like him.”

  “Here, Rosamonde, here my beauty!” shouted Azrael to a magnificent female heron, which hastened to run to him. “You’re not a glutton, are you? And I’ve trained you so well that you have no need of a gold ring to stop you eating fish. Go fetch me a carp.”

  Immediately, the heron drew nearer to the boat, stretched out her long neck, opened her huge wings, flew off and settled on the water, where thousands of fish were swarming, thanks to the progress obtained by the art of pisciculture. She dived, and came up with an enormous carp in her beak.

  “Well done, my beauty! Well done!” Azrael said to her, throwing the carp back into the water. “I’d like a pike now.”

  Rosamonde raised her intelligent head toward Azrael with an expression of doubt and hesitation.

  “Are you afraid?” Azrael asked her. “Haven’t I taught you the fashion in which it’s necessary to take hold of the pike in order to have no fear of its teeth? Go on—I want a pike. Obey!”

  The heron flew off again, glided, and plunged into the water, but it was evident that she had found a redoubtable enemy with which she was fighting. After a couple of minutes Rosamonde reappeared, her feet bloody and her feathers bristling; in her beak she was holding, not a pike but a small alligator, which she threw, dying, on to the deck. Then, suddenly taking off again, she did not take long to disappear into the Seine and bring back a pike.

  “You’re a good, brave bird! Here, I’ll give you this whole pike for your dinner.” He turned to me. “But let’s think about ours, my friend,” the continued. “Let’s go back to the Café Carême-Dugléré.”

  We climbed back into the locomobile, which only took 1.4 seconds to transport us this time.

  “You’ve got your revenge, my dear mechanic. Well done! Here, this is to help you to forget my grumbling just now.” And Azrael slid a hundred-franc bill into the mechanic’s hand

  “Well?” he asked me, afterwards. “What do you think of my flock of herons and pelicans? I’m sorry that you weren’t able to see Flock fish. One of our most celebrated sportsmen offered me thirty thousand francs for him, but, in all conscience, he’s worth more than that—and besides, I wouldn’t want to get rid of him for anything in the world. Can you imagine that the bird is so intelligent that he can bring back a specimen of each of the fish you list for him before sending him forth? The other day I bet that he wouldn’t make a mistake in a list of thirty different fish, and I won my bet. There wasn’t a single one missing from his beak-pouch.

  “What you’d have to admire even more are my falcons and my dogs, for, although hunting is a cruel pleasure, at least we don’t procure it any longer by treacherously killing an unfortunate defenseless animal with the brutal weapons that our ancestors called rifles and shoguns. Pooh! The mere thought of the explosions they must have produced gives me a headache. Someday, I’ll take you to hunt one of the kangaroos that swarm in the forests around Paris—the beautiful forests that date back a century and keep the capital’s air healthy. You’ll see then what my dogs are worth.”

  While he was speaking we arrived at a kiosk on the fronton of which the word Journal could be read in fiery letters, and into which a numerous crowd was incessantly pouring. We followed the crowd an
d found ourselves in front of a machine, an artful combination of electricity and mechanics, which produced thousands of printed sheets instantaneously and relentlessly, which were distributed to everyone in exchange for a five-franc gold coin.

  “I’m distinctly behind the times with regard to the news,” said Azrael. “I only read the first eight issues of the Journal this morning. I still need to peruse these six to get up to date. Can one believe that in the 19th century a single issue of a newspaper appearing in the evening sufficed the worthy individuals of that era? The poor souls! They were not like us, brought up to date on an hourly basis with the serious or frivolous events that succeeded one another by the minute throughout the world. However, the still-too-restricted mode of publication of our present-day newspapers will be subject to a further development that has become indispensable. The Journal has announced that it will appear every ten minutes henceforth. Within a week, the nine hundred other newspapers in Paris will be forced to do likewise if they don’t want to lose a quarter of their five hundred thousand readers.

