Journey to the Isles of Atlantis and Other Fanciful Excursions Read online

  We went up the sinuous course of the Seine, and when we arrived near the double branching of that river, with a descriptive map of the location in hand, the most learned archeologist in our little company enabled us to travel that immense terrain, disfigured by a long succession of years, where a few heaps of stones lay, devoid of form and proportion, the last monuments of the flourishing city that had rivaled the glory of ancient Rome and merited being named the Athens of modern times.

  There, our scholar began to give us a profound dissertation regarding each location.

  “This,” he said to us, “is the site of a sumptuous edifice known by the name of the Palais Royal because it was the usual residence of the monarch. Alongside it, in a north-south direction is a street named Richelieu, or “the place where the rich live.”

  “The rich,” he added, “had chosen that abode as the closest to the king’s palace. Follow me in this direction; there is what was called the Louvre. The origin of that designation is unknown, but by analogy, I am led to affirm that Louvre is merely a translation of the Latin word luparia: louverie, the abode of she-wolves and wolves. The Louvre, therefore, was the dwelling of wild beasts that the kings kept enclosed in large iron prisons in order to give the people a spectacle on certain days. Those ferocious beasts were nourished on raw flesh, as demonstrated by this passage from Lafontaine, a French author of the seventeenth century:

  Into his Louvre he invited them;

  What a Louvre! A true charnel-house,

  etc.11

  “And as it is a lion who is speaking in the passage I am citing, I draw two consequences from my citation: firstly that lions, inhabitants of the Louvre, were indeed nourished on raw flesh; and secondly, that the Louvre was obviously nothing other than the dwelling of ferocious animals.

  “The area that you see in that direction was called the Carrousel. I do not know what it destination was, no vestige being able to enlighten us on that subject; the only reasonable etymology I can find for Carrousel is the ancient French word carreau, which designated a kind of brick made from baked earth, and what gives some appearance of verity to that belief is the proximity of that area with a large tile factory called the Tuileries. Tuileries were Parisian ceramics. On the Carrousel we perceive the trace of a monument of small proportions, which scholars assure us was a triumphal arch, but that assertion is evidently absurd; it is known that in the epoch in which the monument was supposed to have existed. Triumphal arches were not erected; it was about the time of the reinstallation in France of the pupils of Escobar.12

  “Let us advance in this direction. The wood we are in was the field of rest—the cemetery—of the city. In was called the Champs-Élysées and this section, consecrated to certain sacrifices instituted by widows in honor of their husbands, was designated by the name of the Allée des Veuves. In that direction we find the pedestal of a bronze column. No positive tradition is attached to that debris; historians of the early nineteenth century claim that the monument was erected to the glory of the heroes who triumphed in endeavors in Europe. That is an evident error; the French had no triumphs in Europe. The writers of 1816-1830 formally deny the fact advanced by the contemporaries of a man who was doubtless a poor genius, since knowledgeable historians, like likes of Bonald, Salgues and Châteaubriant, say so on every page of their sublime writings.13

  “Let us now go down to the right, and we will find a long scarcely-visibly line. These were the boulevards, or ramparts, which tells us that Paris was heavily fortified. The line of defense runs all around the city.

  “Further away, the Place des Victoires doubtless thus named because of some great advantage won by the French over some other European people. The neighborhood of the boulevards/ramparts renders that supposition very plausible. There, going back up the Seine is, is the site where the Jardin du Roi was located.14 That garden was the one adjacent to a house situated in the first Paris, inhabited by a king named Charles. Near the king’s garden are the apparent foundations of a building known as the menagerie. Menagerie is a word derived from the Gothic ménage, which means “savings”. The menagerie was the realm’s savings, the State treasury. That building received the money from taxes, and served as the residence of the magistrate charged with administering finance. That man, who was necessarily a ménager, a saver, and an honest man, had the title of Minister of Finance...”

