The Eternal Flame

by Michel Corday

  “That’s idiotic,” said François, softly, putting the paper down.

  Laronce handed him another paper. “Read this one.”

  It was a paper whose proprietor had wit, so all his editors were constrained to be witty. They tried. This time, the sentences fluttered, assuming the light step off ballerinas.

  We have been promised miracles. It was all over for the laborious work of coal mines. The shafts were going to be filled in, and the oil-wells too. People would dance on them as on the ruins of the Bastille. No more hard work, no more effort. Better still: no more war. We were assured of comfort for all and a perpetual spring. In brief, the Age of Happiness. Alas! Why did the mediocre inventor of the Starter not meditate upon fables and their wisdom? The adventure of Perrette and the jug of milk would have deterred him from promising so much.7 Today, the jug is in pieces. Goodbye calf, cow, pig, brood. And he would also remember that in wanting to emulate the ox, the frog inflated himself so much that he burst.

  Miraculously—it is the only miracle in this affair—the explosion at Bellevue did not claim any victims. Let us rejoice that it has only provoked outbursts of laughter.

  “Do you want more?” Laronce asked. “Here. Look at the headlines. The End of a Dream. Alarm Signal. The Final Point. The Coup de Grâce. The Firework. Here’s one that takes the form of a road sign: Warning: Dangerous Corner. Another that of electricity substations: Danger of Death. Do you want to read them?”

  François pushed them away with his hand. He smiled palely. “No thanks. That’s enough.”

  He needed to be outside, free and alone. He was short of breath, his chest constricted. He rapidly took leave of his friend. His car was parked in a discreet side street behind the Madeleine. He sat down at the steering wheel and remained pensive.

  For the first time since he had published his discovery, he felt sorely hurt. He had dreamed of approval, gratitude, the fervor of the crowd. His strong and tender nature had hungered and thirsted for it. He was been wounded in the most sensitive part of his being.

  The bite of hatred had always plunged him into a sort of depression. It stupefied him. It acted on him like a venom that induced paralysis and provoked delirium. For a while, he had refused to believe it, and denied the evidence. One might have thought that the human being of the future already existed in him, a human being who would have discarded abject sentiments, in the same way that the useless and baleful appendix had been discarded. For baseness is not necessary.

  At the time of his initial success as a student, he had already experienced that strange incredulity. One of his masters had shown him an anonymous letter that had attempted to harm him, to hinder his career. It was an accumulation of filthy calumnies. Francois thought he had recognized the handwriting of an envious comrade, Bloch-Hébert. He was a sad monster, as unhealthy as a boil and as pretentious as a turkey. Because he had a hideous smile, he thought he was already Voltaire. With the proof in his hand, François had refused to believe it. He had denied it, repressed it. His mind had not been able to take it aboard, to absorb it. It was too gross, too dirty.

  Today, ten years later, before the wave of slurs, a part of him again refused to accept the evidence. Although he was suffering from it, he was tempted to deny it. To what were they obedient, the journalists who had written these venomous or perfidious articles? Obviously, they wanted above all to earn their living by serving the designs of their masters. But some of them must be sincere: those oppressed by all superiority; those who experienced, like dogs, the need to relieve themselves at the base of al pedestals; those who enjoyed the satisfaction of a natural malevolence; those who genuinely hated science and novelty; those, finally, who were truly convinced of the danger of the Starter.

  It was necessary, without delay, to face up to the mob, to break it, to drown out its clamor. Supporting himself on the steering-wheel, François straightened up. His weakness dissipated. He breathed deeply, and shrugged his strong shoulders. It was time to go back to Bellevue. He pulled away.

  “I’ll defend myself.”

  But how? The newspapers? He could no longer knock on any door. He had seen them successively slammed in his face. Now, in each of them, a judas-hole was open in which a weapon gleamed. How could he proclaim the truth? How could he explain the stupid injustice of those accusations? How could he persuade people that the Starter was no more dangerous than gas, steam or electricity? Certainly, there were means of propaganda other than the press: circulars, posters, cinema, the radio. But which should he choose? Obviously, he would be able to consult the administrators of Sidereal Energy, buy without their chairman, they would not exist. Then again, he was afraid of their courteous reproof, more certain than ever the day after the accident. Of, how he missed Chérance! He would surely have guided him through this difficult pass.

  But time was pressing—and suddenly, his decision was made. He would speak. That same morning, just as he was about to set out for Paris, Mariette Lizeray had called him on the telephone. He was aware of the reputation of her well-intentioned enterprise, Le Franc-Parler. She devoted her resources and her life to it. As soon as current events brought any personality into the light, she brought him by means of subtle urbanity to the platform she had founded. Authors explained their theses, politicians their doctrines, aviators their exploits, industrialists their methods and scientists their research. Those speeches were followed by a faithful, ardent and liberal public, and the microphone disseminated them all over the world.

  That morning, the moving spirit of the Franc-Parler had offered him her pulpit. Persuasive and pressing, she had shown him the med to clarify opinion, to underline the fortuitous nature of the accident. Anxious to see Laronce before anything else, he had put off his reply. Now he was determined to accept.

