René du Mesnil de Maricourt: All the Way! The Commune in 2073

(1874)

 

 

It was at ten o’clock in the morning on the first of November, after reading the newspaper, that I decided to take the big step. At five o’clock in the evening I emptied the fatal cup (pardon me for that old expression, a souvenir of my classical reading). The fact is that I drank from a vulgar tea-cup, slightly chipped, bearing traces of poor gilding. What did I drink? I don’t want to give the recipe; people would abuse it.

At six o’clock precisely I lost consciousness, and the last terrestrial sound to strike my ears was that of the dinner bell. I had spent the day writing my testament, thus conceived:

 

My dear children,

 I’m tired of hearing everyone repeat: Good God, where are we going? What does the future have in store for us? Poor France, torn apart by the enemy and by the cruel hands of its own children; poor France, what will become of you?

The future is God’s, that’s evident, but it’s no bad thing to interrogate God about that future, and the surest means of knowing is to witness future events oneself. I want to know what France will become in two hundred years. Well, I shall go to sleep for two hundred years and my curiosity will be satisfied. It’s true that I won’t be able to reply to the alarmed interrogations of my neighbor, who, as he passes me the paper every morning, asks the eternal question: “Where are we going? What will become us?”

It’s necessary to tell you that I have always been profoundly liberal, attached to progressive ideas regarding the emancipation of peoples, but I’ve encountered so many little snags in the application of these ideas that, to tell the truth, I’m no longer sure whether I’m red or white. I would certainly have cried “Long live Henri V!” like anyone else, if it had been possible to settle the matter,28 just as I cry “Long live the President!”—all the more readily since I have nothing to ask of either of them. Will there be red or white in two hundred years? Is it the future that will be triumphant? Is it the past that will be reborn of its ashes, like an old featherless phoenix? We shall know. You have heard talk of the Indian fakir who can produce artificial lethargy at will. Many scientists deny the fact. No matter! He exists, in spite of the prohibitions of the Académie des Sciences, with the result that I have recovered the fakir’s formula and am going to use it on myself in a little while.

Share out my possessions and act as if I were dead. Behave in such a way that everyone will think me well and truly buried, and keep the most absolute secrecy regarding this adventure. I bid you farewell, for in two hundred years from now you would be two hundred and twenty-five, and since the patriarchs, we have lost the habit of such long lifetimes—but marry, have children and transmit my instructions to them.

I’m going to retire to my little study and go to sleep there; I’ll lock myself in. Don’t let curiosity or filial love cause you to break down the door to contemplate my cherished and venerated features, bathe my face in tears, etc., etc. All that, by introducing a dose of air in excess of that specified by the formula, would compromise the success of the experiment. My study door must be walled up, masked by wood paneling; the window should likewise be sealed, so that no stranger can suppose the existence of the little room, which must be like the bell jar of a vacuum pump. Try to live well, but above all, have children. Let the eldest of the family, at precisely six o’clock in the evening of the first of November 2073, make his entrance through the previously un-walled-up door; let the window be unsealed. Let him present himself without fear, and be ready to answer to me; he will find someone able to talk.

(A few minute details here about the precautions to be taken for the solemn moment.)

Farewell once again, dear children, and may God bless you. Let the descendant charged with awakening me not be too abrupt in his manner, nor hypocritically flattering, for a disagreeable sensation might be dangerous.

Senlis, 1st November 1873

Jean-Nicolas Praquin

Ex-municipal councilor, archeologist and philosopher.

 

P.S. I have a horror of genealogical trees that remind us of certain aristocratic vanities now drowned in the flood of progress, but take good care of our own families, in order that I may know who my interlocutor is.

 

P.P.S. Let my dressing-gown be put in pepper, my large boots coated with a thick layer of neat’s-foot oil and half a dozen cotton bonnets be preserved, at all costs.

 

I folded it up, put it in an envelope, sealed it with five large black seals and placed the whole thing in the dining room, very prominently, in order that my family should take cognizance of my intentions; then, as I just said, I locked myself in my study.

That redoubt was very cramped, but I had accumulated many curious and bizarre objects there (the simple mania of an archaeologist and philosopher): a double louis struck under Pharamond; Oceanian swords; Chinese lanterns with grimacing faces; a jar containing a two-head fetus preserved in alcohol; a photograph of a young man whom I had taken into my home and who had never sought to trouble my family; one of an publisher who had got rich without going bankrupt; one of an army supplier reduced to holding his helmet out to passers-by; the portrait of a friend to whom I had lent money and had not turned his back on me—that one I had had painted in oils and on foot; I would have had an equestrian statue made, but didn’t have room.

I had even succeeded, by certain very ingenious means, in conserving the tongue of a woman who had not spoken ill of anyone, the modesty of a poet, the generosity of a banker, the conciseness of an advocate, the virginity of the president of an assize court, the utility of a sub-prefect, the services rendered to the public by a postmaster and, finally, a few kind words from a German and an 1812 sausage.

I let a vague, semi-conscious gaze wander over all these things, while a powerful but gentle heaviness gradually paralyzed each of my limbs and a distant buzzing, like the swell of the sea, afflicted my ears. My vision began to blur, and the last object I distinguished clearly was my mobile saber29 hanging on the wall, and I had a slight aftertaste of the potatoes that it had helped me dig up during the winter of the invasion.

That sensation faded away to give way to a dream, and, with my mind focused on the future I was going to investigate, I said to myself: Is there in the ocean of the political world a man of conviction, honest and disinterested? And floating on the waves of the ocean thus evoked, I saw a few familiar faces of men of different parties, and a sympathetic face sometimes emerged, alarmed and full of anguish, from the lashing foam. They sank, one after another, while I reached out my hand, seeking to catch them by the hair and save them from the abyss—but my fingers closed on them one by one, and nothing any longer remained in my hand but a wig.

Then the first stroke of six o’clock sounded on the big clock in the hallway, and the dinner bell began to ring. I think that, gripped by a sudden terror, I called out to Joseph, my eldest son—but Joseph could not hear me, because the sound stuck in my throat.

I tried several times, and in an agonizing voice, I succeeded in saying: “Jos...”

 

1st November 2073, 6 p.m.

 

“…eph! Joseph!” This time, the word emerged at full volume. Six o’ clock was chiming.

“Here I am, Citizen Ancestor,” replied a reedy voice—and the door fell in.

