The Supreme Progress

by Brian Stableford

  Thus began and ended Georges’ first and last lecture at the École des Arts.

  On this occasion, Monsieur Lissardière’s conduct was truly inexplicable. He did not seem saddened by his pupil’s failure. When Clotilde came to inform him of the deplorable outcome of Georges’ lesson, he could hardly conceal his satisfaction.

  Poor Clotilde! In spite of the sage advice of her father, she had wanted to see Georges triumph; on arriving early in the great hall, however, she had sensed such a current of enmity passing through the crowd that she had not dared to stay. She had retreated into a small adjacent room, where the usher had offered her a chair. From there he could follow nearly all of what was happening in the amphitheater; she therefore heard the initial silence, then the laughter, then the booing. Powerless and shivering, she witnessed the miserable abortion. Then she saw Georges, defeated, haggard and bewildered, crying like an infant.

  “Poor boy!” she murmured.

  A few days later, there was a long discussion between Monsieur Lissardière and his daughter. Clotilde wept, declaring that she would not consent to be Madame Georges Perron for anything in the world. Monsieur Lissardière, by contrast, defended Georges.

  “He won’t be a professor right away, but don’t worry; his time will come. You really aren’t being very kind to the excellent fellow, who would throw himself in the fire for you.”

  Clotilde gave in, but her respect was lost, and her confidence was dead.

  Georges too felt that something within him had broken. He knew that Clotilde had witnessed his distress, had seen his humiliation. That was unforgivable. From that ill-fated day onwards, he could not face Clotilde without a certain dread. She despises me, he thought. His manly vanity and his scientific pride both suffered.

  As for Monsieur Lissardière, he was entirely consoled. A few days later, he offered to take Georges to Villeneuve. There was a new geological horizon at Villeneuve itself, difficult to grasp in its details. It was necessary to set Georges to work. They would see there of what the inventor of the Mirosaurus was capable; and, since he was not cut out to be a great professor, it was necessary to find out whether he had the rare qualities of a scrupulous and sagacious observer.

  The two geologists left for Villeneuve, therefore. Initially, Monsieur Lissardière took part in the excursions; then, as he was not interested in details, he stayed home reading his journals while Georges roamed the countryside. Our friend left at dawn and walked all day. He did not return until the evening, at nightfall. Then he listened in silence to the fastidious dissertations of his savant collaborator, refraining from opposing them by a single syllable. Then, when dinner was over, fatigued by his labors, he went to sleep in his chair.

  Those long marches through the fields were Georges’ consolation. The École des Arts and the Traité des coquilles had not entirely filled the geologist with disgust. He found some pleasure in exploring the rich fossil strata in the environs of Villeneuve. He resumed breaking rocks, shifting stones and examining shells. He carried a bag and a hammer with him, and as time passed, took pleasure in comparing the specimens that hazard offered to him. In this way, he made a local collection that grew quite rapidly. He devoted himself to it ardently, disdaining the useless lumber of books, and recovered in vigorous and omnipotent nature his self-respect and love of great things.

  Every time he interrogated Monsieur Lissardière he was surprised by the insufficiency and the sufficiency with which his master judged everything. He preferred chatting to the peasants and field-workers, simple rustic folk, perhaps coarse and intellectually uncultivated, but who, at least, did not crush him with the weight of their incontestable superiority. He let them speak, taking an interesting their lives, their mores, their tastes and their observations; he laughed wholeheartedly at their jokes. Let Professor Lissardière and his colleagues to mock such deplorable simplicity.

  Most often, Georges set out on his own, but sometimes he took with him a worthy man to whom he had taken a shine. He was a Breton, a former mariner, whom the hazard of various circumstances had washed up as a domestic servant in Paris. Pierre knew nothing about geology, but he loved to accompany Georges. He listened with religious admiration to the minute details that his master gave him regarding fossil seashells. Together, they searched in clay or chalk for Terebratulas, Cerithiums and Pectens, excited by their discoveries. Then Georges talked about the ancient terrestrial ages. He explained the sequence of living things; he explained how they developed according to deterministic laws, improving as they became more distant from their initial origins. And he abandoned himself to inspiration. He no longer dreaded seeming vague or dull, and he would have swapped all the crafty and skeptical students at the École des Arts for that naïve and docile listener.