  As soon as he returned to Bellevue he called Mariette Lizeray. Immediately, they fell into accord on the necessity of acting quickly. They agreed that he would speak the following evening.

  The Franc-Parler’s base of operations was a converted theater in the European quarter. When François went on to the stage, the auditorium was packed. Mariette Lizeray took her place beside him, behind the green-topped table. She was a petite woman, pale and brunette, energetic and fragile, devoid of coquetry and ageless. She whispered to him: “It’s a full house. You have the honors of the stairway—there are people on the steps.”

  Spectators were indeed, for want of space, sitting on the steps of the two lateral staircases that linked the stage to the hall. Such an influx astonished him.

  Immediately, he found the same mental liberty as in his lecture at the Sorbonne. He amused himself by examining all the faces in the crowd. In the front row, Marianne and Lise were smiling at him. Papa and Maman had come from Briolle. Even Pierre Contal had accompanied them.

  The illustrious writer must be more convinced than ever that “it would all end badly,” but he was good beneath his violent fanaticism; he was quite capable of taking a malicious pleasure in seeing François in difficulty and, at the same time, of wanting to bring him the comfort and authority of his presence.

  That educated audience did in fact, appreciate the glory of Pierre Contal. And when Mariette Lizeray, in a brief introductory speech, congratulated herself on seeing the author of Génie antique at the Franc-Parler, the entire hall welcomed him with a fervent ovation.

  François took the floor. First he depicted the energy scattered everywhere, sometimes accumulating in matter and then returning to space “like those vortices of dust that the wind lifts over the road like phantoms, which then evaporate again.” He explained his discovery in its entirety in the accessible terms he had employed to reveal it to Laronce on the day when he had introduced “the miracle of the rose petal” for the first time.

  Without further delay, he explained the accident at Bellevue. He affirmed that the explosion had been caused by clumsiness, an unprecedented and certainly unrepeatable error of stupidity. His plea for the defense was profound and abundant, developin
g all the arguments he had wanted to spread via the Bonjour. In order to make a mental impression he repeated the analogy of the glass lens. Was it not inoffensive in itself? However, one could accuse it of being dangerous since it could by setting fire to a powder-keg, provoke a catastrophe.

  While he spoke, he watched the faces. They expressed a taut attention. Only one member of the audience seemed distracted. He was sitting at the journalists’ table, at the foot of the stage to the right. He was visibly irritated. Perhaps he was simply annoyed at being sent to the Franc-Parler that evening in order to write a report. A total absence of chin further emphasized his bad-tempered expression. While his colleagues were taking notes, he was daydreaming bitterly, his nose and pencil in the air.

  From then on, for François, the rest of the audience no longer existed: not Marianne, not Lise, nor Papa, nor Maman, nor the illustrious Pierre Contal, nor the countless, invisible radio listeners. For him, it was uniquely a matter of interesting, seducing and possessing the man without a chin.

  With broad strokes, he indicated the imminent miracles that could be expected from that limitless and cost-free energy: the hard labors abolished, the others lightened, the comfort spread, the intemperate weather mastered. He delighted in evoking as an example the happy metamorphosis of the capital, such as he had shown it, playfully, to little Claude on the terrace at Bellevue.

  But the surly journalist was no more moved by that than the two-year-old Claude had been.

  Then François talked about war. Such a profusion of energy would permit the conception of electrical warfare. Henceforth, at any distance, it would be possible to flatten an entire country, without a single person or stone remaining standing. It would be possible to cause all the powder in projectile or ammunition dumps to explode. It would be possible to stop all the engines on land and at sea, in the air or underwater. The mere threat of such a war would be equivalent to the suppression of war. For the deadly and sacrilegious formula “the inevitable war” it would be possible to substitute the comforting device “the impossible war.”

  A burst of applause saluted that great experiment, but the man without a chin was trimming his fingernails. Gradually, François became irritated, and raised the stakes. When the audience had calmed down, he resumed in a more aggressive tone, when seemed to be addressed to that recalcitrant listener.

  “Oh, I know that it’s fashionable, these days, to denigrate science. Celebrating its discoveries smacks of the distribution of prizes, schoolmasters’ lectures, democratic banquets. Away with all that! It’s fashionable, on the contrary to deplore discoveries, to proclaim that, far from constituting progress, they constitute a backward step, a return to barbarity. By using such language, one earns a badge of distinction. And note that the detractors of science are the first to call on its help and assistance. Does the most backward country squire see his child fall ill? Then, by telephone, even by wireless telegraph, he begs for a train, and automobile or an airplane to bring him the saving serum.”

  That sally appealed to the audience, who approved it with an amused purr—but the man without a chin, lowering his nose over his fascinating task, continued trimming his fingernails. François felt an imperious need rising within him to move the fellow. Then, while deploring the excesses of a technology still in its infancy—what is a century in human history?—he proclaimed his faith in the miracles of knowledge, in human destiny.

