In 1965

by Albert Robida

  “So,” d’Hérouville went on, “I’m directing the establishment of the Sacred Forest. Before anything else, I’m trying to save that which can still be saved of our murdered woods, our poor beeches and oaks, healthy firs and birches, those that persist, which have a stubborn life beneath the bark. I’m dressing the wounds, caring for or amputating our old ravaged Argonne, reconstituting it...”

  “What hard labor!”

  “Yes—there’s the soil and subsoil to be remade, to be ground up with considerable importations of vegetal earth. Towns from all the regions of France, and even elsewhere, are sending us that vegetal earth: Burgundian, Auvergnat, Provençal, Alsatian, Breton of Languedocian.”

  “The Sacred Forest is made, my friend!”

  “Almost made. Now, the great woods, the dense leafy thickets, the somber covert succeed one another in profound masses, hilly and verdant.”

  The two friends—the man of the Frontier and the man of the Forest—saw one another again; the two families became linked. Monsieur d’Hérouville had a charming daughter, Suzanne, who grew up and increased in beauty along with the trees of his forest.

  When the almost-parallel endeavors of the Frontier and the Forest were concluded, having furnished frequent opportunities for drawing closer together, they continued to meet up. Monsieur d’Hérouville, although occupied with other projects, supervised his dear forest; in the summer, every year, he came to one of its various regions and pitched his tent there. In reality, that “tent” was a collapsible house, an authentic villa, even provided with a annex, where Monsieur d’Hérouville was able to provide hospitality to a friend desirous of renewal.

  Between business trips, Montgrabel made sudden appearances; he sometimes stayed for thirty-six hours—a long sojourn for a man overladen with occupations, summoned hither and yon, fifty or two hundred kilometers, by the important affairs of a big company that was getting considerable larger from day to day. But he sometimes left Madame Montgrabel there with one or two of her children, very glad to take a pleasant breather in the freshness of the woods, in the midst of their studies.

  It was thus that Charles, the eldest of his sons, while still young, felt caught by the soft and dreamy eyes, cheerful temperament and all the graces of Suzanne, a pretty lily-of-the-valley budding in the shade of the young copses of the Sacred Forest.

  While Monsieur d’Hérouville pursued his career as a great forester, Monsieur Montgrabel continued shifting earth. He participated in the digging of the great canal between Paris and the sea, studied, promised, demanded and neglected for such a long time. It had finally been decided to construct it: a river cutting upstream of Paris, a broad channel, the Seine rejoining the Channel near Dieppe; ships of all dimensions were now traveling through the lush Norman grasslands, crossing paths with the hydroplanes that descended from the sky in order to settle on the foamy water like huge birds in a bath.

  The Montgrabel Company had interests in a host of large-scale enterprises: electricity generating stations, airlines, terrestrial tubes for passengers or merchandise, companies importing produce from the colonies...

  Then too, while European or American prospectors were roaming the countryside in order to discover riches in the subsoil, people thought about the soil itself, and the renaissance and development was seen a marked movement in the return of agriculture. In agronomy, the old systems were overturned by unexpected applications of new science. It was high time that those “new sciences” came to the aid of the good goddess Ceres, who was a little too backward, no longer able to succeed in nourishing all her children with methods dating from the emergence from the terrestrial paradise.

  Today, electricity is the great slave, the universal workhorse, which human beings put to all tasks. They demand therefrom the most improbable services, the rudest and hardest labor, titanic efforts and the most minute and delicate operations. Obey, slave! Power the giant pile-drivers and the slender needles transpiercing mountains. They also say to it: “Make the wheat and vegetables grow, warm the blood of our vines, make the peas and potatoes prosper!” And electricity obeys.

  Look at our countryside planted with tall stakes bearing bizarre accessories, covered by an immense and inordinately complex network of wires, comprising an interminable spider-web. That network is alimented by superpowerful electric machines, pouring their effluvia into the ground in order to stimulate the chemical operations underneath, and to obtain from our globe, which was said to be exhausted, crops worthy of the land of Canaan.

