In A Thousand Years

by Emile Calvet

  The splendor of the landscape made a vivid impression of Gédéon.

  “After the pen, the brush,” he said, clutching his album convulsively, forgetting that his artistic development had not surpassed the limit at which the debutant ought prudently to place an explanatory caption at the foot of his picture, if he wants anyone to know what it was that he was trying to paint.

  A few minutes later, the strangers took possession of their apartments, in which a provident hand had accumulated everything that might be agreeable without prejudice to that which might be useful.

  Seven o’clock was chiming when the passengers met up again around a table as sumptuous as that in the Place des États.

  After a meal brightened by a conversation full of charm, gaiety and sympathy, all the guests went down to sit on the terrace, under the silvery rays of the full moon.

  At nine o’clock, the groups separated.

  Antius and his companions went back to their wing.

  As he went into his bedroom, the doctor could not help a cry of grateful admiration on seeing a superb nightcap lying on his pillow, worthy of coiffing a king of Babylon.

  Before mounting an assault on a bed as large as an Egyptian mausoleum, Terrier wondered anxiously: “How are we going to get on with our scientific work?”

  For his part, Gédéon, casting a final glance over the landscape bathed in the soft light of the night-star, wondered aloud: “Which should it be—conventional or impressionist?”

  An hour later, the god of sleep covered all the inhabitants of the African palace with his mantle.

  XXIV. Conclusion

  The inhabitants of the Montparnasse quarter will certainly not forget the events that marked the morning of 15 June 1880 for a long time.

  That day, at half past seven in the morning, a respectable lady surrounded by sympathy and general consideration, Madame Madeleine Boquet, housekeeper for twenty-five years of the celebrated physician Doctor Antius, one of the leading lights of the arrondissement, had hurtled out of her master’s house uttering loud screams and run toward the crossroads at the Observatoire.

  It is recognized that the first witness of this event, already extraordinary, was the doctor’s nearest neighbor, the grocer Collardot, a self-important and dogmatic man, who was, at that moment, standing on the threshold of his shop with his arms folded, waiting for customers.

  At the sight of the old lady running as far as her old legs could carry her and uttering inarticulate cries, the estimable shopkeeper could not help remarking to his three assistants, who were lined up behind him: “Something’s happened at the Doctor’s, for sure.”

  Fifteen paces further on, Monsieur Camuzet, manufacturer of leather goods and member of the Arbitration Council, standing in the middle of the road with his nose in the air, in order to determine whether the weather was favorable for a long-debated family trip to the countryside, had almost been knocked over by the aged housekeeper, who had, moreover, not even said sorry.

  A third witness, the manufacturer of funerary ornaments Balochard, whose name was perhaps unsuited to his profession41 but was superabundantly justified by the joviality of his character, had been unable to keep his impressions to himself, and had gone to join the two abovementioned businessmen, who were already delivering themselves to all sorts of conjectures.

  A few of the grocer’s clients, having arrived at that moment, joined in the conversation, and, in spite of the habitual tranquility of the quarter, as passers-by began to stop, one after another, a considerable crowd had soon formed in the middle of the street.

  As always happens in such cases, all kinds of suppositions, from the simplest to the most extravagant, had not taken long to be voiced.

  Contrary to the aphorism claiming that truth emerges from discussion, a quarter of an hour later, the original cause of the assembly, drowned in hypotheses and successive affirmations, had been entirely forgotten.

  An expert ear, which might have been able to grasp all the conversations agitating seven or eight separate groups, would have heard a curious specimen of the kind of lucubration that emerges every day in the crowds on the public highway.

  “Have the murderers at least been arrested?” asked a timid little rentier who was on his way to take his habitual stroll beneath the chestnut-trees of the Luxembourg.

  “Four have been arrested,” was the confident reply of a local barber, who, razor in hand, had casually abandoned a client soaped up to the eyebrows.

  “It’s said that there were forty in the gang,” said a third.

  “Has there been a crime?” asked a new arrival.

  “I’m afraid so,” formulated a butcher’s boy.

  “The smoke could be seen from here,” observed someone in the next group.

  “Two firemen have already been injured,” added his interlocutor.

  “As plain as I’m seeing you, Monsieur,” said an art student, “I saw the horse going into the shop.”

  “No one knows who started it, you say? That will make things difficult for the commissaire.”

  “There’s only one things to do—have all those who’ve been bitten put down,” proposed a man who did not beat about the bush.

  When the commentaries were exhausted, the crowd gradually dispersed, and twenty minutes later all that remained were have a dozen idlers who had turned the conversation to the ministry.

  On the other side of the road, the wreath-merchant, who had remained on sentry duty at the grocer’s door, summoned the latter—who, with his pen behind his ear, hastened to come running.

  “I’ve just seen Mère Boquet going past with Doctor Dulaurier,” said Balochard.

  “You know him, then?” asked the other.

  “Do I know him! A man who ‘s so good for my business!”

  Their neighbor Camuzet, who was interrogating the sky again, was hailed by his two friends, and, after a brief conference, the three businessmen declared unanimously that not merely neighborliness and solidarity, but also the profound esteem that they professed for Doctor Antius’ household, made it their duty to go and make direct enquiries about the events that had thrown the entire quarter into turmoil.

