On the Brink of the World's End

by Brian Stableford

  XI. The Mores of the Moon

  The aerostatic experiment that I had carried out caused a great sensation in the capital. Among scientists it was talked about either as something insane or something very ordinary, among reasonable people as an interesting discovery, and among people belongs to what is known as high society as a curiosity, a new fashion. Everyone wanted to make my acquaintance; everyone claimed to have eaten with me and conversed with my in a familiar fashion, although many had not. My Sage and I were invited to several Societies. One day, we went to one that was reputed to be very fashionable.

  “An Observer ought to see everything,” I said. “Let’s go to observe.”

  On the way we went through a superb garden; the luxury and elegance of the people walking there were its finest ornament.

  “Everything here respires wellbeing, ease or wealth,” I said to my Sage.

  “The wellbeing that you attribute to this brilliant crowd,” he said, “is only apparent; it is to that appearance that people sacrifice, without examination, the laws of decency and Nature. That striking exterior and luxury is the parent of vices; it has taken the place of virtues; the consideration they attract has usurped them entirely. A man is not respected either for his probity or his morals, but for his carriages and his lackeys. It is not only among the opulent that evil dominates; among people of mediocre fortune it damages both the moral and physical faculties; to satisfy the requirements of opinion, the less fortunate man cuts back on the most pressing needs of Nature. A hairdresser or a merchant of fashionable clothing often takes home the supper of our most frugal housewives. Fops deceive some by means of a false glamour, and ruin others by means of obligatory credit; such a man makes himself considered by his attire and is greatly proud of its merit; it is the only one he has, and he owes it all to his tailor...”

  Scarcely had we arrived at the house where we were expected than the Lady had us introduced into her dressing-room; she absolutely wished it. The Divinity of that lovely Temple, while putting the final touches to the fashioning of her beauty, was receiving the incense of a few admirers. She responded to it by exercising the fortunate art of laughter, becoming impatient and being distracted, at will.

  “This hat is good for me,” she said, standing up to go out. “It gives me a girlish air which suits me infinitely.”

  Playing the simpleton, she ran into the drawing room where the company was, and threw her arms around the necks of all the ladies, embracing them very tenderly.

  “What amity and cordiality the women of this country show to one another!” I said in a low voice to my comrade.

  “These demonstrations,” he replied, “are scenes that the women have agreed among themselves to play. They want to give the men who see them a specimen of their tenderness, and the women they caress a proof of their talent for artifice. The majority of women detest one another; those that they like the most are those that they hate the least.”

  After having distributed general compliments, everyone wanted news, and everyone promised to tell a scandalous story. It was a tribute that was paid on a daily basis for the right to be admitted there.

  “Yesterday,” said a man, “I was with Madame ; she is crazier than one can imagine. One of her creditors came to paint the picture of his parlous state. ‘I’m ruined and without resource, the unfortunate told her, if you don’t pay right away. It’s not so much for me as for my wife and children; they’ll be reduced to the utmost poverty. You will be rendering life to a desperate family of you pay me what you owe.’

  “Initially moved by the unfortunate fellow’s tears, she was about to satisfy him when a reflection stopped her. ‘I’m in despair, she said, ‘at being unable to give you that sum, but I need it to buy fashionable earrings for the ball.’”

  Everyone started laughing except my comrade and me.

  A self-important little person took the floor. “You know Madame ***? There are few people who know her as well as her dear husband. Recently, in her boudoir with one of her lovers, she was so busy receiving the testimonies of his ardor that she neglected the precautions demanded by the mysteries of amour. All the doors were open.

  “The woman is entirely wrapped up in what she is doing. Her husband comes in without being heard and, seeing the breach that is being made in conjugal honor, cries, furiously: ‘My God, Madame, you ought to close the doors! To what would you be exposing yourself is someone other than me had come in?’”

  A man with a clerical collar and a short cloak announced an adventure in which he had played a role; after apologizing for the obligation in which he found himself to recount his good fortune, he commenced:

  “It is in the village, our poets say, that innocence and candor reign; you shall judge whether the gentlemen in question are mistaken. I was in a small provincial burg where, to pass the time, I was paying court to the charming wife of the local Aesculapius. Without much difficulty I persuaded that village beauty that nothing was more tedious and provincial than being faithful to her husband, which was not the custom in elegant society. Everyone knows how passionate provincial women are to copy rigorously all the manners of the capital.

  “One evening, reassured by the absence of her husband, my beauty wanted to try out the manners in question. I had already compared her favorably several times to women in high society, and the night was advanced during that sweet exercise when, by an inconceivable fatality, the husband arrived and obliged me to tear myself away from the arms of pleasure.

  “This was the cause of my disappointment. Under the pretext of caring for the invalids of the vicinity, the doctor had announced that he would not be home that night, but he was actually due to relieve his amorous ardor in the arms of the local president’s wife, who believed that the president was away dealing with affairs of the magistracy. The latter, however, had deceived his chaste spouse in order to fly to his tender beloved, the lieutenant’s wife, whose husband really was absent on more serious business.

