I stood in front of my upholsterer, rapt. Never had I suspected him of being well-informed on these sorts of things.
“The brute matter has now been sufficiently warmed up and ground down,” he went on. “Some of these volcanoes are beginning to die down; their fire is becoming central. The moment has arrived when the germs of animate beings can develop here, and they will develop, at first to excess and with prodigious rapidity. Examine the terrain on which we’re treading at this moment; every atom of matter here is restless, avid for friction. Throw down an acorn here and it will germinate instantly, immediately growing and pushing up towards the heavens; tomorrow there will be an oak-tree, which will have taken on immense proportions in no time at all—but that gigantic tree will soon perish, empty and flaccid, exhausted by its effort.
“Instead of an acorn, set down the egg of a lizard here, or that of a hummingbird; out of it will come an eagle or a crocodile. This is the phenomenal epoch of monsters, of which Monsieur Cuvier had spoken to you, and the Marquis de Laplace before him. Here the globe is so avid to produce that everything that has form is alive. Here, a wooden horse will become a horse of flesh and bone, a doll will become a woman—and we ourselves, if we prolong our sojourn here imprudently, might well be transformed into giants.”
I took three steps backwards. Monsieur Durand took hold of my arm again, with a smile full of irony. “Now, my dear client,” he continued, “do you understand why, without any witchcraft on my part, the mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell of your bed, the leather and horsehair of your chairs, the feet of your night-stand and Bernard de Palissy’s frogs and serpents, as well as the people in your tapestry and Giotto’s painting, tried to recreate their life, their form, their activity? And also why, without any other central heating but the volcano that warmed the ground beneath your feet, you almost died of asphyxia? Whose fault is that? Is it mine, who was only carrying out your instructions, eh? Answer me.”
I gave him no answer; I had none to give. Besides, I was quite out of breath, with my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. The open air had become as hot as that of the grotto. Having almost died of cold on the Moon, I didn’t want to meet my end by virtue of an excess of heat; in any case, the prospect of turning into a giant was not at all tempting to my vanity.
I looked down at myself…my feet had already begun to develop considerably; my knees seemed to me to be more highly placed than before…
I hastened to quit Monsieur Le Verrier’s planet, my mind anxiously full of the idea that creation is not yet terminated, and that God, instead of being at rest, as tradition affirms, is actively continuing his work.
Adrien Robert: War in 1894
(1867)
Adrien Robert was the principal pseudonym employed by Adrien-Charles-Alexandre Basset (1822-1869), who could not use his familiar name—he was called Charles within the family—because his father, André-Alexandre Basset had already used the by-line Charles Basset in building a successful career as a dramatist. Adrien Robert was the by-line attached to a number of feuilleton serials of a more-or-less melodramatic nature, mostly in the Journal pour tous, beginning with Les Amours mortels [Fatal Love Affairs], reprinted in book form in 1857, and concluding with Le Bouquet de Satan [Satan’s Bouquet], posthumously reprinted in book form in 1872. The author’s early work, however had mostly consisted of humorous short stories, many of which were collected in Contes excentriques [Eccentric Tales] (1855) and Nouveaux contes excentriques [More Eccentric Tales] (1859), the first of which was initially signed Charles Newil and the latter Charles Newill; those collections were, however, reissued under the Adrien Robert by-line when it became more famous, and the best of all the author’s collections, Contes fantasques et fantastiques [Offbeat and Fantastic Tales] (1867), was only issued under that name, in an edition handsomely illustrated by Horace Castelli.
The only one of Robert’s works that retained much of a reputation after his premature death was the folkltale-based Jean qui pleure et Jean qui rit [John Who Weeps and John Who Laughs] (1859), which was not only lighter in tone but more consciously sophisticated than his other novels; he wrote a stage version of it in collaboration with his fellow feuilletoniste Paul Féval, to whom Contes fantasques et fantastiques is fulsomely dedicated. Robert’s short stories are, however, considerably more adventurous thematically and often quite original. “La guerre en 1840” is one of three items in his last collection of some interest with respect to the history of scientific romance, the others being “La main embaumée” (tr. as “The Embalmed Hand” in News from the Moon and Other French Scientific Romances) and “Berthold Schwartz,” an account of the mythical inventor of gunpowder.
