Only the director of protocol, who was agitated, was walking back and forth from the door of the drawing room to the peristyle of the palace, but it seemed improbable that his ministry would be utilized and Saint-Denis, who was beside me, whispered in my ear with his characteristic need for irony:
“Henceforth, with the habit of entering without warning that we’re going to acquire, protocol is an entirely extinct career.”
It is necessary to admit that the wait seemed long.
I have noted that the difficulty of telepathic communications increased when the subject and the object did not know one another. Attempts had been made to remedy that inconvenience by submitting photographic documents to the two presidents, several days before, and it was with this aid that they had been able to familiarize themselves mutually with their external appearance. Nevertheless, we were beginning to fear that these precautions had not had a sufficient suggestive effect, and we had all been immobilized in anticipation for an hour when a kind of mist became visible to the majority of the audience on one of the windows of the reception room.
That appeared to everyone to be the effect of one of those momentary fatigues of vision, which can normally be dissipated by blinking. Like the others, I could not help making that petty gesture. When, almost instantaneously, my eyes opened again, I perceived the clear and plain image of a man with a slightly drooping moustache, whose bright eyes were sparkling behind a lorgnette. It was Mr. Roosevelt.
I thought that he bore more resemblance to his portraits than he had in the luminous state of the firework display, but I had no hesitation in recognizing him as he advanced rather rapidly toward Monsieur Fallières, his hand extended, and a smile on his lips, saying in a muffled, distant voice, but which could be clearly made out in the profound silence in which everyone remained bound by attention: “I’m very glad to see you.”
Monsieur Fallières was very pale, less at his ease than his distant visitor, who seemed entirely in his element, as much master of himself as in the simplest of conversations.
The malaise was of brief duration, however. The seconds were precious, for there was no way of knowing how long the communication would last, and it was urgent to solemnize it by long-distance speeches.
Our president was perfect; he spoke for some time about the new fraternity, minds flying over frontiers, and what the conquest of the new force of nature seemed to portend for world peace.
“Henceforth,” he concluded, “there is no longer any possible misunderstanding between people who can read one another’s hearts.”
Mr. Roosevelt listened politely with a great deal of attention and replied with a few sentences in English to corroborate the spirit of the speech. He concluded by uttering three resounding cheers and crying, in a nasal accent: “Long live the sister Republics!”
Almost immediately, he disappeared.
The maximum intensity had been obtained, and, in sum, the trial was satisfactory.
The counterpart also succeeded in Washington, where, a few minutes later, the President of the Republic returned, on the far side of the ocean, the visit that he had just received.
As a practical consequence, the newspaper L’Humanité demanded, the very next day, the pure and simple abolition of ambassadors between countries assured of communications so simply directed.
There seems to be a cruel irony today in recalling the beautiful hours of what seemed, at first to be a dawn, but who could have supposed that a conflagration had just been lit?
VII.
Extracts from Dr. Forbe’s Journal
20 June
One of the first consequences of the new state of affairs had been it appears, an unprecedented increase in the receipts of post and telegraph offices; in the surprise of the apparitions everyone was anxious for exact clarification; letters, telegrams and the telephonic communications were all employed to that effect for nearly a month.
It is no longer the same now that the habit has been formed; on the contrary, a number of practical individuals have begun to use this gratuitous means of correspondence for themselves—with the natural consequence of an abrupt diminution in the State’s receipts, to the point that, if the progression accelerates, as there is every reason to expect, it will be necessary to ward off a possible disequilibrium in the budget. The example has been cited of Pierpont Morgan,29 who, attracted early to Dinard in consequence of the precocious seasonal warmth, shuts himself in his study for two hours a day in order to work in direct communication with a first-rate secretary, whom he has quickly trained for that very special work.
Assuming that that is true, however, it is merely an exception as yet for such long distances. As for communications between cities over the extent of French territory influenced by the wave of transmission, they are very comfortable, and telepathy is beginning to take over the role of the telephone, with neither wires nor receivers. Businessmen, agents and newspaper reporters are beginning to use it, after multiple trials conducted with care.
One is alarmed by the idea that the day is getting closer when, at the behest and impulsion of big businessmen, the entire world will be brought into proximity, when it will only take a few minutes or hours to transmit their instructions, without any intermediary, from one hemisphere to another. As a repercussion, a socialist newspaper is predicting a worldwide strike.
22 June
This morning, while we were having breakfast, Madame Forbe’s mother suddenly appeared, sitting beside André.
She has come to visit us in the same fashion several times without leaving Angers, where she has moved into an apartment while waiting for her house to be rebuilt. She lives alone and her thoughts, continually with us, transport her toward her daughter and her grandson. Then again, she experiences the need to consult me about the details of the construction, in which she believes me to have a competence that I do not possess.
She’s a good woman and I appreciate the confidence that she shows in me, without daring to tell her that I have better things to do than occupy myself with the petty problems of carpentry or the locksmith’s craft that she addresses to me.
While she was there, we were brought up to date with her plans for the summer. We have the habit, every year, of going to stay for a month in an Atlantic beach resort, and the conversation turned to the sea and the charm that it ought to offer now, in the hot days that we’re enduring.
