The Supreme Progress

by Brian Stableford

  I may appear to be writing fiction, but it would be a mistake to think me capable of such lightness of mind. What I have said, as briefly as possible, was necessary. Now the science, properly speaking, begins.

  We exchanged our portraits. Mine was photographed on enamel, framed in gold, with a minuscule chain, to be carried under clothing. That portrait contained a pair of maximum and minimum thermometers, hidden between and ivory plate and the enamel—two masterpieces of precision in such small dimensions. I was thus able to verify the modifications of the normal temperature of an organism affected by love.

  Under pretexts that were often difficult to invent I had the portrait returned to me for a few hours, took note of the numbers and their dates and reset the thermometers.

  One evening, on which I had danced twice with a little brunette lady, I recall having observed a reduction of temperature of 40%, followed or preceded—I had no information as to the order of the phenomena—by an elevation of 70%. Those are facts.

  At any rate, everything being prepared, I took the following measures. I said to Monsieur D***: “Property is theft” (it’s not mine and it’s not new, but it always works), and to Madame D***, who had had a miscarriage that she mentioned too frequently: “A woman, from the social economic point of view, can and ought to be considered a fetus-factory—and I hummed, to the tune of Beside a Cradle, a few lines of a song by W*** entitled Beside a Specimen Jar: “It looked like a white detachable collar/An embryonic substitute for a worthy pose…/If it were not preserved in alcohol/What great things it might have done!”

  Then I insinuated this note into Virginie’s hand: “I shall explain everything later. Absolute row between your parents and me. The ideal, the dream, the prism of the impossible are what awaits us. To live it is necessary to love… A carriage is waiting downstairs; come, or I shall kill myself and you will be damned.”

  That was how I eloped with her.

  The ease with which this enterprise had succeeded amazed me as, once in the railway carriage, I looked at that young woman, brought up in tranquility, probably destined for some mediocre employee, who had followed me thanks to a series of sentimental formulas—which I had not invented, moreover, and which I could not sufficiently explain.

  We were going somewhere, of course. I had, in fact, prepared some time before, with my personal sagacity, a delightful and methodical installation whose purpose will become clear in due course. The train journey took three hours—plenty of time for alarm, sobbing and palpitations. Fortunately, we were not alone in the compartment.

  I had made a preliminary study of the situation, so far as I could, in novels: “You… you’re sacrificing everything for me… how can I ever thank you…” Then, after a silence: “I love you, I love you… oh, journeys with the beloved! The horizon reddened by the sunset, or the pearly dawn, and we are face to face, after distraction or sleep, in newly-perfumed lands.”

  The sentence had been written for me by my friend, the poet W***.

  We arrived, her like a wet bird, me delighted with the initial success of my research—for during the entire journey, while reassuring the poor frightened girl, without letting myself be carried away by the romantic vanity of the elopement, I had skillfully applied between her 10th and 11th ribs a long-running cardiograph so exact that Dr. Maret,37 to whom I owe its hypothetical description, had refused to develop it for economic reasons.

  Afterwards, a carriage collected us from the station. Terror, embarrassment, anxious intoxication of the demoiselle. My feebly-repulsed embraces permitted the cardiograph to record the visceral expressions of the situation.

  And in the delightful boudoir where, putting her hands over her eyes, she reproached herself for her definitive rupture with the exigencies of morality and public opinion, I was fortunately able to make an exact determination—the moment being of absolute importance—of the weight of her body. This is how:

  She had let herself slump on to a sofa, lost in thought. As I paused, contemplating her emotionally and delightedly, I used my heel to press the button of an electric bell lodged under the carpet, and in a secret cabinet, at the end of the balance whose other end was occupied by the sofa, Jean—a devoted and forewarned servant—was able to observe the eight of the fully-dressed demoiselle.

  I threw myself down beside her and lavished upon her all possible consolations: caresses, kisses, massage, hypnotism, etc.—consolations that were not, however, conclusive, in view of my research plan.

  I shall pass over the transitions that enabled me to remove her clothes, while she was still on the sofa, and carry her to the bed-alcove, where she forgot family, opinion and society. In the meantime, Jean weighed the clothing left behind, underclothes and footwear included, on the aforementioned sofa, in order to obtain by subtraction the net weight of the woman’s body.

  In the room where, intoxicated by love, she abandoned herself to my fictitious transports—for I had no time to waste—it was as if we were in a retort. The copper-lined walls prevented any connection with the atmosphere and the air was analyzed rigorously, first as it came in and again when it went out. Potash solutions contained in flasks revealed to skilful chemists on an hourly basis the quantitative presence of carbon dioxide. I remember curious figures in this regard, but they lacked the precision justly required by tabulation, since my own non-amorous respiration was mingled with Virginie’s genuinely amorous respiration. Let it suffice for me to mention the large excess of carbon dioxide during those tumultuous nights when passion attained its maxima of intensity and numeric expression.

  Strips of litmus paper cleverly distributed in the linings of her garments revealed the constantly acidic reaction of sweat. Then, on the following days and nights, there were figures to record relating to the mechanical equivalent of nervous contractions, the quantity of tears secreted, the composition of the saliva, the variable hygroscopy of the hair, the tension of anxious sobs and sensuous sigh!