  In consequence, they headed for the doctor’s house, followed at a distance by the group of idlers.

  Having arrived at the door, which was ajar, the grocer bravely went into the garden and as followed by the leather-worker, who hesitated momentarily but was carried forward by a vigorous push from the maker of funerary emblems. Scarcely had the latter crossed the threshold than he slammed the door in the faces of the rearguard.

  The three men, having arrived at the end of the path, went into the house, which seemed to be deserted. Having remained momentarily indecisive, they were suddenly orientated by the sound of Madame Boquet’s voice. They went along the corridor and into the interior courtyard.

  The three shopkeepers then perceived Doctor Dulaurier, who, hoisting himself up on his stork-like legs, was plunging an attentive gaze into the celebrated physician’s laboratory.

  On hearing the newcomers, the housekeeper had turned round, and, just as the grocer was about to explain his presence and that of his companions with a few well-chosen words, she sobbed: “Oh, my good neighbors, if you knew what misfortune has just struck our quarter! My poor master and his two friends died last night. All three of them are locked in the laboratory. And to think that I only found out this morning when I went to wake Monsieur…I found the bedroom empty, and...”

  “Madame Boquet,” Dulaurier interjected, “we need to get in, although the door’s locked from the inside. We don’t have time to go and look for a locksmith. Perhaps there’s still time to save them. I’m going to break a pane and open the window. One of these gentlemen can climb in and open the door. Which of you would like to undertake the mission?”

  “Me,” cried the brave Balochard. “It’s the least I can do for the physician.”

  On that assurance, the doctor used his key to break the window-pane, which shattered. Then, p
utting his hand inside, he unfastened the catch and pushed the frame. The window opened abruptly.

  The physician leaned forward and, having broadly dilated his monumental nose, which plunged into the room, he said, calmly: “There’s no harmful gas in there.”

  Balochard, whose head scarcely reached the window-ledge, was vigorously hoisted up on to the sill. Scarcely had he darted a glance inside the laboratory, however, than he nearly fell backwards because of the sudden emotion caused by the spectacle that met his eyes.

  Three deathly pale men, immobile, their features violently contracted, where lying back in large armchairs. Next to them, a large copper lamp, doubtless lit a long time before, was on the point of going out, casting a yellow glow over the funereal scene.

  After a moment’s hesitation, the tradesman leapt courageously down to the flag-stones and ran to open the door to his companions.

  Camuzet and Collardot hazarded a glance and recoil in alarm.

  Dulaurier, who had seen many others, hastened toward the three victims, whom he examined in turn.

  “God be praised!” he cried. “Our friends are in good health.”

  Although it seemed to them to be exaggerated, this opinion caused an immoderate joy to all the onlookers.

  Old Madeleine threw herself to her knees, thanking Providence, while the wreath-maker sketched a dance-step.

  Reassured by the doctor’s exclamation, the grocer and the leather-merchant had entered in their turn.

  “Now it’s necessary to bring them round,” declared the physician.

  “If it’s a matter of an operation, I’ll go, for it’s sure to make me feel ill,” admitted Camuzet, ingenuously.

  “It’s sufficient to moisten their heads forcefully and continuously,” said Dulaurier. “All three of them are under the influence of a long-lasting congestion, which might have had a fatal result.” And he sent the housekeeper to fetch cloths and cold water.

  What the Devil could they have drunk to put themselves in that state? the doctor wondered. Even the liveliest only has a pulse-rate of sixty. Why are they holding hands? There’s a mystery in this that intrigues me to the highest degree.

  Madame Boquet came back with three napkins and two jugs full of water.

  Dulaurier assigned everyone a post. On his orders, Collardot covered Antius’ head with the cloth, previously soaked in cold water. Camuzet and Balochard applied the same treatment, the former to the physicist and the latter to Gédéon.

  The housekeeper handed full glasses to the three operators in turn, who had soon conscientiously instituted a triple cascade.

  After a quarter of a hour, the hands relaxed—a phenomenon that appeared to the doctor to be a good augury. Half an hour later, Gédéon uttered a profound sigh and opened his eyes slightly, then immediately closed them again, murmuring something unintelligible. The young man turned over on to his side, and appeared to fall profoundly asleep.

  A short time afterwards, Terrier and Antius presented exactly the same symptoms.

  The practitioner suspended the douches and was able to observe the pulse-rates of the three patients had regained the normal level.

  “They’re sleeping peacefully,” he said. “In half an hour or so, I think they can be woken up without risk.”

  The tradesmen stood back and went to sit down at the laboratory table. There, they were able to exchange in whispers the reflections suggested to them by the extraordinary event that had unfolded before their eyes.

  Madame Boquet, choked by emotion, kept a close watch on the three diners of the previous evening.

  Twenty minutes had scarcely gone by when Gédéon stretched his legs, opened his eyes abruptly and, under the influence of a singular hallucination, launched himself toward a jar full of copper sulfate, which he picked up and clutched to his bosom, crying: “Éva, my child, we’ll never be separated again!”