  “But it requires time for humans to improve their lot. Not seeing them evolve before our eyes, we believe them to be immutable. That is because the notion of duration, of long duration, is not yet familiar to us. Place yourself on a beach in front of a cliff. Think about the time that it required for those successive layers of sediment, of rolled flint, to be deposited in the bosom of the waters, to harden there, before forming the surface of continents. Well, to modify human beings, perhaps it will require as many centuries as to edify a cliff. But the human species will have all the time at its disposal that it needs to improve itself, precisely because of the unlimited energy of which it will henceforth be the master.”

  This time, the sulky journalist raised his head slowly and directed a dead gaze at the lecturer. Then, in order to retain that attention, to clarify that gaze, François understood that he was going to cut loose, that he was about to go all the way, that he was about to cross the frontier at which Chérance had advised him so forcefully to stop. In that man’s face he spat his secret thought, as one spits blood. Avid to convince him, he repeated the words that he had allowed to slip out when he had attempted to convince the great Pierre Contal.

  Yes, in millions of years, when the ardor of the sun weakened, humans would be able to move the Earth into other systems, toward the other suns that we call the stars, and which, successively, would pour out life. Thus they would be assured of a literally endless existence…and the human race would never disappear. Human genius would shone like an eternal flame. Humans would become godlike. Thus would be realized the promise of immortality that is in all religions, the intuition of the divine that is in all souls…never would a vaster hope be offered on Earth...

  But the man without a chin sniggered, and nudged his neighbor’s ribs with his elbow.

  VII

  The explosion at Bellevue had one consequence that François had not foreseen. In one day, it brought him into the light more than his discovery had in two years. Certainly, he was attacked, he was derided, he was called into question—but he was no longer ignored. On the contrary, he was hoisted into the glare of publicity.

  That is because a singular law governs the press of the current era. Every event of note enjoys favorable treatment. There is no admitted right to keep quiet about it. Better still, it is prominently displayed. All explosions merit column space. The mistrustful publicity that ordinarily does not allow anything to be celebrated gratuitously abandons its prerogatives as soon as there is a question, near or distant, of scandal. And the all-powerful barons who direct the press from a distance bow down before that privilege.

  The vogue then lifts its man up, like a tidal bore that overturns all the obstacles in its path. The Bonjour, after a brief hesitation, was obliged to obey that irresistible law. Laronce’s article appeared, twenty-four hours late.

  It is necessary to admit that the man with the pince-nez, although experienced in his profession, had not anticipated that turnaround. That is because he was short-sighted. Overexcited by the immediate difficulties that his friend had encountered, he had looked no further.

  Simultaneously annoyed and delighted to have lacked clairvoyance, he explained to François in an angry tone: “Obviously, I ought to have suspected it. It’s the aviator’s feat all over again. You remember the story of the pilot who beat the altitude record—he was the man who had been further from the Earth than anyone else. Thirteen kilometers…what a pedestal! What a unique glory! Well, no one talked about it. No one knew anything about him, even his name. You could have asked anyone in the world: “Who holds the altitude record?” and no one would have answered. One day, however, the rumor went around that his altimeter was faulty, and that he had never surpassed four thousand meters—and immediately, it was all over the press. For weeks on end his portrait was on the front page of every paper.”

  “Thanks for the comparison,” François said, cheerfully.

  “I know that the two cases aren’t identical,” Laronce admitted, acidly, “but you’ll agree that they present some analogy. On the one hand, an exploit unknown until it became debatable; on the other, an apparatus left in the shadows until it explodes.”

  François smiled at the gibe indulgently. Evidently, the explosion had attracted attention to him, and to his apparatus. That was what had led him to speak at the Franc-Parler. That was what had launched him, spread his lecture far and wide, as a charge propels a projectile.

  Oh, when Mariette Lizeray had telephoned him so early, on the day after the accident, he had not suspected that she was simply the first, that hers would be followed b
y so many other requests, that she was the harbinger of the vogue.

  The vogue...

  It flattered his great need for encouragement, for fervor. At the same time, he was aware of the spice of irony when he remembered how it had come to him.

  Was it not comical to see his portrait, which had appeared discreetly on the inside pages of a few publications when his discovery was announced, now displayed on the front pages of all the dailies and all the magazines? That portrait had even escaped the newspapers to leap on to the cinema screen. Better still: henceforth, it spoke. A film with sound had been made of the inventor in his laboratory. He had even been obliged to learn a brief speech by heart, in order to appear to be improvising it in front of the camera.

  He said: “The limitless and cost-free energy that we shall have at our disposal henceforth will suppress the hardest labor, lighten others and make them more flexible, ameliorate agriculture, regularize the seasons, spread wellbeing and finally render war impossible. And it will undoubtedly permit the planet to prolong its existence indefinitely, and human progress to continue indefinitely, to shine like an eternal flame.”

  He had never discovered so many friends as since the accident. Childhood companions, comrades of the college or the laboratory, felt admiration for him because they saw his portrait everywhere. The remembered him, wanted to see him again, ingenuously displayed their pride in knowing him and in being able to say: “I know him.” That too was both comical and touching.