  The results of the kissometer were particularly curious. The instrument, which is my own invention, is no larger than the apparatus that Punch-and-Judy men put in their mouths to make their puppets speak, which are known as “whistles.” As soon as the dialogue became tender and the situation was established as opportune, I put the primed apparatus—covertly, of course—between my teeth.

  Until then, I had been rather disdainful of those expressions of “a thousand kisses” that people put at the end of amorous notes. They are, I said to myself, hyperboles that have passed into vulgar language by courtesy of certain poets of bad taste—like Jean Second,38 for example. Well, I am happy to bring an experimental verification to these instinctive formulas, which many scientists before me have considered absolutely chimerical. In the space of about an hour and a half, my counter registered 944 kisses.

  The instrument placed in my mouth inconvenienced me; I was preoccupied with my research, besides which, feigned activities never equal real ones. If all that is taken into account, it will be appreciated that the number 944 might often be surpassed by violently amorous individuals.

  That exquisite period of happiness for her and fruitful study for me lasted 87 days. I had established the series of decisive facts on which the science of love must necessarily be founded, save for the ninth and tenth sections within my subdivision. The ninth part was entitled The Effects of Absence and Regret.

  The study became delicate; fortunately, I was able to count on Jean—the devoted servant—and my faithful laboratory assistants, physicists, chemists and naturalists.

  “Virginie,” I therefore said, one morning, “heavenly dream of my life, star of my pallid future, while in your arms I have neglected a few invoices that have been contested. I must therefore remove myself temporarily from the gleam of your eyes, the magnetism of your kisses and the dazzle of your embraces and go clear up that aspect of my commercial life.”

  The scene she made completed what I had determined in a few preceding scenes relative to The Mechanics of Chagrin.

  In
flexible, I left—not without leaving all my assistants precise instructions to take the final notes necessary to my report, the academic effect of whose publication promises to be explosive.

  To tell the truth, though, I had grown weary of that patient research. When a chemist studies a class of reactions or a general theory, with the greatest fervor, he can at least quit his laboratory at mealtimes and at night and abandon his mind to the ordinary facts of life. The problem that I was pursuing did not allow me those leaves of absence. It was necessary always to be ready for experiments; it was necessary, avoiding all distractions, to be constantly on the lookout for the countless and complex phenomena that emerge from what is known as an amorous intrigue.

  In consequence, I took advantage from that respite from arduous toil. Sure of my subordinates, I forgot momentarily, in the ballrooms of the barriers and renowned houses of pleasure, the uninterrupted intellectual tension, to which I had subjected myself religiously for the greater glory of science.

  As I came back on the train, I congratulated myself privately on the colossal task I had accomplished. I told myself, justly that my report would cause a colossal sensation in the scientific world, like Newton’s Principia or some other analogous revelation.

  Such persistent praiseworthiness, I thought, as I lay back on the cushions of the carriage that conveyed me from the station to the villa, and the disinterestedness of such considerable expenses, would finally have its reward!

  “Madame left three days ago,” I was told, when I got home.

  “Left three days ago! That’s not possible…”

  “She left a letter for Monsieur.”

  This is the letter:

  You would be despicable, Monsieur, if you were not so stupid.

  Oh, how bored I was at home with my parents since finishing my studies at the Conservatoire! You didn’t understand that I was very glad to find you in order to get out of that paternal shack. Thanks all the same, dear friend.

  Your friend Jules W*** has explained your project to me.

  You must be very young, without appearing so, to believe that that’s what can be learned with women.

  By the way, I’ve found all your instruments and records. I was nervous—and yet you are a matter of indifference to me!—and I have broken them all and burnt them all.

  I’ve even discovered the mystery of the sash that you left me. Your thermometers and hygrometers (that’s the word, I think), so many spies, are in pieces.

  Then again, what information would you have obtained from me about love? You have always been extremely boring. Your friend Jules amused me, and perhaps excited me, with his Bohemian audacities. You, never…

  It was too depressing in your trick boudoirs.

  Goodbye, my little scientist. I’m going to make my own living on the stage, abroad. A Russian nobleman, less serious and more sensible than you, is taking me away in his trunk.

  Virginie

  All my hopes of glory annihilated, 6000 francs—three-quarters of my fortune—spent for nothing, science held back, in this regard, for several centuries: such is the picture that presented itself to my mind on reading that letter. Not wanting to believe it, I searched the villa from the cellar to the attic.

  And as I wandered through those empty rooms, I felt—the final mockery of fate—regret for Virginie’s flight! Yes, I regretted the loss of that woman more than that of my finest works! And I went to lose consciousness—O shame!—burying my face in my pillow to recover the scent of the tresses that I would no longer be able to touch.

  To cap it all, missing the opportunity to record the analytical elements of such profound heartbreak—such a particular set of violent sensations—I did not think of hitching myself up to the cardiograph!

