Paris in the Year 2000

by Tony Moilin

  The celebration of marriage is the ceremony to which the socialist religion accords the greatest importance, and the Government has neglected nothing to render it magnificent and surround it with all the prestige of the national authority.

  On the day fixed for the solemnity, a special train composed of gala carriages comes to fetch the bride from her home and take her to the wedding at the international Temple. On descending from the carriage, the cortege advances through a curious crowd and, to the sound of music, goes to take its place in one of the nuptial chapels. The magistrates charged with uniting the spouses soon arrive in their turn; they are surrounded by all the paraphernalia of authority, and it is, so to speak, the Republic itself that is coming to preside over and consecrate the marriage of its children.

  To begin with, one of the magistrates reads for the final time the banns of the future couple and asks them whether they are unmarried, whether they profess the socialist religion and whether they promise to persist in that religion throughout their lives and bring up their children within it. The couple’s eight witnesses then come forward, offer guarantees of that promise and engage solemnly to remind the married couple of it if ever the day comes when they want to abjure the doctrines that they have embraced.

  When these preliminaries are complete, an orator goes up to the pulpit. Having said a few words in praise of the two fiancés, he enters into generalities regarding the joys of marriage, the reciprocal duties of spouses, the misfortunes of separations, and concludes by inviting the future couple to remain constantly united and to be models of conjugal life. That speech, always very eloquent, profoundly touches all hearts, especially those of the fiancés, who swear eternal fidelity to one another in hushed voices—an oath too often forgotten, but momentarily sincere.

  After that harangue, the magistrate presiding over the ceremony proceeds to marry the spouses. He asks them whether they want to be husband and wife, and whether they promise mutual fidelity and affection. On their affirmative response, he declares them united and hands a certificate to the young woman, while giving the husband a medal on which is engraved the date of the marriage and the names of the two spouses. Then he makes a short paternal speech about the enviable felicities reserved for good wives and faithful husbands.

  The marriage concluded, the newly-weds remain in the chapel briefly to receive the congratulations of all their acquaintances, who have come to watch the ceremony. Afterwards, they board the gala train again and head for one of the national residences near Paris, such as Saint-Cloud, Versailles, Meudon, etc.

  There, if the weather is fine, the wedding-celebration is held in the gardens; if the weather is bad, it remains inside the apartments. In any case, the residence in question are fitted out in such a way as to offer a thousand distractions to the Government’s guests, and the latter can, according to their tastes, swing, play quoits, skittles or billiards, ride donkeys, sail on the lake, refresh themselves at the buffet, etc. All those married on the same day come together in these residences, easily making one another’s acquaintance, and these fortuitous encounters between young households often give birth to solid and durable friendships.

  However, amid all these amusements, the hour for dinner arrives rapidly. The wedding-feast is provided by the State for the married couple and their cortege, and is served with unusual luxury. In a magnificently-decorated dining-room such as the richest sovereigns never had, a table laden with admirable porcelain, marvelous silverware and sparkling crystal offers the guests an infinite choice of the most delicate dishes and the most renowned wines.

  The Government has decided that even the poorest of people should enjoy, at least once in their lives, all the marvels of opulence and all the refinements of civilization, and that the day of their marriage should be marked in their memory as a day of perfect felicity—as wealth, pushed to its utmost limits, is sufficient to give happiness.

  The realization of that desire costs the Administration dear, but it is an expense on which no one seeks to skimp, because everyone profits from it, and it encourages marriage, for which Socialists do not have any great propensity. The mere desire to enjoy, once in life, all the terrestrial felicities has caused more than one union to be contracted, and they have not proved to be any less unfortunate than the others.

  After having royally celebrated the Government feast and drunk sufficiently to the health of the newly-weds, people leave the table. The men smoke an exquisite cigar, provided by the Nation; the bride and her friends change clothes and put on the ball gowns that they have taken care to bring with them; then they board the gala train again and return to the International Palace. It is there, in the magnificent salons, that the wedding ball is held, to which all the couple’s friends and acquaintances in Paris are invited. To the sounds of an enchanting orchestra, the dances go on until dawn, and, sated with pleasures, exhausted by fatigue, falling asleep, the married couple and the guests go home and surrender to the sweetness of repose.

  4. Burial

  Socialists have a truly incredible religious respect for their dead, and it is astonishing to see a people so light-hearted and incredulous accord so much deference and remembrance to those who are no more. The Government is thus merely in conformity with the mores of the country in surrounding death with a ceremony that is as respectful as it is imposing.

  As soon as a citizen has succumbed and the civil estate has been informed of the death by the physician’s report, the Administration of funeral ceremonies sends employees to prepare the cadaver and keep vigil beside it. Soon afterwards, the magistrate arrives who is charged with pronouncing the funeral oration of the deceased. He brings together the relatives and friends of the dead person and collects from them all the information necessary to compose his speech. That visit provides a powerful distraction to the grief of the assembly, whose members finds a bitter consolation in remembering the virtues and merits of the individual they have lost.

