Paris Before the Deluge Read online

  “And Nimrod, of whom there is so much talk, of whom so much good is said, the simple and generous man who is said to devote his life to the service of his friend Speos, when he could lead such a grandiose existence? And Speos, too? I beg you, Doctor, tell me all the good things that are said about those diamonds of democracy.”

  Dr. Plunos shook his head.

  “No!” cried Chephren. “Those men are no longer just men! They too are ambitious, self-interested!”

  “Have I said that, Philosopher?” the doctor retorted. “I would have been wrong, for in truth, nothing indicates that those men are not pure diamond. But I’m skeptical; I no longer believe in good; and if Sylax himself were to return to earth today, I would probably not believe in him.”

  “Too bad, Doctor! It’s so good to believe in virtue. I believe in it myself, although I know it to be rare. Nothing accuses the men I esteem, does it?”

  “No, nothing, and I would have been wrong to suspect them, for I see no reason why they should not be true in their principles and the glorious struggle they’re sustaining. Atlas is young, but he’s as wise as an old man; he uses the gifts of the fatherland with a charming modesty; he’s disinterested to excess. Nimrod is his friend’s steward, but that’s out of devotion; everyone knows it and says so. Speos is rich, and his patriotic faith has no need to be animated by any other fire than that of conviction...”

  “Thank you, Doctor Plunos,” exclaimed the philosopher, enthusiastically. “God, principle of all things, principle of good, thank you! Thank you, illustrious prophets of the Atlantis of the Pah-ri-ziz, Sylax, Me-nu-tche and Lutetius, the divine founders and legislators of our empire, thank you, thank you!”

  The philosopher Chephren was good and generous; he forgot the sarcasms that his compatriots heaped upon him, in order not to think of anything but wishing them well.

  “Oh well,” he said then, suddenly changing the tone of the conversation, but greatly relieved of an enormous weight that seemed to be crushing his heart, “you’ve seen the raft that I’ve prepared for myself for the day of the shipwreck; the disaster can come whenever it likes—I’m ready. But you haven’t see anything of my home yet; you haven’t seen my scientific experiments, my menagerie, in which I’m striving to effect transformations from one species to another. Come and see!”

  Dr. Plunos was one of the great scholars of Atlantis. He knew about the possibility of transformations by virtue of observation, since there are animal species that are subject to continual metamorphoses; he knew it by virtue of the monstrosities that he had seen in certain species of superior animals—but neither he nor anyone of his acquaintance had ever obtained voluntary metamorphoses produced at the whim of science…and he was going to see them in the home of the philosopher Chephren!

  “Patience,” the philosopher said to him. “What you’re going to see is very little, but I’ll obtain more.”

  The doctor smiled; he understood Chephren’s thinking. “You hope to be able to create a human.”

  “I hope so,” the philosopher replied.

  “You’ll mold a statue and then animate it?” said the doctor, laughing in fits.

  “No,” Chephren retorted. “Only God can work that progeny.”

  “You’ll combine cleverly electrified atoms,” the implacable doctor went on, evidently mocking opinions that were not his own.

  “No,” said the philosopher. “I shan’t create anything or combine any atoms, but I’ll force the nature of a living being to develop in accordance with my will, in order one day to produce a human; I intend however, to keep a part of that secret.”

  Plunos shook his head. “I too,” he said, “have tried like everyone else to create a human, and have not achieved anything—and I believe that one can only arrive at that conclusion. Perhaps we cannot create a human, because the generative human essence has disappeared, either because of the degeneration of the atmosphere or some other condition, or because it consisted one day of a powerful will that is no longer active. Anyway, it’s nonetheless true that we can do nothing ourselves, and that it’s prudent to admit that humans came from no one knows where, although we have no lack of theories on the subject. Personally, I think they’re all full of extra-scientific boldness, illusions and errors, with which everyone has colored beliefs that are more religious than historic.”

