Paris Before the Deluge Read online

  “Thank you, sir,” the young woman replied, in a tearful voice. “I haven’t yet thought that I might need anything, so long as I was here. Today, though, you’re right, I can’t hide it from myself that our father is dying, and that from then on...”

  The young woman could not conclude the thought, which the stranger understood perfectly. Sobs stifled her voice. She pulled herself together, however, and soon resumed the conversation.

  “You see, sir,” she said, then, “poor Song, who is so ill and whom Atlas and I call our father, isn’t our father; he’s our benefactor. He picked us up ten years ago by the side of the road where our parents had doubtless abandoned us. I say our parents, but that might be wrong, for I don’t know whether the people we were with before were our parents.”

  “Have you always been in Sylacea?” asked the stranger, with a very particular interest.

  “No, sir, we had come from far away, very far away, when Song took us into his home, but I was so young that I don’t know where we came from, and when I talk about it to Atlas he seems not to know any more than I do about that.”

  “Atlas isn’t your brother, then?”

  “No, he’s my fiancé. Our marriage has been delayed because of political affairs, which aren’t going very well, he says—and he ought to know, because...”

  The young woman stopped there and bit her lip until it bled, for she had perceived that she was about to betray a secret on which Atlas’ liberty might depend, since the club-members of Sylacea, especially the ringleaders, were hotly pursued by the police.

  “Anyway,” said the young woman, starting again, “We’re not Song’s children, and we aren’t due to inherit anything from him when he dies. I think, in any case, that he has no wealth except what he earned by his labor. This house isn’t his; it belongs to a rich lord in Lutecia, who also has a palace in Sylacea and vast lands in the vicinity of this suburb. Song cultivated that land, and we helped him.”

  “And what is that lord’s name?”

  “Lord Nirvana.”

  That name, which was perfectly familiar to him, made the stranger smile—and his smile was malevolent and mocking, for the name reminded of a cruel and unexpected disappointment.

  “Lord Nirvana,” the stranger repeated, in a reflective tone. “The Lord Nirvana who has a pretty daughter of about your age?”

  “Yes, Ormuzda,” the young woman replied, with a stifled sigh that said more than her interlocutor could divine.

  “Ormuzda,” said the stranger, between his teeth, weighing his words, “who was betrothed in her cradle to the son of a rich man, nobly titled: one of the foremost in King Atrimachis’ court—the illustrious and eminent Mo-Kie-Thi, whom secret difficulties once chased out of Atlantis, while his son died very fortunately, to enrich his heir…yes, I know that lord.”

  “Chemnis!” cried a voice suddenly, which came from the dying man’s room, with a tone of despair that announced a catastrophe.

  It was Atlas’ voice, calling to the young woman. Song had rendered his last sigh. The stranger had no difficulty divining that accident, but he did not move. What, in fact, was the death of a man he did not know to him? He had better things to do than leave this room; he had to think before speaking.

  He therefore leaned back in his chair, his legs crossed and his head supported by his left hand, while his right hand played mechanically on one of the arms of the chair. The numerous loose pleats of his large mantle, a kind of peplum in the fashion of the day, were hermetically sealed around him. He remained motionless like that for a long time, as if profoundly asleep. Then he got up and uttered a sigh from the utmost depths of his chest.

  “In fact, it won’t be so bad,” he said, in response to some intimate thought, and heading for the small low and narrow window that let a little daylight and air into the room. “Of course,” he continued, “It’d be very simple to run…after whom? Children that they don’t know, and ought not to know. Thank you, my God for this encounter! These, I have under my hand, while the others…oh, to the devil with the others! Let someone else look for the undiscoverable Ypsoer. Until tomorrow—tomorrow, then! Let’s spend the night up there; night, it’s said, brings counsel.”

  The window was immediately reclosed, and the traveler went to bed, rubbing his hands with satisfaction. Then he went to sleep, with an infernal smile, while the most poignant desolation set in at Song’s bedside.

