Paris in the Twentieth Century (7 page)

Michel
obeyed these regulations and handed his properly filled-out form to the
librarian sleeping at his desk; following his example, the pages were snoring
loudly on chairs set around the wall; their functions had become a sinecure as
complete as those of the ushers at the
Comédie-Française
.
The librarian, waking with a start, stared at the bold young man; he read the
form and appeared to be stupefied at the request; after much deliberation, to
Michel's alarm, he sent the latter to a subordinate official working near his
own window, but at a separate little desk. Michel found himself facing a man
of about seventy, bright-eyed and smiling, with the look of a scholar who
believed he knew nothing. This modest clerk took Michel's form and read it
attentively. "You want the authors of the nineteenth century, " he
said. "That's quite an honor for them—it will allow us to dust them off.
As we say here, Monsieur... Michel Dufrénoy?" At this name, the old man's
head jerked up. "You are Michel Dufrénoy?" he exclaimed. "Of
course you are, I hadn't really taken a look at you!"

"You
know me?"

"Do
I know you!" The old man could not go on; overpowering emotion was evident
on his kindly countenance; he held out his hand, and Michel, trustingly, shook
it with great affection. "I am your uncle, " the librarian finally
stammered out, "your old Uncle Huguenin, your poor mother's brother.
"

"You
are my
uncle!" Michel exclaimed, deeply moved.

"You
don't know me, but I know you, my boy. I was there when you won your splendid
prize for Latin Versification! My heart was pounding, and you never knew a
thing about it. "

"Uncle!"

"It's
not your fault, dear fellow, I know. I was standing in back, far away from you,
so as not to get you into trouble with your aunt's family; but I have been
following your studies step by step, day by day! I used to tell myself: it's
not possible that my sister's boy, the son of that great artist, has preserved
none of those poetic instincts that so distinguished his father; nor was I
mistaken, since here you are, asking me for our great French poets! Yes, my
boy! I shall give them to you, we shall read them together! No one will trouble
us here! No one bothers to keep an eye on us! Let me embrace you for the first
time!"

The
old man clasped his nephew in his arms, and the boy felt himself restored to
life in that embrace. It was the sweetest emotion of his life up to that very
moment. "But, Uncle, " he asked, "how have you found out what
was happening to me all during my childhood?"

"Dear
boy, I have a friend who is very fond of you, your old Professor Richelot, and
through him I learned that you were one of us! I saw you at work; I read the
theme you wrote in Latin verse—a difficult subject to handle, certainly,
because of the proper names:
Marshal P
é
lissier on the Malacoff Tower.
But that's how it goes, they're always about old historical subjects, and, my
word, you managed it very nicely!"

"Not
really!"

"Oh
yes, " the old scholar continued, "you made two strong beats and two
weak ones for Pelissierus, one strong and two weaks for Malacoff, and you were
right: you know, I still remember those two fine lines:

lam
Pelissiero pendenti ex turre Malacoff

Sebastopolitam
concedit Jupiter urbem...

Ah,
my boy, how many times, had it not been for that family who despise me and who,
after all, were paying for your education—how many times I would have encouraged
your splendid inspirations! But now, you will visit me here, and often!"

"Every
evening, Uncle, when I am free to do so. "

"But
isn't this your vacation?"

"Vacation!
Tomorrow morning, Uncle, I must start working in my cousin's bank. "

"You
in a bank, my boy!" exclaimed the old man. "You in business! Lord,
what will become of you? A poor old wretch like me is no use to you, that's for
sure, but my dear fellow, with your ideas, and your talents, you were born too
late, I dare not say too soon, for the way things are going, we daren't even
hope for the future!"

"But
can't I refuse? Am I not a free agent?"

"No,
you're not. Monsieur Boutardin is unfortunately more than your uncle—he is
your guardian; I can't—I mustn't encourage you to follow a deadly path;

no,
you're still young; work for your independence, and then, if your tastes have
not altered and I am still in this world, come to see me. "

"But
the banking profession disgusts me!" Michel exclaimed.

"I'm
sure it does, my boy, and if there were room for two of us in my place, I'd say
to you: come and live with me, we'll be happy together; but such an existence
would lead nowhere, and it's absolutely necessary that you be led
somewhere.... No! Work, my boy! forget me for a few years; I'd only give you
bad advice; don't mention our meeting to your uncle—it might do you harm;
don't think about an old man who would be dead long since, were it not for his
dear habit of coming here every day and finding his old friends on these
shelves. "

"When
I'm free...," said Michel.

"Yes!
in two years! You're sixteen now, you'll be on your own at eighteen, we can
wait; but don't forget, Michel, that I shall always have a warm welcome for
you, a piece of good advice, and a loving heart. Come and see me!" added
the old man, contradicting his own counsels.

"Yes,
Uncle, I will. Where do you live?"

"Oh,
a long way away, out on the Saint-Denis Plain, but the Boulevard Malesherbes
Line takes me very close—I have a chilly little room out there, but it will be
big enough when you come to see me, and warm enough when I hold your hands in
mine. "

The
conversation between uncle and nephew continued in this fashion; the old
scholar sought to smother just those tendencies he most admired in the young
man, and his words constantly betrayed his intention; an artist's situation,
as he well knew, was hopeless, declasse, impossible. They went on talking of
everything under the sun. The old man offered himself like an old book which
his nephew might come and leaf through from time to time, good at best for
telling him about the good old days. Michel mentioned his reason for visiting
the library and questioned his uncle about the decadence of literature.

