“Zigzag! Zigzag!” muttered the doctor.
“That’s on the part of Europe,” the Graf continued. “As for the Orient, no one there doubts the doctrine, generally professed throughout the Far East.” He stroked his chin, and continued: “I recently had the good fortune to discuss the question with the Japanese and Siamese ambassadors, who were both passing thorough Paris. The former spoke at length about a certain god Fottey,21 whose breath is sufficient to give a soul to the most vulgar of plants; the latter affirmed that, in his country, the theory of souls, applied to vegetables, is so well-recognized that no one there mutilates a tree without expiating the sacrilege by an act of contrition, and no one there pulls up a culinary herb without addressing a mental prayer to the soul thus condemned to displacement.” As if in parentheses, Zoellern added: “Take note that these beliefs are not mine.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” the doctor put in.
“No, in this respect, I still envelop myself in philosophical doubt: do plants have soul, or don’t they? A weighty question, gentlemen, a weighty question!”
For my part, what can I say? However bizarre it might be, this animation of all organic substances, no longer forming any but one single complex being, moved by the same laws and marching by a thousand roads toward the same goal, was beginning to impress me. God alone knew whether it was impossible—and who among us can put limits to the great and mysterious theology of nature?
Then, within myself, I returned to my turning tables. Why should not the spirit or demon, which could so implausibly become invisible guest of the table, simply be the soul of the tree that had furnished it? I decided to interrogate that vegetal soul that very evening, demanding that it yield its secret to me. What a discovery, if I could clarify a question so hotly debated, and finally provide, dogmatically, an explanation of the phenomenon!
On the stroke of nine, almost all my guests arrived. I immediately ordered that the table be brought in—a table in which I had particular confidence, the most impressionable, the most alert and the chattiest of all my tables.
As often happens on such occasions, in spite of the chain of fingers obstinately fixed upon it, the table did not budge.
The dear doctor was radiant, and sniffed pinches of tobacco one after another, with the attitude and gestures of an insolent victor. The Graf von Zoellern voiced the idea that the presence of a skeptical unbeliever is sometimes sufficient to abort the operation completely. I had every reason to believe that the little man had hoped to have his habitual contradictor massacred in the midst of a popular uprising.
I ordered that the tea should be served on the same table. The doctor, who was now playing the leading role, criticized my imprudence. “What if it starts to dance a saraband at the moment when it’s least expected?” he said. “Watch out for the Chinese porcelain!”
Zoellern called him an atheist.
Fortunately, Monsieur Marcillet and Monsieur Alexis had just made their entrance into the drawing-room. There was no longer any topic of conversation but magnetism.
The doctor rubbed his hands; he was counting on a disappointment in that regard as in the other. To get I ahead of the others, he hastened to propose a card game to Alexis—who, with his eyes blindfolded, named his cards before touching them, taking the trick, then read the contents of pockets, counting up the sums of money to be found therein, in gold, silver or copper, and finished up by telling him that he had dined that day on vegetable soup, fillet steak with olives and sole normande.
“How do you know that?” asked the doctor, somewhat nonplussed.
“By means of your restaurant bill, which is still in your waistcoat pocket.”
Zoellern rubbed his hands in his turn. He begged the magnetizer to put him to sleep right away; he had an urgent voyage to make.
After a few conscientiously-administered passes, he did indeed go to sleep, and so obviously that some time went by before he was even able to reply to the questions addressed to him.
Finally, he released a sigh, and his lips moved.
“The moment has arrived,” said Monsieur Marcillet—and he resumed the interrogation. “Can you hear me now?”
“They have one!” replied the magnetized man.
“You don’t understand. Do you know who is speaking to you at this moment?”
“The god Fottey, honored in Japan and throughout the Indian archipelago.”
Monsieur Marcillet recommenced his passes, and interrogated him further. “Where are you?”
“In the paradise of flowers.”
