On the Brink of the World's End Read online

  “Why,” said the worthy curé, “it’s our young doctor; have you brought me good news?”

  “I can’t tell you anything at present, Monsieur le Curé, but I hope that this evening…first, it’s necessary that I talk to Sister Marthe. What I have to reveal to her must remain absolutely secret between her and me. Would you please tell her that I’ll expect her at the château in an hour. I’ll talk to her, and I’ll ask her for formal explanations, and her response will decide her fate.”

  “Come on, you’re talking in mysteries! However, it will be done as you wish. You know that I have entire confidence in you; but you’ll be careful, won’t you, my friend?”

  Laurent waited for Sister Marthe in the drawing room. A large fire was blazing in the vast hearth, while blasts of snow were lashing the windows outside.

  He had recovered all his presence of mind, all his composure. He was about to gamble two human lives, his own and Sister Marthe’s.

  It appears that those condemned to death, when the supreme moment arrives, maintain a terrible calm. Laurent had the calm of the condemned.

  Sister Marthe came in.

  Ah, there you are, Sister,” said Laurent, going to meet her. Here, come close to the fire to dry yourself and warm yourself. Monsieur le Curé has doubtless told you that I want to talk to you about very serious matters?”

  “Yes, Monsieur,” said Sister Marthe, “but I scarcely understood his language. I assume that it’s a matter of my health?”

  “Certainly,” said Laurent, “it’s a matter of your health...and also…something else. Let’s talk about your health first.”

  “Well, Monsieur, thanks to your prescriptions, I’m no longer ill. I no longer cough, in spite of the cold of winter, and I never have a fever anymore.”

  “Well, Sister, no one is happier than I am at that almost unexpected success.”

  He looked at Sister Marthe and he sensed himself softening completely. Never had the young woman’s eyes shone with such a vivid gleam. The tenderness and candor of that gaze troubled Laurent’s soul profoundly, and he felt, on seeing it, all the force of his love.

  He gathered all his courage. Whatever happened, he would do his duty to the end.

  “Since your health is reestablished, Sister, that’s fine. Continue the same treatment, and soon, there’ll be no more question of medicine or malady. If I’ve asked you to come here, it’s because I have to give you important news of your family.”

  “Of my family!” she exclaimed, bewildered.

  “Or rather, the family of Monsieur de Mérande. Don’t be astonished, Sister, I beg you, and let me explain. Hazard, perhaps Providence, has put me in communication with your guardian’s family, and I’ve come…”

  “Oh, Monsieur,” said Sister Marthe, getting to her feet. “Don’t continue. I divine what you’re going to propose to me, and in advance. I refuse. When my guardian died, my mother was offered a small pension, but my mother refused, estimating that no one owed her anything, and that, although it was permissible to accept a benefit from Monsieur de Mérande, our protector, she could not receive alms from his heirs. What my mother has done, Monsieur, I wish to do and ought to do. It will be all the easier for me as I have no need of anything. In a few days, I shall pronounce my vows. That is an irrevocable decision. Thus, I have no further need of the wealth of this world. Sister Marthe only needs to be forgotten.”

  “You haven’t understood me, Sister. It’s not a matter of alms but a restitution. What would you say if I told you that Monsieur de Mérande’ heirs are not his veritable heirs? What would you say if Monsieur de Mérande had left you his entire fortune?”

  “Oh, Monsieur, that isn’t possible, and if I didn’t know you, I’d think that you were making fun of me.”

  “Sister, the moment is solemn, Reply to me frankly, honestly. When Monsieur de Mérande came to see you at your convent, did he talk to you about the future and his projects?”

  “Never, Monsieur. Why would he have spoken to me about that? What did he have to say to me? Don’t you know that he was my guardian, and that my father was one of his gamekeepers?”

  “And you know nothing more?”

  “No, Monsieur, nothing more.”

  And Sister Marthe looked at Laurent with an amazement so sincere that he dared not continue.

  “Well, Sister, I know—hear me well, I know—that Monsieur de Mérande made a testament and that you are his unique heir.”

