The Mysterious Force

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  “Forwards!” howled a colossal voice. “To the Ministries, the Elysée Palace, the telegraph offices!”

  The storm of noise broke, and the multitude broke into a frantic run in the direction of Montparnasse. For ten minutes the flow seemed inexhaustible; then it thinned out. There were only scattered groups and bewildered solitary individuals, women with ragged hair, idlers and curiosity-seekers leaning on window-ledges.

  Then one could see the corpses lying on the pavements or in the gutter; wounded men dragging themselves toward doorways; others panting, howling or coughing…

  The aircraft had disappeared.

  “It’s disgusting!” cried Langre.

  “They don’t know what they’re doing,” Meyral sighed—while Sabine, her eyes wide with fright and her face whiter than the clouds, hugged her children in her quivering arms.

  The automobile was drawn up at the pavement; the driver had abandoned it in order to charge the police.

  “Perhaps it would be better to go back on foot,” Georges remarked.

  Just then, the driver reappeared, his beard stained with blood and his eyes full of fury. “Poverty is dead!” he howled, showing his canine face at the window. “The reign of exploiters is over! That of the common man is beginning! Ah! Ah! It’s ended in suffering…it’s all come apart!”

  A distant and ominous detonation interrupted him. “Cannon fire!” He leapt back and whirled around. “There you are!” he moaned. “I’ll drive you, all the same, before rejoining our brothers. It’ll only take three minutes…and then…and then! Oh, and then…”

  The words would not come; the veins in his temples were swollen, his eyes were phosphorescent and his mouth agape. A jovial fury was making his entire body shiver.

  “More prolos!” he stammered. “Uh oh! More vampires! We’re going to settle their hash!”

  Having violently taken hold of his machine he climbed into the seat and moved off. The streets were clear; from time to time, a belated group shouted insults or raised brutal fists—but the driver brayed: “Up with the red night!”

  When they reached the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, a church bell had started to ring, tolling funereally; a crimson glow was trembling among the stars; the voice of the cannon, resounding at intervals, was suggestive of the speech of the elements, mingled with the incoherent frenzy of human beings.

  III. Humanity’s Fever

  It was 2 a.m. when Meyral left Langre and Sabine. The Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Jacques seemed almost asleep, but the number of lighted windows was still unusual; occasional excited individuals were going along the pavement or springing forth from corners.

  The conflagration continued beneath the clouds, and distant detonations could be heard. After Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, there were more people about; they were swarming in the Rue Gay-Lussac, and forming a dense crowd at the opening of the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Georges succeeded in slipping through next to the railway station.

  The spectacle became sinister there. All the lights were out in the direction of the Odéon; the far end of the boulevard was like a black abyss, in which helmets and breastplates were glinting confusedly. At intervals, the cavalry charged—into empty space. The clinking of iron could be heard, and an equestrian mass was seen to surge forth; the crowd roared terribly.

  That heterogeneous crowd, in which revolutionaries seemed to be scarce, was scarcely spoiling for a fight. Continually traversed by surges of rage and panic, it was subject to a mysterious excitement, which the soldiery shared. Occasionally, a long moan went up, and it was evident that wounded men were lying in the darkness—but the drama was further away; the revolutionaries had suffered a defeat in the Latin Quarter and, after the destruction of the street-lights and the looting of a few shops, had gone back to join the hordes submerging the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the quais, the Louvre and the Champs-Elysées.

  “Our brothers are victors out there!” growled a clean-shaven individual, whose upper lip continually drew back to reveal chalky teeth. “It’s the end that I prophesied: biting the wooden pavements!” He thrust his yellow face into Meyral’s. “We’re going to take it back! Why shouldn’t we do it here and now?” He pointed to the head of the boulevard, toward the Observatoire and, gripped by a sudden excitement, exclaimed: “Let’s set fire to that! It’ll only need 20 of us. First, we need volunteers! Who’s coming with me?”

  Pale faces emerged from the shadows, but the clatter of hooves became audible at the same time; two rows of breastplates seemed to float through the air; the howling multitude ran away in panic.