I saw, by an electrical light whose source I could not make out, a short, slightly stooped man, whose mahogany-colored beard had a few gray hairs mixed in, wearing large spectacles, dressed in a sort of dull gutta-percha tunic. There was something sickly, surly and yet superb in the expression of his features. He was looking at me attentively, without overmuch curiosity, and seemed to be waiting for me to say something to him. As for me, by a rapid mental effort, I pulled myself together; the entire past appeared to me, and in a calm tone, I asked him: “So you’re one of my grandchildren or great grandchildren, and you’re named Joseph, like my eldest son?”

“Citizen,” the little man replied, in his taut voice—as if the effort were painful—“I should like to believe that I am your relative, but in that regard we cannot affirm anything, because the nation has abolished ancestors, in view of the fact that not everyone can afford such a luxury; to conserve that privilege would contravene the laws of equality.”

“But after all, you doubtless bear my family name; you are, I hope, a Praquin, and a good man, as we all are?”

At these words he smiled, and took a visiting card out of a small wallet.

“I called you ancestor,” he told me, “because you evidently belong to the old world that our forefathers have overturned, but there are no more family names, and no genealogy, now.”

And he held out his card, on which I read:

A". Cressgrowers (Joseph), 225. Citizen.

“And this,” he added, “is my companion’s card.”

A". Cressgrowers (Josephine), 225. Citizeness.

“What diabolical gibberish! Would you care to explain it?”

“Yes, Ancient, but let me get my breath.”

At this point, taking a glass-stoppered bottle from his tunic pocket, he raised it to his nose, saying, by way of explanation: “Thanks to the multiplicity of factories, the accumulation of individuals in one place, and the special mode of our constructions, with which I shall soon acquaint you, the supply of breathable air is inadequate, unless we go up in a balloon or on our terraces, so we have oxygen and nitrogen factories, and public reservoirs of compressed air at which everyone can fill his bottle at an fixed price. Don’t worry—this air will be sufficient for you for a few hours. Now, this is the significance of our cards:

“The district of Paris in which we live corresponds to the letter A", and Cressoniers indicates the housing-block in which we are lodged; as for Joseph, I will tell you...”

“One moment, my lad. You mentioned Paris, but I know full well that I went to sleep in Senlis, in the département of the Oise, on the ground floor of my house, in a little study cleverly built into the thickness of the wall; that my house was between a courtyard and a garden, facing a little stream called the Nonette. You mustn’t tell me tales, you hear, or I’ll get annoyed—and I still have solid fists.”

“It was thus,” my interlocutor went on, “that, in your barbaric times, when brutality replaced logic and force was substituted for the law, you brought your rotten old world to ruin—but as I could asphyxiate you instantaneously before you has raised yourself up by half a centimeter, leave your fists at rest and listen to me.”

I was irritated by his tone, which was both conceited and mocking as well as pretentious, all the more so because the French language had undergone a strange metamorphosis during the two centuries I had been asleep. Can you imagine that Parisian jargon, the popular argot that our comedians mimic so hilariously at the Théâtre de Palais-Royal, was the language employed by my interlocutor, with its specific guttural quality supported by gestures of a deplorable triviality? I can but translate his speech into French, in order to be intelligible, while conserving a few of his expressions. It was, therefore, with a certain nervous irritation that I exclaimed:

“Whence comes this familiarity in my regard. Why do you permit yourself to address me as tu? None of my children would have dared to do that, and you, you puny wretch, seem to be sneering at me!”

At which abuse he smiled, and in a frankly good-humored tone he replied: “What? And your sister? Old fool! Have you, then, several individualities all to yourself—more than one nose, mouth, pairs of eyes and pairs of ears—so that I should talk to you in the plural, as if you were a whole group of people? That’s an error of grammar and common sense, long since abandoned, which is reminiscent of the miserable ages of privilege and capital. Besides, if one of our censors heard me say vous to anyone, I’d be subject to a fine of ten thousand francs. Strictly speaking, we may reserve that plural for God”—here he lowered his voice—“since he constitutes, it seems, a whole of several persons, but I’ve just committed a serious fault in pronouncing that word, which ought never to emerge from our mouths. Now I’ll return to the explanation of the cards, but talking tires me out, and we’ve improved dialogue. Open your eyes and shut up.”

He turned his back on me and I saw him maneuvering both hands with an extreme agility.

“You’ll see that we have investigated electricity, old man, and studied the nervous fluid, and have been able to make use of their combination.”

Immediately, I saw luminous characters surge forth on the wall facing me, which appeared and disappeared like the track of a chemical match in darkness. I read the following:

“You fell asleep in Senlis, facing the Nonette, and you woke up in Paris without having changed location, because Senlis and Paris are now but one.

“Take a large set of compasses and place of one its points at the center of the City, pricking the dorsal spine of Note-Dame; open the other branch as far as Provins; trace the circumference, and you will have a perfectly circular area whose extent is approximately equivalent to that of the old Île-de-France. That great round cheese is now called Paris, or, rather, the Commune.30

“Now, cut your cheese by means of a dozen straight lines intersecting at the center, and you will have twenty-four sectors that are distinguished by the letters of the alphabet. A circle, extending as far as the old Saint-Denis circumscribes the first sectors designated by the simple letters mentioned above; a second circle, much more extensive, encloses the continuations of the first quarters, the prolongations of the triangles, and those bear the letter of the alphabet with the sign ". A third circle encloses the series of noted sectors, and so on.

“The advantage of this system is to eliminate any rivalry, since the sectors are perfectly equal. A single glance at my map therefore indicates to a stranger where he needs to look for me in the immense city. But our A" sector is equal in dimension to that of ancient Versailles, and to locate oneself within it requires further subdivisions. The sector is cut into squares by a series of lines drawn at right-angles; each of these squares contains a series of islets or bocks of ten houses, and each house has ten stories; the principal lines isolating the large squares are streets, and the secondary lines merely indicate the drains receiving rainwater. That’s one of the reasons why air is so scarce here, and there’s even talk of a price-increase at the Main Reservoir.”

“What, wretch!” I could not help exclaiming. “You live heaped up in these wells, and that’s what you’ve been able to realize with your ideas of progress, social improvement and the rest! No more air, no more sunlight, no more health, no more life! And we deplored the fate of the workers of Lille and Lyon!”

“That’s true! That’s true! But it doesn’t matter. We have an answer for everything: have a little patience. I’ll continue my explanation of the map. You must have understood that Paris, or the Free City, or the Commune, as you wish, is the perfect representation of an immense spider-web cut into twenty-four triangles terminated at the base by the segment of a circle; I have thus expressed myself badly by employing the word ‘squares’ to indicate our housing blocks; let’s retain it for greater clarity of speech, and let’s say that a collection of squares constitutes an area that, in our free city of workers, bears the name of a trade union. Now, in the ancient Senlis in which you went to sleep two hundred years ago, there were marshes exploited by cressgrowers; that’s why, as a second designation, my card bears the word Cressgrowers. In the same way, we have the areas of Fishermen, Goldsmiths, Advocates, Spadeworkers, Notaries and so on.

