The Supreme Progress Read online

  Geffroy, as a hardened Naturalist, made no attempt to call attention to Mullem’s imaginative fiction in introducing the volume in question, and did not mention Rosny in the list of Mullem’s friends (although he did take the trouble to mention Villiers de l’Isle-Adam as an old acquaintance of Mullem’s and a key influence on his sardonic literary style). Nor did any of Mullem’s imaginative stories in the posthumous collection ever find a publisher while the author was alive, although some of the less adventurous items therein had been previously published. Indeed, had Geffroy not wanted to pay homage to his dead friend, no one would ever have known that these stories existed. From the viewpoint of historians of speculative fiction, however, at least one of the works in question—“Le Progrès supreme,” here translated as “The Supreme Progress”—is of considerable interest, in terms of its unprecedented scope and its anticipation of certain ideas that were to be subsequently popularized; its imaginative reach even surpasses Rosny’s in one respect, and it warrants consideration as a minor masterpiece of sorts.

  Mullem only developed literary interests late in life, having followed a career in law for many years. He had been born into a Jewish family with strong interests in music, and was a fine piano player; his older siblings, Julia and Félix, were both first-rate musicians, Julia in a professional capacity. Louis’ interest in literature might have been sparked, or at least encouraged, when Julia married the novelist Léon Cladel, a former acolyte of Charles Baudelaire. It might have been through Cladel that he first met Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. Mullem first began publishing short stories in the early 1880s, the most fantastic of his early productions being “Feue Harriet, fantaisie américaine” [Harriet the Widow; An American Fantasy] in La Vie populaire in 1882. There is no way to know exactly when Mullem actually wrote the various philosophical fantasies included in Contes ondoyants et divers, although one of them contains internal evidence suggesting that it was written within a year or two of 1893, and there seems to be a developmental pattern in the stories that facilitates their being arranged in a logical, if not a chronological, order.

  The story that can be dated with reasonable confidence, “L’Éternité chimique” (here translated as “Chemical Eternity”), surely predates “Le Progrès supreme,” but probably not by much. Both were probably preceded by Mullem’s third outright scientific romance, “Un Rival d‘Edison” (translated as “A Rival of Edison” in The Germans on Venus) and by the other philosophical romances that seem to lead up to them thematically, which I have included here as interesting prefaces, along with translations of one wry item of speculative non-fiction and a brief allegory. “L’Invisibilité de M. Gridaine” (here translated as “The Invisibility of M. Gridaine”), “Causeries de cercle” (here translated as “Club Conversation”) and “L’Ombre et son homme” (here translated as “The Shadow and His Man”), might or might not have been written after the relatively unambitious “Un Rival d’Edison,” but they surely predate “L’Éternité chimique,” and were probably produced in that order. It seems probable that all of these stories were composed in the 1880s and early 1890s, as Mullem seems to have allowed his literary endeavors to lapse during the final decade of his life, initially displaced by increasing political activity and then by the burdens of ill health.

  “The Invisibility of M. Gridaine” and “Club Conversation” have provincial settings very similar to that of “A Rival of Edison;” all three make similarly sardonic comments about the dogged anti-intellectualism of such towns, and its deadening effects on imaginative ambition and endeavor—presumably reflecting, retrospectively the experience of the early phase of Mullem’s legal career, before he relocated to Paris. The former story is akin to the fictional “case studies” assembled by the pioneer of English psychiatry, William Gilbert, in Shirley Hall Asylum (1863) and Doctor Austin’s Guests (1866). The story’s central idea—that of achieving a peculiar kind of non-existence—is taken further in “Club Conversation,” whose central characters discover a happy medium between the traditional extremes of materialism and “spiritualism.” As in “The Invisibility of M. Gridaine,” the fantastic element of “Club Conversation” can be regarded purely as a study in eccentric monomania—as the notional audience in the club assume it to be—and the same is true of the Paris-set “The Shadow and His Man,” which can be regarded as an expansion of an image contained in the denouement of “Club Conversation,” in which “the Bonsor brothers” seem literally doubled by virtue of the shadow cast by the body representing them.

  Like “Club Conversation” and “The Shadow and His Man,” “Chemical Eternity” is a conversation-piece in which extravagant assertions are made whose reliability is carefully rendered dubious, but in this instance the scope of the conversation becomes very great indeed, replete with highly imaginative speculations. “The Supreme Progress” is also provided with an apologetic frame that permits readers (if they are so inclined) to dismiss the whole thing as a product of absurd insanity, but whether readers take advantage of that option or not, the speculations set out there are truly remarkable. Although they follow on to some extent from the cosmological fantasies of Edgar Poe and Camille Flammarion, they have more in common with the much later and more spectacular visions of Olaf Stapledon, J. D. Bernal and Teilhard du Chardin, not only proposing the notion of the eventual post-technological emergence of disembodied “collective minds” but explicitly raising the questions of what it might feel like to exist as such an entity, and how such beings might spend their time pleasurably, purposively and profitably. For its time—especially if its time was 1894 or 1895 rather than the early 1900s, as seems likely, “The Supreme Progress” is an imaginative tour de force, and its fugitive publication invites us to wonder how many more such masterpieces might have languished unread, for lack of a hospitable outlet.