  Sister Marthe had gone very pale. “Forgive me, Monsieur, if I interrogate you, but in order for you to say that to me, you must have seen the testament. Perhaps you’ve brought it to me?”

  “Alas, no, I haven’t seen it, but I know that it exists.”

  “But you can’t tell me anything more certain?”

  “I hoped that you could give me some indications.”

  “Me, Monsieur? Why is that?” She was genuinely almost angry. She moved toward the door.

  Laurent tried to retain her.

  “So, Sister, you don’t want the wealth that I’m bringing you? If you were rich, what would you do?”

  “First of all, Monsieur le Docteur,” she said, gravely, “I’m not rich; I can’t be. I’m only a humble young woman, an orphan without support. In any case, if I were rich, would be the point of the wealth that you have, I don’t know how or why, dreamed of for me? I’ve made a promise to consecrate myself to God, and I shall keep my promise. Poor, I shall live with the poor.”

  “Then your resolution is immutable?”

  “Yes, Monsieur, immutable. Let me go, I beg you.”

  “So that’s the way it is,” he said, in a low voice. “Well, it’s necessary to finish it.”

  The young woman was struggling, and trying to free herself, but he, looking her full in the face, fixedly, said: “Angèle! Angèle! Come! I want it.”

  Sister Marthe uttered a faint cry, and fell backwards.

  “Ah!” cried Laurent. “Finally, here you are, Angèle! Thank you, thank you!”

  But Angèle did not move. She remained lying on the carpet, inert, immobile. It was the same mortal silence, the same frightful calm, that had invaded her four months before, when Laurent, in his room, had prevented her from leaving.

  Laurent said to himself: That’s the first step taken. When I’ve dissipated this fit of lethargy, it’s Angèle who will appear.

  He was now sure of success. He had rediscovered his power. This might last a long time, but in the end, he knew that Angèle would return.

  She was there, breathing slowly. Her pale lips parted slightly at every breath of her respiration. Laurent, on his knees, contemplated her amorously.

  Oh! he said to himself. How I love her! How I love her!

  He leaned over, and gently, with exceedingly tender precaution, passed his hands over the young woman’s forehead. He repeated it several times, but he saw no change. Neither his words, nor his gestures, nor his breath changed Angèle’s state. She remained immobile.

  For half an hour, Laurent exhausted his efforts. Finally, all of a sudden, he understood. A frisson ran through him from head to foot. He had one of the frightful flashes that reveal to us, in less than a second, an entire ruination, an entire annihilation, and reveal to us more woes than one could recount in several days. A blinding light traversed Laurent’s soul.

  Yes, it is the end, the end of everything. Angèle is dead, forever dead. All the supreme effort he has attempted has ended here, in making himself understood to her. She has come back in order that Laurent can address a supreme adieu to her. She wants to hear it one last time, but she cannot respond to him. Today! Today, once again, and that will be all…and forever. The order that he gave, the other day, back there in his room, will be executed in all its rigor. No remission, no weakness. Angele will not some back again.

  An immense despair seized him. There was more than despair, there was remorse. Who, then, if not him, had broken that admirable instrument, annihilated that tender soul, who adored him? Who could he bla
me if not himself, the imbecile, the wretch?

  What do the Mérande testament and heritage matter to him? What he wants is Angèle, the adored Angèle who came to him and whom he rejected, unworthily. He loves her with an ardent, passionate amour, and he can do nothing. And it is his own fault, by virtue of his cynical cowardice, that he can do no more.

  On the floor kneeling beside Angèle, he wept. He pressed her inert hand between his burning hands, and he would have given his entire existence to feel a slight inflexion of the fingers responding to his supplications.

  But no: nothing. Angèle’s fingers remain immobile. Her hand is like that of a cadaver. The pulse is beating, slowly, with an inexorable regularity.

