The Conqueror of Death, page 23
They did not, however, renounce the quest to make him confess. And as all the maneuvers had proved vain, they took advantage of a further celebration of which he was the hero to put him brutally in the necessity of replying. This time, he consented to do so.
“What you are asking,” he said, “would be a hundred times worse than the death from which you want to be liberated. Take the trouble to look around you. By prolonging life you would be perpetuating vice, moral suffering, nameless unhappiness. Believe me, since I am the only man in a position to enlighten you on the matter, indefinite life—which is almost good as it is—would be a cruel torture. I won’t tell you that a person would become blasé about everything and would become, after two or three hundred years, a stranger in the midst of younger generations, as old people between ninety and a hundred already are in many cases. That is obvious. But think about what one would become in the midst of unforgiving hatreds. Imagine what ingratitude alone would make of the unfortunate. If I could speak, you would now that I am a frightful example of that—but let’s pass on
“Can you see drunkards, gamblers and malefactors renewing their crimes and infamies incessantly, sowing dolor and despair around them for centuries? Imagine certain spouses bound together forever—what am I saying, forever? Where are those who could live together for a hundred and fifty years? Once again, God has made things well. If I had not been frightened by what I foresaw, do you think that I would have hesitated for a moment to make my fellows happy, for whom I have toiled with such courage and obstinacy? Interrogate all those who are listening to me and ask them whether they would be delighted if three-quarters of their friends were immortal, and listen to their reply. And their relatives—that would be something else entirely.
“Oh, you can be sure that I’ve been on the point of saying everything a hundred times over, for the sake of a little peace—but a hundred times over, too, a secret voice had encouraged me to silence, and I have persisted in it. War, theft, pillage, and internecine massacres are formidable evils. It would not require two centuries, I repeat—and this is perhaps the hundredth time—for humankind, overcrowded, to arrive at those extremities, for want of room on this little round ball that is narrower than perhaps you believe.”
He spoke thus for another hour, and concluded by saying: “If I gave in, Messieurs, in a very short time, there would no maledictions that would not be heaped upon my name and my person.”
This time, there was an explosion of fury. The sage Yankee was insulted publicly. Newspapers published abominable diatribes against him. His caricature could be seen at every street-corner, accompanied by wounding captions.
“It’s a practical joke,” said the most earnest individuals, “and he hasn’t lived for as long as people say. The Americans have deceived us in order to poke fun at Europe. If he had the power of which he boasts, would he hesitate? We ought to expel him shamefully.”
And they provoked one another to lose their heads. It would not have taken much to pass from insults to acts of violence. Oh, if they had known how near the man, shaken in his resistance, had come to revealing everything! But when he saw that overflow of rage, he contented himself with shrugging his shoulders and murmuring; “There couldn’t be any better justification of my resistance.”
Before leaving Paris, he had the generosity to make a further gift to humankind, in the form of an inoffensive substance that suppressed almost all pain in all cases of physical suffering. After which he set off for America, and returned to his fatherland, where he was received almost as an enemy.
There, objurgations degenerated into insults. He and his wife were obliged to go into hiding, so to speak. Their dear children and their adorable grandchildren were subjected to base persecution.
Poor Smithson, desolate, sometimes said to his wife: “Who knows whether I might not be wrong. I have a strong temptation to give them what they want, and so much the worse for them.”
One day, he saw one of his great-grand-daughters arrive at the Red House, carrying her only son in her arms, devoured by fever. She threw herself down at is knees, in tears, begging him, imploring him to save her child. Eventually she lay down at his feet, affirming that she would not get up again unless he rendered life to the suffering child.
How could he resist such a plea? He gave in. Smithson made the child drink a few drops of a golden liquid—and the mother, mad with joy, saw the fruit of her loins returned to life...
From that moment on, the perpetual scientist became less obstinate in his intransigence. The second centenary of his discovery of weather control drew near. He began to debate with himself as to whether, on that occasion, he ought not to yield.
That did not prevent him from contriving new marvels.
Thanks to the progress he made in telescopy, the great American brought the planets so close that it was possible to confirm the plurality of inhabited worlds. He pushed his irrefutable demonstrations far enough to establish that the worlds nearer to the sun sheltered beings more intelligent and more civilized than those of distant worlds. He was able to boast of establishing communication between Mars, Mercury and Earth.
But all that left people cold; they still wanted to know the great secret.
“That’s not what we’re asking of you.”
In the meantime, he imagined a thousand improvements. He made a garden of the entire Earth. Unfortunately, humankind was no better. There were always further demands on the part of the human species. In many places, now, civil discord broke out in the matter of the weather. Some wanted rain, others serene skies. They tore one another limb from limb over that. On the other hand, nations had rapidly transformed aeroplanes into weapons of war. Frightful aerial battles took place in which the victors and the vanquished alike were almost certain to perish. These events caused him to despair. Extreme civilization seemed to be bringing humankind ever closer to black barbarism.
Human beings were scarcely obliged to work, technology having substituted for manual labor almost everywhere, but they were no happier. Everyone had too much time to think, to criticize, to desire enviously. The poor in spirit wanted to rise to the highest rank. The vicious demanded to share out the world to the detriment of the humble and the peaceful.