  Brian Stableford

  Victorien Sardou: The Black Pearl

  (1862)

  I

  When it rains in Amsterdam, it rains hard, and when thunder is mingled with it, the thunder is loud. That was the reflection made one summer evening, after dark, by my friend Balthazar Van der Lys, as he went along the Amstel, trying to get back home before the storm broke. Unfortunately, the wind from the Zuyder Zee was running faster than he was. A frightful squall suddenly descended upon the quay, shaking shutters, breaking signs and twirling weather-vanes—and a number of flower-pots, tiles, net-curtains and pieces of cloth, detached from roofs or windows, were blowing pell-mell into the canal, followed by Balthazar’s hat. It was all that he could do not to follow it—after which, the thunder exploded; after which the clouds burst; after which Balthazar was soaked to the skin and started running as fast as he could.

  When he reached the Orphanage, however, he remembered that it is dangerous to start running in stormy weather. The lightning-flashes were following one another unrelentingly; the thunder was roaring in rapid succession; accidents can happen suddenly. This observation frightened him so much that he threw himself blindly into a shop doorway, where someone—a gentlemen calmly sitting in a chair—received him in his arms and nearly fell over with him. The gentleman in question was none other than our mutual friend Cornelius Pump, whom I may introduce to you as the foremost scientist in the city.

  “Wow! Cornelius! What the devil are you doing here on a chair?” said Balthazar, shaking himself.

  “Now, now!” Cornelius replied, anxiously. “Don’t move about so much—you’ll break the string of my kite!”

  Balthazar turned round, thinking that his friend was making fun of him, but—not without amazement—he saw him gravely occupied in reeling in, by means of a silken thread, the most beautiful kite that Amsterdam had ever seen floating in its atmosphere. This majestic plaything was swaying over the canal at a prodigious height, and only seemed to be coming down to earth reluctantly. Cornelius was pulling, the kite was pulling, and the wind, complicating the difficulty, was greatly amused by the little contest. But what was truly calculated to provoke admirati
on was the kite’s tail, twice as long as an ordinary one, and entirely fitted with little pieces of paper, innumerable in quantity.

  “What the Devil possessed you,” Balthazar finally exclaimed, “to play with a kite in such weather?”

  “I’m not playing with a kite, idiot,” Cornelius replied, smiling in pity, “I’m establishing the presence of nitric acid in electrically-charged clouds.” The scientist seized the thoroughly-vanquished kite at last, cast an eye over the little pieces of paper with which it was decorated, and added: “Look—as you can see, my litmus paper has turned red…”

  “Oh good,” said Balthazar, with the slightly mocking smile of an ignorant person who has no understanding of the puerilities of science. “It’s research! A nice time for it!”

  “I should say so,” Cornelius replied, naively. “And what an observatory! Look at it! No houses nearby. A fine horizon! Ten lightning-conductors in view, and all lit up! I’ve been on the lookout for it a long time, this rascal of a storm, and I made myself a firm promise that I’d come here to look it in the face.”

  A violent clap of thunder exploded at these words.

  “Go on,” Cornelius continued, “roar as much as you want—I’ve got you, and I’ll tell you what’s what!”

  “And what have you seen here that’s so interesting?” asked Balthazar, whose feet were beginning to get wet in the water overflowing from the gutter, and who was not in a good mood.

  “Poor fellow,” Cornelius replied, with a pitying smile. “Tell me, what’s that?”

  “Lightning, of course,” said the dazzled Balthazar.

  “Yes, but what kind?”

  “The lightning kind.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Cornelius. “There’s lightning and lightning. To begin with, we have lightning flashes of the first class, in the form of a luminous furrow, compact, very determined in its contours, affecting a zigzag form, colored white, purpurin7 or violet. Then there’s lightning of the second class, an extended sheet of light, generally red, which can embrace the entire horizon. Finally, there’s lightning of the third class, rolling rebounding, elastic, and most often spherical in form—but is it really globular, or might that be an optical illusion? That’s precisely the problem that has been teasing me for such a long time. You’ll tell me, it’s true, that globes of fire have been conclusively observed by Howard, Schübler, Kamtz…”8

  “Oh, I don’t say anything at all.” Balthazar replied. “The water’s rising, and I’d rather get away from here.”

  “Wait for me,” said Cornelius. “When I’ve seen my spherical lightning…”

  “My word, no—I’m only 300 paces from my house; I’ll risk it. And if you want a good fire, a good supper, and a good bed if you need it—and, by way of a globe, that of my lamp—I offer you all of it. Are we agreed?”

  “Wait a minute—my lightning won’t be long…”

  Making no reply, Balthazar was about to launch himself into the street when, all of a sudden, a sinister coppery bolt of lightning cleaved the darkness, and, at the same instant, thunder burst forth with a frightful din, a few hundred paces away. The shock was so violent that Balthazar’s knees bent, and he nearly fell over.

  “There was definitely a globe,” said Cornelius. “This time, I saw it clearly. Let’s go eat!”