  “Angèle! Angèle! If you can’t reply to me, at least you can hear me. Yes, Angèle, it’s a supreme adieu that I’ve come to bid you. An adieu and a plea for forgiveness. Forgive me! I dared not live for you, and henceforth, my sin will weigh heavily upon my entire life. How happy we would have been! Rich! Powerful! Rich, you really would have been Angèle de Mérande. You know that there’s a testament, you alone know it, and if you don’t speak, the secret will die with you. Powerful, for you would have revealed to me knowledge unknown to humans. Happy, for you loved me, oh, my Angèle, you loved me immediately, and I, I loved you so much, and now I love you so much more that I shall no longer live except by means of your memory...

  “Forgive me! Forgive me!

  “But all hope isn’t yet lost. Listen, Angèle. The order that I gave you, that accursed order, I rip it up, I annihilate it. Forget it, and come. Tear it up, as I tear it up. Shake off the heavy chains that are weighing on your limbs. Let me hear your voice, your soft voice; let your hands recover their strength. Just one word, one gesture, and you’ll be saved. Get up, walk, take back your power over your charming body, Angèle, Oh, this is frightful! Are you going to separate us forever?”

  He thought he saw—was it an effect of the vacillating light of the wood burning in the hearth?—he thought he saw Angèle’s lips stir slightly. But it was an illusion, undoubtedly, for the features retained the same serenity, and the heart was beating with the same monotonous regularity.

  He hid his head in his hands and wept.

  “Oh my Angèle! Adieu, and forgive me!”

  He leaned over her, and applied his lips to hers for a long time. But Angèle’s lips remained inert, insensible to that caress, without any effort to seek it or to escape it. It was the glacial indifference of death.

  Then Laurent stood up.

  “Since all is finished, Sister Marthe,” he said, “get up.”

  He extended his hand. Then, slowly, the young woman raised her head, her eyes still closed. Then, propping herself up on her elbows, she struggled to her feet.

  When she was upright, she opened her eyes and passed her hand over her eyelids.

  “Whatever you can say, Monsieur, my resolution is immutable. I thank you for your good intentions, but I don’t want to owe anything to Monsieur de Mérande’s heirs. May I go now, if you don’t want anything more of me?”

  Laurent shook his head, unable to speak.

  “Once again, Monsieur, thank you.”

  XV

  Laurent has returned to Plancheuille; it is spring. Back there, in Paris, nothing has succeeded for him; magnetism inspires a profound disgust in him; medicine seems to him to be a métier both fatiguing and frivolous, populated with disappointments and bitterness. As for music, it sickens him.

  He has refused the proposition of his father, who would have liked to keep him close to him, in the Franche-Comté, in a large town, where an active physician could easily earn six or eight thousand francs a year. One acquires influence there, and—who can tell—might one day be a député.

  Laurent has preferred to accept, at Plancheuille, the hospitality of the General. He spends his time in the mountains, studying natural history. He studies fossils, and collects plants and insects. He claims that he will never leave Plancheuille again. But the General, who believes that it is an amorous chagrin, knows full well that at twenty-eight, an amorous chagrin is not mortal. He knows that science will get the upper hand again, and that Laurent will soon begin to live again, and to hope, and to suffer too, since that, above all, is what life is.

  As for Sister Marthe, she has quit Plancheuille.

  As soon as she had pronounced her views, she was sent to a little village in Brittany, near Douarnenez, where she is teaching French and the catechism to little Breton girls.

  She is very cheerful, very pious, and her health is excellent.

  * * *

  24 “Seeking someone to devour.”

  Jules Hoche: Future Paris

  (1895)

  Now, the years 1894 and 1895 had been signaled by various cosmic phenomena, which provoked great alarm among the Parisian population on every occasion.

  The Butte Montmartre was gradually shifting—see the papers of June 1895. That was no longer a secret for anyone. It was collapsing, little by little, sliding slowly and invisibly, but surely, toward the center of Paris.

  That had been the subject of several interpellations in the Chambre, which has sent several scientific committees, one after another, to the location. They brought back desperate reports.

  The Butte was falling, without it being possible to retain it on that wretched slope.

  All that could be done was to calculate, to within a few days, the date of its appearance at the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre, and takes measures—as if measures had ever prevented a butte from falling.