The magnetizer paused, looked at us with a slightly disconcerted expression, turned to the gallery and said: “Gentlemen, I think I ought to warn you that dreams sometimes interfere unduly with magnetic influences. I don’t think the subject is in a perfect state of lucidity. Let’s try, without jarring him too much, to put him back on the right path… According to you, then, flowers have a paradise?”
“Why not, since they have one?”
“One what?”
“A soul! Is it not just, then, that like us, they have their places of recompense and punishment?”
At the point, there was a slight murmur in the assembly, in the midst of which I distinctly made out a certain zigzag! and the tapping of a finger on a snuff-box.
Monsieur Marcillet continued, with perfect condescension: “Are you quite sure, Monsieur, that you’re not mistaken?”
“How could I be mistaken? At this very moment, thanks to the benevolent intervention of the Japanese ambassador, the divine Fottey has opened the abode of floral felicity to my curiosity. In spite of Thales, Leibniz, Malebranche and Monsieur Dédu, I doubted—I repent of it! Now I see, I am forced to believe! Oh, what spectacles! What perfumes!”
“Come on, let’s try to divert the course of these ideas…”
“Shut up!” the sleeper shouted at him, in an imperious tone. “Stop disturbing me in my delight!”
The magnetizer made as if to wake him up; I stopped him, and on my request, he consented to put me in fluidic communication with the patient.
Zoellern continued talking almost without interruption; he described what he could see, or what he thought he could see, with such precision that I was unable to suspect the slightest trickery in his narration, utterly strange and utterly supernatural as it seemed; his mind, his knowledge and his imagination alone would not have been sufficient for such an improvisation.
The circle tightened around the visionary; with a gesture to the doctor, I indicated a vacant spot next to me.
“Zigzag!” he replied, drawing away in order to pour himself a cup of tea.
I noticed nevertheless that he had sat down at the end of the table nearest to us, with his ear turned in our direction.
The Paradise of Flowers, created by Fottey, the god of vegetation, in one of the Maldive Islands, had its eastern part divided into a series of little parallel valleys. These valleys, separated from one another by gentle slopes from the top of which fell sheets of water, forming cascades on either side, blossomed in the midst of a warm atmosphere; humid vapors, colored pink, blue and violet by the sunlight, filled them with the radiance of rainbows; the inhabitants of the location lacked nothing, either in the way of gentle sunlight or balsamic dew—but I shall not dwell on that paradisal poetry, with which the sleeper perhaps overindulged himself.
To get back to purely topographical matters, all the squares of this great chessboard were occupied by plants assembled without any classificatory order, having no other link between them than their virtuous qualities and the kinds of services rendered by them to human society.
Pell-mell, in the cheerful part of the garden that had been consecrated to them, the first to display themselves to the visitor’s eye were the Nutritious Plants: wheat, maize, rice, and then the numerous family of legumes—green beans, broad beans, peas, lentils—all elegantly sporting their pretty caps on their heads.
Also found in the Paradise of Flowers were the benevolent plants that ease suffering
and sometimes even render life to the sick. Zoellern therefore visited the Valley of Medicinal Plants.
He was greatly astonished to find an extremely restricted number there; cassia and senna did not figure there at all; and, as if the magnetic fluid had added a stimulant to his natural malice, he credited to the god Fottey the explanatory opinion that the marvelous virtues of so many plants formerly praised as universal panaceas but rejected today to the ranks of harmful herbs, had never profited anyone but messieurs the physicians, either in Europe or Asia, all of them beings charlatans.
As a faithful reporter of the séance, I am obliged to declare that at that moment, my dear doctor noisily sniffed another pinch of tobacco and poured himself a second cup of tea.
Continuing his narration along with his route, the Graf went through the Valley of Industrial Plants, textile or tinctorial. Cotton, hemp, flax, madder, the indigo plant and a thousand others of similar importance seemed to form up in ranks to either side of his path, in order to be inspected by him.