  When they returned, bending their backs beneath the weight of their specimens, they strode along the long white highway. Then Pierre, to alleviate the tedium of the road, would relate his travels—his voyages to Senegal, in Oceania, to Chile—his ocean crossings, punctuated by petty events: catching a shark, salvaging a ship, passing through a cyclone. He recounted these slender facts with infinite detail. Georges listened attentively, and the two men—simple souls, evidently—forgot the social barrier erected between them.

  After a month or so, the work was nearly complete. Georges drafted a substantial account of what he had observed. He added a few sketches to it, and gave the whole to Monsieur Lissardière. The professor seemed quite satisfied.

  “Very good, my dear Georges,” he finally said. “We’ve done some truly fine work, and it will create a stir in Paris.”

  Instead of returning to Paris, Georges would rather have gone to Martinville, if only for a few days, in order to see Frantz and Nonotte again, but Monsieur Lissardière opposed it.

  “What are you thinking, my dear chap? What about your marriage? This isn’t the moment to go out there. We have other things to do than make music with your old German!”

  Georges’ marriage had now been announced publicly. Monsieur Lissardière treated him almost as a son-in-law, telling him what he wanted and tracing out a whole plan of conduct for him—including, among other things, the necessity of disposing of the Mirosaurus.

  Poor Mirosaurus! It was the source of all Georges’ glory, and the young man’s heart sank at the thought of abandoning his old friend. Yes, it was almost a dirty deed to get rid of that faithful companion, that modest and indispensable auxiliary. Has one the right to be ungrateful to things, any more than to people?

  It was Clotilde who was most insistent, criticizing the poor skeleton relentlessly. One evening, there was a sort of family meeting at which the fate of the Mirosaurus was debated. Weakly, Georges defended his fossil against Clotilde, who attacked it bitterly, mingling her mockery with practical considerations and the full force of a bourgeois reasoning that evaluates things at their exact material worth.

  “A skeleton worth 200,000 francs is a luxury befitting a millionaire, but you’re not a millionaire. An extra 10,000 francs of income is comfort, while the Mirosaurus is almost poverty. Then again, is it really so beautiful? At the Museum, you can find many more remarkable, which cost nothing, and you can look at them at your leisure.”

  And all these dry words, with an irrefutable logic, chilled Georges’ heart, all the more so because he had no reasonable response. He felt vanquished, not convinced, and there is nothing more painful than being put in the wrong when one feels, deep down, that one is right.

  Georges had to do it. Although the rebellion of his wrath was growling dully in his heat, he obeyed. He wrote to Frantz—it was, moreover, the only letter he had written to his friend—and Frantz, without any vain recrimination, meekly sent the Mirosaurus away. Need it be said that he shed a few tears as he packed the fossil’s bones into a dozen large crates? The Mirosaurus was now, alas, the pride of the Museum of St. Petersburg and the joy of Kramalasov.49

  This time, Georges’ love was entirely interred. The departure of his beloved Mirosaurus com
pleted the destruction of what remained in his heart for Clotilde. And yet, he dared not admit to himself that it was all over. Perhaps did not even know what he thought. He scarcely had time to think. Monsieur Lissardière had reduced him to the status of a slave or a liegeman; he granted him neither distraction nor pleasure. Writing to his dictation, drawing diagrams, doing research in libraries, visiting some scientific conference or other, attending great ceremonial dinners—such where the only occupations permitted to our unfortunate geologist.

  It was the gala dinners, most of all, that were unbearable. He imprisoned himself in an imperturbable silence, noting in passing all the stupidity and nonsense that were spoken in front of him, sensing that he was regarded as a kind of curious animal, called an imbecile and a poor wretch as soon as the dinner was over. But that scarcely bothered him, and he rendered all those poseurs scorn for scorn.