  Atlas and Chemnis had just lost their only friend, their only protector. Launched once again into the midst of the uncertain sea of life, they could no longer see a shore for which to head. The young woman had already forgotten the stranger’s benevolent words, and Atlas no longer trusted anyone.

  He was right. Who could he trust, at present? He looked into the past.

  Chemnis had been right when she said that she knew nothing about her past. Atlas has said so in his turn; he too was ignorant of his past. He saw nothing at first but a family repudiating him, throwing him onto the rubbish-tip of the world like something filthy that might soil them. He could not see anything after that but a peasant depositing him one day at public mercy, in accordance with the prescription of the law, on the dolmen in the main square, at the foot of the statue of the Buddha Sylax. He did not even know who that peasant was; Song had not known either; everyone had forgotten his name.

  It was Ypsoer.

  Ypsoer was married, but had no child. He was not from Sylacea; he had arrived one day, fleeing the fields of his forefathers to search elsewhere for an ease he had not found at home.

  He had hoped once in his new abode, because one evening, very late, his door opened mysteriously and an unknown and invisible hand had deposited a little child in his dwelling, without saying a word. It was a boy; it was Atlas.

  A few years later, a similarly unknown and invisible hand deposited another child in the same hut—a little girl; that was Chemnis.

  But no ease had come with them or after them. That was strange, because in those days the Pah-ri-ziz, who had no refuges open to abandoned children, usually got rid of them in public squares, but those who were introduced furtively into poor homes always brought with them unexpected favors, sometimes even fortune.

  Ypsoer, having waited in vain for a few years, became restless, then set out again in search of wellbeing in another country…but shortly after his departure, two orphans were found on the dolmen of lost children.

  It was from there that Song took them. It was to him that they owed the names that they bore, which he had given them, as was his right, and also the little happiness that they enjoyed before his death.

  That was the whole of Atlas’ past. What hope could he obtain from that?

  All the past! There was also something else, much closer, which was nothing for a young man but a source of turbulence; but that, he only admitted and looked at secretly, even though it was the entire principle of his life.

  We have said that Song was Lord Nirvana’s tenant farmer. Lord Nirvana was a very important man in Sylacea; he had been its civil governor. Reckless and compromising expenditures had diminished his credit, and he was sacked from his post, but if he was less rich he was still wealthy; if he had incurred some disgrace at court, he still had great authority.

  He had a daughter, Ormuzda, a little of whose unfortunate history we already know. She was beautiful, well-developed, although still almost a child. She promised to make a fine match for a great lord.

  Atlas saw her; he saw her often, and poor Atlas loved her as he had never loved Chemnis.

  What could he do about it? That was the worst part of his past, the past that he incriminated so much. He hid his love as much as he could, but Chemnis divined it.

  Atlas had only one means of obtaining Ormuzda: to increase his own status to match hers, or reduce hers to match his; to cover his borrowed name with glory and become rich and powerful, or debase the name of Nirvana, decrease the power of his lordship and destroy his fortune.

  Atlas had no aid to request of his past for
that giant task, but he was able to find some hope in the democratic and social revolutions of the future. He therefore became a republican, and marched on that path with as much haste as he could.

  But what a way he still had to travel to reach Ormuzda! He had covered so little on the day of Song’s death and the arrival in his home of the mysterious stranger!

  II. Servant and Master

  Two days after Song’s death, in the morning, a shower of fine and warm rain, such as one sometimes sees falling at the end of summer nights, had just watered the roads of Lutecia. The curtain of a tent moved aside gently near the middle of Dionah Street, the most beautiful street of the richest quarter of the capital. A pretty plump hand with gracefully slender fingers laden with diamonds supported the curtain; then a little slipper covered with rich embroideries appeared on the threshold; finally, a head extended very mysteriously outside and peered anxiously at the two sides of the street.

  It was a woman’s head, covered in an elegant morning coiffure, which obviously indicated fortune or coquetry—but the woman was too beautiful to be a coquette. She was no longer in the first flush of youth, however, in a country where people aged rapidly; she was certainly over thirty.

