You like poetry; those lines have enchanted me.
24 July
Another excursion: after the mountains, the plain. We have traversed the broad and lush Limagne, extended between two chains, in all directions, firstly to visit Thiers, its wooden houses, and its cutlers, and then to reach Vichy along the bank of a river with a pretty name, the Dore. The great Vichy is always noisy, elegant and agitated.
On the way back we saw the geyser that everyone talks about, which is truly something extraordinary. It sprang up suddenly the first time, but the peasants, fearing that their fields would be flooded, had almost blocked the orifice. A few days ago, the jet reappeared, and roses up more than a hundred meters. The water is as hot as that of the numerous mineral springs that are the fortune of the region. If you arrive soon enough you will undoubtedly see that astonishing spectacle, to which the crowds are flocking. I’m delighted to have been there.
While coming back toward Royat we admired the long chain of the volcanic hills standing out against the setting sun. The undulating line of craters seemed to be tormented by a magnificent eruption.
25 July
The waters of the Auvergne definitely have surprises in store.
I heard his morning, in confidence, from the good woman with the pink ribbons who dries me when I come out of the bath, that the wells have become so hot that they require cooling down. The mixture hasn’t rendered the bath any less pleasant.
Your letters are a great joy to me. Do you have good tires with which to travel the roads of Poland? Clermont is the great manufactory of those necessary objects; entire districts are devoted to it there, but the black city retains its character of a Jansenist city, with its steep and narrow streets, its old lava houses, its sculpted blazons and its views of the mountain at every street corner. I shall be your guide when you come to meet me.
26 July
I must tell you about last night’s event, in order that you won’t be anxious if the newspapers bring you news of it.
At about three o’clock in the morning we had a slight earthquake. Woken up by the first tremor, I was thrown out of bed by the second. In an instant, the entire palace was out of bed, and pajamas were flying along the corridors. I went back to bed, very sagely in the dark, because the electricity, of course.…
In the morning, we learned about the incidents. Our Brazilians had had a terrible fright. The system of bells is out of action, the glassware severely compromised, the conversations rather feverish, but your Claude is intact. Someone has gone to pillage the shops in Clermont in order to acquire candles, and our little tables are illuminated in a picturesque fashion at diner.
The establishment remained closed today.
27 July
I would be entirely content, for you know how curious I am, if I did not see so much fear around me. An unexpected spectacle has been promised to us, and we shall have good seats.
The mountain that I mentioned to you once, Gravenoire, is smoking like a chimney. The mouth, closed for centuries, is in the process of reopening. The plume of smoke was visible this morning, and some courageous people made the ascent. Courage is in a minority, however, and a number of precipitate departures were announced today. I’ve seen pyramids of exotic trunks. You will doubtless approve of my not taking part in that panic...
28 July
It really is an eruption! Muffled detonations announced it all through the nights, and I can assure you that no one got much sleep. This morning the mountain is entirely enveloped in smoke. Two large flows are emerging from it. One of them is heading toward the village, the other taking aim at the hotels. The flow that is devouring my beautiful fir trees is descending with an impressive rhythm. If it doesn’t slow down the lava will reach our drawing rooms within three days. It’s said that the Puy de la Nugère, which overlooks Châtel-Guyon, is also on fire.
Everyone is leaving. The season is ruined. Brazil has bid me farewell, and the two Americans have followed. I’ve decided to go back to Paris and I’d go this evening if I weren’t waiting impatiently for a letter from you. I shall go look for it at the post office tomorrow morning, and catch the twelve-fifty train from Clermont.
A bientôt. Come back soon.
In the newspapers of 29 July the following article appeared:
An unprecedented catastrophe has overwhelmed one of the most beautiful French provinces. The Limagne has disappeared!
The volcanic reawakening announced yesterday has provoked a cataclysm that is still unexplained. The great Auvergnat plain has sunk, and in a matter of minutes, the subterranean waters have covered it in its entirety.
Large towns—Clermont, Riom, Vichy—are under water, as are hundreds of small towns and villages. The number of victims is estimated at four hundred thousand. The eruption of the two mountains has abruptly ceased.
The airplanes that have flown over the hot sea have perceived, beneath the surface, the tragic map of that unfortunate region. The steeples and roof of Clermont cathedral form a strange islet therein. The chain of volcanic hills is reflected in hat immense lake. One can distinguish, on the railway lines, the trains seized in progress at exactly twelve fifty-five.
Pierre de Nolhac: The Journal of Dr. J. H. Smithson
of the University of Seattle (Wash.)
(1932)
Four days to see Europe is too few. To be sure, we go quickly; one can fly from Warsaw to Bucharest in an hour. This little country is monotonous, but, by searching hard, a cultivated American can find material for instruction here.
I should like to know the past of the nations that have formed these new United States; I would enjoy my voyage more—but humankind has such a long history that it cannot be embraced in its entirety. The rhythm of the world accelerates, and the last hundred years have accumulated more changes than the previous thousand.