“Finally, you want to know why I’m named Joseph? A simple matter of chance. As the family no longer exists, it has been necessary to get rid of family names, and a simple means is employed to label individuals. Here we have recourse neither to the decimal system nor the duodecimal system, nor to the alphabet, but to the old calendar, from which twenty of the most common names—Jean, Jacques, Charles, Joseph, etc. etc.—were extracted, and the Central Council decreed that all the inhabitants of Block II, Section X, will be called Charles or Joseph, in all the houses contained between a particular radius and segment of the circle. As for the number in the sequence, it’s that of a person’s house and apartment. Thus, when I meet my neighbor, I have only to say to him: “Bonjour, Citizen 226!” What a simplification for police enquiries, if the police still existed!”

I remained pensive for a few moments, without saying a word. Abandoning his system of electric telegraphy and having had recourse once again to his bottle of air, he continued:

“That astonishes you, eh, old man? But that’s not all. You wanted to know just now why we live like snakes at the bottom of a well. It’s not that bad, though, and I’ll tell you about it, briefly. In the era in which you lived as an idle bourgeois, innocently fattening yourself on the sweat of the people, since you had your share of filthy capital and your place in the sun without knowing by what right you had it, a few principles had already been proclaimed which had brought the road traveled thus far to a good end. We—by which I mean our forefathers—put these principles into practice, and brought about a great revolution whose nucleus was Paris.

“After battles, accounts of which would bore you—terrible battles in which our people were crushed like vermin, only to rise again, ever stronger and more numerous, supported by right and justice—and after a number of petty bloodbaths which had the result of annihilating the bourgeoisie, our people remained masters of the terrain conclusively; then people finally understood. The liberated worker has taken over ownership of capital and land, the raw materials of production, and has said to all his brothers in the world: ‘Come, poor oppressed individuals, slaves of centuries-old tyranny; come throw yourselves into the arms of liberation.’

“And they came—so many of them, all full of good will and a strong appetite, that it was necessary to appoint quartermasters to prepare accommodations, then organize the work and divide up the capital. We even made an agreement with the other nations, which wanted to continue to live in the darkness of the past, that each one would organize itself as it wished. We were given free rein to apply our ideal of society and government, and were granted free possession of the conquered terrain—which is to say, the great cheese of which I spoke.

“We have accumulated here more than forty million individuals; we had to squeeze together somewhat. In addition to that, land has acquired such value that, even if it were paved over with a triple layer of gold coins, there would not be enough to pay for it. Thus, we cannot amuse ourselves by having promenades, squares and other wasted spaces. What good would they be, anyway, since no one goes out any longer, except on to terraces and in balloon-omnibuses? We have got rid of the ground, and thus used up the surface of the Earth...”

When I remained just as pensive and taciturn, Joseph continued:

“By the coloration of your face and the rapidity of your heartbeat—an extravagant expenditure of air—I can tell in a precise manner what you’re thinking; it’s not sorcery, merely a physical phenomenon that I would explain to you if I had time. I know what the questions are that you want to ask me, and there are a lot of them. At this moment you’re wondering how you come to be both in your old house and one of the modern habitations I’ve just described to you. Nothing simpler. After having razed, burned and sacked the old Paris, we rebuilt the suburbs and constituted the city of free workers on the plan that you know. Old buildings that could be adapted to the plan were conserved. That’s how you came to find yourself sealed in your study like an old toad in its hole.”

As if exhausted by this effort, and the sound of his voice weakening, he resumed using the telegraphic system in order to continue:

“Thus, you see that our cards contain the most precise information; with the aid of a few words, a letter and a number, a pigeon-hole can be located instantly. As for the insect that occupies it, he is so similar to his neighbors that individuality, which played such a large role in your world, has, so to speak, been eliminated—to the extent that in seeing me, you see the entire republic.”

“That’s not funny!” I said.

“Oh yes—jokes were once required to amuse the bourgeoisie! But look, if it were otherwise, what would become of equality? All individuality desires to express itself by climbing over the heads of others. Ours are bowed beneath the yoke of the utilitarian social level.”

“And your wife, Citizeness Josephine Cressgrowers A". number…I can’t remember it?”

“Number 225; don’t make me repeat it again, for an error of name of number might make you end up, when you go out, in the sector of Notaries, Advocates or Bankers, and you wouldn’t be able to extricate yourself therefrom. You’ll see my companion Josephine for yourself at eight o’clock; she’s busy making dinner in the federal kitchen; it’s her decad.”31

“She’s making diner herself? And if I understand you right, she’s making it for the community. You don’t have domestic servants, then?”

“Oh, you poor old man, how you belong to your village and your era. You haven’t understood anything about our modern system. I’ll get back to more important things. You know that we all live in blocks or islets of ten houses divided into ten floors, which results in a hundred households comprising a man, a woman and a child—no more and no less. Thus, in this block there are three hundred Josephs or Josephines, according to the sex of each individual. Ten blocks constitute a thousand families, or three thousand individuals to feed.

“That responsibility is entrusted to ten women, who are replaced every ten days and who, when the ten days are up, go on to other functions, such as those of clothing manufacturer, launderer, newspaper editor, professor of philosopher, and many others. Only one occupation is forbidden to them, and with good reason—that of advocate. But understand once and for all that there is no longer, strictly speaking, any manual labor. With improved machines activated by heat or electricity, one has only to touch certain switches with one’s finger. Thus, forging iron, cutting wood, decorating the façade of a public building, casting a statue and writing a poem are all as easy as playing a tune on a miniature organ; it’s only a matter of operating the keys. Having strong arms is, therefore, merely an old expression to us, devoid of meaning, unless it’s a matter of the patriotic capstan, about which I shall tell you in due course.

“You can see that domestic servants would be unnecessary, an encumbrance, and even if they were to be awarded the title of official citizens, it would be no less shameful for a society founded on equality to conserve such ancient, quasi-feudal customs.”

“But in sum, tell me, how is your society of free workers—since that’s the name you’ve adopted—organized?”

“The ultimate foundation, as I’ve already said several times is equality: that is the great principle, and its consequences are these: hereditary property being a monstrous aberration of barbaric centuries in which the strong oppressed the weak, in which one only needed to be well-born in order to sit down at the banquet of the idle rich, has been abolished. Family affections being nothing but disguised egotism, exposing some people to comfort in their households while others find nothing there but beds of thorns, the abolition of the family and the institution of marriage were decreed...”