  “The lieutenant’s wife was savoring securely, with her dear president, a pleasure that prohibition rendered more piquant; the president’s wife was happy in the arms of the doctor, and the doctor’s wife, without being aware of it, was avenging herself in mine for her husband’s infidelity. That chain of infidelities, that mutual displacement, that triple exchange of pleasure, would have been an impenetrable mystery for each of its initiates, but for one of those blows of fate that human prudence cannot anticipate. Expect the most terrible catastrophe.

  “The lieutenant had forgotten a document essential to his voyage; he arrives unexpectedly, and sees with his own eyes…how dangerous unexpected returns by husbands are to a household. Men of law rarely launch suits against one another; the lieutenant placidly sent the president away, who, on returning home, expelled the doctor, who came to expel me in his turn.

  “I can say in praise of the interested parties, that everything was returned to its place without overmuch fuss. Fortunately my estate as a bachelor did not permit me to find a wife on going home; I would have experienced the same fate as the husbands, and that series of incontinences would doubtless have been perpetuated to the lowest orders of the inhabitants.”

  The abbé,14 seeing that his story had amused, did not stop talking. He was a charming man, that abbé!

  “I can no longer write verses,” he said. “Poetry impassions me too much and that gives me bad nerves.” He assured us that he was working on a big book on an entirely new subject. “Artful politeness,” he continued, in the gravest tone, “and gallant knavery make women into actresses who are always on stage, and conceal the depths of their hearts. I want, however, to decipher their veritable sentiments and put their soul in evidence. In order to succeed in that I seize the brief instants when women are themselves; I extract Nature from the fact.

  “For example, while the keen sensations of voluptuousness plunge a beauty into the delirium of amour, among the sobs and surges to pleasure, the mouth babbles halting words, which are the language of Natu
re and gratitude. Those flashes of sincerity are too precious not to focus the attention of the Philosopher, so I have copied faithfully all the pretty exclamations that my good fortune has permitted me to collect. Such a Work has a right to lease the most severe public; I propose to submit it to the censure of the Academy. It will not fail to have its approval, as well as the red stamp. The production will bring me a great deal of honor...”

  After the chatter had continued for a long time in the same tone, the conversation came round to spectacles. The women permitted themselves to judge the actors and the authors at the whim of their caprices; extravagance and bad taste seemed to dictate their judgments, and yet the men who were listening to them, far from sustaining the cause of reason, allowed it to be outraged by the ladies in question and applauded their decisions.

  We left then, and I asked my companion why the men took pleasure in deceiving the women thus, avoiding enlightening them.

  “That’s not the point,” he replied. “That would be to contradict them, and one never contradicts the ladies. Besides which, it’s an established axiom of Society that a pretty woman is permitted to be unreasonable, to say and do foolish things, which are more gallantly described as caprices. As many of them believe themselves to be pretty, many of them use that permission, and it is a capital crime of lèse-gallantry for a man to suggest to a lady that she is not completely right. There are few men who would risk being criminal to that extent, and the majority prefer to applaud the imaginative vertigos of the fair sex...”

  XII. How I met Oë again, and what happened

  “O unique motor of souls! O most powerful of the Gods of the Earth! Sacred metal gold, you separate friends, you corrupt innocence, you give importance to the stupid, consideration to the wicked; you breed and embellish vice, you cover virtue in opprobrium, you make ingrates. Sacred metal gold, in spite of your prodigies, you never make the ambitious man wise, nor the schemer into an honest man...”

  It was thus that my sage comrade spoke, after having received the news of a treason even stranger for him than it was for me.

  I had been occupied for some time in the construction of an aerostatic machine for my departure for the Earth, before which I counted on carrying out a public experiment that ought to ensure me the honor of the discovery in that country, when I learned that my traveling companion Oë, the perfidious Oë, had stolen that sweet satisfaction from me and had eclipsed all my projects of glory.

  Having remembered the method that I had employed in his presence, he had succeeded, with the aid of a few Physicists, in fabricating a Balloon, and had amassed an immense sum by subscription.

  I wanted to tempt his honesty, so I presented myself during his experiment. He had the audacity to refuse to see me or recognize me.

  I eventually encountered him in a Society; I was about to heap him with reproaches but he admitted himself, without blushing, the irregularity of his conduct—which, according to him, was nothing but perfectly ordinary. In declaring to me that his only objective had been the fortune rather than the glory, he promised to publish authentically that it was to me that the discovery belonged. Thus the prize was divided into two lots: money and honor, and each of us was served in accordance with his inclination: the money for Oë and the honor for me.