On mounds reminiscent of altars, silphium,22 sesame and the lotus, so dear to the ancient priests of Egypt and the Brahmins of India; vervein, the herba sacra that served to purify the temples of Jupiter and Apollo; the mistletoe of the druids of Gaul and Germany; persea,23 the subject of so many pious commentaries; the acacia, the ultimate mystical tree; the rose of Jericho, symbol of death and resurrection, and a whole series of holy herbs no less worthy of veneration, displayed themselves surrounded by the attributes of various ancient and modern cults. God as he was, Fottey bowed down as he passed them by; Zoellern was obliged to do the same, but he reserved his admiration and his surges of enthusiasm for the joyous Valley of Beautiful Plants.
More sensual or less hypocritical than the Occident, the Orient has made plastic beauty a virtue. Beautiful women, be they former fisherwomen, enter authoritatively into the paradises of Mohammed and Brahma, and are elevated by right to the rank of houris or apsaras. It is the same for beautiful plants in the paradise of the god Fottey.
When that magnificent vegetable, the pride of floral creation, MacDonald’s cactus,24 whose corolla, as large as a grape-gatherer’s basket, displays its long silver petals implanted in a golden calyx, with its style standing up like an ivory column surmounted by a purple feather, and then the great Aristolochia, the Gustavia, the Victoria Regia, the Nelumbium and the magnolia presented themselves on the shores of his isle,25 did he say to them: “Where do you come from? What good have you done?” No; he said to them: “Come in.”
And after them, when the other royal flowers of every climate and every country, the lily of Japan, the Tigridias of Mexico, the Strelitizia of the Cape,26 the orchids of Central America, the hollyhocks of Syria, the Agapanthus of Africa, all the way to the peonies of Siberia, offered themselves to him, similarly recognizing the right of their beauty, he opened his door again and breathed on them to give them a soul.
And, thinking about our European gardens—even the winter gardens in Paris, London and the Hague, Zoellern told himself that to compare them with that luxuriant valley would be to compare the Societé d’Acclimatation’s aquarium to the vast Ocean.
And yet, although dazzled by the spectacle unfolding before his eyes, he thought he noticed, especially among the royal species, certain irregularities of form, certain abnormal accidents that he was astonished to find associated with so many perfections.
He did not hesitate to impart these critical observations to his divine guide. The latter, smiling, immediately refuted them. What Zoellern suspected to be deplorable irregularities were no more than further perfections, additional organs accorded by Brahma to the inhabitants of this blissful abode.
In the paradise of the Maldives, flowers can move and detach themselves from the earth, which scarcely retains them, their roots being formed like birds’ feet; they can walk, hopping from one place to another; better still, they have wings, pretty white, blue or variegated wings, depending on the color of their petals or stems, and which, when folded up, become almost undetectable by eye. With a single flight, they can cross the borders of their respective valleys if it pleases them to visit one another.
The god Fottey uttered a cry then; that cry, repeated by a thousand echoes, ran from valley to valley, soon filling the whole island with a clamor.
Zoellern thought he was prey to vertigo. A unanimous, spontaneous movement was manifest in the plain and along the slopes where, until then, ranked by size, all those floral marvels had stood motionless. The plain, the hills and the sky itself seemed to quiver before his eyes. Breathless, gripped by anguish, almost terrified, he witnessed a spectacle that it has not been given to any man down here either to see or to imagine.
Confusing their colors and their perfumes, the flowers of the splendid valley crossed paths in every direction, flying through the air by means of beating wings. Hurrying from adjacent valleys through the damp dust of cascades, appearing over the crests of hills, they mingled together and, all together, whirled about as if at play—but without Fottey’s preliminary warning, the Graf would certainly have been able to believe that a furious storm had just descended upon that abode of enchantments.
Now, he saw them slowing down in their flight, breaking up the vortex, gliding, and then descending with fluttering wings to settle on the earth again.
After a few moments’ rest, some started walking in groups; those were generally the largest, and the most remarkable in their forms and colors. Zoellern took note of their precious attitude and ladylike gait; during the promenade, with a perfect art of coquetry, they showed off their large petals in such a way as to make their varied hues stand out, while maintaining their leaves in good order and correctly angled.