“Good, good! That’s logical—but where do the children come from?”

“No one knows.”

“What! No one knows?”

“No. Every citizen must be father to a certain number of little free workers, without his being able to recognize them; none of the children know their parents, and the Commune is the universal mother of all. A short time after your burial, when the great victory took place of labor over capital, liberty in love was proclaimed. Liberty was fine, but equality received rude shocks at every step. Some women had ten lovers, while their neighbors could lower themselves without obtaining the slightest declaration from an old ape; some men transpierced all feminine hearts with their gaze, while all women looked down their noses at their brethren. Add to that a system in which a few reproducers found themselves solely responsible for furnishing the republic, which would have cause some type or aptitude to predominate. It was necessary to renounce all that and submit love to a rational and methodical discipline.”

“What sort of discipline?”

“Every citizen, at the age of twenty-one, and every citizeness, at the age of eighteen, is, or ought to be, capable of the work of national repopulation. In consequence, a young man drawn from the adult reservoir, about which I shall speak in due course, is provided with lodging, which is the lot assigned to him, and, by the same token, is provided with a name since the name is attached to the dwelling. The same operation is simultaneously effected in the female reservoir, and, at the same time as shelter, food, work, tools and civil estate, the adult meets the young companion allotted to him at random...”

“With whom he must live...”

“For exactly a year; when the year is up, a round of inspectors or censors arrives, charged with collecting woman and children; the women are distributed to other citizens, year by year, always according to the dictates of a lottery, until they are too old; then they becomes teachers or midwives. As for the children, they are poured into the bosom of Social Maternity. That is as simple as all our institutions, but it seems to require further simplification, and there is talk of applying to national repopulation a certain system of pisciculture that had already been invented in your era. The project is under consideration, and we’re awaiting a decree of the Central Council.

“Until that decree is promulgated and printed on our poster-balloons, the children will remain in the Maternity until weaned, and then are confided to the care of united households, which are responsible for them until the age of seven. Then the nation takes them back in order to place them in reservoir no. 1, a period of rough-hewing: writing, reading, telegraphy, rapid calculation, and a few historical and geographical notions. They are then plunged into reservoir no. 2, a period of growth in which they get a general notions of arts and crafts, and finally they are decanted into reservoir no. 3, that of adults, a period of adaptation and improvement in which they are taught all the professions.”

“All the professions, you day? What difference is there between a mason and a physician, a wine-maker and an astronomer?”

“None. Equal remuneration; we are adept at everything, to such a extent that a telegram notifies me whether I shall be an advocate for the next decad, a sewer-worker or a censor for the following decad, or whether I shall have to be a representative on the Grand Council while awaiting my turn on the capstan. In a word, we have to do everything—in a mediocre fashion, it’s true, but our goal is to attain average proficiency in everything, and. thanks to our numbers, our products are perfect.”

“Hmm! I don’t quite understand, any more that I understand your capstan. I’ve often seen sailors devoting themselves to that painful exercise in order to pull up an anchor, but since you practice aerial navigation, you must have got rid of aquatic navigation.”

“Not badly reasoned, old chap! We call ourselves that by analogy with, and in memory of, the great national instrument. It must be admitted that coal is scarce, and to obtain it from other nations would require fabulous sums; we have tried hard to dig down into our property as far as the center of the Earth, but it was necessary to call a halt to that in the face of unforeseen difficulties. Ether, chloroform and other substances became rarer, to the extent that we decided that we would become the necessary motor ourselves. Day and night, in each of the twenty-four sectors of the great cheese, thirty thousand men are harnessed to handles, and they push, push, push ahead, while singing the national anthem that reminds us of our emancipation, to the tune of the Marseillaise. Now, the collective force produces friction, and from that friction emerges heat, which we direct by means of ingenious apparatus in such a way as to produce clothes, works art or good dinners, like the one to which I invite you, for eight o’clock is about to chime, and the citizeness will not be long.”

“Devil take me!” I exclaimed.

“Again, no God and no Devil,” said Joseph, imperiously. “I have no desire to pay the fine: ten thousand francs represents a decad’s work! These figures might seem excessive to you, but think of the augmentation of productivity, and hence of wages. As we live behind a blockade here, and other nations only accept ready cash, we are forced to have recourse to paper. We even go as far as payment in kind. Thus, I’ve sometimes received a stuffed crocodile for working at the patriotico-fraternal capstan, and I go to buy breathable air at the local reservoir with an old umbrella. The words you use recall certain primitive superstitions that enchained peoples for too long, and in that regard our laws are explicit.”

“So be it! I won’t say anything; but I’ll make the observation that your capstan reminds me strongly of those Egyptian monuments for which, before the liberation of humankind, the State paid in human sacrifice for...”

“Bonsoir, Citizens! Here I am. I’ve obtained a double ration from the Federal Council of Josephs for the ancestor, who must be hungry.” So saying, Madame Josephine 225 made her entrance. Eight o’clock was chiming.

My study door having been caved in, at simple touch from the citizeness, I saw the wall on which Joseph had exercised his telegraphic talents open up, sliding sideways as if by magic, to reveal a small and very tidy dining-room. On a table were three sets of cutlery and bowls of soup.

The dishes that succeeded one another, seemingly placing themselves before us of their own accord, seemed rather insipid to me, and the portions where measured chemically. As the rapidity of the service astonished me, Joseph murmured, between two mouthfuls: “Improved technology; application of electricity.”

At the end of the meal we had beverage of some sort, which reminded me of our old coffee, followed by a vague memory of brandy.

I could not define the exact nature of the items of food and drink; at any rate, after the meal I found myself breathing more easily, quite alert and well, almost cheerful, in spite of the numbness that had weighed upon me since my awakening.

“Electro-chemical phenomena,” Joseph whispered in my ear. “Cooking with organic elements reconstituted by science. Galvanization of the stomach...”

The citizeness intrigued me greatly; she had not pronounced two words during the meal and I had been unable to meet her gaze, hidden behind spectacles as massive as those of the citizen, but blue-tinted. His complexion seemed to me to be pale, pasty and unhealthy. She was wearing a kind of waterproof garment, gray in color, like the masculine tunic, but fitted with an enormous hood with advanced edges, like a nun’s head-dress, so that her face was lost in its dark depths. One could, however, see a few strands of mahogany-colored hair peppered with white.