“La guerre en 1894” was probably written only a few months before the publication of the collection; internal evidence strongly suggests that it was inspired by the extensive sequence of invasions carried out by Prussia in the latter months of 1866, beginning with the annexation of the Duchy of Holstein in June of that year: invasions that laid the foundations of the unification of Germany, and its establishment as an ambitiously bellicose nation-state. The story thus anticipated the boom in future war fiction that began in England in 1871, under the immediate provocation of Prussia’s successful invasion of France. Anxiety regarding the probable effects of future technological developments on warfare was communicated to France on a much more generous scale in the 1880s, where it was extravagantly dramatized by Albert Robida—thus providing the fledgling international genre of scientific romance with one of its key subgenres—but Robert’s brief anticipation of chemical warfare is entitled to be regarded as a significant and prophetic precursor.
CADET SCHOOL FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF ARMIES
To Monsieur Edmond R , captain of the first battery of steam bombardiers, at Strasbourg.
Grand Duchy of *** , June 5, 1894.
I have finally succeeded in discovering the great state secret that has intrigued me so powerfully during the month I have spent in the territory of the Grand-Duke *** (a tract of about 15 square leagues). As this discovery cannot fail to interest you from the double viewpoint of politics and the art of war, I am sending you a few pages from my travel-notepad.
At the Queen of Hungary hotel, where I established myself, in the salons of the Kursaal, at the Great Elector Bierhaus, to which I went from time to time to empty a few seidels with a dozen students from the university, at the public bath-house where I performed my morning ablutions—in the company of an old Austrian general, ankylotic from top to toe thanks to five wounds received in the war against Prussia in 1866—from dawn to dusk, sitting down, standing up or lying down, in sunshine or rain, in good humor or black depression, I heard these three words perpetually whistling in my ears: Cadettenschulefur die Ganzlichearmeenzerstorung! Which means “Cadet-School for the Complete Destruction of Armies”: a pretty formula, which outdoes the most ferocious advertisements for insecticide powders by as much distance as separates the human race from the tribe of Reduvians.48
However, the Cadettenschulefur, which only got on my nerves at first, began to worry me. The Grand Duke had sent all his rifled cannon, howitzers and mortars to the foundry, and the Ministry of War had made a deal to sell all the Grand-Ducal army’s Dreyse rifles—weapons employing the Papferstrof system, firing 35 rounds per minute—to a small South American republic.49 The entire cavalry, save for the 20 men-at-arms allotted to the service of the community of thieves, has returned to pedestrian status, but the 200 men comprising the main body of His Excellency’s army have received new armaments and a special uniform.
Officers and soldiers carry a long bronze-plated iron blowpipe, and a cartridge-case containing wooden darts fletched with swansdown and terminating in a little glass capsule. In addition, each one has in his belt a wickerwork-clad bottle, the metal stopper of which is flared, like the openings of apparatus that is used to anaesthetize patients with chloroform.
The uniform is made of very light black leather, with red braid; a number embroidered on t
he collar is the only thing serving to distinguishing the officers. Corporals open the series with the number 1, and the field-marshal closes it with the number 13. These numbers are so small that one can hardly make them out from five or six paces away, but the numbering system—borrowed from the Watchmen of London—seems to me to be very advantageous in the field, especially since the creation of units of sharpshooters, specially charged with creating vacancies in the ranks of enemy officers.
This paltry little army maneuvers 20 so-called compressed-air catapults mounted on wheels and considerably complicated by gears—which, I am assured, launch volleys of a special sort nearly 300 meters. But what is the special nature of these volleys, and what do the glass capsules fired by the blowpipers contain? Only General Moufette, director of the Cadet-School (I shall omit the rest of the formula henceforth) and the Grand Duke knew that terrible state secret.