  The peasants strive to keep up, abandoning the ancient routines; the schools of agronomy furnish engineers and foremen. But that is insufficient. Powerful associations have been formed to organize that cultivation over vast extents, constructing model farms for rational exploitation; companies of workers pass from domain to domain with their machines, following a studied circulation.

  “My company also requires an agronomical branch,” Monsieur said, as if in jest. “In my organization too, people must involve themselves with cereals, wines, oils, etc.”

  And, advised by Monsieur d’Hérouville, he turned his sight in that direction too. He soon had strong interests in the phosphate mines of Algeria, and also sent prospectors in search of deposits in Morocco. Two of his sons were at the Centrale with one of Monsieur d’Hérouville’s sons; the third went to the École Supérieure d’Agronomie, and they all pursued studies brilliantly that would enable them to take leading roles in the general staff of the great Montgrabel Company.

  One day, Charles Montgrabel, who had just left the Centrale among the leading members of his class, went to join the d’Hérouville family in their collapsible house in one of the most picturesque areas of the Sacred Forest, in the Argonne. He arrived alone by aircycle in order to surprise his friends, desirous of talking to them about his hopes and ambitions, and especially glad to see Suzanne d’Hérouville.

  Monsieur d’Hérouville was no fan of present modes of locomotion. That man of the woods, determinedly rural, retained his sympathies for the old and most backward means of transportation; he went as far as the flying car, but, although a progressive man in other ways, he preferred to the fastest and most reliable airplane, the ancient horse, or at least the motorcycle and sidecar.

  As Charles was parking his aircycle under the hangar, he saw Monsieur d’Hérouville and his daughter Suzanne arriving from a path through the wood. Exclamations were uttered, embraces exchanged. Charles was very happy; it seemed to him that on recognizing the number of the airplane, Suzanne had blushed with pleasure.

  “Well, champion, are you content?” Monsieur d’Hérouville. “To graduate fourth in your class is very good.”

  “You know already?”

  “I saw your father yesterday, by tele. We had a long chat. My compliments, dear boy! And I’m delighted by your arrival, delighted. We’ll have some fine excursions together, you’ll catch our breath under my trees, and we’ll chat, especially about the Centrale, with Suzanne. We have a great deal to talks about regarding the Centrale.

  “Why is that? Why that in particular?”

  “Because, my friend it’s time for her to think about a career; Suzanne has made very suitable studies at school, her scientific preparation is good. we’re going to aim her toward the Centrale, and we expect that, with determination and perseverance, she’ll be able to apply next year.”

  “Oh,” said Charles, with a desolate expression.

  “Eh! What? What makes you take that downbeat tone? Does our determination surprise you? You don’t think she stands a good chance of being accepted? You have such a poor opinion to her brilliant faculties?”

  “No, no! What annoys me, on the contrary, is that she’ll be entering...”

  “Yes, she’ll be entering.”

  “And I’ve just left. I regret that she didn’t decide on the Centrale sooner.”

  “Yes, at the age of twelve, eh?”

  “Oh, that’s true. I’m being stupid. It’s me who’s leaving too soon, let’s say
no more about it. In three or four years, Suzanne will be an E.C.P. engineer too...”

  Suzanne laughed. She did not show any marked enthusiasm for the Centrale, but after all, it was necessary to embark on some career.

  She set to work without showing an excessive ardor or a very great confidence when she applied. She was rejected twice by pitiless men who were not moved to make concessions by her slightly troubled gaze. O sorrow! Scientific careers remained closed to her.

  It was necessary to go console her in the collapsible house, to which Charles hastened in order to offer his condolences.

  And it was then that Charles, already launched in his father’s great enterprises and in the research of the red coal, confessed to Suzanne’s parents and his own, that he was in love...

  Suzanne and Charles have now been married for six years and they have two charming children: young Gustave and Pierrette with the blonde curls. Their life is sweet for, in the course of his travels to the four corners of the world, Charles never fails to devote a part of his evenings to his family, thanks to a wireless tele apparatus that he transports into the depths of the most deserted wilderness.