  Charles Cros: The Newspaper of the Future

  (1880)

  I arrived at the offices of Le Chat Noir, and was so overwhelmed by the Asiatic luxury of the rooms that I stood for two hours, twirling my hat between my fingers, in a corridor strewn with a thousand busy employees, dressed in the most various and multicolored uniforms.

  I was taken into a waiting-room. The curtains, the divans and the incense burning in the corners increased my timidity. Vanquished by fatigue and emotion, however, not daring to let myself collapse on to one of the comfortable ottomans that cluttered the editorial offices, I spotted a little three-legged cane-seated stool and sat down thereon, judging myself scarcely worthy of it.

  Immediately, I was gripped by an unfamiliar vertigo: Monsieur Grévy39 appeared to me with the features of Jupiter, pursuer of nymphs; Salis was holding an Apollonian lyre and, smiling mysteriously, sang to me:

  On that tripod, men of the least capacity

  Acquire a sibylline perspicacity.

  Indeed, the walls seem to be drawing draw away, the ceilings are becoming domes of tropical verdure, and the belated flies of winter multiply in the forms of twittering hummingbirds.

  The block-calendar, from which a sheet is torn away every day, was illuminated by an electric light, and a fateful date could be read thereon: March 1, 1986.

  “Why that nine instead of the eight?”

  “It’s quite simple,” Rodolphe murmured. “We’re older by 100 years.”

  “We’re going to die, then?”

  “Don’t try to be clever. You know perfectly well that, thanks to the famous American Tadblagson’s invention, our brains have been fabricated in platinum by galvanoplasty, and that, when they’re worn out, they’re replaced by an identical specimen, since the molds are conserved and catalogued at the Town Hall.”

  “And where are we?”

  “In the offices of Le Chat Noir.”

  Indeed, the reporters are seated around an immense emerald table. The reporters are not handsome; they have the faces of furniture-removers; they are all clad in grey linen with an identification-number on the collar. Each of them wears a kind of hat shape like a pumpkin, connected to his forehead by a series of contacts, like those in the measuring-devices used by hat-makers.

  5 p.m. chimes.

  The ten reporters at the end stick telephones to their left ears and write with their right hands on continuous strips of paper unfurled in front of them by a machine. As the surface is covered in writing, it is drawn through a slit into the basement, where the printing-works are.

  Alphonse Allais, in the capacity of an obliging cicerone, explains things to me: “They’re the reporters of the Present; the telephones reveal to them what is happening everywhere, and they write with the talent that they extract from those singular hats.

  “I should not forget to tell you that the hats contain state-of-the-art metallic brains, with batteries and accessories. The contacts touching the forehead serve to transmit electric currents that can produce talent in the most obtuse of heads.

  “This invention, due to the celebrated Tadblagson, has transformed the social order by rendering talent proportional to wealth. That is why the greatest genius of our era is the banker Philipfill, who has been able to afford himself the luxury of collecting the most expensive brains. Among others, he is said to have paid a million and a half for Sarah Bernhardt’s brain, guaranteed genuine.

  “It follows from this that an end has been put to the socialist demands of the last century. Now the axiom is: no money, no talent. There are very rare exceptions of people without a sou who are born with intelligence, but our tribunals apply summary justice to them by expropriating their brains, every model of which reverts to the State.

  “Le Chat Noir of 1986, which desires to interest its readers at any price, has made the greatest sacrifices to enrich its cerebral collection. Thus, the heads of the ten reporters at the back, two of whom write in verse, are worth more than five million. That one, on the left, has a Victor Hugo brain; just look at it—ten past five, and he has already written 200 verses, 20 a minute.”

  I leaned forward avidly to read a few verses, but the paper was moving so quickly that I could only read these:

  The rough s
andstone wheel draws water from the trough

  And the steel blade whistles, twists and glints.

  The steel must yield to the bite of the flint.

  A spark must flash in the supreme collision

  Like the spark in the gleam of a lover’s vision.40

  “Oh! That will probably be cut by the sub-editor. The brain of the bearer sometimes has too great an effect on the work. That one is a knife-grinder, and his trade is showing.

  “As you can see, we obtain our reporters from the lowest class; they’re more reliable, cheaper and less liable to put their own inner being into the work.

  “We sometimes link two or three different brains, however, in order to obtain unexpected effects. For instance, look at that reporter bowed down by his two superimposed hats. In addition to his own brain—which has scarcely any effect—he’s carrying that of the poet Theodore de Banville, in combination with that of an advocate known to a few erudite persons. I’ll use my scissors to cut out what he’s just written—he won’t even notice—and you can assess the effect.

  This is what was written on the excised strip.

  I had her one fine evening (all things

  …… Considered.)

  Her mother was a tailor, vulgar and

  Widowed.

  I had a mind, despite my colleagues’ horror,

  To make…

  But no one, says Cujas,41 alleging her turpitude,

  Could take…

  Is that gaze, with its gunpowder flashes,

  Profound?

  To ask the question, my heart, it to answer it,

  Deep down.

  I told her: you shan’t have a stone from me,

  Neither

  A diamond, a louis, a franc, a glass of beer,

  Nor cider!