  Without saying a word, Dulaurier went to seize the young man’s arm. The latter put up no resistance, and meekly allowed himself to be led to his armchair, into which he fell back, without letting go of his bottle.

  Shortly afterwards, to the increasing amazement of the three worthy bourgeois, who had already been astonished by the previous scene, Antius stood up and shouted, angrily: “Is that imbecile going to send his entire life making plates of spinach on canvas?” And he fell backwards into his seat.

  “What the devil is the third one going to say?” said Balochard.

  They did not have long to wait for an answer.

  After passing his hand slowly over his forehead, the physicist moved his lips gently. “How much force can liquefied hydrogen deliver?” he murmured.

  “Don’t worry, Messieurs,” the doctor said to the obliging neighbors. “This is the end of some formidable nightmare. There’s no longer anything to fear with regard to the condition of these gentlemen; in half an hour, at the latest, they’ll be on their feet. It only remains for us to thank you sincerely for your kind assistance.”

  The estimable tradesmen only withdrew after a formal promise had been made to recall them in case of any problems, and they promised the physician to maintain absolute silence as to what they had seen.

  The secret was so well kept that within a radius of five hundred meters, that same evening, from the porters’ lodges to the mansards, there was no talk of anything but the accident, with all the variations of all the usual commentaries.

  Two hours later, Dulaurier, Antius, Terrier and Gédéon, sitting at table in the dining room, launched an assault on a marvelous feast that Madame Boquet had prepared to celebrate the resurrection.

  Epilogue

  The rapid voyage that they had just made in the future world impressed the three heroes of this story variously.

  That same day, the physicist, under the influence of a profound preoccupation, went back to his laboratory and covered large sheets of Bristol paper with technical formulas. The following day, seconded by young Rastoin, his assistant, he set up a powerful apparatus designed for the liquefaction of hydrogen. It was eight o’clock when he came out of his study. Ten paces from his door he stopped abruptly in the middle of the street and slapped his forehead.

  “The solution to the problem of aerial navigation is there!” he exclaimed.

  The following Thursday, Antius, frequently interrupted by applause, read a very remarkable paper to the Académie, which dealt with the particular action of certain vegetal alkaloids on the nervous centers.

  The next day, he received a visit from Gédéon, who came toward him with a grave and compassed step.

  “Uncle,” said the young man, “the sojourn we’ve just made in a world in which everyone is honest, good, hard-working and educated has led me to a sincere resolution. I want to become a serious man.”

  The doctor, convinced that his nephew was planning an assault on his wallet by means of a new kind of skirmish, contented himself with smiling.

  “In November,” the young man went on, coolly, “I shall enroll in the Faculty of Law.”

  Antius raised his head.

  “And tomorrow, I start work as Maître Desiflard’s clerk.”

  The doctor’s eyebrows furrowed. He must need a large sum, he thought. “Well, my lad, what can I do for you?”

  “Accompany me to your notary’s office and act as guarantor of my conduct.”

  The young man’s serious tone made an impression on the scientist. “I’ll take you at your word,” he said. “In any case, it’s necessary to strike while the iron is hot.”

  They went out.

  Two hours later, Maître Desiflard, convinced in his turn, arranged for his new clerk to start the next day.

  Eight o’clock was chiming at the École des Mines when Gédéon came to take his place at his desk. He gravely put on a pair of lustrine sleeves and flexed the nib of his pen twice with the nail of his index finger.

  After a fortnight, the head clerk said, in an oracular tone: “Monsieur Cahusac will make a first-rate notary.”

  The
certainty of this flattering prediction increased by the day, by virtue of the chronometric exactitude and indefatigable zeal that the future lawyer brought to his new functions. His fantastic wardrobe, which had previously had the privilege of causing the yapping voices of the clothes-merchants who passed beneath his window to increase their pitch by an octave, had been philanthropically taken to the nearby night-shelter. Severely dressed in black from head to toe, the model clerk had adopted without difficulty the gravity of bearing and language that constitutes the essential ornament of the notariat.

  While passing through the various stages of his study at regular intervals, he rigorously followed the course at the School of Law, and the professors counted him among the most meritorious of the cohort, as honorable as it was restricted, of hard workers.

  He had just won the first prize in Roman Law when Maître Desiflard confided the difficult position of Head Clerk to him.

  Our hero was at the top of his profession. The remarkable aptitude for business that developed so miraculously within him preserved the capital of his clients on many an occasion from ambushes of every species with which the world of speculation is bristling.

  He had become the oracle of the quarter.

  Chosen as arbiter in several important affairs, his sagacity, his impartiality and his conciliatory spirit had always made peace between the adversarial parties, who thus found themselves spared the murderous gears of court procedure and perilous contact with the three men of law whose portraits he had once sketched with so much verve and comical humor.

  A year later, Gédéon came down the steps of the School of Law, laden with the congratulations of his professors, who had just conferred his degree upon him.

  Antius, marveling, did not know what cause to attribute to the profound revolution that had occurred within the young man’s life. One day, however, having reflected on the subject for some time, he exclaimed: “I’ve got it! My nephew really has aged a thousand years.”