Our little André mingled his projects with ours and gradually started daydreaming, his eyes staring off and with a distracted expression. I was trying to make my mother-in-law understand my deficiency in matters of plumbing and floor-laying, when Madame Forbe suddenly exclaimed: “André! What are you doing?”
I turned round and I saw the child, who, having unbuttoned his jacket and waistcoat, was about to take off his trousers, with mechanical gestures.
“But Maman,” he said, quite earnestly, “I’m going bathing.”
Two months ago we would have thought he was mad. I simply took him by the hand, talking to him softly in order to bring him back from the dream in which he found himself—for he admitted to us, while putting on his collar, that he thought he was at La Baule, at the seaside, and he had been unable to resist the impulse.
25 June
A visitor today—real, not by image: Sourbelle came to see me.
He’s losing patience; for more than six weeks his wife has been in prison and the affair has not taken a single step forward. Her innocence—or, at least, her lack of responsibility—is incontestable, for the good faith of the two unfortunates is manifest.
The poor devil! I pity him. Ruined even in his hopes by his unfortunate voyage, he is living in his empty tiny lodgings, alone with the sadness of having caused his wife’s misfortune. To eat, he’s been obliged to take the first job he could, and he’s a dishwasher in a café. He scarcely has the means to provide for the necessities of his toilette and I see that he’s still wringing that frightful cap the color of pea soup in his hands.
“It’s no
t possible,” he affirms, “that they won’t yield to the evidence. Besides which, Monsieur, you promised me—I beg you, say something to the magistrate so that he’ll set my wife free.
He believes it, poor fellow. I believe it too, and it seems to me, ultimately, that an injustice is being done: I’ve promised him that I’ll go to see the examining magistrate in charge of the case.
26 June
It turns out that the examining magistrate is Vatinel, a court deputy, an old childhood friend. He received me without delay, asking me for news of my wife, whom he doesn’t know.
As soon as I spoke, he became grave, sitting up straight in his cane chair. His benevolent eyes fixed themselves on me behind his pince-nez and he explained the new malaise from which the magistracy has been suffering for a month.
“You can’t have any idea, my dear fellow,” he said. “We’re positively overflowing with more than five hundred cases of the same sort. At this moment, almost all criminals, murderers or thieves, are affirming that they don’t understand any of what happened to them and claiming to be victims of suggestion at a distance. Are they sincere? In many cases, the antecedents of the people involved seem to be in accord with their affirmations; at any rate, no one any longer kills and no one steals—for several weeks, if you believe the accused. The will of other individuals, almost always unknown, has been directing the actions of the guilty parties. How can responsibility be determined in such circumstances? What, in fact, will become of responsibility?”
I shook my head.
“All right,” I said, “but in the case that interests me, if there is a guilty party, you have him; arrest the husband, who accuses himself of the intention, and charge him…with homicide by imprudence.”
Vatinel looked at me profoundly. “Ah!” he sighed. “Perhaps it will come to that. In the meantime, I repeat that we dare not inaugurate that jurisprudence for fear of attracting the attention of too many malefactors to the point. Above all, don’t repeat any of this until further notice.”
7 July
In the enthusiasm of the first few days, it was decided to hold a big banquet to celebrate the discovery of the sympathetic current, which, for the moment, unites three great countries.
I’m included in the list of those who will make a speech during dessert, and as it’s my first speech, I’ve been working on it conscientiously, singing the praises of the new method of communication—of which, however, I’m beginning to understand the inconveniences. In sum, though, what discovery doesn’t, in the early days of its appearance, lead to some awkwardness in the temporarily disrupted pattern of human life?
I’m alone in my study; I’ve been polishing my punctuation, saluting the new era of fraternal sincerity. The noise of an altercation in the hallway disturbs me and irritates me. I lend an ear.
It’s Sourbelle again. Yesterday, on rendering him an account of the temporary failure of the steps I’ve taken, I exhorted him to be patient; I even slipped a fifty-franc bill into his hand. And now he’s arguing with the maid in order to get in, in spite of the order I’ve given not to be disturbed while I’m working.
All in all, he annoys me, with his green cap. Is it my fault, after all, that his imprudent violence has had such consequences?
He’s ended up going away, though. I watch from behind the curtains at the drawing room window and I see him walking up and down the street making furious gestures; he must be waiting for me to go out. I go back into my study.
I’m no longer alone there; Madame Forbe’s mother has just appeared again, sitting at my table. From Angers, her image never leaves me alone, and it’s beginning to be annoying for an orator constrained to sing the praises of telepathy.
“I’m glad to see you, Auguste,” the distant voice says to me. “What do you think about a veranda for the dining room, instead of a bay window and three hinged windows?”
I listen, chewing my pen holder, and gaze resignedly at the windows, through which the softened light of the courtyard is coming. And there I see Sourbelle appear, Sourbelle again, whom I left pacing up and down in the street. By virtue of the omnipotence of his overexcited desire, he’s projected his anxious form this far, and he starts talking, heaping reproaches and complaints upon me.