  After the time necessary for the reality of the decease to be fully appreciated, the burial proceeds, and the cadaver is placed in the coffin by the employees of the funeral service. That coffin is exactly the same for all citizens. It is made of simple pine; the coffins of oak and lead, which once established social distinctions even among the dead, have fallen into complete disuse in Socialist society.

  As soon as the coffin has been screwed shut and covered with the mortuary cloth, the cortege sets off and goes down into the cellars, where the mourners take a special train on the underground railway. That train, exclusively devoted to funeral service, is comprised of carriages in harmony with that sad destination. It moves at low speed, collecting dead people as it goes brought down from the various quarters through which it passes. Ten similar trains serve the city, and all head for the International Palace, which they reach by going over the Seine bridges, thus arriving in the subterranean sections of the Socialist Temple.

  These subterranean workings are disposed in a vast funerary Crypt with lowered vaults, where the blue-tinted light of the funerary lamps seem to thicken the darkness they illuminate. Nothing is as gripping and majestically mournful as the sight of that temple of the dead, where everything has been calculated in order to impose respect and convey the idea of eternal rest. There are no works of art here to attract and delight the eyes, but walls of a depressing nudity and monotony forming galleries of infinite length whose extremities are no longer lit at all and fade away into complete darkness.

  No sound from the world of the living reaches these funereal places; a profound silence reigns everywhere, in which the slightest word creates an echo and reverberates fragmentarily along the sonorous vaults. On penetrating into that lugubrious place, one feels seized by a vague terror and, involuntarily, one speaks in hushed tones and walks slowly, fearful of troubling the solemn repose of the silent solitude.

  Here and there, mortuary chapels are found, equal in number to the number of people deceased every day. It is in one of those chapels that the funeral service takes pl
ace. The coffin is transported there and installed on a catafalque; the audience is arranged around it, and the ceremony begins.

  To begin with, the name and occupations of the deceased are announced and the various documents certifying his death are read out. Then the magistrate charged with pronouncing the funeral oration goes up to the pulpit. After having delivered a panegyric to the deceased and spoken about all the inconsolable regrets they have left behind them, the orator enters into generalities regarding the objective of life and the destiny of human beings after death.

  In this regard, however, let us say what the philosophical opinions of the Socialists are—opinions that are developed in all funeral orations and furnish an inexhaustible them for the eloquence of preachers.

  All Socialists profess the doctrines of pantheistic materialism. They believe that the world is uncreated and eternal, and that it is composed of two profoundly distinct principles, one of them essentially passive and inert, which is matter, the other essentially active and intelligent, which is force.

  Reasoning for humans as for the universe, they believe that a human being too is composed of two different principles, one material and passive, which is the body, the other active and intelligent, which is the soul animating the body. After death, they think that the soul and body separate. The former is gradually disorganized; it loses its individuality and is confused with the rest of matter. As for the soul, it is destroyed in the same fashion, stripped of its personality and mingling intimately with the great intelligent All that vivifies the material world.

  Socialists are not all in agreement regarding the time necessary to effect the destruction of a soul. Some, the materialists, affirm that the destruction takes place instantaneously, and that, immediately after the last sigh, the mind that animates us evaporates and is lost completely and irrevocably, scattered far and wide within the immensity of Creation. Others, who call themselves spiritualists, believe that the souls of the dead conserve their personality for a long time after death, that they float freely around us, that they can enter into communication with certain individuals or objects, take visible form, pronounce speech, and thus produce all the manifestations attributed to spirits and revenants.

  Whatever the existence of spirits might be, it remains the case that Socialists, whether materialist or spiritualist, agree on one important point: the soul is not immortal, and after a lapse of time, whether it be a matter of seconds or years, it loses every last vestige of its individuality and is confused with the great All.

  Depending on whether the deceased shared the materialist or spiritualist doctrine, an orator is chosen professing one or other of those opinions. In the former case, he expands in his funeral oration on the pitiless cruelty of death, which destroys in the blink of an eye the most beautiful intelligences, leaving nothing but a memory, often very fleeting, in the hearts of those who have known us.

  If, on the contrary, the preacher chosen is a spiritualist, he speaks about the existence of spirits, their happy or unhappy state, their intervention in the events of life, the means of evoking them and of entering into communication with them, in order to know what has become of them and to ask their advice.

  When the funeral oration is finished, the coffin is lifted up, the funeral procession forms up again and heads through the subterranean passages to the railway leading to the cemetery. That railway leaves the International Palace at the extremity of the Île Saint-Louis; it goes along the Quai de l’Arsenal, crosses the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and Saint-Mandé and terminates in the Bois de Vincennes, where it splits into several branches.

  It is that wood which serves the Socialists as a cemetery. It has not changed its appearance, however, in spite of its new destination. In fact, the socialist religion, differing in that respect from all other cults, does not erect any tombs to its dead. Trees, grass and flowers are all that one finds in its cemeteries, and one does not even see the slight elevations of the terrain that design the form of the coffin and indicate the places where someone has been interred.

