The Supreme Progress

by Brian Stableford

  “My son,” he said, “you have adopted a tranquil and happy way of life; you are a true sage. Let my experiences be a lesson to you; don’t do as I have done in running after wealth that does not exist. Seek neither glory nor fortune; glory is for the dead, fortune for fools. Life is here, in the midst of this powerful and fecund nature, which never betrays those who love her. Perhaps she will yield one of her secrets to her, and you will have more joy in discovering a new fossil than in climbing into a carriage with eight springs.”

  Frantz also talked about his art—his divine art, which opened the doors of infinity. He became animated then; his eyes burned with an unfamiliar flame, and his emotional speech penetrated Georges’ soul.

  In the evenings, until late at night, Frantz and Georges remained together. Frantz played the airs of old masters, so sweet and so pathetic, and Georges never wearied of listening to them. A new world revealed itself within him, full of mysteries. He listened, slightly distractedly at first; then, gradually, he became attentive, gripped by the divinity. The vibrations of the instrument, increasingly sonorous, seemed to make his thoughts vibrate; as the harmonious phases unfolded beneath his friend’s agile fingers, an entire world of thoughts traversed his head, and images passed by, tender, sad, ardent, audacious, filling his being with indefinite emotions, full of charm and force.

  On those evenings, to Nonotte’s great despair, Georges came home late. Frantz’s house was some distance away, and, come rain or snow, he had to traverse the entire village of Martinville at 1 a.m. One day, Georges proposed that Frantz should come and live with him, and Frantz agreed. They agreed to share the household expenses.

  I know that nothing is more contrary to custom, nothing is less regular. It is quite acceptable to make a friend, but to welcome that friend into one’s home! It is necessary to be devoid of any sense of social convention; a self-respecting person would never behave as Georges did. So Georges was much criticized. Unfortunately, he paid little heed to popular opinion. He was simple enough to want to do as he wished, and, not being inclined to interfere with the actions of others, he claimed the liberty of his own.

  Soon, the friendship between the two men became profound. Frantz told Georges about his disappointments, his sadnesses, his love-affairs. Yes, the old musician with the long arms had been in love. He had felt his heart swell with joy at a woman’s smile—that of a pretty blonde girl from Winterstein, who had toyed with him for two years. When Frantz began that story, he could not finish it. His voice trembled, his eyes became moist, and then, abruptly, he opened his violin-case and, without saying a word, started to play at hazard, feverishly, as if only the divine melodies of Beethoven or Schumann could chase away the bitter memory of the pretty blonde girl from Winterstein.

  And Georges too thought about the soft smiles and tender gaze of a woman. A vague desperation gripped him; in the rapid notes emitted by the violin, he saw the forms of women passing by, who extended their arms to him and offered him their kisses. Little by little, the thick envelope of lethargy within which he had blunted himself since infancy was ripped apart. His ideas became more precise, more abundant and vaster. He saw something beyond his seashells. Behind his collection he vaguely perceived the infinity of science: an entire world of powerful facts and vast ideas to which, until now, lost in the observation of meager details, he had remained a stranger.

  One day—a memorable day—when Frantz was declaiming on the shore, Georges, who was hollowing out the walls of his cavern, felt his pick arrested by an object of large dimensions. He tried to detach it; the object resisted. Then, with his knife, his hammer and his pick, he set about attacking the friable stone that surrounded the unknown mass. The mass was enormous, half a meter thick, so solidly enclosed in the rock that it could not be budged. After an hour’s labor, Georges succeeded in laying part of it bare; then he took a step back in order to assess it more accurately.

  Suddenly, an idea illuminated his mind; he felt as if a frisson—the frisson of the sublime—was traversing his body from head to toe.

  “Frantz! Frantz!” he cried, breathless with emotion. “Look! A fossil! An immense fossil!”

  Frantz came over. “It’s only a large stone,” he said.

  “A stone!” Georges exclaimed, indignantly. “A stone! It’s a magnificent fossil, larger than all those in museums.”

  “Oh!” said Frantz, a trifle skeptically. Seeing that Georges was getting carried away, he added: “I hope that it is a fossil—but it’s time to go home for dinner.”