I noticed that the citizeness was a trifle stooped, like Joseph, and I wondered whether I might be confronted by an old lady—and yet, a few swift and decisive gestures, and a suggestion of stubbornness in the nostrils made me think that the citizeness might not be as old as she seemed. During the meal she had put a pitcher on her head in order to carry it into the next room, supporting it with both hands like a Greek caryatid; as I saw her disappear she had evoked a rapid vision of youth, beauty and innocence. Beneath the horrible gutta-percha garments I had perceived the curve of hips, the suppleness of a flexible figure; I had thought of those genteel schoolgirls who dress up outrageously to play the roles of grandmothers.

Joseph understood, for, as he had said, the diabolical little man could read my thoughts.

“Ha ha, Ancient!” he said, smiling, “It appears that you were a connoisseur in your day, perhaps an enthusiast, but as I have to leave you alone with the citizeness, be circumspect. I’m not speaking for myself—I don’t have any right to be jealous.”

I made a gesture full of dignity and offended decency, and asked Joseph: “Why do you say that you don’t have the right to defend your conjugal honor? The woman is your wife and possesses the spousal dignity that we hold precious among us. In a word, she belongs to you.”

“You’re mistaken,” said Joseph, with a certain sadness. “She belongs to the State, to the Commune, if you wish, and the Commune has only lent her to me. In case of any deterioration of accident, I would be responsible for the damage caused to the nation, thus deprived of one of its instruments of repopulation.”

“Why is he leaving us, then?” I asked Josephine, when he went out.

“To go drink three cups of a debilitating infusion, read three verses of Klopstock’s Messias and comment on a chapter of Hegel: the three cups because it has been noticed that his muscles are developing too much and threatening to exceed the limits of the permitted mean; the reading because he has shown signs of a certain vivacity indicative of intellectual tendencies. As the majority here is unintelligent, intellectual tendencies are blunted by friction with German. Would you like to know anything else? Will you soon be finished with your questions? I’d like to interrogate you about the past—but go and see whether the doors are locked. Go on! Look lively!”

She began pirouetting around the table, humming: I have a restless foot... Oh, the little lambs...32

“Tell me, what did those animals do? Out there, old books of engravings circulate in secret, in which people and animals of the extinct world were seen, but it’s forbidden, on the grounds that such things clog up the intellectual wheels. All the same, I’d like to see a lamb or a horse...”

Still babbling and hopping around, with a few flicks of the wrist she got rid of her hood, her frightful waterproof garment, threw away her mahogany wig and her blue-tinted spectacles, shook off the dull powder soiling her face and appeared, as I had divined, in the naïve splendor of a dazzling youth.

“Are you an actress, Mademoiselle?” I asked, in bewilderment, feeling quite intimidated by that sudden revelation.

She burst out laughing. “Oh! Mademoiselle is superb! Mademoiselle is worth its weight in platinum. Mademoiselle! You must have come back to our world in order that I should hear that word. But no stupidities, you know, my jewel of an ancestor!”

With that, her dark eyes, shining with murderous mischief, expressed supplication mingled with terror so well that I was overcome by emotion.

“Oh, indeed! It’s just that if some censor were to see and hear me, I wouldn’t get away with a fine; I’d have to disappear.”

“Disappear, poor child! But who are these terrible censors, then, of which I’m always hearing mention?”

“They’re no one and everyone. There are no more sergents de ville or paid police, as there once were, but half the population is employed in spying on the other, and the slightest infraction of the law leads to the suppression of the guilty party; the Grand Council decided that—to ensure the security of the republic, it’s said.”

“And what happens to the guilty parties?”

“I don’t know. A man vanishes one evening; the next he’s replaced by another almost identical, who takes his name, his number, his pigeon-hole, and that’s it. Neither seen, nor known, Bonsoir! You made me laugh just now asking me whether I was an actress. Oh no, no more than anything else—and even less, for special aptitudes have been seen in me for music, dance, pantomime, and care has been taken to apply me to cooking and geometry.”

“How old are you?”

“We can’t know that exactly; something like eighteen or twenty, I suppose.”

“And—pardon me if the question is indiscreet—are you already a mother?”

“No, but I will be tomorrow morning. I received notice of it today; an infant will be brought from the Maternity for us—but if it’s not healthy I’ll refuse it; yes indeed, as we’re responsible for the kids, I don’t want damaged goods!”

“And you must love someone who is a stranger to you, constraining your sentiments?”

“Love? I don’t understand—it’s the first time I’ve heard that; it’s doubtless an old word. We don’t love anything; we obey the Council; we’re entrusted with some brat, told to keep it alive and in good condition; when the general sweep comes around we give the child back and get a receipt in return. After that, another, and so on.”

“Do you love Joseph?”

“I don’t know; I don’t know him; he’s like all the others, except that he’s young and polite, but, probably out of respect and fear of the law, he’s never done anything imprudent, as I have.”

“Poor children! Poor children! So this is progress! So that wretched helmet, those spectacles, that wig...”

“Oh well, that’s uniformity!33 Has one any right to have a better figure than someone else, more beautiful eyes or more abundant hair? Firstly, the spectacles are compulsory, because by dint of microscopic studies and application, and by dint of living without sunlight, sight is generally weak, and it was decreed one day that, the nation being myopic, it would wear spectacles. For us they have to be colored, because it’s necessary that no one sees our eyes. As for hair, it’s the same principle; in the beginning there were blondes, red-heads brunettes and black-haired people in the Commune; all of that was melted together to obtain a dark mahogany shade, and as a considerable number of citizens were beginning to go gray, the tresses are sprinkled with a few white tints. That’s also the reason for the curvature of the dorsal spine that’s statutory here. Enough chat of that sort, my Ancient. Tomorrow morning Joseph will be a deputé; he’ll show you the city of workers from a balloon, and you’ll witness a parliamentary session, after which the Grand Council will deliberate. As for me, I’ll re-read my Theory of Maternity, for use with the expected little monster. Good night—and above all, don’t say anything about what you’ve seen.”

I didn’t sleep too badly, and the next morning Joseph woke me up, made me swallow a few hasty mouthfuls, and, preceding me through a number of corridors, led me to the bottom of a sort of funnel, at the top of which, on looking up, I could see a blue circle. It was the sky—the good God’s authentic sky. The air, although rarefied, did me good as it filled my chest, and my emotion was so intense that, while following Joseph up the steps of an interminable spiral staircase, I felt tears come into my eyes.

“That’s another of the advantages of our Commune system,” Joseph said. “It’s true that we’re deprived of air and sunlight, but where would be the pleasure of enjoying them, if abstention didn’t make us appreciate their benefits?”

