Paris in the Twentieth Century Page 3

  Frenzied applause broke out at this same place where, one hundred and seventy years before, bravos had welcomed the Festival of Federation. Nonetheless, since everything—even speeches—must come to an end, the machine stopped. The oratorical exercises having been terminated without incident, the Ceremony proceeded to the actual awarding of the prizes.

  The question given to the Grand Competition of Higher Mathematics was as follows: Given two circumferences OO': from a point A on O, tangents are drawn to O'; the contact points of these tangents are joined: the tangent at A is drawn to the circumference O; what is the point of intersection of this tangent with the chord of contacts in the circumference O'?

  The importance of such a theorem was universally understood. Many were familiar with how it had been solved according to a new method by the student Gigoujeu (François Némorin) from Briançon (Hautes Alpes). Bravos rang out when this name was called; it was uttered seventy-four times in the course of this memorable day: benches were broken in honor of the laureate, an activity which, even in 1960, was not yet merely a metaphor intended to describe the outbreaks of enthusiasm.

  On this occasion Gigoujeu (François Némorin) was awarded a library of some three thousand volumes. The Academic Credit Union did things properly.

  We cannot cite the endless nomenclature of the Sciences which were taught in this barracks of learning: an honors list of the day would have certainly astonished the great-grandfathers of these young scholars. The prize giving continued, and jeers rang out when some poor devil from the Division of Letters, shamed when his name was called, received a prize in Latin composition or an honorable mention for Greek translation. But there came a moment when the taunts redoubled, when sarcasm assumed its most disconcerting forms. This was when Monsieur Frappeloup pronounced the following words:

  "First prize for Latin verse: Dufrénoy (Michel Jérome) from Vannes (Morbihan). "Hilarity was universal, amid remarks of this sort:

  "A prize for Latin verse!"

  "He must have been the only competitor!"

  "Look at that darling of the Muses!"

  "A habitue of Helicon!"

  "A pillar of Parnassus!" et cetera, et cetera.

  Nonetheless, Michel Jérome Dufrénoy stepped forward and faced down his detractors with a certain aplomb; he was a blond youth with a delightful countenance and a charming manner, neither awkward nor insolent. His long hair gave him a slightly girlish appearance, and his forehead shone as he advanced to the dais and snatched rather than received his prize from the Director's hand. This prize consisted of a single volume: the latest Factory Manual.

  Michel glanced scornfully at the book and, flinging it to the ground, calmly returned to his seat, still wearing his crown and without even having kissed His Excellency's official cheeks.

  "Well done, " murmured Monsieur Richelot.

  "Brave boy, " said Monsieur Huguenin.

  Murmurs broke out on all sides. Michel received them with a disdainful smile and sat down amid the cat-calls of his schoolfellows.

  This grand ceremony concluded without hindrance around seven in the evening; fifteen thousand prizes and twenty-seven thousand honorable mentions were distributed. The chief laureates of the Sciences dined that same evening at Baron de Vercampin's table, among members of the Administrative Council and the major stockholders.

  The joy of these latter was explained by... figures! The dividend for the 1960 exercises had been set at 1, 169 francs, 33 centimes per share. The current interest already exceeded the issue price.

  Chapter II: A Panorama of the Streets of Paris

  Michel Dufrénoy had followed the crowd, a mere drop of water in this stream transformed into a torrent by the removal of its obstructions. His excitement had subsided; the champion of Latin poetry became a timid young man amid this joyous throng; he felt alone, alien, and somehow isolated in the void. Where his fellow students hurried ahead, he made his way slowly, hesitantly, even more orphaned in this gathering of contented parents; he seemed to regret his labors, his school, his professor.

  Without father or mother, he would now have to return to an unsympathetic household, certain of a grim reception for his Latin verse prize. "All right, " he resolved, "let's get on with it! I shall endure their nastiness along with all the rest! My uncle is a literal-minded man, my aunt a practical woman, and my cousin a boy out for the main chance—ideas like mine are not welcome at home, but so what? Onward!"