  “You’re mistaken, Dr. Plunos,” Chephren replied, severely, “and you’re not talking as a scientist. Although you’ve found nothing but despair in your research, you ought to wish that others might be more successful than you. Have you not seen anything in my home, then? You have seen, you have said—will you retract?”

  “Oh, no,” replied the doctor, with a hint of embarrassment in the face of his interlocutor’s mercuriality. “What I meant to say is that, even supposing that you succeed in producing a human, as you say, by transformation—and, in truth, I’m tempted to take your word for it on the basis of what I’ve seen here—supposing that you succeed in developing all the limbs and all the organs of one of your experimental elements all the way to the human type, how will you animate him? Will he not be human in appearance only, while internally, the life—the soul, in sum—will be that of a brute? There, I believe, your power will stop; you’ll only have an imperfect, hybrid being—a monster—because you won’t be able to give him a soul.”

  The doctor seemed triumphant, because he was trying, like everyone else, to resolve the great problem of the creation of humankind, and he had had so little success that he would not be sorry not to be overtaken by anyone else.

  “Does a brute have a soul, doctor?” asked the philosopher, with a sly smile, which indicated that he was asking a highly controversial question.

  “A soul…a soul…,” said the doctor, between his teeth.

  “A beast is alive, however; it lives, as humans do,” Chephren continued. “It dies, as humans do, it breathes, eats, digests as humans do. Because it does not speak their language, because it does not devote itself to their industry, their studies, their follies, their passions, their crimes, you say: it has no soul. And the Molochians, the Belphegorians and the Chananeans, a few of whose tribes only resemble humans in their configuration—all the savages, in sum—do they have a soul?

  “Among us, maniacs, the hallucinated, madmen of every sort, every quality, every shade, cretins and idiots…do they have souls?

  “Why, in that case, should beasts not have a soul, too? Don’t deny it, Dr. Plunos—every animal has a soul; that soul has less perfected faculties, I don’t deny, even less in some species than others. Of all the species we know, it’s the human soul that appears to us to be the most perfect—absolutely, that is; relatively, every soul is perfectly adapted to the machine it has to animate.

  “One more thing, and let’s finish, my dear doctor, with the perfection of the soul. Tell me what the soul is, and I’ll tell you whether a beast has one; tell me, in addition, why that soul is more or less perfect within the human species. Do you, personally, believe that it functions with the same perfection in all humans? Do you dare to say that there are not, in the scale of the human species, infinite gradations between the soul that functions with a rare perfection and the soul that is at the bottom rung of the intellectual level, approaching the relative perfection of the beast, of which it is not always in advance?

  “Well, Doctor, what does all that imply? A material disposition that hinders the functioning of the soul in some, and leaves it free to operate in others. If, therefore, I succeed in giving human perfection to an imperfect being, I have no need to give it a soul; its own will develop more freely in its second state than in its first, to operate the new machine to which it finds itself adapted—the human, in sum...

  “But forgive me, it’s getting late, I’m keeping you too long,” said the philosopher, who did not want to cut short the discussion of a question on which he had so much to say. “Until tomorrow, then, I beg you, Doctor! I invite you to follow with your own eyes the transformations I’m pr
eparing. I have no pride; I’m hopeful, but if I fail, what does it matter? The game will begin again. If I don’t find it, someone else will; for it will be found, you can be sure of that. Seek with perseverance and conviction, as Sylax says, and you shall find, for God has yielded all His knowledge to humans, but wants them to search for it.”

  Dr. Plunos shook philosopher Chephren’s hand affectionately, saying to him: “I’ll come back tomorrow, the day after and every day, since you’ve invited me.” On the point of going out he stopped, and turned to the philosopher. “Thank you very much for your friendship,” he said, “for it is friendship, not to fear surrendering your most precious secrets to me. Well, in return. I’ll also give you mine, for I have one—and, more fortunate than you, I’ve very nearly found what I was looking for.”