  From time to time she listened to the interior of the apartment; then she returned all her attention to the outside, showing evidence of great impatience.

  It was obvious that she was waiting for someone, and feared being caught.

  “My God, it’s him!” she said, letting the curtain of the tent fall back precipitately—for she had heard a noise inside the apartment.

  Then, suddenly, she uttered a little cry, which might have been a cry of fright. She found herself confronted by a man, who bowed to her respectfully.

  “It’s me, Madame,” he said, in a voice that strove to be gracious.

  “You frightened me, appearing suddenly like that. You didn’t knock.”

  “A thousand pardons, Madame, I did knock.”

  “No one replied to you,” said the lady, with dignity.

  “I saw that Madame was waiting for me.”

  “But if you’d found my husband here, or if he saw you in my apartment at this hour...”

  “I know that Lord Speos is walking in Clito Square, smoking his opium pipe. I thought, in consequence, that there was no inconvenience in coming in to see Madame immediately, to give her the information I have.”

  The gracious wife of Lord Speos uttered a profound sigh then, as if her husband’s absence had relaxed her lungs, which the fear of his presence had tightened.

  Her phlegmatic visitor, who had come to bring her news, did not speak, however. He waited impassively for a question before recounting what he seemed to be proud of having learned. An indefinable expression of superiority, irony and perhaps challenge, seemed to reveal that secret sentiment. His mouth was slightly pursed. He let the fire of his gaze descend upon the poor woman, which appeared to make her ill at ease in the midst of the desire she had to interrogate her messenger.

  One would not have thought that the man was merely a hired servant, and that the woman was the wife of the rich and powerful Lord Speos. It is true that Lord Speos himself bowed his head before him, growling, like a ferocious beast recognizing the hand of its master.

  To understand that marvel, we need to go back a little and say a few words about a fundamental law of the Atlantis of the Pah-ri-ziz, which will explain better than any other narration the grave situation of our characters.

  III. A Law of Marriage

  If the Pah-ri-ziz Atlanteans were not always satisfied with all the laws of their country, which they turned upside-down from time to time with revolutions, only to recover them subsequently under other names, as is always the way, there were certain fundamental laws that they conserved with a religious respect.

  They came in a direct line from the Buddha Sylax, Me-nu-tche and Lutetius, a divine trinity that they never separated, either in their invocations or the beneficent attributions that they derived from them.

  The foremost of these laws was the one pertaining to marriage.

  Now, that law permitted a young woman to marry at the age of fourteen; it ordered her to do so at twenty, on penalty of going into a convent and remaining cloistered there for five years. She was liberated again after that time, but always under the injunction of marriage, unless a panel of experts dispensed her of the obligation for reasons of health.

  A young man was not permitted to exceed the age of twenty-two without entering into the bonds of matrimony without exposing himself to five years of expatriation. When that time was past, he could return, but only to obey the law.

  Among the Pah-ri-ziz, the initiative of marriage was not, as among modern peoples, the sole privilege of young men. The first request was also accepted, on the part of both families, without any distinction.

  A second article of the law specified that any young man who was in default of legal mores, if he were found to be guilty, would be expelled forever from the territory of Atlantis, unless he married within three months.

  The young woman whose fault was recognized would be exposed in a small canoe, pushed out to sea with no oars and no sail—in sum, no means of steering—abandoned to the grace of God and the waves, forbidden ever to return to Atlantis if she survived, except to marry within a time designated by the law.

  That entire law was severe, but it found a corrective in another article of the matrimonial code, which prescribed that spouses had to remarry every five years if they wanted to continue to live together. If they wanted to separate, they were free after that space of time—but separation was a stigma from which one did not recover easily.

  Now, in the year two thousand three hundred and twenty-eight, there was in Lutecia a man of high intelligence, who had achieved wealth and honors by virtue of his own knowledge, firm determination and merit. He was the head of the militia. His name was Arimaspes.