  Georges did not sleep a wink. The next day, very early, in spite of heavy rain, he resumed his work. After great effort, he was finally able to disengage the so-called fossil. As he had bought the little cavern some months before, no one could interfere with his digging or contest his discovery.

  Well, yes, it was a discovery! Fortunes are sometimes reserved for the humble. The enormous object was nothing other than a fossil bone belonging to a great Jurassic reptile, the existence of which no one had previously suspected.

  Disinterring the remains was a difficult task. For Georges, it was delightful. He could have brought in workmen, but he preferred to take sole charge of the work. All alone, with an indefatigable ardor, he separated out the bones. As soon as dawn broke he was in the cavern, sculpting the monster’s remains, and he stayed there until dusk, insensible to the wind and the rain. Every day brought a new discovery, a new joy. First the limbs appeared, then the colossal vertebrae, and then the enormous head, with orbits as large as immense cauldrons.

  The worthy Frantz was amazed and delighted. There was no longer any other topic of conversation between the two men.

  Six months of effort, six months of ever-renewed pleasures. The time passed quickly. Finally, the Mirosaurus maritimus—that was the name Georges gave it—transported piece by piece, could be reconstituted almost in its entirety. A shed was constructed in which the gigantic skeleton was installed. Standing on its four immense limbs and inclining its colossal head, the Mirosaurus was a truly fine sight. People came from far around to admire it, and Georges composed an explanatory treatise to describe the new species.

  This treatise caused a sensation in the scientific world. There was a veritable revolution. For several years, the geologists who were piecing together the history of fossil saurians had always been confronted by a lacuna, an enormous gap, a horrid, gaping, shameful void between the Paleosaurians, whose jaws were straight, and the Archeosaurians, whose jaws were square. Well, the Mirosaurus had oblique jaws. That was the feature connecting the Archeosaurians to the Paleosaurians. The gap was filled in, the void eliminated. Thanks to Georges, the science of fossils no longer had a cruel lacuna. Thanks to Georges, the audacious hypothesis that Monsieur Lissardière had ventured in 1850, regarding the analogy of all the saurians, had been confirmed.

  In spite of its triumph, the Mirosaurus remained modest. The poor deformed creature that had paraded its colossal body over Cretaceous beaches 100,000 centuries before, cared little about academic and Sorbonnean disputes. In spite of its success, it was always there, in the shed, silent and motionless, perhaps dreaming of times past and disdaining from the height of its great age the emotions of the young world that had reintroduced it to the benevolent light of the sun.

  Neither Frantz nor Georges took much account of the polemics that the recognition of the Mirosaurus had excited in Paris. All that scientific kerfuffle was genuinely of little importance to them. Georges’ joy was sufficient for Frantz, and the sight of the old fossil monster was sufficient for Georges. In contemplating his reptile, the honest fellow savored an unalloyed pleasure. At any moment of the day, he could go to the shed, feel the bones of the skeleton, polish them, touch them, run his hands amorously over the old carcass, wax ecstatic over the apophyses and the crests, inventing a new admiration with every passing moment.

  Life had never been so sweet for our friend. Never had fortune smiled on him so much. Happy Georges! He did not seek to know whether he was happy. He
lived without disputes, without anxieties, without chimerical aspirations. He did not philosophize; he did not reason—which is the best way of avoiding irrationality. He loved Frantz, his house, his cave and his Mirosaurus. No, none of that could betray him, and one could defy malevolent destiny!

  The evening musical sessions, interrupted for some time because of the work necessitated by the Mirosaurus, had recommenced. Frantz’s violin had never been so eloquent; never had the notes escaping quiveringly from the old instrument vibrated with so much force and gentleness. They were powerful sensations, ineffable tendernesses, enchanting dreams. If the Mirosaurus opened upon the infinite soul of the past, Frantz’s violin opened stairways toward the infinity of the future.

  As for the present, it still fled by, without disturbance and without sadness. The house in Martinville was upstanding, solid, sane and calm. Old Nonotte made sure that the curtains were very white and that good hot soup was always steaming at the appointed time in the earthenware bowls.