  At this point Dr. Plunos lowered his voice. “Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll give you my secret in detail, but tonight, know what it is. By means of cabalistic signs made powerful solely by my will, I can magnetize an object, or even a man. More willingly, however, I take a bracelet that I put around my arm, and then fall into an ecstasy. What surrounds me then becomes nothing to me; I no longer see and no longer hear anything but what I have resolved to see and hear in my ecstasy. My spirit transports itself anywhere, into the most distant places and the most impenetrable places; it reads the depths of hearts, it sees the past and the present; only the future is hidden from it; but I’m searching, and like you, I say: I shall find it.

  “Well, in that ecstatic state, I’ve seen what no one, perhaps knows; I’ve seen an intimate history that will interest you, and which you will appreciate better than me, a poor scholar who only knows my books, while you have studied humans and their passions with a view to social wellbeing. The story—forgive me for having to cut it off at this point—is that of a few men that you hold in high esteem. I ask your forgiveness in advance if what I have to tell you is bad, if my science is indiscreet, and if my words take away illusions that are dear to you.

  “Until tomorrow, then, philosopher Chephren! Confidence for confidence, secret for secret! Adieu!”

  And Dr. Plunos retired, very pensive, but more preoccupied with what he had seen and heard in the philosopher’s ark than what he had said himself and what he had to say.

  The next day, he was on time at the rendezvous. He was awaited impatiently. Chephren was not jealous, but he was deeply impressed by the doctor’s discovery, which he had not suspected, although he knew so many things and believed that he had studied everything. Perhaps he had, like many others, treated as dreams and ridiculous sortilege the mysteries of electricity and animal magnetism, which, in our day, still do not appear to be worthy of the study of a great thinker, and are willingly relegated to the level of the sibylline utterances of fortune-tellers.

  Now, what he had disdained had yielded unexpected and prodigious results to a scientist as serious as he knew Plunos to be. He therefore felt very curious to converse again and to measure the success of his new friend, if he had been successful.

  We shall gladly leave the two scientists to talk to one another about electricity, animal magnetism and occult science, but we shall retain for ourselves the story that Plunos had promised to tell.

  I do not want, however, to tell it like him, with all his numerous and varied reflections, all its scholarly digressions, mingled with philosophical observations, which did not fail to multiply his exclamations of disappointment, sometimes of horror, and, above all, his questions.

  The story, moreover, did not reach its denouement during the hour of conversation between the two friends, but the doctor followed all the twists and turns with a double interest—his own and that of the philosopher, whom he kept up to date until the end.

  We shall not dispense with the end of Dr. Plunos’ narration in order to return to our two scientists in the particular time and place. In any case, we shall not leave the Atlantis of the Pah-ri-ziz, and especially Lutecia.

  PART THREE

  THE ATLANTEAN REPUBLIC

  I. The Orphans of the Dolmen

  In the year 2347, at the end of the reign of Atrimachis IV, the small town of Sylacea26 was greatly agitated. Its short distance from Lutecia, about thirty leagues, retained it under the influence of the troubles that were fomenting in the capital,

  The town, however, was apparently tranquil; the magistrates sat in their tribunals without contest, the armed force functioned without opposition and the laws were executed there as in peacetime. But minds were troubled; people were complaining inside the houses; clubs had been established in cellars; agitators were moving around mysteriously in the evening and by night, going from door to door or into the fields to co-ordinate and organize a revolution. They were waiting for the signal to act, which was due to arrive, at any moment, from Lutecia.

  It was an evening in the last days of summer; the sky was covered with hideously black clouds, and a glacial, whistling north wind had just got up, making the gaudy leaves of the tall palm trees bordering the road quiver noisily.

  The carriage that maintained a direct service between Lutecia and Sylacea suddenly appeared around a bend in the road, scarcely grazing the road in its rapid flight, and then suddenly stopped, although it had not yet reached its destination.