My old Austrian general, who is very much in the know with respect to these matters, gave me some very curious information yesterday while we were plunged chin-deep in the redemptive well known as the Fiery Achilles,50 in which one would be able to cook crayfish in two hours.
“General Moufette,” he said to me, “has only been under the flag for 18 months. He’s an ex-apothecary from Louvain, who has led a very eventful life. A very skilful chemist, Moufette—some names are predestined51—was searching for a new gaseous compound to destroy a legion of rats installed in a large Beguinage.52 He asphyxiated his assistant in a quarter of a second, killing him stone dead—accidentally, of course—by virtue of having forgotten to put a stopper in a certain glass tube connected to a boiling retort.
“The sacrifice of an apothecary’s assistant is always a painful matter, I admit, and to begin with, Moufette, as a Christian, was afflicted by bitter regrets, but the second quarter of an hour was an apotheosis, a demigod-like triumph for the chemist.
“To confess the truth to the law, which loves circumstantial details and scientific explanations, would have been to deliver the secret of the prodigious chance discovery, to annihilate at a single stroke an entire future of glory and wealth. The apothecary made a heroic resolution; he buried his victim in his cellar and, under the pretext of going to Antwerp to by a cheap consignment of quinine bark—Cinchona scorbiculata—he fled to Brussels, where he took the train for Cologne that same evening. He preferred to be taken for a murderer and save the strongbox—which is to say, the discovery.
“Two months later, he performed a decisive experiment in front of the Grand Duke of and a commission appointed by the Ministry of War, asphyxiating at a distance of 150 meters three men condemned to death by the high court, lent for the demonstration of the system. Immediately created a baron and battlefield general, Moufette was also charged with organizing without delay the Cadettenschulefur die Ganzlichearmeenzerstorung, at a salary of 20,000 florins a year. Since then, with the authorization of the Grand Duke, he has added the name of Bellone to the name of Moufette, to give it little more shine.
“He has converted a former powder-magazine, sited three leagues from the capital, into a vast chemistry laboratory and arsenal of war. It’s there that the cadets prepare, under his direction, the capsules and shell-casings of blown glass for the blowpipers and war-catapults, which he immediately fills with a yellow liquid, which evaporates into smoke on contact with the air.
“These asphyxiating capsules, which are no larger than a hazelnut, break on impact with the soil and kill everything within 100 square feet, even more if there is a wind. The shell-casings, which contain two liters of liquid, can wipe out a battalion at a single stroke. The skill of the shooters consist of aiming four paces in advance of the enemy.
“A few days before your arrival, there was a blowpipe duel between two captains on the drill-field. The younger, who was from the Cadet-School and was reputed to be the finest shot in the Grand Duchy, broke his capsule on one of the buttons of his adversary’s uniform. The latter fell down dead without having had time to blow out his own projectile.”
Drawing closer to me on the steps of the bath, the old general whispered: “I’ve heard rumor in the offices of the Minister of War that a top secret field-laboratory is being constructed for an imminent expedition; I have every reason to suppose that the Grand Duke has the firm intention of annexing France to his Duchy, having long desired to possess a coast. You understand very well, my dear sir, that with the means of destruction at his disposal, his army will be under the walls of Paris within a month, and that the steam-artillery of which you are so proud will be no use at all. Ten Moufette-bombs on Paris, and that’s your nationality done for.
“General Moufette’s secretary, who was formerly my administrative officer, has told me confidentially that there are 15 tropical hardwood barrels in reserve in the arsenal, labeled thus:
For an army of 1200,000 men.
Half for 60,000.
For a cavalry division.
(Ultra-concentrated).
Half 30-inch shells.
“In sum, there’s enough there to kill a million men.
“It’s forbidden, on pain of death, for foreign members of the establishment to go into the arsenal building, but the Ministry of War issues permits to visit the laboratory and the glassworks on Mondays from noon to four p.m. If you are would like to undertake such an excursion, I shall have two entrance tickets, and I am happy to offer you a place in my caleche.”