The annals of our own States—of my own Idaho, for example—have been abundantly laden since our revolutions. In the twentieth century, America went to make war in Europe; they still remember that here. My great-grandfather, a singular man, took part in it when he was twenty, and my father still talked about that war. Today, it’s no longer anything but a date to our schoolchildren.
Scarcely informed with regard to events that are much more relevant to us, how can we interest ourselves in the adventures of the rest of the world? Enormous extents of history have crumbled behind us; human memory no longer refers to them.
I can scarcely recognize in Europe the cradle of civilization that was described to us. Its soul has become foreign to us. We, who give the highest priority to ideal values and the disinterested curiosity of the mind, cannot understand that anyone can disdain, after once having known them, the treasures of art and thought. What a display there is here of industrial cities, what masses of perishable goods, what a brutal search for pleasure! The eyes of the traveler are wounded everywhere.
I would not have prolonged my excursion if I had not perceived, here and there, a few traces of a curious past: a site escaped from the encumbrance of iron, an abandoned monument that amuses my archeological incompetence.
I am concluding my flights in Paris. Will I discover there, under its banal opulence, secret beauties speaking to me heart? I have already classified its most ancient edifices chronologically. The Panthéon and the Arc de Triomphe evidently date from Roman times. The temple of Montmartre is no less ancient, and I gaze with respect at the dome that the great Napoléon built to shelter his tomb.
An antiquated church like Notre-Dame attracts me by virtue of its religious mystery. But places of prayer are less frequented than our beautiful American cathedrals, so bright and vibrant, where the piety of our people is affirmed. On this continent of the East, it seems to be stifled beneath the materialistic indifference of the masses, too proud of technological progress to raise themselves to divine concerns.
How can a European of France support the fever of production and competition that leaves him no repose? We govern matter, as he does, but we do not s
ubmit our souls to it. Since the harsh economic crises that shook our ancient egotism, it seems that a little of the old America of Washington and Lincoln has reappeared. Our families have become patriarchal again. They are united and laborious. Nature surrounds them and enchants them. The benefits of the new world are employed in according us the leisure to live.
Let us glorify our great Universities of the Pacific, which complete the spiritualization of that great people! Heirs of Greco-Latin Humanism, the masters who transmit wisdom with knowledge form the complete human being. They furnish an ideal. Here, who reads poets? Beneath the sky that saw Homer and Keats born, no one reads them anymore. In our homeland, students and workers have them on their bookshelves. The verses that I compose are as popular throughout Idaho as the songs of our musicians. What can become of a nation that replaces poetry with business, and no longer knows the price of anything that serves no purpose?
These enormous cities, which still call themselves capitals, have one common feature: it appears as soon as one flies over them. The center is restricted. Composed of narrow and stifling streets. As they draw away, the streets become wider, the green spaces multiply and the air there becomes respirable. Paris, today the greatest city, since its inhabitants approach fifteen millions, extends from the Oise to the Marne. Woods cover its hills; the one at Saint-Germain, on the Seine, is quite pretty. The traces of old roads guide the aerial traveler toward what is known as the South-Western Faubourg, where there are a few curiosities to visit.
One descends into a round space. In the center there is one of the statues of horsemen that are fairly frequent in Europe. It is said that this one represents our General Lafayette; I think that it is more likely to be the ancient king of the country who had the nearby château built. That building makes the depths of this faubourg very populous. Our American tourists have maintained the custom of coming to see it. Like them, I’ve visited two large halls, one of which, still decorated, resembles an old theater; they serve as schools of electricity. The middle of the château, which a warden opens for you, contains fairly small rooms with paintings whose significance escapes us today. They have, in any case, almost all deteriorated over time, and the part of the edifice that is no longer in use is threatened with ruin. Everyone detaches a piece of marble or bronze to take away, out of habit.
I was lingering over a few reflections on the fragility of the human glories of which traces remain here, and promising myself that I would study them one day in my books when a very old man with an affable manner came toward me. He was crossing the courtyard, keys in hand, and offered to let me into the garden. I still had an hour to spare before nightfall, and I accepted.
The deserted garden pleased me at first by virtue of its majesty. The further I advanced on the terrace, the more I divined that the disdained château must have been, in its time, something magnificent. The long façades presented a precise harmony; was that what the historians call “French taste”? I had never sensed so well that grandeur is not the same as enormity. The lines remained intact, even though the corroded stone was cruelly giving evidence of abandonment.
Why has that useless façade been maintained, since no one any longer comes to look at it? Two large ponds full of green-tinted water still reflected it confusedly, and I understood what nobility its image had had in the purity of those mirrors. Bronze figures, still lying on the disjointed edges, seemed to be to be more beautiful than any familiar to me.
One of them, a tall and slender woman playing with a child, stared at me strangely, as if to inspire a tender nostalgia in me. With one gaze, it has populated the entire garden.
I walked along the pathways, traces of which were barely conserved amid the long grass. Shots growing at random obstructed the way. A wilderness covered what had once been lawns. Staircases, fountains and colonnades were crumbling under the thickets, allowing the whole plan that had distributed them to be divined.