  Months passed. Finally, in successive fragments, the Mirosaurus was entirely disengaged from its somber cavern. It could be photographed in its entirety, and Georges sent a print to Monsieur Lissardière, a member of two Académies, Professor of Paleontology at the École des Arts, etc., etc.

  Monsieur Lissardière replied that he would come to Martinville himself, to study the remarkable specimen in situ. Georges and Frantz went to meet the great man at the railway station. They recognized him easily by the enormous rosette ornamenting his frock-coat. They introduced themselves; they greeted one another and headed, without wasting any time, for the Mirosaurus’ domicile.

  Monsieur Lissardière was a knowledgeable man, and, moreover, a clever one. He held five important positions, in his own right, with generous salaries. Nothing, however, could satisfy his ambition. Several positions were not enough for him; he needed them all. So, whenever a geologist happened by chance to be offered any official position, however modest, Monsieur Lissardière took it as a personal offense. He pestered successive ministers with acrimonious claims. In the offices of the ministry everyone knew him, from the concierge to the chief of staff. Everyone feared his complaints, but whether by virtue of weakness, dread or indolence, they kept their expressions straight and gave in to him.

  He was, however, a fine speaker. He shone in the salons—but in no period of his life had he ever broken stones or scraped fossils. He left such fastidious work to his assistants; he did not like the minutiae of science, he said, and only took pleasure in powerful generalizations. To tell the truth, his assistants were veritable slaves; he gave them neither respite not leisure. It was hard work being an employee of Monsieur Lissardière, and he wearied the most patient—so he was forever complaining bitterly about the disastrous individualist tendencies of the youth of today.

  Such was the short, thin, pale and wrinkled man with the pretentious gestures and penetrating eyes who made his entrance at Martinville railway station, and immediately inspired in Georges a superstitious terror.

  When he was in the presence of the Mirosaurus, he first inspected the jaw.

  “Of course! It’s oblique! What have I said? It’s an archeopaleosaurian. I foresaw it, your fossil, in 1850. You’ve doubtless read my paper? It’s oblique, perfectly oblique. It had to be, for I’d predicted it. It’s a handsome specimen, a very handsome specimen.”

  He spent about an hour detailing the beauties of the Mirosaurus. Georges gave him two or three explanations which struck Monsieur Lissardière by their novelty.

  The savant professor cast a rapid eye over the seashells, admiring them to an appropriate degree. What surprised him, though, was the new classification that Georges had worked out. Our friend was well able to defend it when Monsieur Lissardière attacked it, and the professor was astonished that, far from faculties and academies, in an obscure village, an ignorant petty bourgeois could have had so many ideas.

  The morning was well spent. They went to table and had a long and plentiful lunch, as one does in the provinces. Without missing a bite, Monsieur Lissardière, took a greater interest in Georges than the Mirosaurus.

  “Would you believe,” said Frantz, “that the Museum of St. Petersburg has offered us 200,000 francs for our animal? We didn’t want to sell it, though.”

  Monsieur Lissardière uttered a cry of amazement. “200,000 francs!” he exclaimed. “There’s an object that has cost you dear!”

  “That’s true,” said Frantz, “but it’s our luxury.”

  Monsieur Lissardière looked at him sideways. The long-haired musician had displeased him from the start. “You’re very rich, then?” he said.

  “Enough to refuse ourselves nothing,” Georges replied, smiling.

  “And to desire nothing,” Frantz added.

  Monsieur Lissardière opened his eyes wide.

  Eventually, he took his leave of the two friends. He gave Georges a vigorous handshake, bowed slightly, almost impertinently, to Frantz, and climbed up into the carriage that would bear him away to Paris, full of hope.

  He slept on the way, but it was not of the Mirosaurus that he dreamed. In an enchanting dream, he distinctly saw the ideal son-in-law for whom he had been searching for a long time.

  A few days later, Georges received a letter from Monsieur Lissardière.

  The illustrious scientist lavished admiring epithets upon the Mirosaurus that he had been able to discover in the depths of a cavern. That discovery was celebrated as the most significant progress made in geology for 20 years. “You have,” he said, in conclusion, “discovered that which I thought; who knows what you might be capable of doing henceforth, by following my counsel? Come to my home in Villeneuve-sur-Oise; we shall work together, and it will be easy for us to compose a quite remarkable treatise on the Mirosaurus.”

