The Floating Island (13 page)

“Well!” said Pinchinat, “what do
you say to what has happened to us?”

“A dream,” replied Yvernès, “a
dream in which we are engaged at a million a year.”

“It is unmistakable reality,”
replied Frascolin. “Search in your pockets, and you can pull out the first
quarter of the said million.”

“It remains to see how it is
going to end! Very badly, I imagine,” said Zorn, bent on discovering a folded
rose-leaf in the bed on which he had been laid in spite of himself. “Besides,
where is our luggage?”

In fact, the luggage was probably
at San Diego, to which they could not go in search of it. Oh! Very rudimentary
luggage; a few portmanteaus, linen, toilet utensils, a change of clothes, and
also, it is true, the costume of the executants when they appeared before the
public.

There was nothing to be uneasy about
on this point. In forty-eight hours this rather faded wardrobe would be
replaced by another presented to the four artistes without their having to pay
fifteen hundred francs for a coat or five hundred francs for a pair of boots.

Besides, Calistus Munbar,
enchanted at having so ably conducted this delicate affair, took care that the
quartette had nothing to wish for. It was impossible to imagine a more
inexhaustibly obliging superintendent. He occupied a suite of rooms in the
casino of which he had the chief management, and the company had taken care
that the fittings and appointments were worthy of his magnificence and
munificence. We would rather not say how much they cost.

The casino included lecture-rooms
and recreation-rooms, but baccarat, trente et quarante, roulette, poker, and
all other games of chance were strictly prohibited. Here was the smoke room
from which was delivered direct to the houses the tobacco smoke prepared by a company
recently established. The smoke of the tobacco burnt in the furnaces of this
central establishment was purified and cleared of nicotine and distributed by
pipes with amber mouthpieces to each subscriber. The subscribers had only to
apply their lips and a meter registered the daily expense.

In this casino, where the
dilettanti came to listen to the music from afar, to which the concerts of the
quartette were now to be added, there were also the public collections of
Milliard City. To the lovers of paintings, the gallery, rich in ancient and
modern pictures, offered a number of masterpieces bought at extravagant prices,
canvases of the Italian, Dutch, German and French schools which would make
envious the collections of Paris, London, Munich, Rome and Florence. It had
examples of Raffaelle, Da Vinci, Giorgione, Correggio, Domenichino, Ribeira,
Murillo, Ruysdael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Cuyp, Frans Hals, Hobbema, Van Dyck,
Holbein, etc., and also among the moderns, Fragonard, Ingres, Delacroix,
Scheffer, Cabat, Delaroche, Regnaut, Couture, Meissonier, Millet, Rousseaux,
Jules Dupré, Brascassat, Mackart, Turner, Troyon, Corot, Daubigny, Baudry,
Bonnat, Carolus Duran, Jules Lefebvre, Vollon, Breton, Binet, You, Cabanel,
etc. In order to make these pictures last for ever, they were placed in glass
cases, from which the air was exhausted. It is worth mentioning that the
impressionists, the intensists, the futurists had not yet encumbered this
gallery, but doubtless that would occur in time, and Floating Island would not
escape an invasion of this decadent pest. The museum also possessed statues of
real value, marbles of the great sculptors ancient and modern, placed in the
courts of the casino. Thanks to this climate being without rain or fog, groups,
statues and busts could resist the attacks of the weather without injury.

That these marvels were often
visited, that the nabobs of Milliard City had a very pronounced taste for the
productions of art, that the artistic sense was very strongly developed amongst
them, it would be hazardous to pretend. But it was noteworthy that the Starboardists
included more amateurs than the Larboardists. All were, however, agreed when it
was proposed to buy any masterpiece, and when their astonishing offers
invariably obtained them from all the Dukes of Aumale, and all the Chauchards
of the old and new continents.