  Nothing in such a necropolis is a reminder of the dead, except for tiny epitaphs lost in the long grass, on which the names and professions of the dead are inscribed, with the dates of their birth and death. When one desires to have more information about a dead person, one has only to go into little kiosks, in which one finds registers containing, in chronological order, all the funeral orations of the dead people interred in the vicinity.

  Concessions of plots in socialist cemeteries are all equal, measuring two meters by three. They are given gratuitously to every citizen who professes the socialist religion on the day of the ceremony celebrating their majority or abjuration.

  Many concessionaries never visit the plot allocated to them, fearing that it might bring bad luck. Others, on the contrary, go there frequently; they put flowers there, plant trees, install seats and make a small garden on the lugubrious spot, in which they like to come to rest. In any case, for those who have no fear of the neighborhood of the dead, there is no park as beautiful as the cemetery of Vincennes and nowhere else that one sees trees with such rich crowns, flowers as bright or grass as green and lush.

  5. Pleasures

  The Parisians, and especially the Parisiennes, of the year 2000, are extremely fond of pleasure. They certainly work assiduously all day, but when evening comes it is absolutely necessary that they seek distraction and amusement. Staying at home is a torture, and, for the benefit of their physical and mental health, they need to go out, to take the air, to go somewhere and see someone. Society is organized to that effect, and one can say that there is no other country in which pleasures are as numerous, as varied and as cheap.

  In the first place, merely strolling in the evening in the salon-streets and shop-streets is a fine distraction, which costs nothing. The inhabitants of Paris use it, and abuse it. Men come to watch women passing by, women come to be admired, and the more beautiful half of the population is always occupied in providing a spectacle for the other.

  One gets bored with everything, though, even idling. That eventuality has been anticipated, however, and a thousand establishments of pleasure open their doors to strollers.

  Firstly, there are immense cafés, luxuriously decorated, brightly lit, and filled with noisy crowds. In these cafes all kinds of games can be played—billiards, cards, dominoes, etc.—and one can buy drinks there; or, to put it more accurately, simulacra of drinks, for the Parisians are the most sober people on Earth. They are served a finger of beer in a magnificently-carved tankard, a spoonful of coffee in a Sèvres cup, a drop of liqueur in a muslin-glass, and that is sufficient for them, their stomach being content as soon as their eyes are satisfied.

  The great distraction of Parisians, however—the one for which they forget to eat and drink—consists of spectacles. Those are extremely numerous and of every kind. There are establishments for drama, comedy, vaudeville, opera, singers, dancers, feats of strength and skill, etc. Some of them are also cafés, where one can smoke and drink, but the most highly-appreciated and those that attract the biggest crowds are the “Theater-Journals.”

  That name is given to theaters where the program changes every evening and is an exact representation or burlesque of the day’s events. If, for example, there has been a fire or a murder, since the previous day, the events are reproduced on the stage, with so much fidelity that it is as if one were seeing the reality. On the other hand, when the news or a person in the news that day is amenable to parody, however slightly, they are represented in caricature, in mime or in song, adding burlesque details and absurd reflections, thus composing scenes so hilarious and side-splitting that they excite long burst of inextinguishable laughter in the most morose individuals.

  Parisians love these sorts of diversions, and these parodies, far from doing any harm to the citizens who furnish their subject-matter, are, on the contrary, the best guarantee of serious celebrity, for if ridicule kills imbeciles, it puts intelligent people on pedestals.

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sp; The French are the most sociable people in the world, and their greatest pleasure, after spectacles, is to come together in soirées.

  Every Decadi (see the following section) the Government holds a great official ball in the salons of the International Palace. The salons in question are the most magnificent in the world, genuinely magical in their appearance by virtue of their number, variety and decoration.

  Here, there are immense ballrooms, dazzling with gold, mirrors and light, where thousands of couples are dancing to the sounds of a stirring orchestra. There, there is a huge winter-garden, with cool shade and sparkling fountains, where tropical plants display their luxuriant vegetation and fill the atmosphere with the heady scents of the forest.

  To the side there are discreet boudoirs, where thick woolen carpets muffle footsteps and where softly-upholstered love-seats invite the prolongation of intimate conversations. Elsewhere, there are flower-filled hothouses spreading forth their thousand odorous bouquets, and, competing in brightness and freshness with the flowers, the artificial ornamentations of the heads and bosoms of women.

  Further away, there is a somber grotto, rocky and mossy, where a tinkling stream runs; on advancing beneath the vaults one penetrates into a dark corridor where one can scarcely make out one’s path—and one thinks that one has already gone astray when one emerges unexpectedly into a splendid buffet, to which dancers repair in haste when their strength is exhausted, and prepare for further exploits.

  All the inhabitants of Paris have the right to see these splendors, and everyone receives two or three invitations every year, but many people do not take advantage of them, preferring to cede their places to young people, for whom dancing is such a great pleasure, and who are never as happy as when they are received in the Nation’s salons.