  At this point a loud noise is heard in the street where I live; I wake up with a start. The Paris of 5839 disappears and the Paris of 1821 strikes my gaze. I remember my dream; I compare; my archeological good faith totters; I throw away a deceptive book and I cry: “Is there any truth, then, in that deceptive science? Everything we know about Athens and Rome might be as false as what was known about Paris in my dream! Who will clarify this disenchanting doubt…?

  Julie Lavergne: The Clockmaker of Nuremberg

  (1882)

  I. Nuremberg in 1595

  I would like, beyond the mountains and the clouds,

  To launch myself like an eagle in audacious flight,

  To plunge into the ether, to dominate storms,

  And disdaining the earth, arrive in the heavens.

  H. de L.

  It was the day of the fair. A noisy and well-dressed crowd filled the streets of Nuremberg. The main square was covered with flag-decked shops in which the richest merchandise of Bavaria and foreign lands was displayed. The sun had shone all day and its last rays were still illuminating the summit of the three hundred and sixty-five towers of the fortified enclosure of the town, its great red roofs, its numerous bell-towers, the rival steeples of the churches of Saint Sebaldus and Saint Lorenz, and the crenellated walls of the old castle of the Burgraves.

  In the narrow and sinuous streets darkness had already fallen; the lamps were lit and hearths, vigorously stimulated by housewives preparing supper, were sending their reliant and mobile glow over the ceilings and windows. The appointed hour for the shops of the fair to close would soon sound, and the merchants, while still making a few sales, were hastening to tidy up and close their wooden huts.

  One of them, an old clockmaker reputed to be something of a sorcerer, who was celebrated in Nuremberg for having constricted the beautiful clock of Saint Lorenz, was getting ready to lock the cases in which he had already placed his watches when a very young man, tall and handsome, who had gone back and forth past the shop ten times during the day, stopped in front of him and, with an embarrassed expression, said to him:

  “Master Hyrcanus, I’d like to buy a watch from you.”

  “You’ve decided a little late, Herr Ritter von Ittenbach,” said the clockmaker. “In ten minutes, the shop has to close, and I’ve already put some of my merchandise away. To oblige you, however, I’ll open one of my boxes again. Is it a beautiful watch that you want?” As he spoke, the wily merchant made an inventory of the purchaser’s costume from the corner of his eye. The young man’s garments certainly did not indicate wealth: a doublet and mantle of slightly threadbare green cloth, long boots of Cordovan leather, a trimmed ruff that was very white but in rather coarse fabric, a sword with a steel hilt and a felt hat ornamented with a eagle feather formed his full equipment; but his benevolent face, his curly brown hair, and an extreme grace and vivacity, combined with the finest figure in the world, gave him the air of a true gentleman.

  He was a gentleman, in fact; but, as the younger son of a house that had fallen a long way, Lorenz von Ittenbach had a purse even lighter than his head, although the latter was light enough. His older brother had tried to put him in the church, to place him as a page with the Duke of Bavaria and to send him to study at the University of Wurtzburg: wasted effort; Lorenz only liked hunting, while waiting for an opportunity to go to war. He lived in the fraternal castle, spending his small income on petty follies, coming to Nuremberg to amuse himself on days of fairs or processions. His good humor won him friends, and his good manners, as always happens, added to his other merits what varnish adds to a table.

  So, whi
le Lorenz von Ittenbach examined a few watches, Hyrcanus asked him, although he knew perfectly well, what the feather that ornamented his hat was.

  “It’s an eagle feather, Master Hyrcanus, and I can tell you how I earned it. I climbed the Westberg to find eaglets in the nest; I had already taken one when the mother, whom I had seen depart and believed to be far away, came back at speed and attacked me. I’d killed the male the day before; she knew that, for sure; I judged it by her fury. I was clinging to the rock with my left hand, with only a hunting-knife to defend myself. Saint Hubert protected me; I got away with a few pecks, which bloodied my hand and my forehead, but I cut off the eagle’s head. The bird soared for a moment without a head, and then descended in a spiral into the precipice. I only went back to the castle after having found it, so I took back the eaglets, but they were dead. How much is this watch?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow morning, Herr von Ittenbach. The clock is chiming. Will you do me the honor of coming to see me at home, in Sebaldstrasse, at the sign of Time, tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. We’ll strike our bargain glass in hand. Once the sun has set I no longer sell anything. That was the custom of my father. If Your Lordship has other engagements, we can meet here at midday. In the meantime, keep the watch to see how well it goes and how pretty it is.”