This time, I could not contain my indignation, and as we were about to reach the terrace and Joseph’s upper body emerged entirely into the natural air, I shouted loudly:

“Wretch! Stop pretending! You’re twenty years old, your heart beats, you aspire to liberty, light and love—in sum, to that God whom you have expelled from your absurd republic!”

I thought that I would pay dear for that outburst, for he darted a glance at me darker than Clytemnestra’s, and we were in a position such that a simple push would have precipitated me to the bottom of the terrible black gulf. That only lasted for a second, though. His face cleared, and it was with a smile of sorts that he held out his hand to help me climb the last few steps. He whispered in my ear: “On your life, not another word until we’re 700 meters above the clouds!”

On can easily imagine the general form of the terraces crowning the blocks of ten houses—which is to say, squares about a hundred meters on each side, bordered at the perimeter by a wall sustaining staircases, while vegetable plots ran along the foot of the wall. In the center the orifice of the funnel into which the staircase we had just climbed plunged; and bushes adjacent to the community’s chimneys. The uniformity of that glance was unbroken, from one block of ten to the next, save for the occasional tall chimney, like those of our factories. Joseph informed me that they allowed the smoke and vapors of the federal kitchens to escape.

“You see,” he added, “that without wasting an inch of ground, we have exhausted the soil, but that our terraces procure a little dessert for the federated. I have no need to tell you that if we have cherries and peaches in midwinter, we owe them to geothermic culture. In sum, the nature of the ground, whether we buy it or make it ourselves, is utterly insignificant, thanks to the prodigies of chemistry.”

While speaking, he busied himself detaching the balloon that would transport us to the Assembly. Several others of the same size were anchored along the wall and to the chimneys. It would be difficult for me to describe these vehicles, because they did not resemble anything from our era. They were shaped something like an elongated boat, equipped with four slender wings of vast extent, affecting a sort of resemblance to those of the dragonflies of our rivers.

Without any help from me, and without taking the trouble to explain the mechanism—which I had undoubtedly not understood, for lack of preliminary study—he maneuvered it with activity and precision. When he had sat me down facing him, I found myself transported, without knowing how and without the slightest shock, several hundred meters above the terrace.

“Don’t lean over too far, and try not to move. Do you know how very imprudent and talkative you were just now? No one was there; otherwise, in spite of your two hundred and fifty years of existence, you’d have had to forsake your appetite for bread. Oh, if Josephine had too loose a tongue, they wouldn’t hesitate to cut it out. You have to take precautions; in our own islet, people know about your scientific resurrection, and people are disposed in your favor, but I can’t answer for other sectors. There are still people with an appetite for bourgeois blood, even that of a bourgeois phenomenon, and believe me, the best thing for you to do is to imitate me.”

Out of a little cabin under the tiller, like those small boats have, he took a uniform similar to his, including the spectacles and the wig.

“Disguise yourself as best you can with that, make yourself grimy, try to make yourself small and stooped. Not bad. Now we can talk; no one can hear us, unless the crows have been recruited as police spies.

“Well, no, it’s true, old chap—we’re not happy at all, not at all, and strictly between us, there might well be some hammer-blows in preparation against the president; I don’t know whether you might even witness a revolution today.”

“What’s that? A Revolution! Oh yes, a little revolution to keep your hand in; I see that you haven’t forgotten the old tunes. But who is your president?”

“No one, or almost no one; he’s a citizen selected by lot. His name and individuality are effaced, since his job consists of counting the votes in the Assembly and transmitting the national will to the Grand Council. To conceal that individuality even better, it has been decided that every president should wear Monsieur Thiers’ overcoat, which the Commune has conserved in memory of the services rendered by that great man.34 If he had not had our forefathers shot or deported, as he did, they would not have attracted to our cause all the sympathy that attaches to persecuted sects. So you’ll see his bust in the hall of the Grand Council, with those of the other individuals who, directly or indirectly, precipitated the humanitarian movement: the great despots, Louis XIV, Ali Pasha, Ivan IV, Nero and his consorts, who rendered monarchy odious; the Rousseaus, Babeufs and Proudhons who formulated the doctrine of our ignored grief, our unrecognized rights; the men of action: Amasis the ex-thief, king of Egypt, one of the first to indicate that theft is merely principled rectification, since property-owners were the original thieves;35 Napoleon III, the counterfeit of his predecessor; Bismarck, one of our most powerful levers…I’m passing over many others, as you’ll see.

“The deputés, with their imperative mandates in their pockets, are much less important. Besides, it’s the lottery that picks them out, and they only have to express the views of the sector that they represent. With that system, you might think that everything would proceed smoothly, but no, whatever one does; there are still foreign influences, occult but dangerous, that falsify the votes. Thus, there’s the big question on today’s agenda: ought the entire nation to be bowed down, almost hunchbacked, as if in consequence of excessive labor? Some say yes, others no, and the neighboring nations will certainly be doing their best to make us seem ridiculous; the president himself, old and broken down, would like everyone to resemble him. Hence, discontent among well-built people, who claim to constitute the majority—and as I said, the session will be stormy.”

“Well, well! But who are these other nations you mention, and what relationship do you have with them?”

“The map of Europe has been redrawn; it presently consists of three great confederations, to wit: the Slavonic, the German and the Latin. It’s to the latter that our city belongs, although it is, so to speak, out of the game, living its own life without concern for races or origins. But commercial necessities put us in contact with the neighbors, and the president receives deputations from all the powers. No one likes entertaining foreigners, whose doctrines might poison the national spirit, and I believe that they feel the same, but it’s still necessary that we export the excess of our products, which inundate the Earth, because we manufacture cheaply, and it’s also necessary that we obtain raw materials from abroad.”

“You never have wars?”

“War!” said Joseph shrugging his shoulders. “But that’s the antithesis of democracy. Besides, we’ve rendered it impossible; consider that, from the height of our balloons, with a few asphyxiating bombs and the resources of electricity, any one of us, at the flick of a switch, could pulverize fifty thousand human beings.”

“But haven’t the others made the same progress?”

“Indeed, but national secrets are well-guarded and woe to spies! And we’re numerous enough for anyone to think twice before troubling us. Anyway, what motive can anyone have for war while we remain within our boundaries and respect the conditions of the European pact?”

“That’s true—but the rest of France doesn’t adhere to your improved organization of free labor, then?”