  Yet he proceeded quite unhurriedly, not being one of those schoolboys who rush into vacation like a subject people into freedom. His uncle and guardian had not even thought enough of the occasion to attend the prize giving; he knew what his nephew was "incapable" of, as he said, and would have been mortified to see him crowned a nursling of the Muses.

  The crowd, however, impelled the wretched laureate forward; he felt himself borne on by the current like a drowning man. "A good comparison, " he thought. "Here I am abandoned on the high seas; requiring the talents of a fish, all I have are the instincts of a bird; I want to live in space, in the ideal regions no longer visited—the land of dreams from which one never returns!"

  Amid such reflections, jostled and buffeted, he reached the Grenelle station of the Metro. This line served the Left Bank of the river along the Boulevard Saint-Germain, which extended from the Gare d'Orléans to the buildings of the Academic Credit Union; here, curving toward the Seine, it crossed the river on the Pont d'Iéna, utilizing an upper level reserved for the railroad, and then joined the Right Bank line, which, through the Trocadéro tunnel, reached the Champs-Élysées and the axis of the Boulevards, which it followed to the Place de la Bastille, crossing the Pont d'Austerlitz to rejoin the Left Bank line.

  This first ring of railroad tracks more or less encircled the ancient Paris of Louis XV, on the very site of the wall survived by this euphonious verse:

  Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant.

  A second line reached the old faubourgs of Paris, extending for some thirty-two kilometers neighborhoods formerly located outside the peripheral boulevards. A third line followed the old orbital roadway for a length of some fifty-six kilometers. Finally, a fourth system connected the line of fortifications, its extent more than a hundred kilometers.

  It is evident that Paris had burst its precincts of 1843 and made incursions into the Bois de Boulogne, the Plains of Issy, Vanves, Billancourt, Montrouge, Ivry, Saint-Mandé, Bagnolet, Pantin, Saint-Denis, Clichy, and Saint-Ouen. The heights of Meudon, Sevres, and Saint-Cloud had blocked its development to the west. The delimitation of the present capital was marked by the forts of Mont Valérien, Saint- Denis, Aubervilliers, Romainville, Vincennes, Charenton, Vitry, Bicêtre, Montrouge, Vanves, and Issy; a city of one hundred and five kilometers in diameter, it had devoured the entire Department of the Seine.

  Four concentric circles of railways thus formed the Metropolitan network; they were linked to one another by branch lines, which, on the Right Bank, extended the Boulevard de Magenta and the Boulevard Malesherbes and on the Left Bank, the Rue de Rennes and the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Victor. It was possible to circulate from one end of Paris to the other with the greatest speed.

  These railways had existed since 1913; they had been built at State expense, following a system devised in the last century by the engineer Joanne[3]. At that time, many projects were submitted to the Government, which had them examined by a council of civil engineers, those of the Ponts et Chausées no longer existing since 1889, when the École Polytechnique had been suppressed; but this council had long remained divided on the question; some members wanted to establish a surface line on the main streets of Paris; others recommended underground networks following London's example; but the first of these projects would have required the construction of barriers protecting the train tracks, whence an obvious encumbrance of pedestrians, carriages, carts, et cetera; the second involved enormous difficulties of execution; moreover, the prospect of even temporary burial in an endless tunnel was anything but attractive to
the riders. Every roadway formerly created under these deplorable conditions had had to be remade, among others the Bois de Boulogne line, which by both bridges and tunnels compelled riders to interrupt reading their newspapers twenty-seven times during a trajectory of some twenty-three minutes.

  Joanne's system seemed to unite all the virtues of rapidity, facility, and comfort, and indeed for the last fifty years the Metropolitan railways had functioned to universal satisfaction.