  Monsieur Montgrabel tried, in the early days, to stimulate his daughter-in-law to some utilization of her intelligence adapted to her tastes and aptitudes. But were Suzanne’s aptitudes discernible? He studied her seriously with a gaze so clairvoyant in business matters, but a trifle distracted in other matters.

  “My dear child,” he said to her, “what if you were to study law? That wouldn’t be bad; there’d be a position for you in the litigation section of the Montgrabel organization…an agreeable distraction and a useful occupation...”

  Suzanne had therefore, commenced studies in law, again without enthusiasm. The spark was not there. The lessons in law lapsed and her husband, looking at here notebooks in order to tease her, found a good dozens little poems there distributed between a few lines of prose, under strange titles:

  On synallagmatic and unilateral contracts

  O songs of the stream hidden beneath the branches!

  Souls of the leafy woods, fresh and discreet murmur!

  The regime of privileges and mortgages

  Calm down, my soul. The breath of the breeze

  And the joyful sun

  Dissipates vain dreams...

  “Is Suzanne getting stuck into the law?” Monsieur Montgrabel asked his son. “Perhaps I’m mistaken, but it seems to me...

  “Law? But she’s abandoned it. Civil or commercial, it’s too arid for her dreamy nature. She’s begun to study high finance, which permits flights of fancy...”

  “Too many flights of fancy! It’s a good idea, all the same...”

  “Yes, but I think that it’s still beyond her aptitudes.”

  “Damn! That’s already quite a few ineptitudes to her account.”

  Charles laughed quietly. He had just discovered in his wife’s notebooks, it sonnets this time, but a little social and pastoral romance. An idyll between a Californian technologist and a young Picard woman—an idyll punctuated by considerations of the new situation of the semi-agricultural and semi-industrial populations of our modern rural regions.

  That was, therefore, how she employed her time, to console herself for her numbers. Charles did not reproach his wife; he thought that she was fine as she was. Like the indulgent husband of old, he limited himself to joking about her lack of seriousness and allowed her to divided her time between her literary distractions and a small collaboration in Madame Montgrabel’s social projects.

  IV. A Family Dinner at the Montgrabel House.

  The Only Futile Person in the Household

  Annette having talked, there was much discussion in the Montgrabel house about the famous lost handbag. Madame Charles Montgrabel went out every day, mysteriously taking air-taxis instead of going out in one of the house miniplanes.

  What did it signify? What important objects could the lost handbag contain? What secrets had the wind carried away with it into the air? And poor Monsieur Charles was still out there in Java, suspecting nothing, even though he sometimes called his wife on the tele during the day, uselessly, Madame having gone out to search!

  Monsieur Montgrabel senior manifested some surprise at these excursions, but he was so busy that such things soon slipped his mind. The conclusion of the staff, and Annette in particular, was that it was high time that Monsieur Charles came back and cleared up the mystery.

  Instead of simply telephoning, Suzanne had gone in person again to the Central Lost Property Office, after having also enquired at the smaller Neuilly office.

  Nothing. There was not the slightest trace of the modest red velvet handbag with the steel clasp, which Suzanne seemed to hold in such particular esteem.

  “What’s in it then?” one employee had the indiscretion to ask, irritated by her persistence. “Bank notes or love letters?”

  Suzanne ran away, more worried than ever, and went along the bank of the Seine on foot, in the region that the airtaxi must have been flying over a few days earlier.

  Young men from a nearby school manning hydroplanes were amusing themselves by performing stunts over the river.

  “Be careful! Look out!”

  That was addressed to Suzanne, who was getting too close to the edge.

  Abandoning her search, she went back up quickly and headed for the air-station at the Pont de Neuilly in order to get an air-taxi. She risked it. The sky was calm; there was no wind and not even the usual traffic above the elegant quarter and the shade of the Bois de Boulogne, for it was a day of air races and the time when airplanes and miniplanes were taking off from the terrace of Saint Germain for the race from Saint-Germain to Brest and back, a sporting solemnity similar to the old classic horse races.