“Firstly, France no longer exists, any more than Germany, Italy or Spain. Like us, England minds its own business, trading independently, and lives freely while respecting the liberty of others. As for the former France, it’s divided into five or six kingdoms, duchies or republics, according to local taste. Thus, we have a king reigning in the Vendée and part of the Midi, believed to be descended from the ancient Bourbons. A second portion of the Midi is constituted as a Republic, and the third has resuscitated Provençal royalty. In Bretagne, by virtue of archeological research, digging in the tumuli and local archives, a distant cousin of Duc Judicaël36 has been exhumed and Bretagne has become an independent Duchy again, while a substantial fraction of the North and East recognizes sovereigns of the Orléans branch. There are a great many members of the Bonaparte family; it was decided that they would divide Corsica between them—where, it appears, each of them, at the head of a six-man army, makes war on his neighbors.

“In Spain, of which the Arabs have the impudence to reclaim their share, people get by as best they can. Germany is very nearly what it was before unification, and the Prussians form a small savage population on the shore of the Baltic. In Italy, the work of Victor-Emanuel has been obliterated, but a very embarrassing question arose in consequence: what to do with the Pope, whom even the majority of Romans did not want for a king. A rather ingenious compromise was found; he has his palace in the Vatican, and a few other establishments in other cities, such as Jerusalem and Avignon, but, thanks to the improvement of balloons, he can travel incessantly with his cortege of cardinals and all his staff, floating above nations attached to the Roman Catholic religion. Although he no longer has any land, the spiritual world belongs to him, and by that means, he directs the fractions of his Church scattered over the Earth much more efficaciously...”

While chatting thus, we were rising higher; the balloon’s great wings struck the air with incessant rapidity, and we traversed cloud after cloud. Less accustomed than my companion to the rarefaction of the air, I was suffering from it considerably, and was obliged to have recourse to his little bottle.

“We’ll be arriving momentarily. We’re near Saint-Denis now.”

Indeed, scarcely had he finished speaking than the balloon, gliding obliquely and descending toward the ground, carried us with vertiginous rapidity to the center of ancient Paris, above the Cité, three or four hundred meters from the ground. All the details could be distinguished clearly, as on a relief plan. I was dazzled, and remained mute.

“You find it much changed, eh? Let’s stop for a while, and I’ll explain what seems to you so extravagant. You’ll certainly recognize the location of your capital, but only a fraction of the city survives. We began by demolishing everything, as I told you, and then rebuilding it according to the ideas and needs of modern society. Central Paris is no more than a great plain traversed by the Seine, straightened and channeled. It’s in that plain that the nation can set foot on the ground and tread on it. You can see a certain number of great national monuments; I’ll point them out to you:

“Firstly, the Cité, where Notre-Dame and the Palais de Justice once stood—which is to say, odious testaments to popular superstition and judicial prevarication—is no more than a vast temple: the temple of free and glorified labor. Inside, it is decorated with three hundred statues or allegorical groups, each representing an industry: the tailor plying his needle, the cook spitting his turkey and the surgeon his patient, etc., etc. Natural grandeur in bronze. It’s here that the citizens come, at the renewal of each decad, to honor the only divinities recognized here: labor directed by human intelligence.

“Secondly, higher up, on the site of the Tuileries—a shameful monument to the insolence of kings—raises the Central Maternity, whose function you know.

“Thirdly, to the right and the left, three large circular buildings: the three male Reservoirs facing the three female Reservoirs.

“Fourthly, adjacent to the Maternity, there’s the Senate...”

“The Senate?” I exclaimed, in amazement. “You have Senators? But why, then, go to the trouble of overturning an entire social edifice?”

A few rapid wing-beats carried us over the Senatorial palace, where the balloon remained hovering.

“You have only to look and you will understand,” said Joseph. “The august individuals are about to go to the Assembly.”

And I did, indeed, see a long file of men emerged slowly and majestically, no longer clad in the dirty national tunic but in magnificent purple togas whose hems trailed disdainfully on the ground. A few of them wore the uniforms of generals, and magnificent decorations of all the familiar orders shone on their breasts. I did not understand as yet when, on looking at them more closely, I saw that some were lame or one-armed, others blind, one-eyed or paralyzed, and in the bewildered faces of some, oozing filthy drool, I recognized cretins.

“Now you understand; those are injustices of nature which, with our ideas of equality, we could not tolerate. What could we do? Condemn the nation to adopt all these infirmities? That was unthinkable. Then we thought of indemnifying these poor underprivileged individuals by searching the vanities of the past for means of flattering human self-respect; there is the result.

“Let’s pass on to the fifth and last; it’s the most important, because it’s there that the Assembly sits and the President of the Council resides. That palace occupies, as you can see, almost all of the site of the Champs-Élysées. Let’s moor the balloon here, and proceed on foot; while we walk, you might perhaps notice some things of interest.”

Although I had been warned in advance, I had some difficulty in suppressing my laughter on seeing a compact crowd of small, stooped, graying men wearing spectacles, so similar to my guide that if I had not taken his arm I would not have been able to recognize him among the others.

“Fear not,” said Joseph, with a singular smile, “kindness is never wasted”—and in smiling thus, he seemed to want to emphasize his weak pun,37 whose significance I was about to comprehend. All the balloons, wings folded like grasshoppers at rest, were hooked on to the walls. The very same people who were elbowing one another in order to arrive more rapidly, unceremoniously treading on toes, stood aside respectfully and bowed as the senators went by.

On the site of the former Palais de l’Industrie, an immense crowd was gathered around a monstrous balloon on which one could read, in letters fifteen feet high:

 

LIBERTY – EQUALITY – FRATERNITY

Hunchbacks Strike!

Live by labor or die in combat!

Long live the Commune!

 

“There’s the stamp of authority—that’ll excite you!” said Joseph. “Do you see all these people standing up straight? Let’s join them; it’s time to confess that I’ve been conspiring with them for some time, and that I’m one of the leaders of the conspiracy.”

And Joseph metamorphosed, as the citizeness had done; he suddenly stood up straight, and his dull, atonal gaze, deprived of expression, became brilliant with malice, revealing an energetic determination.

“Good, my lad!” I said, shaking his hand. “I like you better like this, and I’m entirely ready to slap you on the back. I haven’t forgotten the barricades, when, bourgeois or proletariat, we fought for liberty—but here, before fighting, I’d like to know why and for whom.”

“You’re not disgusted, then. Do people who fight ever know those things? They’re puppets obedient to strings, but which hands hold and pull those strings one can never know. Personally, I conspire as a matter of taste, for love of it; after several generations of hybridization, I doubtless retain some Bellevillois blood in my veins. Once it was a matter of dethroning a tyrant. The enemies were soldiers, policemen, spies and the whole gang; one took on such and such a minister, or certain deputés, but now...”

“Now you’re all ministers, deputés, policemen at the same time—to attack the state is to attack yourselves.”

