The Germans on Venus Read online

  In 1676, Mansard, with the plans on which Marly had been built, demonstrated to Louis XIV the need for a machine of some sort to bring water up to the gardens of the château. It was simple to imagine, difficult to execute. Louis XIV did not get any more excited than was necessary; he simply notified the scientists of Europe that they were to provide it, and not to take too long about it. Projects immediately began to flourish. Heads heavy with calculations bowed down stubbornly in search of a glorious solution.

  The Baron de Ville, a native of Liége, already well-known in France for several hydraulic systems, offered his services to build the machine in question. His project approved, he set to work, stoutly aided by one of his compatriots, a highly-skilled technician named Rennequin Swalem.37 Some people even claimed that Rennequin was the inventor, and that the Baron de Ville was only one of those dangerous collaborators who lend their name but take the glory—one of those usurpers for which the verses were written that begin Sic vos non vobis….38 There is, however, no justification for the Rennequists’ claims. All the evidence suggests, on the contrary, that the Baron de Ville was a serious inventor. There is much argument regarding a certain epitaph that describes Rennequin as an inventor. On the other hand, however, it is said that the Baron de Ville had come to France to construct a machine to raise water to the château and gardens of Sant-Germain, then occupied by Queen Anne of England; that the machine was completed, and later proposed, copied and reconstructed at Marly. This repetition would be an important argument. Rennequin supervised the work and the workmen and, when the machine was finished, the Baron de Ville was appointed its governor, with a proportionate salary. He lived in the Pavillon de Luciennes (or Louveciennes); as for Rennequin, he remained a supervisor with a salary of 1880 francs. He died at the machine, in 1708, at the age of 64, without ever having protested against the Baron de Ville’s alleged usurpation. Moreover, this is what can be read on an old diagram representing the former Marly machine, designed in 1688:

  This machine served to embellish the royal houses at Versailles, Trianon and Marly, and might have served at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It was constructed by order of the king, according to the plans and under the direction of Monsieur le Baron de Ville.

  Work was begun in June 1681, and the water rose up in 1685. That was a fine day, but rudely bought with innumerable efforts, researches and tentative experiments. As for the expense, no one was astonished. It was six or seven millions then, which would be a good 14 today; it is also said that it was not all written down. The naiad’s running costs rose to 71,016 livres, but that is said not to include wages. Nothing seems to have been exaggerated. Beside, who would have complained? The people? It did not concern them. If that money did not buy bread, at least it bought spectacles; that was enough. As for Louis XIV, such trivial considerations did not bother him. He had needed water for the reservoirs, for the swans, for the stone and bronze tritons, and he had said: “Go, I give you the mountain, take the valley, and, if necessary, confiscate the river.” He had been obeyed; the sunlight played upon the water of his pools; it cost a good few millions—a mere bagatelle! It was paid, everyone was content. There was no Chamber to dispute his expenses, no newspapers to scatter their writings in the crystal waters of his fountains! He was the king, he was a god, he was everything!

  Marly alone profited from the machine at first. It was only 20 years after her completion, when the population increased considerably at Versailles and the wells dried up in periods of drought, that the reservoirs of Marly were transferred there. We would certainly like to give an accurate description of the ancient machine, and we declare that to that end we have riffled through the pages of books with which we were strangely unacquainted, but how can she be recognized in these wheels, chains, pumps, pistons and sumps? On the basis of our studies, we can say to our readers that what remains clear to us is that all the water stirred, captured and swallowed by the machine was raised with the aid of 221 pumps, arranged in three rows, and two sumps, mounted on a platform that was 500 feet or 162 meters above the river.

  From that tower the water falls into a basin that serves as a gauge; from there it runs into an aqueduct 310 fathoms long, sustained on 36 arches, constructed in millstone grit, all of whose angles and all of whose pillars are made of cut stone. At the end of this aqueduct is a tower about 44 feet high, constructed of the same materials as the large tower and the aqueduct. The water is received in a cistern, at the bottom of which are the valves that distribute the water to Marly and Versailles. That is a summary of the digestive apparatus with which the monster drank from the Seine that which she subsequently blew out over the gardens.

  If all men—or, at least, nearly all men, as one of Louis XIV’s court preachers rephrased it—are mortal, the works constructed by men are subject to the same destiny. After a century, by dint of twisting the waves in her throat the old machine felt profound internal lesions; her stomach was ruined, her teeth were broken, visible cracks appeared in her skull, and she began to cough and shake her head. She had become terminally asthmatic, without taking into account the fact that, incurable as she was, the centenarian’s malady was costing the State dear. A conference of mechanical engineers was therefore assembled. The hope was ignited in their eyes of a glorious recompense if they found a means of galvanizing the decrepit body and simplifying the expenses of her upkeep. However, in the middle of the consultation—which was prolonged—a knock on the door was heard; the French Revolution was passing that way, and wanted to stamp the scientists’ certificates of citizenship. One of them, the author of the restoration project, was arrested as a suspect, and the whole thing was abandoned.

