Journey Through the Impossible (23 page)

But the planet's last day has sounded. Everything crumbles, everything vanishes, night falls, and we are back in the Danish castle where
the play began.

The back of the theater opens once more and we see, like an
apotheosis, an interior corner of Notre Dame," then an immense
cathedral that seems to rise to the very heavens.

There is a mystical note at the end. But M. Cleves's honor is
saved. It can be said that, in order to make a success of this Journey
Through the Impossible, he has attempted the impossible.

"Doctor Ox," A Journey to the Moon, and A Journey to the Bottom of the
Sea, and M. Dennery has patched them together, the collaboration
resulting in a salmagundi, pretty nearly headless and tailless, yet
which must be acknowledged to be a triumph of stage carpentry,
scene-painting, and costumery. This is the plot, if plot it can be called:
in a little town of Denmark lives the Widow Traventhal, whose
daughter is betrothed to young George Hatteras. George is a son of
that famous Captain Hatteras whose voyage in search of the North
Pole terminated fatally. His friends have always concealed the
parentage: they feared lest the example of the father might tempt the
child, but it is all in vain; no man can escape his destiny. The blood of
the bold navigator courses through his veins; he thirsts after the
unknown: he, lives in the midst of maps and charts and globes, and in
his delirium dreams of explorations such as none other has ever imagined. He would attempt the impossible. "Quite mad!" say his fellowcitizens. "Certainly very sick!" reply Madame and Mademoiselle Traventhal, who forthwith send for Doctor Ox and ask him to prescribe.
Now, Doctor Ox is an excellent scientist by repute, but Doctor Ox,
instead of administering chloral or bromide of potassium, as assuredly
would have done the eminent Dr. Charcot, the present authority in
lunatic and nervous affections, works up the diseased brain of his
patient, first, by revealing to him his connection with the deceased
Arctic explorer; second, by the assurance that he can help him to
realize his desire to become another Christopher Columbus. The
doctor is a species of Mephistopheles; he, too, is in love with Heval-
I write her name with an H this time, but your readers may suit themselves as to the orthography, about which there has been as much controversy among newspaper reporters as there was over the letter
gamma in Gounod's "Tribut de Zamora,"' where many contended
that this consonant ought to be doubled. The savant's scheme is truly
diabolical; he administers an elixir which emancipates the youth from
subjection to physical laws that hamper ordinary human beings, but
his real object is to get rid of his rival by death or incurable madness.
In vain does the organist Volsius try to snatch George from the sinister influence; he tries music, he tries argument, and he might as well
have left both untried, for George persists, and then, with a noble spirit of self-sacrifice, he assures the disconsolate maiden that he, too,
will share the perils of her lover's peregrinations. He will protect him,
he swears, in spite of himself, and this he does in a series of avatars
wherein he appears as Professor Lidenbrock, Captain Nemo, Michel
Ardan, and an Altorian-this, I should explain, means a citizen of the
planet Altor-whither the travelers go in a bombshell fired from a
monster Columbiad situated in the garden of the Gun Club of Baltimore. You must understand that the struggle between the doctor and
the musician is intended to illustrate the conflict between good and
evil. But Heva is not altogether satisfied; she fears to trust her George
to Volsius alone, and so she, too, and with her a friend of the family,
one Tartelet,3 the dancing-master, takes a dose of the magic mixture,
and in the twinkling of an eye Ox, George, Volsius, Heva, and the
dancing-master are transported by an "electric current" to the foot of
Mount Vesuvius, and then begins the dance.

The tourists, whose party is reinforced by a traveler from
Sweden,4 whom they meet at Naples, Monsieur Valdemar by name,
begin their excursions by a visit to the "entrails of the earth" in search
of the "central fire." Three "entrails" are visited in this journey, of
which a fissure in the volcano was the starting point; the first entrail
is a rocky cavern; the second struck me as made of granite; in the third
is represented a most fantastic subterranean vegetation, with the
atmosphere rendered peculiarly luminous, giving to an underground
rivulet extraordinary effects of light and color. These regions are
inhabited by the Troglodytes, a degenerate class of beings, ugly, but
picturesque, with long hair, mud-tinted faces, and silver hands, who,
much struck by Heva's beauty, rush savagely at the intruder, and are
calmed as suddenly by Professor Lidenbrock, by whom is executed,
quite sweetly, an air on his pocket violin. At the first performance M.
Joumard did something from the "Tribut de Zamorra;" at the sixth he
selected something from Carmen.5

This [setting] is numbered six on the programme. In [set] seven
the central furnace has been reached. I suppose that this reality may
be qualified as a fourth and final entrail, as, after 50 or 60 lovely
beings, attired in very dark blue with gold trimmings, gold helmets,
and black kid gloves reaching above the elbows, have danced and capered, another company of white ladies representing fountains,
dance frantically, and the curtain falls, thus giving it to be understood
that, Earth having no more mysteries to reveal to G. H., he and his
friends may try another kingdom.