Other flowers had landed beside little lakes formed at the bottom of hills; they bathed their roots therein, doubtless to refresh their tints or straighten their stems, slightly fatigued by the heat of the day.
On the edges of these same little lakes, aquatic plants had naturally chosen their domiciles. Like their terrestrial sisters, they could detach their roots from the soil, draw away from the bank and, moreover, tour their lagoons by swimming. To the former the benign god of vegetation had given wings; for these he had determined that their lower leaves were prolonged in the form of oars; these oars were adequate to sustain them above water, so that they could move around with their stems straight and their corollas spread out.
Butterflies are admitted to the Paradise of Flowers, for flowers and butterflies can scarcely live without one another; but, attached to the soil or some rocky projection, they are captive, their wings paralyzed, unable to take part in all that celebratory movement, and it is the flowers that, contrary to the established order here, fly to meet them, make their choice, caressing them or neglecting them according to their whim.
The Paradise of Flowers is the butterflies’ Inferno.
Zoellern then asked the god Fottey how that attractive sympathy could have arisen between two species of beings that seemed, at least on Earth, to belong to entirely different races.
“By virtue of a great harmonic reason, of which you cannot take account in your backward Europe,” Fottey replied, “the transmigration of souls. According to the laws of metempsychosis, the soul of a flower, after its time of proof, passes into the body of a butterfly, or some other insect—a fly or a beetle. That ought to suffice to make you understand the secret attraction than brings these various species together.”
The Graf dared to follow up his question. “And what becomes of a butterfly’s soul?”
“It passes into the body of a sparrow or an animal of similarly scant importance—but not alone, however, for it requires three butterfly souls to form that of a flycatcher, as it requires three flower souls to form that of a butterfly, and so on; the souls of three flycatchers or wrens form the soul of a wood-pigeon; and always three by three, always progressing in strength and intelligence, they thus climb the scale of beings, step by step, until a myriad of souls of every sort, newly p
urified by the breath of a god, eventually forms the soul of a human being, the only one created immortal.”
Delighted with these cosmogonic confidences, Zoellern collected them carefully, promising himself firmly to propagate them for the instruction of poor Europe, so backward.
While chatting, the god and the voyager advanced toward the most elevated regions of the isle. The latter was astonished to see that the valleys and hills that had been so cool and cheerful a little while ago were succeeded by steep, sterile mountains, from which no springs emerged, and where their feet sank into the sand.
His astonishment was further increased on encountering in this wild terrain the flowers most highly esteemed among us—not only camellias, balsamines27 and tulips irreproachable in color and form, but the most beautiful roses in the world: the tea rose, the king’s rose, the rose with 100 leaves.
Why were they not in the Valley of Beautiful Plants, where their place seemed to be established by right? He submitted this question to the master.
“We’re in the region of expiation,” Fottey replied. “Once, tulips and camellias possessed both beauty and perfume; they became too proud. I took their perfume way to give it to the violet and the reseda, humbler plants whose modesty deserved recompense.”
“But what about the rose?” Zoellern interjected. “The rose, regarded by us as the queen of flowers?”
“A title usurped! Her royalty is nothing but a lie; neither her beauty nor her perfumes belong to her; the whole is nothing but a work of art and cunning. Born a simple flower of the fields and woods, her natural grace brightened the bushes in spring that her coralline fruits decorated in autumn; ambition took possession of her; she has had her paradise on Earth, where she was fêted by everyone; now, in this arid and stony grounds, she is expiating her mendacious success; this is her punishment. But misfortune purifies; subjected to this dolorous proof, the rose will recover her primitive state, with her five petals, which make her sparkle in the morning mist, and her original scent, naively sweet, with which she should have been content. Brought back then to the laws of her nature, from which the industry of humans has distanced her so far, along with her pistils and stamens she will recover her soul, for doubled flowers do not have one, and love and maternal cares will easily make her forget her fraudulent triumphs.”
The Supreme Progress Page 8