  How will all this end? Meyral wondered, retreating along the façades of the buildings. If the excitement continues, all humankind will be crazy by tomorrow morning—including me.

  After making tiresome detours, he succeeded in getting home. His maid, Césarine, was waiting for him, horribly haggard, drunk on drama and terror. She had spent hours in a dark closet, in the company of old clothes, decrepit boxes and broken crockery.

  “Monsieur!” she moaned. “Monsieur!” Dirty tear-strains streaked her face. “Are they going to murder us, roast us alive or smoke us out like rats?”

  The creature’s effervescence exasperated Meyral. Nervously, he studied her reddened face, the sparkling eyes behind her tears, and the hair that had escaped from her curlers to hang down like the remnants of a threadbare mane. He felt a desire to break a flask over her head or chase her away with blows from a pestle. At the same time, he felt sorry for her; he understood her smoldering terror and the consequent leaps of her imagination.

  “Before anything else, go to bed!” he ordered. “Go to bed right away. Do as the cockroaches do—get back into your hole; you’ll make yourself ill staying awake. The best refuge is upstairs, in your room. No revolutionaries will take it into their heads to climb up there, and what if they did? They don’t want anything from servants.”

  These words gushed forth like water from a cracked basin. He made expansive gestures; his consciousness was falling apart, without his ceasing to maintain a certain self-control. “Jump to it!” he went on. “It’s here that your precious life is in danger. Up there is an oasis—a spring in the desert, a haven of safety. Climb up, I tell you! Get on with it!”

  She listened in bewilderment, shaking the gray wisps of her hair, indecisive at first, but then convinced. Suddenly, she grabbed her little copper lamp and ran away up the service stairs, without even bidding her master goodnight.

  He took refuge in his laboratory, and at first the overexcitement seemed to increase. Memories were roaring like torrents and becoming intolerably colorful, waves of hope alternating with asphyxiating anxiety. “To work, pitiful atom!” he exclaimed.

  For a few minutes, he attempted to carry out experiments. His hands were shaking; his retinas received quivering images; his thoughts, as discontinuous as his movements, fled randomly.

  “It’s worse than being drunk!” he sighed. “Meanwhile…what about the phenomenon? It persists, the phenomenon, but isn’t it decreasing? The indices of refraction… Sabine…Langre… What will become of France?”

  The vertigo became unbearable. Georges abandoned the polarizer in which he was analyzing a ray of red light, took a few steps at random and let himself fall into an armchair, struck down by drowsiness.

  He woke up at about 8 a.m.; immediately, he had the impression that his excitement had disappeared. Only the anguish persisted, sharp and keen, but normal. The events of the previous evening were strangely unsteady in his memory.

  He called Césarine. She came running, yellow with fatigue, her lips like minced veal. “Oh, Monsieur!” she murmured. She was obviously frightened and harassed, but not as haggard as before.

  “What about the mob?” he asked.

  “The President has been killed, but the quarter is peaceful,” she replied. “They’re collecting the dead.”

  “Who’s collecting the dead?”

  “The Red Cross, along with the cops and other people.”

  “So the
government is victorious?”

  “I don’t know, Monsieur. So they say. I can’t hear anything any more, and even the fires seem to be extinct.”

  “Bring me the newspapers.”

  “There aren’t any, Monsieur.”

  “Damn!” Georges growled. He was not surprised—only anxious—an anxiety that was a trifle slow and ponderous, with shivers that made his heart leap like an animal woken up with a start. He drank a hasty cup of chocolate, put on his overcoat and went out.

  The weather was warm, the sky covered with nickel-plated clouds in which there were gaps. People were passing by leadenly. A fruit-seller was hawking Burgundy cherries in a tearful voice; the grocer’s boy was arranging boxes with a pensive air; the butcher was slicing meat with a dirty and distracted hand. Everyone seemed weary. An old woman told a bread-carrier: “Tomorrow, there’ll be no more Republic. It’s Victor who’s taken the fauteuil!”