  When we emerged from the offices of the Journal we went into the Café Carême-Dugléré and took our places in the room where we would be dining, and where a table was already set, served with a sumptuousness of gold plate and crystal that is indescribable. A bookcase of carefully-selected and elegantly-bound volumes containing the most celebrated works of all eras permitted the diners to keep the tedium of waiting at bay by means of riveting reading.

  My God, I thought, since I’m here, although I don’t know how, in 2865, I’m curious to know which French authors have survived the test of time. Let’s see: Molière and Walter Scott, complete works; Le Sage, Le Diable boiteux;97 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie; Augustin Thierry, Conquêtes des Normands. Good! Let’s pass on now to those who were alive in 1865...

  At that moment, the door of my study opened noisily, and instead of my friend Azrael, I saw my friend and physician Dr. Amédée Forget,98 who hastened to establish a current of air by opening both battens of the window, with no less noise than he had made opening the door.

  “Are you mad?” he demanded. “Staying shut up like this in a study full of ether vapor! It’s enough to anesthetize you to death! Thank God nothing unfortunate has happened, if not to you, at least to my friends Flock and Mademoiselle Mine. They’re both asleep, in what seems to me to be a singular and perhaps troubling slumber.”

  Master Flock stretched and came to caress my friend, barking; Mademoiselle Mine leapt on to his shoulder in order to embrace him better, and I rubbed my eyes.

  “Oh, my dear chap!” I exclaimed. “What a fine thing progress is! In 2865…”

  “Come on, you’re still asleep! Wake up and come with me for a walk on the boulevard.”

  Alas, I said to myself, with a sigh, picking up my hat in order to go with my friend, we won’t see the marvels that my other friend Azrael has just shown me!

  Notes

  1 Like many of the citations with which Berthoud liked to preface his stories, this one is invented; it probably relates to the imaginary Père Mathias featured in “Saint Mathias the Hermit.”

  2 The Duc de Rochefoucauld’s Maximes were first published in 1665, although more were added in later editions.

  3 This term, referring to opium, was exceedingly esoteric in 1831 and has fallen into disuse since, but Honoré de Balzac was fond of it and used it in several stories, including one reference to a cadaverous face with “a theriaki smile.”

  4 In fact, these are the opening words of chapter 20 of volume I of Michael de Montaigne’s Essais.

  5 Émile de Saint-Armand Deschamps (1791-1871) was one of the early leaders of the French Romantic Movement; with Victor Hugo he founded the periodical La Muse Française. “Conclusion” was included in his collection Études française et étrangères (1828).

  6 Samuel Richardson’s work was very popular in French translation, especially Pamela; or, Virtune Rewarded (1740), which provided a key model of the kind of “moral fiction” to which the cynicism of Berthoud, Janin and Petrus Borel—not to mention the Marquis de Sade—provided conscientious opposition.

  7 Histoire de Richard sans Peur, duc de Normandie, fils de Robert le Diable was a chapbook originally published by Garnier in 1736, popularizing a sequel to the popular legend of Robert le Diable, which became the basis of a famous opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, premièred in Paris in 1831. Berthoud appended versions of both legends to his collection of Chroniques et traditions surnaturelles de la Flandre.

  8 The ruined Benedictine abbey founded in the seventh century and dedicated to its second abbot, St. Bertin, in Saint-Omer, was one of the most famous monuments in the region that Berthoud calls Flanders. In the period when Berthoud wrote the story its stone was being plundered in order to built Saint-Omer’s Hôtel-de-Ville, completed in 1834.

  9 In fact, the village of Clairmarais, near Saint-Omer, owes its name not to some Feudal overlord of that name but to a Latin improvisation by Saint Bernard the founder of the Cistercian abbey that was established in the marsh in 1140. The last vestiges of the abbey are still visible, but it was destroyed during the Revolution, in 1790, when Clairmarais became a commune.

  10 When Berthoud lived there, there was an area popularly known by this name in Cambrai, whose appellation caused some discussion among antiquarians, recorded in the publications of the Societé d’Émulation de Cambrai. Its main thoroughfare had already been officially renamed the Rue Sainte-Barbe.