  XIII. My Departure from the Moon

  Let us flee this ingrate planet, I said to myself; let us fly back to Earth and regain my homeland, the good city of Paris. One does not find schemers by prospectus there, ignorant men of projects who elevate their fortune and glory at the expense of the labor of others. There is not so much decency, but there is virtue; there is not so much honesty, but it is probity that reigns in that good city of Paris. Wives are faithful to their husbands there, and one cannot reproach the latter for the cowardly complaisance, the shameful traffic in conjugal honor that plunges the husbands of the Moon into abysms of turpitude. One does not encounter priests there whose carriages splash or run over pedestrians; it is a good city, the city of Paris. The abbés, in conformity with their holy institutions, live there with a surprising regularity of conduct; they are neither gallants not fops. None are seen who employ revenues consecrated to alms and divine services in the propagation of luxury and debauchery. Monks are new at odds there; they are united like brothers. Bishops only come there for indispensable matters of business; they normally stay in their Dioceses, where they are models of humility, sobriety and disinterest. For morals, long live our good city of Paris! Let’s fly back there.15

  In consequence, I had constructed four aerostatic balloons, which I had attached to the four corners of a kind of boat, in which there was an enormous bellows, the force of whose wind acting inside the machine ought to overcome the atmospheric wind, or at least resist it and serve for steering.16

  All the dispositions for my departure having been concluded, I announced publicly that I was about to make an atmospheric journey. That announcement stirred all minds; some treated my enterprise as folly, while other regarded its execution as possible. Numerous bets were laid and the newspapers wearied their readers with the boasts of those who offered to lose their money for or against the success of my voyage.

  A host of Astronomers, Physicists, Moralists and Poets came to solicit ardently the pleasure of being my traveling companions. Each wanted to acquire in the air a reputation that he could not have merited on the ground: ambitious people, whose frenetic enthusiasm excites laughter and pity! To expose one’s life audaciously in order to attract the gaze of a curious public momentarily, is the height of vanity. To glorify oneself and raise oneself up higher than one’s competitors is to ornament oneself with the merit of a performer of feats of strength. Oh, how I prefer the virtuous ardor of the citizen who precipitates himself into agitated waves, at the peril of his life, to rescue one of his fellows! The great actions of virtue carry their own recompense; those of self-regard wait for publicity. The conduct of those aerial Don Quixotes convinced me of that; when I had told them that I had no intention of returning among them, seeing their hope of collecting the prize of their temerity from their compatriots eclipsed, they suddenly renounced going with me.

  I did not have to go to any trouble making my provision of books; every author hastened to pay me the tribute of his productions. One would like to be talked about in a country to which one will never go, just as one would like to exist in a time when one is no longer alive.

  Poets brought me pretty volumes in a small format, gilded on the edges, ornamented with vignettes and engravings; they bore some resemblance to the elegant individuals who based their merit on their attire.

  “Take them anyway,” my Sage said to me, who was helping me to choose. “Their lovely covers and images will amuse your nephews’ children.”

  Scholars brought me voluminous quartos and heavy folios.

  “Those,” he told me, “might be very useful to you in your journey; their specific weight will serve you as ballast.”

  I made the decision to take off incognito, although I was warned that if some event forced me to come down, the curious would not fail to testify their satisfaction by unusual extravagances;17 but I was afraid of being assailed at the moment of my departure by armed numbskulls who were capable of disturbing the order of my voyage by wanting to share in its glory.18

  With tears in my eyes I quit the sage observer, the benevolent host who had been such a great help to me. I regretted no one but him in that country; as for Oë, who was so despicable in my eyes, I never heard any further mention of him.

  I traversed without accident, by courtesy of the night, the vast reaches of the air, and arrived at my house via the skylight. I embrace my dear nephew and my niece, who were scarcely expecting their poor uncle.

  On the way, I made observations of great interest to the Scientists of Earth, to which I intend to impart to my compatriots very soon, as well as an aerographic map on which the different layers of the atmosphere will be represented. I shall prove geometrically that each of those layers is co
mposed of different species of spirits exhaled by the inhabitants of Earth. I shall indicate in a separate article the dangers one runs in traversing those regions of the air, as well as the remedies that it is appropriate to carry there. For example, in traveling through the region that is composed by the exhalations of cold critics, austere moralists and icy poets, one should be careful to don a thick cloak and a fur bonnet, and to plug one’s ears with cotton. For the region of orators, erudites and chronologists, one should equip oneself with volatile alkali and the most violent sternutatories. For that of the jolly abbés, elegant individuals and fops, one should make a provision of gherkins, pepper and all the acids and salts with which insipid and sickly dishes are normally seasoned, etc. etc. etc.

  I shall not take long to distribute a reasoned prospectus for that curious Work, which I shall offer to the public by subscription, as is the custom on the Moon. To begin with I shall promise the finest things in the world, and when I have my subscribers’ money, the Work will proceed as best I can.

  * * *

  4 Author’s note: “Several Engravings, and a Comedy entirely devoted to this subject, are testimony to the enthusiasm of Parisians for events of this importance.”

  5 Author’s note: “My poor uncle is not the only aerial Voyager to have been sensible of that vainglorious thought. See Monsieur Charles’ letter after his ascent from the Tuileries.” Jacques Charles (1746-1823) launched the first hydrogen balloon in August 1783, and he and Nicolas-Louis Robert made the first manned flight in a balloon of that kind in December 1783, taking off from the Jardin des Tuileries before a crowd estimated at 400,000 people, including Benjamin Franklin and one of the Montgolfier brothers. Charles made a solo flight soon thereafter, ascending to 3,000 meters and then (wisely) gave up the dangerous practice.