Setting eight is the roadstead of Goa, with Indian pavilions on the
right and left, and in the background the city and the sea. Here, Monsieur Valdemar, the funny man, does a monologue expressive of his
satisfaction with the "diamond picked up 5,000 feet below the surface
of the earth;" then the Nautilus, a cigar-shaped craft, steams in: the
travelers go on board, and in the eleventh [setting] are seen seated
around the hospitable table of Captain Nemo-the third incarnation
of Volsius. In the twelfth [setting] the Nautilus has plunged, and her
passengers walk out of their cabins into the magic city of the
Atlantides, which, you know, was swallowed up ever so long ago by
the angry floods. The citizens of this realm have a revolution; they
want a king, and, having chosen one of themselves, are about to crown
him, when Mademoiselle Patry,6 a very handsome person, combines
with Doctor Ox and George to make a coup d'etat, which results in
the selection of the hero and his immediate coronation, all serving as
a pretext for more dancing, more marble staircases, porphyry
columns, minarets, and properties in general, outdoing, perhaps, in
splendor the brilliant display in the "Mille et Une Nuits." [Setting
fourteen], The Gun Club of Baltimore, offers nothing especially interesting or original. The members amuse themselves by shooting
pistols while the big gun is being made ready. A servant enters, and
the columbiad is prepared. "Gentlemen," he announces, "will the
intending travelers kindly take seats in the shell!" With the exception
of Doctor Ox, the party get into the projectile-in the slips, for we
never see the monster projectile-and, the scene changing, the huge
mortar, "warranted to carry with the utmost precision 1,250 feet
beyond the point aimed at," appears pointed toward the firmament.
Just as the match is being applied, Monsieur Volsius rushes on the
stage and insists on an excursion ticket, which is kindly granted by the
Gun Club of Baltimore's committee. He gets in at the vent: an explosion is heard, and again the scene shifts to the planet Altor. The car
has reached [its] destination in safety; they are met by Maitre Volsius as an Altorian in a long robe like a Jewish rabbi's crimson silk cap, a
sort of caricature of Louis XI, to whom Messieurs Valdemar and
Tartelet make a political speech in explanation of the advantages and
disadvantages of parliamentarianism, while their companions admire
the architectural beauties of a planet where a cottage has a golden roof
and walls encrusted with precious stones. Another circumstance much
impresses the party; the Altorians are favored with two suns-one for
the day, the other for the night. Valdemar ingenuously remarks:
"What a pity that there is not a third in case of an eclipse." This
intensely witty joke is immensely applauded always. During their
journey some of the travelers have changed their toilets. Heva looks
very gorgeous in a gown with white satin, above which is a tunic of
white merino, profusely embroidered and trimmed with green
marabout feathers, and a corsage of currant-colored satin, with white
jet and gauze sleeves.

It is on the marketplace of Altor that we are treated to the third
and most magnificent ballet of the piece-palaces, terraces, colonnades, galleries; nothing is wanting to give effect to this spectacle,
than which nothing more beautiful has been produced, even at the
Academie Nationale de Musique. Suddenly, in the midst of mirth and
joy, comes a terrible crash; a "meteoric comet" has struck the festive
planet; everything crumbles away; the clouds gather, the thunder
rolls, the lightning flashes, and Altor becomes a thing of the past.
How the excursionists escape the cataclysm is not explained, but they
do escape in some way or another; they get back to Earth, where, in
the nineteenth [setting]-the "Castle of Andernach"-George, at first
quite insane, recovers his reason, thanks to his betrothed, whose love
triumphs over the jealous hate of the fatal doctor, after which comes
the obligatory apotheosis in three transformations and the curtain
falls definitively. And now, if you wish, an opinion of the merits of the
"Journey Through the Impossible," I will say frankly that I have never
seen anything more idiotically incoherent, or of which the dialogue is
more pretentious. Under another name it is only a re-edition of
"Pilules du Diable," the "Biche au Bois," the "Mille et Une Nuits,"
which again are only speaking versions of the old-fashioned pantomimes. George is Harlequin, Heva Columbine, Volsius the Good Genius, Valdemar a good-natured Clown, and Doctor Ox the Wicked
Enchanter. These adventures and mishaps have been seen a hundred
times before, and if the people did not talk they would be all the better
liked. Yet, for all that, the piece is successful-an immense success and
a success which will last for months, as panoramas nowadays are all
the fashion. M. Paul Cleves has given proof of taste and of unrivaled
prodigality, and I should not be surprised if the "Voyage a Travers
l'Impossible" equaled in vogue the famous "Tour du Monde." Still, I
think that it will prove to be M. Verne's "Song of the Swan"; That this
will be the last trial of scientifico-fantastico-geographical dramas.