  This system consisted of two separate roadbeds on which the trains proceeded in opposite directions; hence there was no possibility of a collision. Each of these tracks was established along the axis of the boulevards, five meters from the housefronts, above the outer rim of the sidewalks; elegant columns of galvanized bronze supported them and were attached to one another by cast armatures; at intervals these columns were attached to riverside houses, by means of transverse arcades. Thus, this long viaduct, supporting the railway track, formed a covered gallery, under which strollers found shelter from the elements; the asphalt roadway was reserved for carriages; by means of an elegant bridge the viaduct traversed the main streets which crossed its path, and the railway, suspended at the height of the mezzanine floors, offered no obstacle to boulevard traffic.

  Some riverside houses, transformed into waiting rooms, formed stations which communicated with the track by broad footbridges; underneath a double-ramp staircase gave access to the waiting room. Boulevard stations were located at the Trocadéro, the Madeleine, the Bonne Nouvelle department store, the Rue du Temple, and the Place de la Bastille.

  This viaduct, supported on simple columns, would doubtless not have resisted the old means of traction, which required locomotives of enormous weight; but thanks to the application of new propulsors, the modern trains were quite light; they ran at intervals of ten minutes, each one bearing some thousand riders in its comfortably arranged cars.

  The riverside houses suffered from neither steam nor smoke, quite simply because there was no locomotive: the trains ran by means of compressed air, according to the Williams System, recommended by the famous Belgian engineer Jobard[4], who flourished in the mid-nineteenth century.

  A vector tube some twenty centimeters in diameter and two millimeters thick ran the entire length of the track between the two rails; it enclosed a soft-iron disc,

  which slid inside it under the action of several atmospheres of compressed air provided by the Catacomb Company of Paris. This disc, driven at high speed within the tube, like a bullet in its barrel, drew with it the first car of the train. But how was this car attached to the disc inside the tube, since this disc would have no communication with the exterior? By electromagnetic force.

  In fact, the first car carried between its wheels magnets set on either side of the tube, as close as possible without actually touching it. These magnets operated through the walls of the tube on the soft-iron disc, which, sliding forward, drew the train after it, the compressed air being unable to escape through any outlet. [Author's Note: if an electromagnet can bear a weight of 1, 000 kilograms on contact, its power of attraction is still that of 100 kilograms over a distance of five millimeters.]

  When a train was to stop, a station employee opened a valve; air escaped and the disc remained motionless. As soon as the valve was closed, the air pushed on, and the train resumed its immediately rapid progress.

  Thus by means of a system at once so simple and so easy to maintain—no smoke, no steam, no collision, and the passengers' freedom to ascend all the ramps—it seemed that these roadways must have existed since time immemorial.

  Young Dufrénoy bought his ticket at the Grenelle station and ten minutes later got off at the Madeleine; he walked down the steps to the boulevard and made for the Rue Impériale, which had been constructed on the axis of the Opera down to the Gardens of the Tuileries. Crowds filled the streets; night was beginning to fall, and the luxury shops projected far out onto the sidewalks the brilliant patches of their electric light; streetlamps operated by the Way System—sending a positive electric charge through a thread of mercury- spread an incomparable radiance; they were connected by means of underground wires; at one and the same moment, the hundred thousand streetlamps of Paris came on. Nonetheless a few old-fashioned shops remained faithful to the old means of hydrocarburated gas; the exploitation of new coal pits permitted its current sale at ten centimes per cubic meter; but the Company made considerable profits, especially by distributing it as a mechanical agent.

  In fact, of the countless carriages which clogged the boulevards, a great majority were horseless; they were invisibly powered by a motor which operated by gas combustion. This was the Lenoir[5] machine applied to locomotion.

  Invented in 1859, this machine had the initial advantage of doing away with boiler, firebox, and fuel; a little lighting gas, mixed with the air introduced under the piston and lit by an electric spark, produced the movement; gas hydrants, set up at the various carriage parking places, supplied the necessary hydrogen; new improvements had made it possible to get rid of the water formerly used to chill the machine's cylinder. The machine, then, was simple and maneuverable; up on his seat, the driver operated a steering wheel; a brake pedal, located under his foot, permitted an instant modification of the vehicle's speed.

  The carriages, with the power of several horses, did not cost, per day, one eighth the price of a horse; the expense of the gas, carefully monitored, permitted calculation of the work done by each carriage, and the Company could no longer be deceived, as in the past, by its coachmen.