  11 Le Cambrésis was one of the ancient provinces of France, of which Cambrai was the capital.

  12 Both of these quotations appear to be invented, as well as their supposed authors.

  13 Histoire Genealogique des Pais-Bas, ou Histoire de Cambray, et du Cambresis (1664) by Jean Le Carpentier.

  14 This citation is probably invented; Berthoud could not have known in 1831 that the Romantic painter Eugène Délacroix would produce a famous painting of “Le Rapt de Rebekka” in 1858. Delacroix father, a statesman, was named François, but he was not a poet.

  15 The Cistercian Abbaye de Vaucelles, some 13 kilometers from Cambrai, was founded in 1131 by Saint Bernard. Destoyed in the Revoluton, it was partly restored in the 20th century.

  16 The term moustier, resurrected by various members of the French Romantic Movement, including Edgar Quinet, was a Medieval synonym of monastery, surviving in numerous place-names, but Berthoud seems to be using it in a different sense, to refer to an oratory.

  17 This invented quotation is a variation of Herodotus’ dictum: “Call no man happy until he is dead.”

  18 The sermons of the famous bishop of Clermon, Jean-Baptiste Massillon (1663-1742) were collected after his death; Berthoud would undoubtedly have made their acquaintance at Douai. “Petit Carême” is one of those delivered during Lent.

  19 Robert III, Comte de Flandres, also known as Robert de Béthune (1249-1322) had the title of Comte de Flandres passed on to him by his father in 1299 but spent the next six years imprisoned by Philippe IV, and was only able to assume the position in earnest in 1305. He was not, in fact, involved in the battle of Coutrai or Courtray, otherwise known as the Battle of the Golden Spurs, in 1302, although Berthoud was not the only writer to put him there; the Flemish writer Hendrik Conscience did likewise in Die Leeuw van Vlaanderen (1838; tr. as The Lion of Flanders), of which Robert is the hero.

  20 In fact, Robert had married Yolande, or Iolente, de Bourgogne in 1272 and she died—after giving birth to six children—in 1280, so the chronology of the story is inaccurate. Charles, the only son of Robert’s first marriage, had died in infancy, but had he survived he would only have been six years old when Robert married Yolande, so that aspect of the story is entirely fanciful. The characters of Mathias and Bauderic are imaginary.

  21 Philippe II, known as Phiilipe Auguste, born in 1165, was king of France from 1180 to 1223.

  22 Author’s note: “This list and all the details of magic encountered in this legend are scrupulous in their exactitude a
nd printed in various works of sorcery, in particular: Le Dragon rouge, ou l’Art de commander aux esprits célestes; Questionum magicarum libri sex by Père Delrio; J. B. Neapolitani magiae naturalis libri vigenti: Un livre de l’imposture et tromperie des diables, translated by Jean Vivier, by Jacques Grenin; Commentarius de praecipius generibus divininationum, by Gaspard Peucerus; Malleus maleficarum, by Jacobi Sprenger; La Physique occult, ou Traité de a baguette divinatoire, by de Vallemont; Le comte de Gabalis, ou Entretien sur les Sciences secrètes, etc., etc.” The list mingles supposed grimoires and books penned by witch-hunters with one title (the Grenin volume) that appear to be invented. Le Dragon rouge was the best-known mock-Medieval book of spells; Berthoud later published a book with the same title, which is probably a new edition of it, but which is not available for consultation on gallica or Google Books.

  23 A term used in alchemical documents, which retains some fashionability today in occult circles, referring to heliotrope or “bloodstone.”

  24 The German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803), who considered that his vocation was to be “the Christian Homer,” spent 25 years writing and publishing his epic Messias (1748-1773; tr. as The Messiah); he produced other Biblical epics thereafter, but they never attained a similar prestige.

  25 Frederick William Herschel (1738-1822) published his discovery of Saturn’s period of rotation in 1790, which seems inconsistent with the date in the following note—and neither sits well with the date of 1803 given at the beginning of the story—so Berthoud is evidently employing a certain poetic license here.