And yet, Smithson was still waiting for the great celebration that he assumed would be offered him in order to give his fellows the supreme benefit...
This time, however, there was no question of any such thing. The Americans, like everyone else, redoubled their acrimony against the scientist. At the moment when he was counting on a triumphant ovation, there was an upsurge of insults and sarcasm. With bloody unanimity, as if they had been driven by blind destiny, people competed in dragging him into ignominy. It went as far as threats. His house was besieged. Inventions were demanded of him to meet all needs, and the satisfaction of all whims.
“How right I was!” he said, frightened.
And on 24 June 2100, when only three people came to compliment him on his anniversary, Smithson and his wife decided that they would stop drinking the elixir of life.
Within two days they aged through all the time that they had stolen from nature, and died disillusioned, without regret.
Paul Combes: The Gold Mines of Bas-Meudon
(1898)
I. In which Lauriane’s Dream is Abruptly Interrupted
What was the brunette Lauriane dreaming about in her multicolored silk hammock in the warm and perfumed atmosphere of the greenhouse?
Around her, a thousand exotic plants deployed their green foliages or extended their spirals, constellated with flowers in sparkling colors, with bizarre forms and penetrating perfumes. Among them shone rare orchids, whose strange corollas were iridescent with marvelous tints. In a gilded aviary, a flock of brightly-plumaged birds perpetually in motion, mingled low notes and pearly modulations in a delicate chirping.
What was Lauriane dreaming about, and why was she sighing?
Many young women would have envied the calm and peaceful existence that she led in the elegant villa that her father, Monsieur Dumortier, possessed at Meudon at the entrance to the Pavé-des-Gardes. It is true that she had lost her mother, but a long interval of time had gone by since then, and the years, without leading to forgetfulness, had slowly filled in the dolorous void left by the departure of the beloved dead woman.
The father and daughter had felt their mutual affection increase after the cruel separation that had left them alone in the house, in the company of the maidservant who had seen Lauriane born. It is at such time that, in accordance with the poet’s profound observation, “one perceives too late that one has not loved enough,” and those who remain benefit from the retrospective tenderness that one regrets not having lavished on those one has lost.
Monsieur Dumortier and Lauriane were then, reciprocally, one another’s entire universe, and for a long time, nothing entered their hearts to cause the slightest deviation of that affection—not even their common passion for rare flowers, a sentiment that, on the contrary, seemed to bring them even closer together.
Monsieur Dumortier was not exactly rich. The sole heir of the wealth of a family of moderate fortune, he had never made any effort to increase his wealth further, preferring the calm of a modest ease to the risks of the struggle for existence. His small income permitted him to live comfortably, without luxury, in the villa at Meudon, and to devote to his favorite passion what other inclinations might have expended in worldly pleasures.
Thus, the circle of his relationships was extremely restricted. He scarcely saw anyone else, on a regular basis, except the owner of the villa next door, Monsieur Roret, of whom forty years of neighborhood, since their early youth, had inevitably made a friend.
Then there were the lovers of exotic plants that he met at the merchants’ establishments, with whom he was linked by common interests, and who occasionally traded their rarities with him.
It was thus that he made the acquaintance of Christian Norval, a young scientist whom a great Dutch horticultural firm had hired as a plant-hunter, and who had brought back incomparable orchids from the Dutch East Indies.
The modest Monsieur Dumortier was well-known to all orchid-lovers. Because Christian Norval needed, for his botanical identifications, to compare the types he possessed with those he lacked, he had asked to visit Lauriane’s father’s collection.
The day on which the young scientist was received for the first time in the Meudon villa, and allowed to admire the marvels of the greenhouse, was a memorable one. With what love Monsieur Dumortier was able to show off his Dendrobiums, his Aerides, his Saccobiums, his Coelogynes, his graceful Asian orchids, in parallel with his majestic American orchids, the Stanhopeas, the Lycastes, the Cattleyas, the Laelias, the Miltonias and, above all, the Odontoglossums, the Cyrtochylums and the Oncidiums, whose butterfly-flowers seemed to be fluttering in all directions on the branches of their panicles, capriciously fashioned and variegated.
Needless to say, however, of all the treasures that Monsieur Dumortier possessed, the one that charmed Christian the most was Lauriane, a living flower in all the freshness of her twenty years. So, he invented a thousand pretexts to return to Meudon and to insinuate himself into the intimacy of the residents of the villa. He succeeded in that without difficulty, as much by his gracious manners as his profound knowledge of living nature—knowledge that he was able to communicate with a marvelous artistry, without making it obvious. It was not only the world of plants that he had studied; he was fascinated by all the manifestations of the life of the globe, and was just as interested in birds and insects as in flowers.
While chatting, he touched on everything that nature contained, to such an extent that in order truly to know the beautiful flowers in the hothouse he also needed to know what birds, butterflies and bees lived in their locality in the countries that had given them birth. He was the one who populated Lauriane’s aviary with birds like living gems. Monsieur Dumortier also owed to his generosity a superb Coeologyne lowii that Christian had brought back from Borneo.23
Thus, the young man became one of the best friends of the household, not without causing a certain displeasure to their neighbor, Roret.