For her part, Madame Forbe proclaims: “I said to him, to the architect, I said to him: ‘Monsieur, you’re a thief!’”
“They’ll guillotine her for sure,” the other says.
“And do you know what he said to me?” the Angevine image howls.
I lose my temper. I stand up, shouting furiously: “Zut! What do you expect me to do about it?”
Eyes fixed, her expression stupefied, the poor woman looks at me with a kind of terror; then she shrivels and becomes hot-tempered, fleeing at top speed, returning to Angers without further ado.
At the same time, Sourbelle has disappeared.
I’m having all the difficulty in the world concentrating on my thoughts here, preventing my imagination from accompanying them.
IX
“It’s strange,” Saint-Denis said to me at the corner of the Rue Royale and the Place de la Concorde, “that we haven’t yet found any form of collective rejoicing more in harmony with our new modern life than all these banquets. Isn’t resigning oneself to contemplate nourishments that no one touches, in our epoch of aching and mistrustful stomachs, conceding too much to routine?”
With the pages of my speech folded up in my pocket, against my heart, I listened to my old master talk with a distracted ear and a mouth already dry in anticipation of the moment to come.
As we crossed the Place de la Concorde, a crowd blocked our path; at the same time, a chorus of voices brought to our eyes the dribs and drabs of the official revolutionary anthem, the Internationale.
Curious, Saint-Denis drew nearer, lending an ear and watching a procession file between two hedges of onlookers: a long cortege of arsenal workers from Brest, all of whose actions had been attracting attention and some anxiety in Paris for the last two days. The image of that distant demonstration produced a more direct emotion than reading about it in the newspapers.
We arrived at the Hotel Splendid, where almost all the guests of the banquet were assembled; we were only waiting for the minister who is to preside over the feast. Contradictory rumors were running round.
“Will he come?”
“Certainly.”
“You know that the cabinet’s been obliged to hand in its resignation after the interpellation of Lerody on the strikes at Brest. Just as the President of the Council was getting ready to dread the decree closing the session…”
I must confess that I was only listening vaguely to what was being said; my anxiety was increasing by the minute at the thought that it would shortly be necessary for me to read a few pages aloud in the presence of all the illustrious or important individuals that the rooms could hold.
I found myself seated at table to the left of Professor Hoch—the man who had made such a brief appearance at the Académie des Sciences on the day when Saint-Denis had read my observations; having nodded to him briefly, I scanned the table with a circular glance.
Scientists known throughout the world, diplomats, important functionaries, and illustrious writers surrounded me. I observed directly opposite me the small fixed and thoughtful eyes of a Japanese envoy whose entire appearance of attentive gravity signified preoccupation with the thought of making industrial use of the new fluid as soon as it made its appearance at the frontiers of the Nipponese Empire. Not far from him, a tall Chinese mandarin seemed to be saying, with his thin smile: We’ve known about this for a long time, long before you, many centuries ago; except that we prudently renounced it, like so many other dangerous products with which your ignorance is still toying.
Having thus looked around, my eyes met those of my neighbor to the left, Edouard Grandmaison, the editor of the newspaper La Foule, which claims to print three million copies. He’s a dry and lively southerner, likable and a good talker. He leaned towar
d me.
“A funny thing,” he murmured, with a smile full of irony, “that we’re meeting here to celebrate the power that overthrew the power of the minister sitting as president of the table…you’re not up to date?”
My expression was a clear response. He was kind enough to give me a few explanations.
“This strike at Brest, whose images are beginning to frighten Paris, started the trouble. Exasperated, like all of us, by the obsessive spectacle of that faraway calamity, the ministers decided this morning, in a meeting of the Council, to arrest the two leaders of the adventure tomorrow. The last assembly of the session was to have taken place today, that being the best way of avoiding interpellation. Unfortunately, just as the President of the Council as about to read the decree of closure, Lerody of the unimodified socialist group stood up and revealed the ministerial plan, which was still secret. He even named names, accusing the Minister of the Interior of having proposed the measure, gave details of the entire Council meeting and all the discussion, and even the order of the arguments: so-and-so said this, and then so-and-so said that.
“You can imagine the stupefaction: the Chamber was writhing. ‘How do you know that?’ the President of the Council couldn’t help asking. ‘I witnessed the meeting,’ Lerody admitted, ‘to which I was transported by the intensity of my desire, in the condition of an image.’ There was no means of denying it, and it was necessary to put the motion of no confidence to the vote; the right and the far right overturned the ministry yet again.
“With the aid of telepathy,” said Dr. Hoch, concluding, laughing rather heavily.
“Yes,” said Grandmaison, “with your telepathy, which will render all secrecy impossible.”
I was listening to him a trifle distractedly, nodding my head. To reassure my anxiety and calm the thirst that was drying my mouth, I drank without discernment from the glasses in front of me, incessantly filled by the waiters. The strength of the wines might have been mediocre, but the influence on me was no less certain, and when it was my turn to speak, I got up unemotionally, almost excitedly.
The Revolt of the Machines Page 25