  The vestige of absolutism was left breathless in her corner, for there was then a machine in Paris, perennially active in one of its great squares, which engaged in rivalry with others. The poor invalid was then overtaken by a series of misfortunes and dolorous alternatives. Here the demolition hammer was set to work, there scaffolding was erected. She was sold at auction, abandoned, betrayed and crucified. One of her worshipers, in despair, then began, in slightly irreverent language, a history of its martyrdom entitled: The passion of a very respectable lady, aged 123 years, god-daughter of a very magnificent prince and daughter of a man of genius, delivered into the world in the year 5804, among the apostles of truth. It was an imitation of the Gospel, by which no one then dreamed of being shocked, but which nevertheless had a sacrilegious frivolity about it.

  This opuscule begins thus: “At that time, the god-daughter of one of the greatest and most magnificent princes who had ever existed said to her friends and admirers: ‘You know that judgment will be passed in two days and that the daughter of Swal [Rennequin Swalem] will be given over to be dismantled.’ Then the princes of theory and the speculators assembled in the hall of their leaders and they deliberated on the means of skillfully taking her apart and killing her.”39

  The imitation is faithful; it continues thus word for word. We shall cite another two fragments:

  “The morning having come, the leaders of the princes of theory and the speculators held council against the god-daughter to put her to death; and having already sold her they delivered her to the demolisher, in consideration of 180 kyliades, which were divided between them. Then the one who had betrayed her, seeing that she was condemned, said: ‘I have earned my money.’ He rejoiced in it, and he bought a house of ease and a field, putting all thought of doing away with himself out of his mind.”40

  The judge, who wants to save the unfortunate machine, but is unable to do so, washes his hands in vinegar and all the speculators respond: “May her blood fall back into our pockets and those of our children!”

  She is mutilated, and a placard is put on her forehead bearing a bizarre inscription, which is incomprehensible if one does not bother to read the large letters together, independently of the small ones, and then the small ones, independently of the large:

  CEN’EcondSTQUEamnPARéeCEàêt

  QUENrevenOUSdueVOetdé
ULONchir

  SDEVéccaORErlarRLAemplacMACera

  HINquiEDEpourMARraLIpeun

  QUENousimOUSLporteAVOànoNSus.41

  The minor wit responsible for this complainte is unidentified. The machine was resuscitated before being entirely defeated. In 1807, work on the project began, but enormous sums were expended in vain. In 1811, Monsieur Cécile took over the direction and overcame the difficulty. He it was, jointly with Monsieur Martin, who put air back into the broken-down lungs, or rather fitted new lungs. He it was who applied steam-power and equipped the edifice with a Greek fronton, in which the poor nymph was blackened and bruised by the gears while releasing frightful sighs. One would have thought it a temple without the black plume that was almost always suspended above her head, which attests the alimentation of a more ardent fire that a tripod or incense-burner of our own day.

  This machine is 64 horse-power. She consumes between 96 and 100 hectoliters of coal every 24 hours, and raises up 90 inches of water in a single jet to the summit of the large tower, which is equivalent to 1.8 million liters of water. She was put into operation in 1826. In 1818, the entire mechanism of the old machine was demolished and sold, replaced by another that raised up the water in a single stream. The latter was supposed to be provisional, pending the installation of the steam-engine. That provisional apparatus still exists. It comprises only two hydraulic wheels, each connected to a complement of four pumps. The maximum product of this machine is 60 inches or 1.2 million liters of water every 24 hours.

  Such was the origin and the story of this glorious establishment, for whom new destinies are perhaps reserved in the future, but which, for the moment, no longer enjoys any but the obscure esteem of competent men. She is no longer the beloved god-daughter of kings, as the complainte quoted above makes out. The latter only take note of her occasionally. Louis XVIII was asked to visit her one day, but the constitutional obesity of the monarch, who did not have the full use of his legs, had to be taken into account. A miniature model of the machine was therefore constructed, which was mounted on little wheels on the day of his visit and pushed into the middle of the road, where the prince from the height of his carriage, set the hydraulic toy in motion. The courtiers then praised the condescension of the prince, who could have ordered that the machine be rolled all the way to Paris and installed his study. Charles X and Louis-Philippe each consecrated a single journey to her. The Comte de Paris came occasionally, and took extreme pleasure in having the workings of the steel limbs explained to him.42

  Fountains of warm water have been organized on either side of the peristyle, thus serving the culinary needs of inhabitants of Bougival and Marly. It is the first concession made to humanitarianism. In the great century, that positive application would have been strictly avoided; it would have been considered a sacrilege had an object designed for luxury not been completely useless. What would Louis XIV have said if, like us, he had heard a scientist and engineer, whose strange social preoccupations have somewhat encumbered his scientific ideas, make the bold and frank proposition that great steam-engines might be employed in the quasi-realization of Henri IV’s prayer!