  Like all Atlanteans, Arimaspes had satisfied the prescriptions of the law with regard to marriage. Not long thereafter, however, he had lost his wife. He had then made the resolution to remain alone henceforth with his only child, his daughter Ludia. The love of his daughter and the memory of his wife were sufficient for him; he did not remarry, the law giving him that right.

  Arimaspes had numerous friends, some who liked the man and doubtless others who only liked his credit. Frank and good, he delivered himself entirely to the pleasures of friendship and the familiarity of friends.

  He was by no means suspicious of anyone’s sentiments, and yet his daughter grew up and blossomed like a hothouse flower. She was beautiful, sensitive, inexperienced—as one is at that age—and unfortunately, too free beneath her father’s tent. The poor father thought her still a child, but one day...

  First, he perceived one day that his child was unusually thoughtful and sad, that she was ill; eventually, he perceived that she no longer had the innocence of a child.

  Arimaspes did not blame his daughter; he only blamed himself. His despair was profound, and overwhelming for Ludia was not yet fourteen, and her seducer…her seducer was immensely rich, of very high status, of almost royal nobility—but what did that matter? Her seducer was married.

  The law was there, inexorable; it applied to everyone. Ludia, his only daughter, his beloved daughter, his entire life, was to be cast adrift at sea, alone and with no hope of salvation.

  Arimaspes wanted to elude the harshness of the law. To that effect he addressed himself to a man recommended to him by public opinion: a young man, it is true, but wise, good, religious above all, and yet somewhat needy, for he was devoid of parents, of any family—any admitted family, at least—and without any support to ensure his existence.

  Where did he come from? Nobody knew. He was, it was said, like so many others among the Pah-ri-ziz, a child of hazard—the child of a seduction, one might have been able to say, but after all, who could tell? The young man was discreet, and did not say anything, if he knew himself. He was, in any case, wise bey
ond his years and revered by those who knew him as a young old man.

  Lord Arimaspes heaped him with benefits, made him the most seductive promises and then confided his daughter to him, in order to hide her from everyone’s gaze without arousing any suspicion.

  That man and Ludia left one day, therefore, on a long journey, traveling far and wide until the day when the young woman brought a son into the world.

  Arimaspes’ secret but formal order was to make the child disappear at birth. The young mother divined that; she seduced her severe guardian by means of caresses, tears and promises. She consented to be separated from the child, never to see him again, provided that she knew that he was alive, and she also took responsibility for providing for all his needs.

  It was arranged in accordance with her desire.

  She therefore returned to Lutecia, happy and tranquil, her heart full of love for her son; but she found her father on his death-bed. The mortal threat that he saw continually hovering over the head of his beloved daughter had killed him. He died in his daughter’s arms a few hours after her arrival.

  Ludia remained alone, inconsolable for that great misfortune, but she was rich, honored, and uncontested in her virtue. She was therefore keenly sought in marriage; she passed the age of fourteen on her father’s death.

  She did not welcome any request; she wanted to wait. Everyone understood her filial discretion and praised it. They were mistaken, for it was the father of her child for whom she was waiting; it was him and him alone that she loved. He was married, it is true, and there was a stigma in marrying a man who divorced without a grave reason, but what did that matter to Ludia? She would accept the stigma, she would accept any ignominy, provided that she married her seducer. That seducer was Mo-kie-thi.

  But Mok-kie-thi was no longer in Lutecia; he was not longer even in Atlantis. Unfortunately, the weakness of his heart had rendered him guilty of a crime in the eyes of the law, and of a crime punishable in such a terrible manner that he had been unable to bear the thought of the punishment that awaited his victim. He had fled before Ludia’s fault became known—or, rather, he had gone on a long voyage with his wife, promising to return soon. Everything indicated that that was his intention, that his voyage would not be of long duration. He had a child—a very young child—and he had not taken the boy with him, fearing on his behalf the fatigues of a voyage in which he saw nothing but adventures and perils. He had entrusted him to a friend.