  Lorenz hesitated momentarily. Hyrcanus was reputed to be a magician, but Lorenz was brave to the point of temerity, as curious as an owl, and had a desire to acquire the watch, even though he did not have a quarter of its value in his pocket.

  “I’ll come to breakfast with you, Master Hyrcanus. Until tomorrow.”

  “I’ll expect you,” said Hyrcanus. “Here, Gnomo!”

  A kind of monster, a man of Herculean strength but whose legs were so short that he seemed to be walking on his knees, emerged from beneath the counter, where he had been lying down like a dog. He was entirely clad in dark red Utrecht velvet, with a similar bonnet pulled down all the way to his black and bushy eyebrows.

  “Let’s go,” said Hyrcanus, picking up his locked boxes and putting them on his knees. “Home, Gnomo!”

  Gnomo then went behind the armchair in which his master was sitting, fitted his broad shoulders to a solid hook, lifted up the armchair, the clockmaker and his boxes, the first carrying the others, stood up straight, and took the road to Sebaldstrasse with a firm tread.

  A few foreign students wandering in the square burst out laughing on seeing them pass by, and one of them said to a lace merchant who was bolting the shutters of her shop: “Who’s the little old man with spectacles who has himself carried on someone’s back like a sack of flour?”

  “He’s Master Hyrcanus, the most skillful clockmaker in Nuremberg,” she said. “The poor man is paralyzed in the legs and can’t walk. I can’t see what there is to laugh at in that. Pray to God that nothing similar ever happens to you. Master Hyrcanus was a good dancer in his youth, so my late mother said.”

  “His porter looks more like a brute than a Christian,” said another scatterbrain.

  “Be careful. He’ll come back to have supper and sleep in the shop. If he hears you mocking him, you’ll receive more punches than you have ribbons in your shoes, my little sir.”

  “Ah! You’re not very polite to strangers, my little lady. What does it matter to you if I speak my opinion of that wretched clodhopper?”

  “Gnomo!” shouted the merchant. “Hurry up! There are clowns here who are talking about you.”

  Gnomo arrived at a heavy and urgent pace, uttered a dull growl, closed his fists and directed a bulldog glare at the students.

  The latter, not deeming it appropriate to pick a quarrel with such a bear, hastened to decamp, and Gnomo, shutting himself in the hut, lit a lantern, stopped the thirty or forty clocks that were suspended around him, had supper and lay down on the straw, where he snored until daybreak.

  II. The Dice

  After having supped joyfully in one of the best inns in the town, Lorenz wanted to gamble for his share with a few scatterbrains of his stripe. He won two or three casts of the dice, and his purse was soon so full that he found himself in a position to pay cash for the watch. It was ticking in the pocket of his doublet; the comrades wanted to play again, and Lorenz, too generous a player to refuse his adversaries their revenge, and reassured by his victory, played for so long and so hard that he lost not only what he had won but also his last florin.

  The curfew had sounded and the landlord, worried by the noise that the gamblers were making, after having reminded them several times that the ordinances of His Highness Duke Maximilian Emanuel15 prescribed the closing of taverns as soon as the curfew bell had rung, and seeing that no one was thinking of retiring, made the decision to extinguish the lamps. Without paying the slightest attention to the murmurs of the gamblers, he distributed little lanterns to them and had his waiters show them to their respective rooms.

  Lorenz had some difficulty going to sleep, although he had only dined very soberly; he was annoyed by having lost his money, and thought with displeasure about the lecture that he would receive from his elder brother and his sister-in-law, very reasonable people, benevolent toward him, but who would nevertheless have a fine time telling him that if he was impoverished, it was his own fault.