  As he got closer to the Boulevard Saint-Michel, Meyral ran into the vestiges of the mob. Many shops were closed; police platoons and cavalry squadrons were circulating in the roadway. The brutality of men was revealed; leaves had been torn from the trees, street-lights were twisted, shutters gaped open, staved in by iron bars, windows were missing panes.

  The dull and pale spectacle was simultaneously reminiscent of demolitions, awakenings the morning after drunken sprees, crystallized fury, frightful lapses into unconsciousness and mortal skirmishes.

  A human fever, Meyral thought, already dissipated in the night of time!

  The police would not let him through. He had to go round by the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince and cross a section of the Luxembourg. When he came in the vicinity of the Rue Gay-Lussac, newspaper-sellers surged forth waving their papers tumultuously.

  “L’Eclair!”

  “Le Journal!”

  L’Eclair and Le Journal had only two pages each. Posters informed readers that, for want of compositors, press-operators and power, it had been necessary to restrict the print runs to whatever could be contrived. The headlines read:

  Death of the President of the Republic.

  Mob triumphant and vanquished.

  Fire and Blood in Paris.

  The Battle of the Boulevards and the Champs-Elysées.

  The Siege of the Ministries.

  It seemed that the revolutionaries had taken the Ministry of the Interior by storm, invaded the Central Telegraph Office, massacred the police and routed the Municipal Guard and the Dragoons. At 3 a.m. they had taken possession of the Elysée Palace and captured the President of the Republic. A vast fire had ravaged the Boulevard des Italiens; another had devoured the stockrooms of Au Printemps;9 bombs had demolished the fronton of the Palais Législatif; anarchists and apaches had swarmed through the first, second, seventh, eighth and ninth arrondissements, where they had instituted looting; the damage was estimated at 50 or 60 million francs.

  That was the moment at which General Laveraud had come on to the scene. He had brought five infantry regiments, four cavalry regiments and several batteries of light artillery, and had massed these troops in the sixteenth arrondissement. The men had exhibited an extreme overexcitement, and the general himself had manifested a savage humor—but that bad mood had not detracted from his military qualities; it had rejuvenated them. It seemed that he had decided not to take any notice of any higher authority. He began by sweeping the Avenue du Bois de-Boulogne and the Avenue de la Grande-Armée with cannon-fire; the revolutionaries there had scattered. Then, disposing his batteries, he ordered the bombardment of the Champs-Elysées and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where countless fanatics had accumulated. The shells had scythed them down like grass.

  The revolutionaries’ panic had been as feverish as their audacity. When the avenue was clear, Laveraud’s troops had moved forward to the roundabout; then there had been a brief battle. The rioters’ elite held Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré and the Elysée. They withstood a hail of projectiles for a quarter of an hour, and then gave way in their turn. Charges of infantry and cavalry had swept the streets clean as far as Saint-Philippe—and then the butchery began. The troops had fired relentlessly into the massed crowds, held immobile by their own numbers; shells had smashed the presidential palace.

  Then by the light of fires and the dawn, a white flag had been raised, and Laveraud consented to listen to negotiators. They were three men drunk with rage, gunpowder and blood.

  “We hold the President!” the most frenetic declared. “If your troops don’t pull back, we’ll kill him like a hyena.”

  “And I,” Laveraud replied, shaking with fury, “will give you five minutes to evacuate the Palais.”

  “Be careful! We shan’t hesitate—especially me!” He turned a purple face toward the general. “I, most of all, will not hesitate!”

  “I have but one order to give,” growled Laveraud. “Your extermination!”

  The revolutionary withdrew, vomiting threats. Five minutes later, the bombardment resumed; at 4 a.m., Laveraud went into the Elysée. The President’s cadaver was lying on the steps of the Palais, but the Revolution was defeated.10

  Is it defeated? Meyral wondered, in amazement.

  He studied the people surrounding him, astonished by their gray faces. There was an excessive contrast between this calm and the convulsions of the night. He felt internally dull and worn-out himself.