Then, one day, at the request of the company in Amsterdam that had already sent him to Malaya, he departed for Surinam in Dutch Guiana, in search of new riches, after have said warm adieux to Monsieur Dumortier and Lauriane, and promised them a share to the discoveries that he was sure to make out there.
The young woman had not failed to notice the interest that she had inspired in Christian Nerval, and there was every reason to believe that, for her part, she had not remained indifferent to his attentions, for—it is futile to seek to dissimulate it any further—it was about the plant-hunter that she was thinking in her hammock suspended in the greenhouse, next to the brilliant songbirds that reminded her of the absentee. And she sighed as she thought that the enthusiastic scientist, in the bosom of the virgin forests of Guiana, passionately in love with nature, had doubtless forgotten all about her, entirely given over to his orchids, seductive flowers of which Lauriane was almost jealous.
In which she was wrong, as the continuation of this story will show.
At any rate, it was in America that her imagination was wandering when a ringing bell recalled her to reality.
She leapt nimbly out of her hammock in order to tell Marthe, the maidservant, that Monsieur Dumortier was taking his habitual siesta and that he should not be woken up unless the visit was so important as to render it absolutely necessary.
After a few moments, Marthe came to inform her young mistress that the visitor was none other than the owner of the villa next door, Monsieur Roret, who was asking to see Monsieur Dumortier immediately.
A cloud darkened Lauriane’s forehead; her dark eyebrows frowned, giving her charming face a harsh expression that was certainly not habitual. However much displeasure Monsieur Roret’s visit caused her, though, fearful of annoying her father, who appeared to have a weakness for the neighbor, she said to Marthe: “Tell Monsieur Roret to wait.”
Then she went to awaken Monsieur Dumortier gently and inform him that their neighbor was waiting in the drawing room.
II. Monsieur Roret’s Speculations
Monsieur Roret was the same age as Monsieur Dumortier. They had both been born in Meudon, in the neighboring villas in which they still lived. They had grown up together, and although they were far from having the same tastes, they had never lost touch with one another.
Monsieur Dumortier had married; Monsieur Roret had remained a bachelor.
As much as the former loved beautiful flowers and hated business, the second, a materialist disdainful of everything that did not have the objective of making money was relentlessly involved in variously fortunate speculations.
Monsieur Roret had succeeded, it was said, in making a fairly considerable fortune by means of property deals. He had exploited, in a rather intelligent manner, the expansive movement that carries Parisians avid for open air to take up residence in the suburbs—a movement facilitated day by day by the continuous improvement of means of locomotion.
Several times, he had been able to anticipate the direction in which the lovers of country life would go, and by buying up large tracts of land cheaply that he resold in plots at a handsome profit he had been able, in a relatively short time, to increase his capital considerably.
Encouraged by those initial successes, he had recently engaged in a much larger deal. It was a matter of acquiring, either by immediate purchase or by means of options that he had obtained for determined dates, all the building land situated in the commune of Meudon, especially the part known as “Bas-Meudon.”
He had great expectations of the operation, being convinced that, out of all the places situated in the vicinity of Paris, Meudon was the one most attractive to the capital’s inhabitants.
Perhaps he was right, in a way, but from the viewpoint of speculation, events were by no means in a hurry to justify his hopes. The plots of land he had bought at a fairly high price were hardly selling, or not at all; on the other hand, as the dates for the maturation of the options arrived in succession, Monsieur Roret was beginning to find himself short of disposable funds—and, in consequence, in a rather embarrassing situation.
That very day he had observed that one of his biggest options would fall due at the end of the month. It was time to take stock.
In that difficult situation, he had thought about his neighbor, Monsieur Dumortier.
Monsieur Dumortier was, undoubtedly, an inveterate enemy of business, because of the worries and annoyances that came with it. Perhaps, through, there would be a means of taking advantage of his one weakness, which was the affection he had for Lauriane. It would be easy to dangle before his eyes the sparkling possibility of easily realizing, in a short space of time, a superb dowry for Lauriane.
And, as he thought about Lauriane, Monsieur Roret sighed, in exactly the same way that the young woman had sighed in the greenhouse, when thinking about Christian Norval.
In the speculator there was never any considerable interval between conception and action. He went to his neighbor’s house immediately.
“What’s happening, then, my friend?” asked Monsieur Dumortier, “to make you interrupt my pleasant siesta. I was dreaming…”
“Dreams are what I want to talk about,” the neighbor interjected. “I’ve just had some news of the utmost importance.”
“What?” asked the orchid-lover, in a rather indifferent tone—for important things were the ones that interested him least.
“You know—or perhaps you don’t, for these questions don’t interest you—that until now, the government hasn’t made a decision about the location of the Exposition Universelle of 1900. Should they use the Champ-de-Mars again? Should they transfer it outside Paris? They were hesitating. Now, I’ve just learned from a reliable source that the government intends to employ, for the 1900 Exposition, the vast spaces that the State domains of Meudon offer. What do you think of that?”