  He went to sleep, however, and dreamed that he had wings and was going to take eaglets from the nest. He did not find any in the aerial aerie at which he arrived in rapid flight, but he found golden eggs; he filled his pockets with them and stuffed them into his hose, his hat and his handkerchief.

  Now I’m rich for life, he said to himself. Let’s hold on them tight.

  Alas, the malevolent dawn came to wake the cocks, and those pitiless singers, in shrill voices, caused the dreams to fly away. Lorenz woke up, and heard an unusual sound close by. It was the beautiful silver watch, inlaid with niello: the watch that he would be forced to return, for lack of money, alas, thanks to those accursed dice.

  Lorenz got up, sighing, washed and dressed. While he was going back and forth in his room, he saw his face in a mirror and said to himself: Come on, I’m crazy to torment myself like his, Master Hyrcanus isn’t a Turk or a Jew. He’ll give me credit, on my good appearance; in a few throws of the dice I’ll win back what I’ve lost, ad after all, it’ll soon be the end of the month. My brother will give me my pension, and anyway...

  And he started singing, to a tune of his own invention, an Italian proverb that a poor artiste had taught him: Cent’anni di malinconia non pagano uno quattrino di debita.16

  He went down the stairs, letting his rapier bump into the steps; people who get up early have no greater pleasure than waking up those who are trying to sleep, and, with his hat tilted over his ear, in a joyful and confident manner, he headed for Sebaldstrasse

  Hyrcanus’ house, constructed in bricks and wooden panels, advanced two overhanging stories over the street, the small, irregular windows of which were ornamented with sculpted frames representing the most fantastic grimacing figures of humans and animals that one could ever see. The shop was not very well-illuminated, so the clockmaker did not work there, and his work-bench occupied a large room that opened over the garden. Above the door to the street, between the two first-floor windows, a master sculptor of the fourteenth century had represented Time. His huge scythe, his long beard and his furious expression terrified little children, but the neighborhood pigeons were not frightened of him and it was rare to pass along Sebaldstrasse without seeing one of them perched tranquilly on the white-haired head, or the wings or the scythe of Time.

  When Lorenz von Ittenbach went into Hyrcanus’ home, an aged maidservant was at her stove, an apprentice was sweeping the shop, and Hyrcanus, seated in a wheelchair, was occupied in winding a clock. He greeted Lorenz with the greatest politeness, and, maneuvering himself, rolled his wheelchair into a small room where two places had been set at a table covered in the finest Flanders cloth. A simple but excellent breakfast was served on silver plate, and at dessert, Hyrcanus, dismissing the ap
prentice, offered Lorenz a glass of Xeres wine worthy of being presented to the Emperor of Germany. Until then, they had only talked about indifferent things. Lorenz wanted to broach the subject that preoccupied him, but Hyrcanus hastened to say that he would not conclude anything for a week.

  “It’s necessary to try the watch first,” he said, “And besides, I have a favor to ask you. You’re a gentleman, Meinherr, and I know that no von Ittenbach has ever failed to keep his word. Will you promise to keep the secret that I’m going to tell you?”

  “Willingly,” said Lorenz, from whom Hyrcanus’ frank manner and hospitality had taken away all suspicion. “I give you my word. Here’s my hand.”

  Hyrcanus clasped the fresh and vigorous hand of the young hunter in his thin and wiry fingers, and, lowering his voice slightly, said to him: “If you can give me the feathers of six large eagles, the watch will be yours and I’ll remain very much obliged to you. But I absolutely must have six large eagles.”

  “You shall have them!” cried Lorenz, “even if I have to go all the way to the Donnersberg to kill them. But what are you going to do with six eagles, Master Hyrcanus?”

  “That’s my secret, Herr Lorenz. If you want to complete my satisfaction, bring me those wings—for I have no need of the bodies of the birds—in secret, hidden under your cloak, and as soon as the animals are taken, while they’re still flexible. Don’t mention our bargain to anyone, or it will be broken. In any case, I have your word; I’m tranquil. Adieu, then, and good hunting. It’s now time for me to go to the square and practice my profession of merchant. Oh, Herr Lorenz, there’s another that I love far more!”