  Parisians are careless of nature. After a few days, the Butte was forgotten, the marriage of the Princesse d’Orléans having captured public attention.

  Paris was on the threshold of the twentieth century were approaching; its doors opened at the appointed hour, at the same time as those of the great Exposition.

  Floods of strangers rushed into Paris, beneath its one-meter moon, its dirigible balloons and its famous hole, the hole so dear to Paschal Grousset.25

  An unparalleled era of prosperity began; food prices were sky high and Parisians were sleeping under bridges because of the rents.

  Suddenly, there was a frightful bang and cries:

  “It’s the Metro blowing up!”

  “The Hole has collapsed.”

  It was worse than that; it was the Butte Montmartre that had just hurled itself bodily on to the Boulevard des Italiens, annihilating a few Sino-Japanese lacquers that had nothing to do with the affair.

  In the blink of an eye, the chiefs of police and the firemen, two or three ministers, eleven reporters, the troops of the Château-d’Eau, a dozen pickpockets and as many stray dogs, sandwich-men, coco-merchants and sixty thousand idlers –in brief, the All Paris of great disasters—were gathered at the scene of the catastrophe.

  As had been said before, there was no remedy.

  It was impossible to take the Butte back up to Montmartre. The best thing to do was to leave it there and await developments.

  Paris then had the lamentable experience of the inconveniences that the displacement of a butte brings in its wake.

  Public life changed it aspect completely; the coachmen went on strike; the itinerary of the Batignolles-Clichy-Odéon omnibus had to be completely overhauled.

  Frightful things!

  Several newspapers had been buried alive.

  One of them was publishing a feuilleton that had lasted two years, and whose ups and downs found an unexpected conclusion in that occurrence.

  The author sued the newspaper, demanding compensation. The newspaper protested, alleging that it was, after all, irrelevant whether the characters of the novel perished in the real catastrophe of the Butte or a cataclysm due to the author’s imagination, since they would be exterminated anyway in the final episodes—but that argument did not prevail, and the paper was convicted, and never recovered.

  Grave difficulties did not take long to result from the presence of the Butte in the middle of one of the most elega
nt quarters of Paris.

  A host of women, for whom virtue was only a question of distance, took to regularly throwing their bonnets over the windmill of la Galette, which was brandishing its sails directly above their windows.

  The dance-halls and drinking dens of the ex-Butte made fortunes.

  Finally, calm was gradually reestablished among the Parisian population; people fraternized with the indigenes of the Butte, who began to shave and put on gloves in order to keep up with fashion.

  A few weeks later, the fun-lovers of the boulevard were reconciled with the young female immigrants and thus, once more, the misfortune of one group completed the happiness of the other.

  * * *

  25 In 1895 Paschal Grousset (better known under the pseudonym of André Laurie, under which he wrote several notable Vernian novels), who was a député for Paris at the time, proposed that by way of a main attraction for the projected exposition of 1900 a deep shaft ought to be excavated extending a mile underground, in order that visitors could undertake a journey at least a little way toward the center of the Earth. The plans were quite elaborate, featuring a series of subterranean galleries, with tropical plants and animals taking advantage of the high temperature and humidity at the bottom. The project never got off the ground (so to speak).

  Raoul Bigot: The Iron That Died

  (1918)

  For forty-eight hours Lieutenant Jacques had not had a moment’s rest. Since the beginning of the attack violently launched by the enemy, his battery, installed not far from the front line, had come under particularly heavy fire from the opposing artillery; he was the sole surviving officer, with a personnel reduced by almost half. The orders were imperative; it was necessary, whatever the cost, to continue the barrage under the hail of the 20s and the 150s.

  With his habitual detached expression, the lieutenant was going from gun to gun, inspecting his men and giving advice whenever an incident threatened to stop the fire. Nothing seemed to move him, and his imperturbable calm tempered the courage of his soldiers better than more or less nervous speeches. From time to time he went into his hole in order to take cognizance of the news that he was able to receive thanks to the improvised wireless receiver he had installed there.