  Flattery is the most perfidious of intoxicating liquors; its perfume is so inebriating that it numbs, stuns and generates delirium in the most solid of heads. Georges had no difficulty imagining that he might become a great man. Surges of pride invaded him. No, truly, he did not belong in Martinville. A little beach is a narrow theater for a scientist of the first rank; was it appropriate to let great discoveries rot in a provincial hamlet?

  A remote village; a few fishermen’s huts; a rustic house; a failed musician! On looking around. Georges found that everything had shrunk. Even the Mirosaurus had lost a little of its prestige, and he could no longer adore it with the same blind affection.

  After some hesitation, Georges accepted Monsieur Lissardière’s invitation. Frantz accompanied him as far as Rouen. The musician had tears in his eyes.

  “What will become of me without you, Georges?” he said. “Don’t stay out there, at least. You’re fine in Martinville—don’t seek your fortune elsewhere. Oh, yes, glory! But there’s more glory in the Mirosaurus’ cave than Lissardière’s villa. Then again, you’re not made for people like that, my poor boy. You’re a dreamer, a poet, an innocent—what will become of you in their Paris, in the midst of their intrigues and battles…?”

  But he interrupted himself abruptly, accusing himself of egotism, and reproaching himself for thinking of himself when a great future was opening up for his friend.

  What a surprise was waiting for Georges in Monsieur Lissardière’s little house in Villeneuve-sur-Oise! Within a few days of his arrival in Monsieur Lissardière’s home, he was far less interested in the Mirosaurus than in young Clotilde, the savant professor’s daughter.

  Once more, the master’s perspicacity had not been found wanting. What he had found in Martinville was not merely a Mirosaurus that gloriously confirmed one of his hypotheses, but, even better, a son-in-law who might serve his glory. Truly, young Perron was the son-in-law he had been waiting for, rich enough for Clotilde to have all the nice things that only wealth can provide, intelligent enough to be a precious collaborator, and sufficiently obscure and docile for that collaboration to be silent and advantageous. With George, one need have no fear of the rebelliousness and ingratitude o
f the young disciples of the École des Arts, whose foolish vanity made them charge dearly for their petty services.

  But Georges could not see so far ahead; he had no suspicion of these tenebrous machinations. He surrendered himself to sensations that were entirely new to him, which penetrated him delightfully. He put on a show of being interested in the diameter of the intermaxillary bones of the Archeosaurians and listened without complaint to Lissardière’s dissertations, but in reality, no longer knowing what had brought him to Villeneuve, unresistingly obedient to the caprices of his vagabond imagination, he thought of nothing but escaping to rejoin Clotilde.

  Clotilde was pleased by this homage. Strictly brought-up in an austere environment, she had grown up since her earliest childhood in the adoration of the parental individual. She had always heard talk of her father’s great intelligence and high status. It was, in the Lissardière household, a fixed and indisputable verity that Monsieur Lissardière was a great man, and that everyone else ought to efface themselves before him. It was almost sacrilege to resist or contradict him. His words were gospel. Madame and Mademoiselle Lissardière accepted them without argument.

  Several times already, suitors had offered themselves; they had been rejected. Even young Michenot, Monsieur Lissardière’s best pupil and most devoted collaborator, had been sent packing, less for his lack of fortune than his vague inclinations to independence. Michenot evaded the authority of his patron, and Monsieur Lisardière was determined to have his son-in-law under his dominion, like his wife and daughter.

  Georges had forgotten Frantz and the Mirosaurus. An unknown life was opening up to him. In the evenings, on the veranda, Clotilde would run her agile fingers over the piano, lit by two candles, while Georges, intoxicated by indescribable sensations, gazed at her and listened to her. Yes, this was true happiness!

  And Clotilde, sensing feminine coquetry awakening within her, sometimes affected a joyous familiarity, putting more care into her manner of dress, teasing Georges regarding his savagery and the solitary life he had led on the shore of the Ocean.