"Literature
is dead, my boy, " the uncle replied. "Look at these empty rooms, and
these books buried in their dust; no one reads anymore; I am the guardian of a
cemetery here, and exhumation is forbidden. "

During
this conversation time passed without their noticing it. "Four
o'clock!" exclaimed the uncle. "I'm afraid I must leave you. "

"I'll
see you soon, " Michel promised.

"Yes!
No! My boy, never speak of literature, never speak of art! Accept the situation
as it is! You are Monsieur Boutardin's ward before being your Uncle Huguenin's
nephew!"

"Let
me walk you some of the way, " said young Dufrénoy.

"No,
someone might see us. I'll go by myself. "

"Then
till next Sunday, Uncle. "

"Till
Sunday, my dear boy. "

Michel
left first, but waited in the street; he saw the old man heading toward the
boulevard, his steps still confident; he followed him, at a distance, all the
way to the Madeleine station. "At last, " he rejoiced, "I'm no
longer alone in the world!"

He
returned to his uncle's mansion. Luckily the Boutardins were dining in town,
and it was alone in his peaceful little room that Michel spent his first and
last vacation evening.

At
eight o'clock the next morning, Michel Dufrénoy headed for the offices of the
Casmodage and Co. Bank, which occupied, in the Rue Neuve-Drouot, one of those
buildings erected on the site of the old Opera; the young man was taken into a
vast parallelogram filled with strangely shaped machines. At first he could not
make out what they were: they looked rather like huge pianos.

Glancing
toward the adjacent office, Michel caught sight of several enormous safes: not
only did these resemble fortresses but they were even crenellated, and each of
them could easily have lodged a garrison of twenty men.

Michel
could not help shuddering at the sight of these armored coffers. "They
look absolutely bombproof, " he reflected.

A
middle-aged man, his morning quill already behind his ear, was solemnly
strolling among these monuments. Michel soon identified him as belonging to
the genus
Number,
order
Cashier;
precise, orderly, and ill- tempered, this individual invariably accepted money
with enthusiasm and paid it out only grudgingly. He seemed to regard such
disbursements as thefts; receipts, on the other hand, he treated as
restitutions. Some sixty clerks, copyists, and shipping agents were busily
scribbling and calculating under his direction. Michel was to take his place
among them; an office boy led him to the important personage who was expecting
him. "Monsieur, " the Cashier remarked, "when you enter these
precincts, you will first of all forget that you belong to the Boutardin
family. That is the procedure. "

"It
suits me fine, " Michel replied.

"To
begin your apprenticeship, you will be assigned to Machine Number Four. "
Michel turned around and discovered the calculating machine behind him. It had
been several centuries since Pascal had constructed a device of this kind,
whose conception had seemed so remarkable at the time. Since then, the architect
Perrault
[9]
,
Count Stanhope
[10]
,
Thomas de Colmar, Maurel and Jayet
[11]
had made any number of valuable modifications to such machines. The Casmodage
Bank possessed veritable masterpieces of the genre, instruments which indeed
did resemble huge pianos: by operating a sort of keyboard, sums were
instantaneously produced, remainders, products, quotients, rules of proportion,
calculations of amortization and of interest compounded for infinite periods
and at all possible rates. There were high notes which afforded up to one
hundred fifty percent! The capacities of these extraordinary machines would
easily have defeated even the Mondeux
[12]
and the [proper name missing in the manuscript].

Except
that you had to know how to play them: Michel would be obliged to take lessons
in fingering. It was evident that he had entered the employment of a banking
house which required and adopted all the resources of technology. Moreover, at
this period, the volume of business and the diversity of correspondence gave
mere office devices an extraordinary importance. For example, the Casmodage
Bank issued no less than three thousand letters a day, posted to every corner
of the world. A fifteen-horsepower Lenoir never ceased copying these letters,
which five hundred employees incessantly fed into it.

Nevertheless
electric telegraphy must have greatly diminished the number of letters, for new
improvements now permitted the sender to correspond directly with the
addressee; secrecy of correspondence was thus preserved, and the most intricate
deals could be transacted over great distances. Each banking house had its own
special wires, according to the Wheatstone
[13]
System long since in use throughout England. Quotations of countless stocks on
the international market were automatically inscribed on dials utilized by the
Exchanges of Paris, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Turin, Berlin, Vienna, Saint
Petersburg, Constantinople, New York, Valparaiso, Calcutta, Sydney, Peking,
and Nuku Hiva. Further, photographic telegraphy, invented during the last
century by Professor Giovanni Caselli
[14]
of Florence, permitted transmission of the facsimile of any form of writing or
illustration, whether manuscript or print, and letters of credit or contracts
could now be signed at a distance of five thousand leagues.

The
telegraph network now covered the entire surface of the earth's continents and
the depths of the seas; America was not more than a second away from Europe,
and in a formal experiment made in London in 1903, two agents corresponded with
each other after having caused their dispatches to circumnavigate the globe.