  Monsieur Lissardière, however, affected a great admiration for his pupil and future son in law in public. He freely admitted that Monsieur Perron was an exceptional individual—a slightly primitive scientific mind, to be sure, but one whose genius was ahead of its time.

  “He’s a man who makes discoveries,” he added, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds us something someday that will turn science upside down!”

  Science! Well, no. Georges has renounced science. He has understood, perhaps a trifle belatedly, that she is a person of easy virtue, easily seduced by a promise or a caress. She is cold, bad-tempered, pitiless, and one must sacrifice everything one loves to her, for a long time, in order to obtain a few insignificant favors in return. No, science is not for Georges. He likes quietness, tranquility of mind; he detests effort, and he detests boredom even more. He would rather read La Fontaine’s fables than the Traité des coquilles. He prefers an excursion to the beach at Martinville to the most savant deductions of Monsieur Lissardière and his friends.

  The aberration that took hold of him in Madame de Crussac’s salon has quit him now, and forever. Monsieur Lissardière’s laurels no longer prevent him from sleeping. He thinks mad ambition pitiful; he tells himself that he is, in sum, a peasant, and a peasant he will remain.

  When Monsieur Lissardiére’s affairs were concluded, he wandered around Paris. There, instead of collecting seashells, as in Martinville, he collected ideas—sad ideas, moreover, although they sometimes made him smile bitterly. He went through the streets, lingering in front of shop windows, causing passers-by to elbow him out of the way, contemplating all that feverish activity—the impassioned movement carrying all those frenzied individuals to their work or pleasure—with disdain.

  Alas, nothing is forgotten in the human soul; and everything that has existed in our consciousness, as at the surface of the sea, if only for a second, leaves an indelible trace. The fit of ambition, temporary as it had been, had cast a kind of foul leaven into Georges’s soul. He was no longer the same man as before. The cheerfulness and insouciance of times past had not returned. All his thoughts were now mingled with a bitter sentiment. In the vastness of Paris he felt his inferiority, his humility, his weakness. He saw himself small and unknown, lost in that human ocean. The name of Perron had slipped back into obscurity. A chocolate-maker with his posters is better-known—which is to say, more famous—than a scientist who has discovered a Mirosaurus.

  Oh, how he regretted the happy time when he had nothing beside him but the blind tenderness of old Nonotte, the passionate friendship of Frantz and the compassionate deference of the fishermen of Martinville. How sweet is the odor of seaweed compared with the stink of the faubourgs! And he had left it, that seaweed! He had left his fishermen and his old Nonotte and his worthy Frantz—to run after a chimera, he had abandoned his life, his good life full of serenity, sweet dreams and tender affection!

  What strange inertia holds him thus, chained to this detestable existence, far from his beloved Martinville? Georges curses himself 20 times a day, indignant at his cowardice, the manner of his weakness, which insults and rebukes him without being able to give him any energy. Why does he remain, since neither glory, nor science retained him? Now, when Georges sees Clotilde, he no longer blushes and trembles, as before, with delightful and invincible fright. The banal handshake on arrival and departure is as cold as an obligatory politeness.

  The wedding date has not yet been fixed. Georges is in no hurry. He no longer resists Monsieur Lissardière; he has abdicated. He does what his master commands; his will-power has been annihilated by a will more powerful than his own.

  One day, satisfied with the docility and intelligence of his pupil, Monsieur Lissardière finally told Georges that the moment had arrived, that it was necessary to prepare for the great event, and that the invitations could be sent out.

  Georges attempted a few words of gratitude, and as he had not yet penetrated his own sentiments, was astonished not to find more delight in his heart. That evening, he went to pay his first official visit to his fiancée.

  When he entered the drawing room, there was no one there yet. While awaiting Clotilde’s arrival, he began riffling through the newspapers strewn on the table and the scientific journals that Professor Lissardière received. Suddenly, he made an angry gesture, and abruptly threw away the Revue that he was holding, crumpling it slightly.