At every step, however, a mysterious statue appeared, which revealed under the moss the most perfect workmanship. More than one, fallen from its pedestal, was lying down, it limbs scattered. I dared not touch them; respect stopped me before those symbols.
Were they the divinities of old to which those woods were consecrated? Or allegorical effigies of forgotten heroes? Or merely simple ornaments imagined for a sumptuous dwelling? I inclined toward the first of those hypotheses—and as magic persists in the images of abolished gods, I hastened my footsteps under the branches, not daring to interrogate the enigma of the marbles further.
The great silence was only troubled by the leap of a squirrel or the passage of some unknown animal. The shadows thickened in the foliage, making the solitude more oppressive. I don’t know how, lost in that labyrinth, I found myself back on the terrace, facing a perspective open to a distant horizon. A long canal was shining there in the light of the sun, which was about to disappear.
When I turned round I saw the fire of the sunset flamboyant in all the windows from one end of the château to the other: a fugitive apotheosis, which only lasted for an instant, but which will illuminate my memory forever.
I had visited the past; henceforth, that past lived within me. What it had allowed me to glimpse—those resuscitated gods, those uncertain shadows—would not abandon me again.
The old man who had introduced me signaled to me that he was about to leave. I asked him to tell me the name of the strange place. He looked at me, slightly surprised.
“It’s Versailles, Monsieur.”
Notes
1 Jean-François Regnard’s comedy of 1787.
2 Urania is the muse of astronomy.
3 Abbé Noël-Antoine Pluche (1688-1761), author of a pioneering work of the popularization of science, Le Spectacle de la Nature (1732).
4 Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), best known for the romance Paul et Virginie (1788), left for posthumous publication a three-volume study of Harmonies de la nature (1815).
5 Henry Pemberton (1694-1771) was a physician, one of Newton’s few personal friends. He edited the third edition of the Principia Mathematica, which appeared in 1726.
6 The astronomer, mathematician and Revolutionary Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736-1793)
7 The figure of “half as small” seems entirely arbitrary, given the author’s loathing of mathematics. Had he been able to apply measurement and calculation to such vital data as the thickness of the atmosphere, the angle of rays of light striking it and the supposed refractive index of the “lens” constituted by the atmosphere, he would surely have realized that this claim, the lynchpin of his argument, is absurd.
8 This argument only holds if Newton’s theory of gravity is false, so there is a suspicious circularity about the attempt to use it as evidence of that falsehood
9 The geophysicist Pierre Bouguer (1698-1758) measured small regional variations in the Earth’s gravity due to density variations in underlying rocks—with the result that the “Bouguer anomaly” is named after him, but the variations were nowhere near as spectacular as this claims asserts.
10 The Dutch lawyer Willem Jacob s’Gravesande (1688-1742), who was appointed professor of mathematics and astronomy at the prestigious University of Leiden in 1717, became one of the leading popularizers of Newton’s work in continental Europe. He designed numerous experiments to demonstrate Newtonian principles, and greatly impressed Voltaire.
11 Author’s reference: “Paulian’s Dictionary of Physics, 8th edition, article Sgravesande.” The text in question is by another important pioneer of the popularization of science, Aimé-Henri Paulian (1722-1802),
12 Author’s reference: “See Bailly, Histoire de l’Astronomie, reduced to 2 octavo volumes, vol. II, pp 299, 322 and 333.” The quotations in this paragraph and in Jouroufle’s next speech come from what was originally a separate work, published in 1779, on modern astronomy, following up the first volume, from 1775, on ancient astronomy.
13 Author’s reference “See Bailly, especially book XX, entitled Newton.”<
br />
14 Pierre-Louis Maupertuis (1698-1759).
15 Author’s reference: “See Lalande, Abrégé d’Astron. no. 1064, and Bailly, Histoire de l’Astronomie, vol. II, p. 311 of the edition reduced to two octavo volumes.” The former reference is to the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande (1732-1807), whose 1802 history of astronomy updated and replaced Bailly’s, but the citation is an earlier work, Abrégé d’astronomie, published in 1774.
16 Author’s reference: “Bailly, ibid. vol. II p. 312.”
17 Author’s reference: “Exposition du système du monde, vol, II p. 127.” The text cited, published in 1808, is by Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827)
18 If the author had not been such a determined enemy of measurement and calculation, he might have bothered to check to see whether this familiar phenomenon might be an optical illusion caused by the proximity of points for comparison when the sun and moon are close to the horizon.
19 Maroufle means “bumpkin” or “simpleton,” but I have left it untranslated to preserve the pun on Jouroufle’s name.
20 Jean-Félix Picard (1620-1682) published Mesure de la terre in 1671. Richard Norwood (c1590-1675) calculated the length of a meridian by walking from London to York and carrying out observations of the sun’s altitude. Both of their estimates were reasonably accurate, considering the primitive nature of their instrumentation, and did not justify the conclusion drawn here—which is, of course, false, as many subsequent measurements have shown.
The Nickel Man Page 33