The most frequented rooms in the
casino were the reading-rooms devoted to the newspapers, and the European and
American reviews brought by the regular service of steamers to Floating Island
from Madeleine Bay. After being turned over, read and re-read, these reviews
were placed on the shelves of the library with many thousand other works, the
classification of which required the presence of a librarian at a salary of
twenty-five thousand dollars, who had probably less to do than any of the other
functionaries of the island. This library also contained a number of
phonographic books which gave no trouble to read; all you had to do was to
press a button and you heard the voice of some excellent reader aloud. For
instance, there was the
Phèdre
of Racine read by M. Legouvé.  As to the
local journals, they were edited, composed and printed in the workshops of the
casino under the direction of two editors-in-chief. One was the
Starboard
Chronicle
for the Starboard section; the other the
New Herald
for the
Larboard Section. The news consisted of the different events on the island, the
arrival of the steamers, marine intelligence, ships sighted, the price lists of
interest to the commercial quarters, the daily position of the island, the
decision of the council of notables, the orders of the governor, the decrees of
the civil power; births, marriages, deaths
—
the
last very seldom; besides, there were never any robberies or murders, the
courts only dealing with civil matters, actions between private persons. Never
were there any articles on centenarians, longevity being no longer the
privilege of the few.

For foreign intelligence the
papers were indebted to the daily telephonic communication with Madeleine Bay,
whence started the cables submerged in the depths of the Pacific. The people of
Milliard City were thus informed of all that passed all over the world, if
there were sufficient interest in it. Let it be added that the
Starboard
Chronicle
and the
New Herald
were on excellent terms with each
other. Up till then they had existed in harmony, but there was no saying that
their exchange of courteous discussions would last for ever. Tolerant and
conciliatory in all religious matters, Protestantism and Catholicism worked
very well together in Floating Island. It is true that if in the future some
odious political matter became mixed up with religion, if questions of private
interest and selfishness intervened
—

Besides these daily high-priced
journals, there were weekly and monthly reviews, reprinting the articles from
foreign magazines, the articles of Sarcey, Lemaitre, Fouquier, and other
critics of eminence; then there were magazines, illustrated or not, without
counting half-a-dozen society papers devoted to current fashionable gossip.
Their only object was to afford a little enjoyment to the mind
—
and to the stomach.
Yes, some of these society pages were printed on edible pastry with chocolate
ink. After they were read they were inwardly digested at the next breakfast.
Some of them were astringent, some of them were gently purgative, and all
proved very excellent eating. And we may here say that the quartette found this
invention as agreeable as it was practical.

“These are lectures of easy
digestion,” observed Yvernès judiciously.

“Quite a nourishing literature,”
replied Pinchinat; “pastry and literature combined, that agrees perfectly with
hygienic music!”

Now it is natural to ask what
resources the island possessed for maintaining its population in such
conditions of welfare as no other city in the world approached. Its revenues
must have amounted to a considerable sum, considering the expenditure under the
different headings and the handsome salaries paid to its employed.

The quartette inquired of the
superintendent concerning this.

“Here,” he replied, “we do not
bother about business. We have no Board of Trade, no Exchange, no export trade.
The only commerce is that needed by the wants of the island, and we shall never
offer strangers the equivalent of the World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893, or the
Paris Exposition of 1900. No! The mighty religion of business does not exist,
and we never raise the cry of ‘Go ahead!’ unless it is for the Pearl of the
Pacific to keep in front. It is not to trade we look for the needful revenue of
Floating Island, but to the custom-house. Yes! our customs dues yield all we
require for the exigencies of our budget.”

“And this budget?” asked
Frascolin.

“Its total is twenty million
dollars, my excellent friends!”

“A hundred millions of francs!”  exclaimed
the second violin, “and for a town of ten thousand souls.”

“That is it, my dear Frascolin;
and the amount is entirely provided by the customs dues. We have no octroi, the
products of the island being almost insignificant. We have nothing but the dues
levied at Starboard Harbour and Larboard Harbour. That explains the dearness of
our articles of consumption
—
dearness
which is relative, mind you, for the prices, high as they may appear to you,
are in accordance with the means of those who pay them.”