  At that moment, Monsieur Lissardière came in. He seemed even more self-satisfied than usual, and he extended his hand to his future son-in-law with an authentic bonhomie full of condescension.

  Georges was pale, and his lips were trembling. His attitude was so confused that Monsieur Lissardière was taken by surprise.

  “Don’t worry—Clotilde is coming.”

  Instead of replying, however, Georges picked up the inopportune Revue he had just thrown down and turned it this way and that.

  “Have you read my article?” asked Monsieur Lissardière.

  “I’ve read it,” Georges replied.

  “Well, do you like it?”

  Georges did not reply. The professor scowled.

  “If you have any criticisms to offer, don’t hold back, my dear chap! You should know, however, that the entire scientific press has adopted the conclusions of my research at Villeneuve.”

  “You mean our research,” said Georges, boldly.

  The breath of revolt was blowing through him; an immense indignation was swelling within him. All the servitude and humiliation of recent months was returning to his heart. He felt as if he were transformed. It was no longer his master and father-in-law, the illustrious professor, who was before him, but a rival, a plagiarist who had taken from him the most cherished thing in the world dear, which is thrice sacred: the supreme consolation of the scientist and the artist—which is to say, the honor of a labor accomplished. Such authorial pride is unfathomable. Georges, humble and hesitant a short while before, was now an intrepid aggressor. The weak sometimes have these audacious impulses.

  “Our research, then,” said Monsieur Lissardière, pinching his lips. “But we do not share in it equally; since I’m the one who provided all the ideas, it’s only just that my name alone should be attached to it.”

  “How can you say that?” Georges replied, exasperated. “Don’t you know that they were my ideas as much as yours? Even…”

  He stopped.

  “Well, speak,” Monsieur Lissardière replied, having become pale in his turn, trembling with anger. “Say it…”

  But Georges did not say anything. He tried to control himself, without succeeding in stemming the seething flood of indignation that was rising up in his breast.

  “Is the Mirosaurus yours or mine? Your friends and your journals talk about it every day. But to hear them, it seems like your discovery; everyone affects to forget who made it. I’m not very important, to be sure, but at the end of the day…”

  “You’re an ingrate,” Monsieur Lissardière interjected, in a resounding tone—for he also felt stifled by indignation. “Who were you when I took you from your village, to bring you here, to give you lessons—wh
ich I’ve never done for anyone else—plucking you from the obscurity in which you were buried, introducing you to the foremost scientists in France, giving you my daughter, my beloved Clotilde? Who were you, Monsieur Perron? And this is how you repay me! No, truly, such conduct…apologize to me, or I shall never see you again as long as I live.”

  “Apologize?” Georges exclaimed. The audacity of the man disconcerted him. Him, the spoiled, the enslaved, the crushed, apologize to his tyrant! Such courage was beyond his strength. He remained silent.

  Monsieur Lissardière strode back and forth around the drawing-room. “My poor daughter,” he murmured. “My poor daughter!” Georges’ ingratitude appalled him—but, remembering the magnanimity of which he had given evidence with respect to that wretch, he admired himself. “Look,” he said to Georges, after a long silence. “You’ve had a moment of aberration. For my daughter’s sake, I’ll take pity on you and forgive you.”

  “Monsieur Lissardière, Monsieur Lissardière,” Georges relied, with restrained rage. But he could not find anything to say; his anger was choking him. “Goodbye,” he said. And he left.

  What should he do now? Against Monsieur Lissardière, against Clotilde herself, against Paris and all the scientists in Paris he felt animated by a ferocious, inexhaustible hatred. He had acted without calculating the consequences of his action. Yes, it was a rupture! Yes, it was the end of all his dreams of glory and love! Well, no matter. He had but one idea: to leave behind—far behind—the diseased atmosphere that had weighed upon his life like an odious nightmare for a year.

  Then, as if impelled by a superior force, half-awake and half-asleep, disdaining the opinion of the world, he walked to the station and boarded a train that was about to depart.