  What this enthusiastic dreamer proposes (we leave the entire responsibility for his utopia to him) is that, by means of slight modifications familiar to him, residual water in steam boilers might serve admirably to cook the humble beef of poor people who are frightened by the idea of keeping a fire lit at home for a long time. In every region where the benefit of the smallest steam-powered factory or the most negligible steam locomotive were admitted, every inhabitant would bring his supper, carefully bound up and labeled, and the communal boiler would then return his beef, cooked sided-by-side with his neighbor’s beef, or perhaps his enemy’s. Who knows, even—this is the transcendental gastronomy of culinary philosophy—whether the idea of a communal boiling of nourishment prepared in the same receptacle might not extinguish rebellious hatreds and give birth in the minds of men to the idea of a reconciliation commenced by the vital element? Such a short distance separates beef and man—perhaps only the distance between food that is edible and that which is not.

  Louis XIV, we may be certain, would be quite astonished by these projects, which will come to pass on the day when the Sun, on rising, plays in the arms of the humanitarian telegraph. In that happy time, people will set forth without anxiety, and everyone getting into a railway-carriage might enjoy the delightful assurance of being preceded by his dinner and traveling by courtesy of his cooking-pot.

  X. B. Saintine: Astronomical Journeys

  (1864)

  X. B. Saintine was the by-line used by a prolific dramatist and novelist who was born Joseph Xavier Boniface (1798-1865). Although he is largely forgotten today, two of his works, both fact-based novels, remain fairly well-known: Picciola, about a political prisoner who conserves his sanity by investment in the fate of a flower growing in a crack between the stones of his prison; and Seul! [Alone!], which purports to tell the true story of the castaway on whose experiences Daniel Defoe based the story of Robinson Crusoe.

  The fascination with strategies of psychological survival exhibited by these two novels resonates in many of Saintine’s other works, including a curious book of visionary fantasies, ostensibly (and perhaps genuinely) drawn from a notebook in which the author had long compiled a record of his dreams, La Seconde vie [The Second Life] (1864). The following two-part episode is taken from that book, where it forms chapters IV and V; the second is there separately titled “Une Autre visite! Une Autre planète!” [Another visit! Another Planet!]. It is not the only dream recorded therein that is of interest in the context of scientific romance; others deal with hypothetical microscopic life-forms named “animules.”

  Most of the dreams related in La Seconde vie are earthbound fantasies mingling broad comedy with sly philosophical and psychological speculations, but this brief cosmic odyssey, while remaining as cheerfully nonsensical as any of the other dreams narrated in the book, boldly involves itself with contemporary debates regarding the evolution of the Earth and its living species. Camille Flammarion employed similar visionary artifice in some of contemporary popularizations of astronomy and discussions of the possible habitation of other worlds, especially Lumen (1866-69; 1872 in Récits de l’infini; revised for separate publication 1887), but Flammarion’s evolutionism was responsible for a sharp ideological contrast between the imaginary excursions described in Lumen and those detailed by Saintine.

  Saintine’s fantasy, which takes some inspiration from the endeavors of followers of the anti-evolutionist anatomist Georges Cuvier, makes an interesting comparison with Eugène Mouton’s “The Origin of Life,” whose inspiration was similar. Its graphic depiction of animate matter anticipates the imminently-impending public clash between Félix-Archimède Pouchet and Louis Pasteur regarding the viability of the theory of spontaneous generation—an issue not yet regarded as conclusively settled at the turn of the century, when Gustave Le Bon wrote L’Evolution de la matière (1905; tr. as The Evolution of Matter) and Gaston de Pawlowski dramatized its substance in Voyage au pays de la quatrième dimension (1912; revised 1923; tr. in a Black Coat Press edition as Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension).43 Saintine does not, of course, attempt to address these issues seriously, but his flamboyant celebration of their potential as aliments of nightmare testifies to the extent to which thinking men of the time were haunted by the possibilities that contemporary scientific research and speculation were releasing into the public domain

  1.

  Where am I? What eager whirlwind is carrying me into the depths of the Heavens? I am floating, rising up with a speed that only the rapidity of the electric current can approach. The Earth vanished from my sight some time ago: poor wretched little Earth, I watched it shrink, gradually diminishing until it seemed no more than a schoolboy’s ball, rotating after having touched the ground—and my heart was touched, my eyes moistened. Poor, poor little Earth, where so many grand passions seethe—and vanities no less gra
nd!—little grain of sand from which I saw the Sun for the first time, on which I have loved and suffered, shall I ever be allowed to return to you?

  My emotion was not long delayed in changing its object. Still rising up, I was swallowed up by profound darkness, and the dread took hold of me that I might crack my skull on some unperceived celestial body. A feeble radiation dissipated the obscurity around me somewhat; I glimpsed a sort of reddish globe that was heading towards me. Was it a comet ready to crush me in its passage? What could I do to avoid it? I had no wings to regulate and direct my course.

  With a vivid sentiment of joy, I then perceived that my own will was adequate in itself to move me the direction I desired. At first I had difficulty believing myself to be endowed with such power, but what could be more logical and natural, in accordance with the universally established order? When I was an inhabitant of the Earth, could I not cause my limbs to move solely by means of a mental instruction? Now my thought—my will, in the final analysis—was similarly steering my body: a body freed from the bonds of gravitational attraction, and consequently almost weightless.

  Assured of this precious faculty, after having tacked back and forth for a while, gently cradled by the waves of the ether, intoxicated by that pure essence of life, I was emboldened to resume my ascent, continuing my course through the higher regions of space.