  A passenger got down and continued on foot, alone, toward the city. At the very edge of the suburb of Lutecia he stopped. He was hesitant; it appeared that he no longer knew where he was, and was searching his memory for forgotten indications. Perhaps the appearances of the suburb had changed, or perhaps a long absence had caused the traveler to forget its physiognomy.

  It was difficult to say exactly how old the man was; he appeared to be about forty. Perhaps he was a just and good man, but in that case, his physiognomy was deceptive, for his eyebrows, strongly arched and inordinately long and bushy, which scarcely allowed this red and piercing eyes to be glimpsed in the depths of an impenetrable redoubt; his nose, long and hooked like the beak of a bird of prey; and his beard, red-tinted and unkempt, give him an intimidating expression of dissimulated harshness and mocking cunning.

  The man’s embarrassment seemed considerable, but he was about to go into the suburb anyway when he heard footsteps behind him.

  He turned round, and saw a young woman, who seemed as anxious as he was, but for a different reason, for she was not searching but waiting. He went toward her.

  “Are you from Sylacea?” he asked her.

  “Yes, sir, I’m from Sylacea.”

  “Is this really the suburb of Lutecia?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “That’s strange; I don’t recognize it at all. Has it changed a great deal, then?”

  “No, sir,” the young woman replied. “In the ten years I’ve been living here, it has changed very little.”

  “Yes, but since twenty years ago?”

  “Twenty years ago, I don’t know—I’m not that old.”

  The stranger reflected for a moment, then said: “Do you know in the suburb of Lutecia...”

  He stopped suddenly at that point, on seeing a young man, toward whom the young woman turned abruptly and said: “I came to meet you, because I was anxious; you’re so late coming back, and father isn’t well.”

  “Pardon me, sir,” said the stranger to the newcomer, “I understand that your presence is required elsewhere, and I don’t want to keep you, but I wanted to ask this young woman, your sister or fiancée...”

  “Both,” replied the young man phlegmatically.

  “I wanted to ask this young woman,” the stranger repeated, not seeming to pay any heed to the singularity of that reply, “whether she knew in the suburb of Lutecia a peasant by the name of Ypsoer.”

  “We don’t know him,” the young man replied, in a curt voice, still walking.

  The stranger bowed and was about to draw away when large raindrops began to fall amid thunderclaps that invited the little group to hasten their steps.

  “Are you from this town, sir?” the young man said to hi
m.

  “No.”

  “Do you at least know someone who can give you shelter during the storm that is about to break violently, according to all the indications?”

  “I don’t know anyone.”

  “Would you care to accept our hospitality, then? It won’t be very brilliant, but it will be given with a good heart.”

  “Thank you, young man. I’ll come with you.”

  They hurried on, and it was just as well, for the clouds that had been threatening for some time immediately burst and released floods of hail—but they went into their dwelling at that moment.

  It was a house of very simple appearance. As in other houses that nature did not permit to be hollowed out in some hill or rock, the ground floor was constructed of solid masonry and perfectly maintained. It was surmounted by a platform on which there was a tent with several compartments. A service stairway led from the ground floor to the tent, and another led directly to the platform from the outside.

  The dwelling did not give the impression of fortune but of ease; the most exquisite neatness reigned there. Its population was only comprised of the two young people that we know and an old man, in the early phases of old age, normally strong and vigorous but presently lying in his bed, so ill that he was unable to recognize anyone.

  The stranger greeted him without receiving any response; then, after having examined him with a profound gaze that doubtless did not reveal what he was looking for, he turned toward his hosts, to whom he addressed a few words of condolence. He retired hereafter to the room that had been allocated to him, where the young woman served him a light meal that he accepted with pleasure.

  As she bowed to him in order to withdraw, he said: “Permit me, miss, to offer you once again the expression of the great chagrin I experience for the misfortune that is threatening you, and my profound sympathy for your poor father. I’m not a man of high position or great wealth, but if I can do anything, I place myself at your disposal.”