“I don’t deny it, but although we no longer have tyrants to demolish, it’s still necessary to defend ourselves as best we can against tyranny—and the tyranny is invisible. Being obliged to take on someone, it’s the president that we’ll overturn, whom we’ll crush, although the poor Devil can’t do anything and has never thought of tyrannizing anyone. Anyway, there’ll be fighting, broken heads, a little diversion from the monotony of existence—isn’t that the revolutionary ideal?”

“But you haven’t any weapons.”

“What do you think our bottles and electrical apparatus are? Do you expect cannon and rifles, as in your barbaric centuries?  Less noise, more effect—that’s our motto. That’s enough for now; you’ll see the rest for yourself.”

At the end of an immense boulevard the façade of the gigantic Palais National loomed up. The boulevard was bordered by a quadruple rank of shiny green palm-trees.

At that sight, I expressed a certain astonishment, which did not escape Joseph’s penetration; replying to my thought, he said: “No, don’t think that the globe has warmed up, or that a new inclination of its axis has displaced its latitudes; Africa hasn’t been transported to Paris. How can you imagine that, given the price of wood, we could afford such a luxury as trees, even if the soil could support them? Those palm-trees are made of painted zinc, designed for the same usage as certain hollow colonnettes of your time, along the boulevards…at the same time, the object is pleasant to look at. Utile dulci38—isn’t that how your pedants put it?”

Having joined the group of upstanding individuals, we entered an immense hall at the back of which the President was seated, between two men that Joseph identified as the Minister of the Interior and his Private Secretary, both charged, by reason of the President’s advanced age and physical debility, with repeating his words to the audience, making use of a giant megaphone.

After a few murmurs in the crowd, negotiations, certain formalities and the reading of reports devoid of interest, a deputé rose to his feet and announced—also with the aid of a megaphone—that he was going to speak on behalf of the deputation of hunchbacks who had gone on strike. (Exclamations to the right.)

The President, combining the functions of Head of State and President of the Assembly, reached slowly and solemnly for his hand-bell, but without his bleak and seemingly petrified face indicating the slightest emotion.

“What self-composure” said someone nearby. “Nothing disturbs him!”

The deputé read the following statement, in the midst of profound silence:

“Citizen President and Citizen Members of the Grand Council, we, the inhabitants of sectors A" through M", regions of hat-makers, physicians, heating engineers, bankers, tax-collectors, etc., etc., in consideration of the fact that neither nature nor age constrains the absolute majority of the nature to maintain a stooped posture;

“That the obligation to feign a slight infirmity is an augmentation of effort without an equivalent augmentation of salary;

“And that, in any case, equality is not significantly diminished by the rectitude of a large number of vertebral columns;

“The inhabitants of the said sectors declare that they refuse to submit to the obligation of slightly curving the spine, unless the Grand Council allows each of them an augmentation of pay of a hundred francs a day.

Followed by signatures, in alphabetical and numerical order.”

(Furious clamors to the right. Prolonged applause to the left.)

The Minister leans toward the President, who pronounces a few words in an indistinct voice. The Secretary does likewise.

“Citizens,” the Minster then translates, “our President has just said: ‘Citizens, it is always with a new pleasure that I see you ready to support the cause of a motion, but refrain from exaggerated zeal, for...’”

The Secretary, addressing the left, continues: “‘Citizens, it is with regret that I see you support the cause of insubordination; he who lacks respect for the law...’”

But he is unable to continue. A group of frenzied individuals, leaping on to the platform, surrounds the President and his spokesmen; groans and murmurs are heard, a loud scream, and finally, a singular clink of metal and the sound of a heavy body falling to the floor.

“The President has been assassinated!”

“Every man for himself.”

“To arms!”

An indescribable tumult; a debauch, an orgy of vociferations.

The disorder was complete: jostling, stamping feet, electric gleams, menacing bottles, whole rows of men knocked down and trampled underfoot...

Such was the scene in the hall, when a man of Herculean build bounded to the podium, took possession of it, clung to it, and, in spite of the efforts of the Minister and the Secretary, succeeded in holding his position. Tens, twenty, thirty of the bespectacled little men caught hold of his arms and legs, in order to cast him down, but, like a wild boar shaking off a cluster of dogs, he swept them away, throwing them into the auditorium, crushing them against the benches. The ups and downs of the struggle were vaguely visible through the undulations of the crowd.

Finally, having become sole master of the terrain, the stranger appeared in all his glory: a trimmed moustache and a big red beard on his chin, a double breasted coat, a high receding forehead forming a single line with the shape of a backward-tipped hat: a pure-blooded American!

He seethed, stamped and bent the planks of the podium beneath his formidable fists. Seizing a megaphone, he shouted—or, rather, bellowed—loudly enough to drown out all the noise. He was audible all the way to the gates of the Maternity.

“I am Jonathan Nathaniel Simpson, citizen of Massachusetts in the United States of America, and I have come to summon the Free City or Commune, under threat of bodily constraint, to put in my hands without delay the sum of eight hundred thousand dollars...” (Oh! Oh! Listen! Listen!) “…which is owed to me by the aforesaid Commune, as proven by the documents that I shall read to you. So shut up. Parisian vermin!

“This is a receipt from the Minister of the Interior: ‘I acknowledge having received, on the first of January 2071 (old style), possessing the authorization of the Grand Council, an automaton representing a President of the Republic, for the use of the Commune, which has been handed over to me by its inventor, Jonathan Nathaniel Simpson of Massachusetts, United States of America, on the condition of his allowing us the sole exploitation of his patent for five years, at the end of which he will be paid:

“‘For the construction of the president…...$300,000

“‘As compensation for the patent………...$100,000

“‘The interest on this sum being at the disposal of the aforementioned Simpson for the five years in question.’

“And now, wretches, listen to this: they’re my personal bills, verified by your minister, the Secretary and your Central Council:

“June 2072, for having remade for the President a false rib, following a fall from a balloon……….…$100,000

“July of the same year, for having improved the tone of the voice when addressing the left……………$40,000

“Ditto, for having adjusted the mechanism of the hand that shakes the hand-bell………..……………$60,000

“Total…………………………………...$600,000

“Six hundred thousand dollars due to me, and if you reckon the two hundred thousand-dollars indemnity is exaggerated, when it was necessary for me to repair the President as new, and that my operation might have been publicized...what do you think?”

At that moment, I felt a rather sharp pain in my left leg. Thinking that it was caused by a electric shock, I put my hand to it and encountered the blade of my mobile saber, which, by virtue of a random twitch on my part, had just come unhooked from the wall and fallen on to my left leg.

And Joseph—the real Joseph—said to me: “Father, you slept quite badly this evening...”