I accepted enthusiastically.
Eugène Mouton: The Origin of Life
(1877)
Eugène Mouton (1823-1905) was the son of a military officer who spent his childhood in Guadaloupe. He embarked upon a career as a lawyer which culminated in an appointment as a prosecutor in Rodez. He began writing humorous short stories on the side, using the pseudonym Mérinos [Merino sheep or wool], making his debut in Le Figaro in 1857, and gave up his legal career ten years later to become a full-time writer. He remained best known for his humorous short fiction, much of which was fantastic in a vein somewhat akin to the “nonsense literature” produced in England by Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and W. S. Gilbert, but he also wrote various non-fiction books, including one on French penal law and of the first ever guide-books for would-be authors. Partly inspired by the example of Mouton’s professionalism, his nephew by marriage, Paul Duval, went on to become one of the leading lights of the fin-de-siècle Decadent Movement as Jean Lorrain.
Mouton produced a number of items directly inspired by reading contemporary popularizations of science, of which “L’Origine de la vie” is one; the internal evidence suggests that it first appeared in 1877 before being reprinted in his collection Fantaisies (1883). Two other scientific romances, “L’Historioscope” (translated as “The Historioscope” in the Black Coat Press anthology News from the Moon and Other French Scientific Romances) and “La fin du monde” [The End of the World] had earlier been reprinted in Nouvelles et fantasies humoristiques (1872, by-lines Mérinos). The latter item offers an account of the end of the world quite different from the one briefly sketched out here.
Like Mouton’s other exploits in this vein, “L’Origine de la vie” exemplifies the perennial problem that early writers of scientific romance had in finding appropriate narrative forms for their speculative excursions, being more essay than story. It also provides a particularly clear illustration of the license that the adoption a humorous tone gave to a laconically casual imaginative extravagance that would have seemed inapt in more earnest work; in this sense, Mouton’s jesting exercises in scientific romance, uneasily but fruitfully suspended between fiction and non-fiction, laid groundwork for the more elaborate and sophisticated speculative adventures of Alphonse Allais, Alfred Jarry and Gaston de Pawlowski.
Given that the Earth was, in the beginning, a mass so incandescent that the most durable substances were then in a vaporous state heated to 2000 or 3000 degrees above zero, we cannot imagine, even in our dreams, that there was any organic matter therein.
Above 40 or 45 degrees, all orga
nic compounds are destroyed; the roast meat that we eat, even when it is cooked, is no more than 50 or 60 degrees above zero. Thus, the temperature of the Earth being immeasurably higher than our most thoroughly-cooked roasts, no organic life could ever have begun in such an environment, and if there had been any seed of life within it, it would have been annihilated. The igneous origin of our planet—take note of this point—is not, moreover, in any doubt; it is proven geologically and demonstrated astronomically by Laplace in his celebrated Précis de l’histoire de l’astronomie.
If one cannot contrive an alternative hypothesis to explain the origin of living creatures, it is necessary to conclude that they have not begun, and to conclude in consequence that, having not begun, they do not exist—which is absurd, to be sure, but much less absurd than the Darwinian hypothesis.
If, on the contrary, one wishes to claim that the first living beings appeared when the Earth had cooled sufficiently, one is no further forward, given that animals mostly eat one another and one is bound to wonder what the first ones lived on while awaiting the appearance of those which would serve as their prey.
One of two things must therefore be the case: either living things cannot, and therefore do not, exist; or, if they have been created and exist, Darwin’s theory is false.
With this starting-point clearly established in my mind, I was led to recognize that, in view of the indispensable relationships that make the existence of every organized creature a necessary condition of that of all the others, the appearance of living creatures upon the Earth could not have been other than simultaneous—not only for animals but for vegetables, because the chemical operations that render the air breathable are equally shared between vegetables and animals; if the animals ceased to respire, the vegetables would perish, and the other way around.
The Germans on Venus Page 11