  These gas cabs were responsible for a tremendous consumption of hydrogen, as were those enormous trucks loaded with stones and paving materials, which deployed some twenty to thirty horsepower. This Lenoir System had the further advantage of costing nothing when it was not in use, a saving impossible to realize with steam machines, which devour their fuel even when they are not in motion.

  These swift means of transport operated in streets less clogged than in the past, for a ruling of the Ministry of Police forbade any cart, dray, or wagon to pass through the streets after ten in the morning, except for certain special routes.

  These various improvements were certainly suited to this feverish century, during which the pressure of business permitted no rest and no delay.

  What would one of our ancestors have said upon seeing these boulevards lit as brightly as by the sun, these thousand carriages circulating noiselessly on the silent asphalt of the streets, these stores as sumptuous as palaces, from which the light spread in brilliant patches, these avenues as broad as squares, these squares as wide as plains, these enormous hotels, which provided comfortable lodging for twenty thousand travelers, these wonderfully light viaducts, these long, elegant galleries, these bridges flung from street to street, and finally these glittering trains, which seemed to furrow the air with fantastic speed?

  No doubt he would have been astonished; but the men of 1960 were no longer lost in admiration of such marvels; they exploited them quite calmly, without being any the happier, for, from their hurried gait, their peremptory manner, their American "dash, " it was apparent that the demon of wealth impelled them onward without mercy or relief.

  Chapter III: An Eminently Practical Family

  At length the young man reached the house of his uncle, Monsieur Stanislas Boutardin, banker and director of the Catacomb Company of Paris.

  It was in a magnificent mansion on the Rue Impériale that this important person resided, an enormous structure in wonderfully bad taste, sporting a multitude of plate-glass windows, a veritable barracks transformed into a private residence, not so much imposing as ponderous. The ground floor and outbuildings were occupied by offices.

  "So this is where the rest of my life is going to be spent, " Michel mused as he walked in. "Must I abandon all hope at the door?" And he was overcome by an almost invincible longing to run away, but managed to control himself; he pressed the electric button of the carriage entrance, and the doors, operated by a hidden spri
ng, noiselessly opened and closed behind him.

  A huge courtyard led to the offices, arranged in a circle under a ground-glass ceiling; at the rear was a large garage, where several gas cabs awaited the master's orders.

  Michel made for the elevator, a narrow chamber with a narrow tufted banquette around the walls; a servant in orange livery was on duty day and night. "Monsieur Boutardin, " Michel announced.

  "Monsieur Boutardin has just begun his dinner, " replied the footman.

  "Be so good as to tell him his nephew, Monsieur Dufrénoy, is here. "

  The footman touched a metal button set into the woodwork, and the elevator rose imperceptibly to the first floor, where the dining room was located. The servant announced Michel Dufrénoy.

  Monsieur Boutardin, Madame Boutardin, and their son were seated around the table and met the young man's appearance with a profound silence; his place was set for him, the meal had just begun; at a sign from his uncle, Michel joined the banquet. No one spoke a word to him. Apparently his disaster was known to all. He could not eat a mouthful.

  There was a funereal air about this meal; the servants performed their tasks in perfect silence; the various dishes ascended noiselessly in chutes set in the walls; they were opulent with a touch of avarice, and seemed to nourish the diners with a certain reluctance, a certain regret. In this absurdly gilded, mournful room, everyone chewed rapidly and without conviction. The point, of course, was not to be fed but to have earned the material on which to feed. Michel perceived the nuance, and choked on it. At dessert, his uncle spoke for the first time: "Tomorrow, sir, first thing in the morning, I should like a word with you. " Michel bowed without speaking; an orange-liveried servant led him to his room; the young man went to bed; the hexagonal ceiling reminded him of a host of geometrical theorems; he dreamed, in spite of himself, of right-angle triangles whose hypotenuse had been... reduced. "What a family!" he murmured to himself in the depths of his troubled sleep.