  In the distance, toward the blue-tinted hills, above the innumerable villas scattered in parks and gardens, above the plains from which industry had fled, taking its factory chimneys to specialized regions, above Mont Valérien and all the villages that had become cheerful and florid again, the bright wings of airplanes could be seen from the Neuilly station, standing out against the verdure of the forests, and flocks of white airplanes taking off in groups at three-minute intervals in the direction of Brittany.

  Suzanne returned to the Montgrabel house pensively. As she landed on the flight terrace, a large aircraft appeared through the first clouds, veering in an expert curve. Suzanne had no need to raise her head to recognize the particular purr of her father-in-law’s airplane. She waited on the platform. Monsieur Montgrabel got down with his son Maurice and a gentleman with an important appearance.

  “My daughter-in-law, Madame Charles Montgrabel,” said her father-in-law to the gentleman. “Bonjour, Suzette! Dear child, may I introduce my friend Monsieur Larose, a former député...”

  “Madame,” said Monsieur Larose bowing.

  “…Whose seat a lady, Madame…Madame…I can’t remember, an advocate from Montpellier, has just stolen. Monsieur Larose is going to become my collaborator, I hope. Come in my dear friend.”

  Monsieur Montgrabel pushed Monsieur Larose into the left-hand elevator, descending toward his study, while Suzanne and her brother-in-law took the right-hand one in order to reach Madame Montgrabel’s office.

  “What does that gentleman do?” asked Suzanne.

  “You heard—Monsieur Larose is a fairly well-known politician. My father told me in a low voice, while nudging me with his elbow: ‘My future secretary, very probably.’ I’m not entirely sure what he meant by that. My father has been rather mysterious for some time. He’s preparing something. What? We’ll soon see... Bonjour, Maman! You look superb today!”

  “No,” said Madame Montgrabel. I’m always exhausted...”

  Madame Montgrabel was not alone in the little office annexed to the large office. There were three ladies with her—two of her daughters, Marcelle and Laurence, and a cousin, Madame Okonna—reclining in sumptuous Second Empire armchairs.

  The cousin had just return
ed from a three-week trip to Japan with her husband, an attaché at the Japanese embassy in Paris, in charge of commercial affairs.

  “And shall we see Cousin Okonna soon?” asked Maurice Montgrabel.

  “Certainly,” relied Madame Okonna. “This very evening. He’s very busy at the embassy, you understand. Affairs in progress to regulate, and an entirely new question of aratory machines—electric, natural—created by one of our most famous engineers.”

  “Good!” sad Maurice Montgrabel. We have our mechanical construction establishments too. Competition in the family, then?”

  The two sisters-in-law, Marcelle and Laurence, started laughing.

  “And what about us? You don’t know what Marcelle has just told me?” said Laurence.

  “You don’t know what Laurence has just told me?” said Marcelle.

  Further laughter burst forth. Madame Montgrabel laughed too,

  “Well,” said Marcelle, “great news, we’re all overjoyed. We’ve succeeded with the synthetic sheep.”

  “Well, Laurence continued, “we have in manufacture, in Australia, three thousand genuine sheep, alive, with authentic flesh, real legs of mutton, good cutlets, and wool into the bargain, while your synthetic sheep, my dear Marcelle, has no wool at all; it will never furnish enough to stuff a little mattress, your synthetic sheep in pill form!”

  Suzanne gazed at her two sisters-in-law with such a expression of astonishment and incomprehension that they pretended to be scandalized.

  “I observe with chagrin that Suzanne doesn’t understand,” said Marcelle, with great seriousness. “She still remains the futile person of the family. It’s deplorable!”

  “But what is the synthetic sheep?”

  “The other?” said Laurence. “The true sheep, you must know that one? Yes? Well, Marcelle’s synthetic sheep is in disloyal competition with the true sheep! O modern chemistry, yet another of your infamies!”

  As tea, sweets and little cakes were brought in, the laughter ceased momentarily.