Underground Man. Gabriel de Tarde
by the needs of social stability, nearly failed to pass, incredible as it may seem, in the face of a coalition of celibate electors.
Tradition informs us that the bill relating to this indispensable extension of the franchise would have been infallibly rejected, if, luckily, the recent election of a multi-millionaire suspected of imperialistic tendencies had not scared the assembly. It fancied it would injure the popularity of this ambitious pretender by hastening to welcome this proposal in which it only saw one thing, that is, that the fathers and husbands, outraged or alarmed by the gallantries of the new Cæsar, would be all the stronger for impeding his triumphant march. But this expectation was, it appears, unrealised.
Whatever may be the truth of this legend, it is certain that, owing to the enlargement of the electoral districts, combined with the suppression of the electoral privileges, the election of a deputy was a veritable coronation, and ordinarily produced in the elect a species of megalomania. This reconstituted feudalism was bound to end in a reconstitution of monarchy. For a moment the learned wore this cosmic crown, following the prophecy of an ancient philosopher, but they did not keep it. The popularisation of knowledge through innumerable schools had made science as common an object as a charming woman or an elegant suite of furniture. It had been extraordinarily simplified by the thorough way in which it had been worked out, complete as regards its general outlines, in which no change could be expected, and its henceforth rigid classification abundantly garnished with data. Only advancing at an imperceptible pace, it held, in short, but an insignificant place in the background of the brain, in which it simply replaced the catechism of former days. The bulk of intellectual energy was therefore to be found in another direction, as were also its glory and prestige. Already the scientific bodies, venerable in their antiquity, began, alas! to acquire a slight tinge and veneer of ridicule, which raised a smile and recalled the synods of bonzes or ecclesiastical conferences, such as are represented in very ancient pictures. It is, therefore, not surprising that this first dynasty of imperial physicists and geometricians, genial copies of the Antonines, were promptly succeeded by a dynasty of artists who had deserted art to wield the sceptre, as they lately had wielded the bow, the roughing chisel, and the brush. The most famous of all, a man possessed of an overflowing imagination which was yet well under control, and ministered to by an unparalleled energy, was an architect who among other gigantic projects formed the idea of rasing to the ground his capital, Constantinople, in order to rebuild it elsewhere, on the site of ancient Babylon, which for three thousand years had been a desert – a truly luminous idea. In this incomparable plain of Chaldea watered by a second Nile there was another still more beautiful and fertile Egypt awaiting resurrection and metamorphosis, an infinite expanse extending as far as the eye could see, to be covered with striking public buildings constructed with magical speed, with a teeming and throbbing population, with golden harvests beneath a sky of changeless blue, with an iron net-work of railways radiating from the town of Nebuchadnesor to the furthest ends of Europe, Africa and Asia, and crossing the Himalayas, the Caucasus, and the Sahara. The stored energy, electrically conveyed, of a hundred Abyssinian waterfalls, and of, I do not know, how many cyclones, hardly sufficed to transport from the mountains of Armenia the necessary stone, wood and iron for these numerous constructions. One day an excursion train, composed of a thousand and one carriages, having passed too close to the electric cable at the moment when the current was at its maximum, was destroyed and reduced to ashes in the twinkling of an eye. None the less Babylon, the proud city of muddy clay, with its paltry splendours of unbaked and painted brick, found itself rebuilt in marble and granite, to the utmost confusion of the Nabopolassars, the Belshazzars, the Cyruses, and the Alexanders. It is needless to add that the archæologists made on this occasion the most priceless discoveries, in the several successive strata, of Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities. The mania for Assyriology went so far that every sculptor's studio, the palaces, and even the King's armorial bearings were invaded by winged bulls with human heads, just as formerly the museums were full of cupids or cherubims, "with their cravat-like wings". Certain school books for primary schools were actually printed in cuneiform characters in order to enhance their authority over the youthful imagination.
This imperial orgy in bricks and mortar having unhappily occasioned the seventh, eighth, and ninth bankruptcy of the State and several consecutive inundations of paper-money, the people in general rejoiced to see after this brilliant reign the crown borne by a philosophical financier. Order had hardly been re-established in the finances, when he made his preparation for applying on a grand scale his ideal of government, which was of a highly remarkable nature. One was not long in noticing, in fact, after his accession, that all the newly chosen ladies of honour, who were otherwise very intelligent but entirely lacking in wit, were chiefly conspicuous for their striking ugliness; that the liveries of the court were of a grey and lifeless colour; that the court balls reproduced by instantaneous cinematography to the tune of millions of copies furnished a collection of the most honest and insignificant faces and unappetising forms that one could possibly see; that the candidates recently appointed, after a preliminary despatch of their portraits, to the highest dignities of the Empire, were pre-eminently distinguished by the commonness of their bearing; in short, that the races and the public holidays (the date of which were notified in advance by secret telegrams announcing the arrival of a cyclone from America), happened nine times out of ten to take place on a day of thick fog, or of pelting rain, which transformed them into an immense array of waterproofs and umbrellas. Alike in his legislative proposals, as in his appointments, the choice of the prince was always the following: the most useful and the best among the most unattractive. An insufferable sameness of colour, a depressing monotony, a sickening insipidity were the distinctive note of all the acts of the government. People laughed, grew excited, waxed indignant, and got used to it. The result was that at the end of a certain time it was impossible to meet an office-seeker or a politician, that is to say, an artist or literary man, out of his element and in search of the beautiful in an alien sphere, who did not turn his back on the pursuit of a government appointment in order to return to rhyming, sculpture and painting. And from that moment the following aphorism has won general acceptance, that the superiority of the politician is only mediocrity raised to its highest power.
This is the great benefit that we owe to this eminent monarch. The lofty purpose of his reign has been revealed by the posthumous publication of his memoirs. Of these writings with which we can so ill dispense, we have only left this fragment which is well calculated to make us regret the loss of the remainder: "Who is the true founder of Sociology? Auguste Comte? No, Menenius Agrippa. This great man understood that government is the stomach, not the head of the social organism. Now, the merit of a stomach is to be good and ugly, useful and repulsive to the eye, for if this indispensable organ were agreeable to look upon, it would be much to be feared that people would meddle with it and nature would not have taken such care to conceal and defend it. What sensible person prides himself on having a beautiful digestive apparatus, a lovely liver or elegant lungs? Such a pretension would, however, not be more ridiculous than the foible of cutting a great dash in politics. What wants cultivating is the substantial and the commonplace. My poor predecessors." … Here follows a blank; a little further on, we read: "The best government is that which holds to being so perfectly humdrum, regular, neuter, and even emasculated, that no one can henceforth get up any enthusiasm either for or against it."
Such was the last successor of Semiramis. On the re-discovered site of the Hanging-gardens he caused to be erected, at the expense of the State, a statue of Louis Philippe in wrought aluminium, in the middle of a public garden planted with common laurels and cauliflowers.
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