  Oh yes, it’s defeated. The rhythm has disappeared—the exasperated rhythm that drove it to murder.

  He made haste to get back to Langre.

  The old man had only just woken up. He seemed vague and somber.

  “He’s been here,” he murmured. “After grinding his teeth, complaints and curses, he left—but he’ll be back!”

  “When did he come?” Georges asked.

  “At 3 a.m.…exhausted…without a hat, with a gash in his neck. When he left, a boundless fatigue had flattened us both.”

  “Me too!” Meyral whispered.

  “Sabine and the children are still asleep. We must save her, Georges. I don’t want her to fall back into the hands of a maniac.” He roused himself and became animated. His tragic face appeared beneath the weary mask. “I committed a crime in giving her to him; I’ve committed another in leaving her to suffer.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I hadn’t the right not to know. Undoubtedly, I’m a poor social observer—the laboratory had stripped away my sensitivity to human beings—but one doesn’t give one’s daughter away without obtaining guarantees. I should have consulted my friends…you most of all, who are not entirely the slave of attitudes to matter. You would have warned me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you know. Don’t treat me with a degrading indulgence. You knew!”

  “I guessed,” said Meyral, softly, “that she could not be happy with that man. And since then, I’ve seen…”

  “You’ve seen her suffering! You knew she was in danger. You should have told me.”

  “I didn’t think I had the right.”

  “Why?”

  A blush of shame rose to the young man’s cheeks. He made an interrupted gesture expressive of embarrassment and doubt. “Scruples,” he murmured.

  Langre could not decipher the gesture, nor interpret the word. “Unfortunate scruples!” He fell into a grim reverie.

  “Did you know that the revolutionaries have been defeated?” Meyral said, suddenly. “And that the President of the Republic is dead?”

  “I don’t know anything!” Langre exclaimed. He shook his head violently, a red tint spreading over the colorless swarthiness of his cheeks. “I detest my contemporaries,” he said, gloomily, “but I’m ashamed nevertheless to be so uninvolved in their drama!”

  “We couldn’t have done anything about it! Our humble presence would only have aggravated the disorder. It’s not that I regret. Our role was elsewhere—and we haven’t been able to fulfill it. Who knows what has happened while we’ve been asleep? Who knows what prodigiou
s observations we’ve missed—and humankind with us—unless others…?”

  “Unless others have taken our place!”

  They looked at one another, full of the profound anguish of scientists who have let the moment of discovery pass.

  “Why should it be too late?” Langre muttered.

  “Yesterday, before I went to bed, it seemed to me that the phenomenon had decreased. I wasn’t able to make completely sure; fatigue got the better of me—but this morning, the great calm succeeding the hyperesthesia of the multitude surely indicates a metamorphosis of the environment.”

  “Well, let’s get to work—since you don’t have anything urgent to do.”

  As soon as they had carried out the initial experiments—the simplest and sketchiest—no further doubt was possible; the refraction of light had returned to normal. At the most, they discerned, after a passage through a pile of glass plates, a few confused zones in the spectrum obtained by means of a flint-glass prism: traces of abnormal infringement. Attempts at polarization gave scarcely any result.

  “We’ve lost the game!” groaned Langre, in a chagrined tone. “It’s the fault of that abominable Vérannes. While we were embarking on an absurd adventure, the others were at work.” His despairing eyes searched the invisible for those unknown rivals that iniquitous destiny had sent to haunt them. “For after all,” he went on, bitterly, “everyone involved in optics…”

  “Who knows?” said Meyral, thoughtfully. “Perhaps they had other things to look at than what we have seen.”

  “But the basis of the phenomenon was there to be studied! Why wouldn’t they have devoted themselves to it more passionately?”

  Georges shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly. Confronted with the accomplished fact, he did not know how to answer. “Undoubtedly,” he said. “But what can we do about it? I think, moreover, that the evolution of the phenomenon will continue. Exceedingly interesting things are happening…I sense it!”