  Blinded and stunned, Balthazar collected himself. “That thunderbolt fell right on top of my house!”

  “No,” Cornelius replied, “it was in the Jewish quarter.”

  Paying him no heed, Balthazar started running, in spite of the danger. Cornelius, gathering up his pieces of paper and putting his chair over his head, decided to follow him, in spite of the rain, which was coming down even harder.

  At the corner of Zwanenburgerstrasse, where his house was, my friend Balthazar was completely reassured. No flames were lighting up the street, and his house was still intact. He went up the front steps in one bound and knocked two or three times, imperiously. Even so, no one was in a hurry to open the door, so Cornelius had time to catch him up.

  Balthazar hammered on the door.

  “Can you believe that Christiane isn’t opening up?”

  Finally, Christiane decided to do so. She was pale with fear, her hands trembling, and she could scarcely speak.

  “Oh, Monsieur,” she said. “Did you hear that clap of thunder?”

  “Did it render you deaf, then?” Balthazar relied, hurling himself into the house. “Quickly, my girl! Dry clothes, a big fire, and the table set!”

  He went upstairs four or five stairs at a time and, shoving open the door of the large drawing room, he fell into his armchair with a sigh of relief. Cornelius followed, with his chair.

  II

  An hour later, the two friends were finishing their supper, elbows on the table, laughing at the wind and the rain that were raging outside.

  “This,” said Cornelius, “is the best time of the day. A nice bottle of white curaçao, a good fire, good tobacco and a good friend to chat with you; there’s nothing better, is there, Christiane?”

  Christiane moved back and forth, putting a heavy stoneware jug on the table, along with the antique glasses with slender stems. Pronounced by Cornelius, her name caused her to blush, but she made no reply, shivering as she still was with fear.

  Christiane, it is time to tell you, was a young woman brought up by virtue of charity in our friend Balthazar’s house, and I ask your permission to tell you her story, so quickly that you will not have time to become impatient.

  Some time after the death of her husband, Madame Van der Lys, Balthazar’s mother, was at mass one day when she felt a slight tug on her dress. Thinking that someone was after her purse, she acted so promptly that she immediately seized the hand of the thief. It was the hand of a little girl, very dainty, very pink, very innocent and very charming.

  The worthy lady had tears in her eyes on seeing those angelic little fingers so soon employed in bad deeds. Her first impulse was to release the child for pity’s sake; the second was to hold on to her for charity’s—and that was what she decided to do, the good soul! She took little Christiane home with her; the girl was weeping, for fear of being beaten by her “aunt.” Madame Van der Lys consoled her, got her to talk, and learned enough to understand that the child’s mother and father were gypsies of the sort that travel with fairgrounds; that the little girl had been trained from a young age in acrobatic exercises; that her father had been killed attempting a difficult feat; that her mother had died of poverty; and, finally, that the pretended aunt was a shrew who beat the little girl and taught her to steal, while waiting for better opportunities.

  I don’t know if you knew Madame Van der Lys, but she was as good a woman as her son is a man. She kept the child—whom the “aunt” did not come to reclaim, as you can imagine. She brought her up, and taught her to read and count—and Christiane was soon a little model of sweetness, decency and good manners. And what a housekeeper! When the poor lady died, at least she had the consolation of leaving to her son—along with her cook, old Gudule, who was deaf and becoming unsteady on her feet—a young woman of 15, alert and lively, who never let Balthazar’s fire go out or his dinner get cold, and who knew where to find the good linen and silver for feast days—and was polite, comely, gentle and pretty to boot. That, at least, was the opinion of Cornelius, who had discovered in those eyes lightning flashes much more interesting than those of the third class. But, hush! I shall stop there so as not to seem scandalous.

  I can add, however, that Christiane gave a good welcome to Cornelius, who lent her good books; the young man, in his capacity as a scientist, held a housekeeper like Christiane in higher esteem than the most beautiful dolls in the city, who were often good for nothing.

  This evening, however, it seemed that the storm had paralyzed the young woman’s tongue. She had refused to sit down at the table, where her place was set, as usual, and, under the pretext of serving the two friends, came and went, hardly listening, replying vaguely, and
making the sign of the cross at every flash of lightning…until the moment when Balthazar, turning round, could no longer see her, and thought that she had retired to her room.

  A few minutes later, he went to put his ear to the door of her room, which opened into the drawing-room, parallel to the study door. As he could not hear anything, he became convinced that the young woman was already asleep, and came back to sit with Cornelius, stuffing his pipe.

  “What’s the matter with her this evening?” said Cornelius, gesturing toward the young woman’s room.

  “It’s the storm,” Balthazar replied. “Women get so frightened!”

  “If they didn’t, friend Balthazar,” Cornelius replied, “We wouldn’t have the immense pleasure of protecting them like children…especially that one, who’s so dainty and frail. Honestly, I can’t look at her, without tears coming to my eyes, she’s so gentle, so good…so tender! Oh, the charming child!”

  “Why, Master Cornelius,” Balthazar replied, “you’re almost as enthusiastic about Mademoiselle Christiane as you are about thunder!”

  Cornelius blushed slightly, and murmured: “It’s not the same thing.”