And hereupon Calistus Munbar
started off again, boasting of his town, boasting of his island
—
in his eyes a
fragment of a superior planet fallen into the Pacific, a floating Eden, in
which the wise men had taken refuge, and if true happiness could not be found
there, it could be found nowhere. It was a showman’s speech! It seemed as
though he said, “Walk up, gentlemen; walk up, ladies! take your tickets, there
are only a few places left. Who will take a ticket?” etc., etc.

It is true that the places were
few and the tickets dear. Bah! The superintendent threw the millions about as
if they were but units in this city of millionaires.

It was in the course of this
tirade, in which the phrases poured forth in cascades, in which the gestures
became accelerated with semaphoric frenzy, that the quartette were informed
regarding the different branches of the administration. And first, the schools,
in which the instruction was gratuitous and obligatory, and of which the
professors were paid as if they were ministers. Here were taught the dead and
living languages, history, geography, the physical and mathematical sciences,
and the accomplishments more thoroughly than in any university or academy in
the Old World
—
according
to Calistus Munbar. The truth was that there was no great rush of pupils to
these public schools, and if the present generation retained some traces of
study in the colleges of the United States, the succeeding generation would
have less learning than they had dividends.

Did not the inhabitants of this
moving island travel in foreign parts? Did they never visit the great capitals
of Europe? Did they not see the countries that had given them so many
masterpieces of all kinds? Yes! There were a few whom a certain feeling of
curiosity drove to these distant regions. But they found it fatiguing; they
grew weary of it for the most part; they found there nothing of the uniformity
of existence on Floating Island; they suffered from heat, they suffered from
cold; in short they caught cold, and people never caught cold in Milliard City.
Consequently they, the imprudent adventurers, who had had the unhappy idea to
leave it, were only too glad and impatient to return to it. What good did they
get from these travels? None.

As to the foreigners who might be
attracted by the fame of Floating Island, this ninth wonder of the world, the
Eiffel Tower being at least the eighth, Calistus Munbar thought that they never
would be very numerous. Of those who had come during the last year the majority
had been Americans; of other nations there were few or none. There had been a
few English, recognizable by their turning their trousers up on the pretext
that it was raining in London. Besides, Great Britain had looked with no
friendly eye on the building of this artificial island, which provided another
obstacle to navigation, and would have rejoiced at its disappearance. The
Germans obtained but a very cool welcome, as if they would quickly have made
Milliard City a new Chicago, once they had set foot in it. The French were of
all foreigners those whom the Company would greet with most sympathy and
attention, owing to their not belonging to the invading races of Europe. But
had a Frenchman ever appeared on Floating Island?

“That is not likely,” said
Pinchinat.

“We are not rich enough,” added
Frascolin.

“To live here, yes,” replied the
superintendent, “but not to be an official.”

“Is there, then, one of our
compatriots in Milliard City?” asked Yvernès.

“There is one.”

“And who is this privileged
person?”

“Monsieur Athanase Dorémus.”

“And what is he doing here, this
Athanase Dorémus?” exclaimed Pinchinat.

“He is professor of dancing and
deportment, with a handsome salary from the government, to say nothing of his
income from private finishing lessons.”

“Which a Frenchman is alone
capable of giving!” replied his Highness.

The quartette had thus become
fairly well acquainted with the organization of the administrative life of
Floating Island. They had now only to abandon themselves to the charm of this
voyage which was taking them to the west of the Pacific. If it had not been for
the sun rising sometimes over one part of the island and sometimes over
another, according to the direction in which the island was moving, Sebastien
Zorn and his comrades could have believed they were on firm ground. On two
occasions during the fortnight that followed there had been a violent storm and
gale, for there are always a few on the Pacific notwithstanding its name. The
waves dashed up against the metal hull, and covered it with spray as if it was
an ordinary shore. But Floating Island did not even groan under the assaults of
the raging sea. The fury of the ocean was impotent against it. The genius of
man had conquered nature.