Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules Verne Read Free Book Online

Theory in
twenty volumes, another for an Abstract of Electric Problems, this one for A
Practical Treatise for the Lubrication of Driveshafts, and that one for the latest Monograph on Cancer of the Brain.
    "How
strange!" mused Michel. "All of science and industry here, just as at
school, and nothing for art! I must sound like a madman, asking for literary
works here—am I insane?" Michel lost himself in such reflections for a
good hour; the searches continued, the telegraph operated uninterruptedly, and
the names of "his" authors were confirmed; cellars and attics were
ransacked, but in vain. He would have to give up.
    "Monsieur,
" a clerk in charge of the Response Desk informed him, "we don't have
any of this. No doubt these authors were obscure in their own period, and their
works haven't been reprinted... "
    "There
must have been at least half a million copies of Notre-Dame de Paris published in Hugo's lifetime, " Michel replied.
    "I
believe you, sir, but the only old author reprinted nowadays is Paul de Kock [8] ,
a moralist of the last century; it seems to be very nicely written, and if
you'd like—"
    "I'll
look elsewhere, " Michel answered.
    "Oh,
you can comb the entire city. What you can't find here won't turn up anywhere
else, I can promise you that!"
    "We'll
see, " Michel said as he walked away.
    "But,
sir, " the clerk persisted, worthy in his zeal of being a wine salesman,
"might you be interested in any works of contemporary literature? We have
some items here that have enjoyed a certain success in recent years—they
haven't sold badly for poetry..."
    "Ah!"
said Michel, tempted, "you have modern poems?"
    "Of
course. For instance, Martillac's Electric Harmonies, which
won a prize last year from the Academy of Sciences, and Monsieur de Pulfasse's Meditations on Oxygen; and we have the Poetic Parallelogram, and even the Decarbonated Odes..."
    Michel
couldn't bear hearing another word and found himself outside again, stupefied
and overcome.
    Not
even this tiny amount of art had escaped the pernicious influence of the age!
Science, Chemistry, Mechanics had invaded the realm of poetry! "And such
things are read, " he murmured as he hurried through the streets,
"perhaps even bought! And signed by the authors and placed on the shelves
marked Literature. But
not one copy of Balzac, not one work by Victor Hugo! Where can I find such
things—where, if not the Library..."
    Almost
running now, Michel made his way to the Imperial Library; its buildings,
amazingly enlarged, now extended along a great part of the Rue de Richelieu
from the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs to the Rue de la Bourse. The books,
constantly accumulating, had burst through the walls of the old Hotel de
Nevers. Each year fabulous quantities of scientific works were printed; there
were not suppliers enough for the demand, and the State itself had turned
publisher: the nine hundred volumes bequeathed by Charles V, multiplied a
thousand times, would not have equaled the number now registered in the
library; the eight hundred thousand volumes possessed in 1860 now reached over
two million.
    Michel
asked for the section of the buildings reserved for literature and followed the
stairway through Hieroglyphics, which some workmen were restoring with shovels
and pickaxes. Having reached the Hall of Letters, Michel found it deserted, and
stranger today in its abandonment than when it had formerly been filled with
studious throngs. A few foreigners still visited the place as if it were the
Sahara, and were shown where an Arab died in 1875, at the same table he had
occupied all his life.
    The
formalities necessary to obtain a work were quite complicated; the borrower's
form had to contain the book's title, format, publication date, edition number,
and the author's name—in other words, unless one was already informed, one
could not become so. At the bottom, spaces were left to indicate the borrower's
age, address, profession, and purpose of research.
    Michel
obeyed