CHAPTER III.
EFFECT OF PRESIDENT BARBICANE'S COMMUNICATION.
It is impossible to depict the effect produced by the last words of thehonourable president. What cries! what vociferations! What a successionof groans, hurrahs, cheers, and all the onomatopoeia of which theAmerican language is so full. It was an indescribable hubbub anddisorder. Mouths, hands, and feet made as much noise as they could. Allthe weapons in this artillery museum going off at once would not havemore violently agitated the waves of sound. That is not surprising;there are cannoneers nearly as noisy as their cannons.
Barbicane remained calm amidst these enthusiastic clamours; perhaps heagain wished to address some words to his colleagues, for his gesturesasked for silence, and his fulminating bell exhausted itself in violentdetonations; it was not even heard. He was soon dragged from his chair,carried in triumph, and from the hands of his faithful comrades hepassed into those of the no less excited crowd.
Nothing can astonish an American. It has often been repeated that theword "impossible" is not French; the wrong dictionary must have beentaken by mistake. In America everything is easy, everything is simple,and as to mechanical difficulties, they are dead before they are born.Between the Barbicane project and its realisation not one true Yankeewould have allowed himself to see even the appearance of a difficulty.As soon said as done.
The triumphant march of the president was prolonged during the evening.A veritable torchlight procession--Irish, Germans, Frenchmen,Scotchmen--all the heterogeneous individuals that compose the populationof Maryland--shouted in their maternal tongue, and the cheering wasunanimous.
Precisely as if she knew it was all about her, the moon shone out thenwith serene magnificence, eclipsing other lights with her intenseirradiation. All the Yankees directed their eyes towards the shiningdisc; some saluted her with their hands, others called her by thesweetest names; between eight o'clock and midnight an optician inJones-Fall-street made a fortune by selling field-glasses. The Queen ofNight was looked at through them like a lady of high life. The Americansacted in regard to her with the freedom of proprietors. It seemed as ifthe blonde Phoebe belonged to these enterprising conquerors and alreadyformed part of the Union territory. And yet the only question was thatof sending a projectile--a rather brutal way of entering intocommunication even with a satellite, but much in vogue amongst civilisednations.
Midnight had just struck, and the enthusiasm did not diminish; it waskept up in equal doses in all classes of the population; magistrates,_savants_, merchants, tradesmen, street-porters, intelligent as well as"green" men were moved even in their most delicate fibres. It was anational enterprise; the high town, low town, the quays bathed by thewaters of the Patapsco, the ships, imprisoned in their docks, overflowedwith crowds intoxicated with joy, gin, and whisky; everybody talked,argued, perorated, disputed, approved, and applauded, from the gentlemancomfortably stretched on the bar-room couch before his glass of"sherry-cobbler" to the waterman who got drunk upon "knock-me-down" inthe dark taverns of Fell's Point.
However, about 2 a.m. the emotion became calmer. President Barbicanesucceeded in getting home almost knocked to pieces. A Hercules could nothave resisted such enthusiasm. The crowd gradually abandoned the squaresand streets. The four railroads of Ohio, Susquehanna, Philadelphia, andWashington, which converge at Baltimore, took the heterogeneouspopulation to the four corners of the United States, and the townreposed in a relative tranquillity.
It would be an error to believe that during this memorable eveningBaltimore alone was agitated. The large towns of the Union, New York,Boston, Albany, Washington, Richmond, New Orleans, Charlestown, LaMobile of Texas, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Florida, all shared in thedelirium. The thirty thousand correspondents of the Gun Club wereacquainted with their president's letter, and awaited with equalimpatience the famous communication of the 5th of October. The sameevening as the orator uttered his speech it ran along the telegraphwires, across the states of the Union, with a speed of 348,447 miles asecond. It may, therefore, be said with absolute certainty that at thesame moment the United States of America, ten times as large as France,cheered with a single voice, and twenty-five millions of hearts, swollenwith pride, beat with the same pulsation.
The next day five hundred daily, weekly, monthly, or bi-monthlynewspapers took up the question; they examined it under its differentaspects--physical, meteorological, economical, or moral, from apolitical or social point of view. They debated whether the moon was afinished world, or if she was not still undergoing transformation. Didshe resemble the earth in the time when the atmosphere did not yetexist? What kind of spectacle would her hidden hemisphere present to ourterrestrial spheroid? Granting that the question at present was simplyabout sending a projectile to the Queen of Night, every one saw in thatthe starting-point of a series of experiments; all hoped that one dayAmerica would penetrate the last secrets of the mysterious orb, and someeven seemed to fear that her conquest would disturb the balance of powerin Europe.
The project once under discussion, not one of the papers suggested adoubt of its realisation; all the papers, treatises, bulletins, andmagazines published by scientific, literary, or religious societiesenlarged upon its advantages, and the "Natural History Society" ofBoston, the "Science and Art Society" of Albany, the "Geographical andStatistical Society" of New York, the "American Philosophical Society"of Philadelphia, and the "Smithsonian Institution" of Washington sent ina thousand letters their congratulations to the Gun Club, with immediateoffers of service and money.
It may be said that no proposition ever had so many adherents; there wasno question of hesitations, doubts, or anxieties. As to the jokes,caricatures, and comic songs that would have welcomed in Europe, and,above all, in France, the idea of sending a projectile to the moon, theywould have been turned against their author; all the "life-preservers"in the world would have been powerless to guarantee him against thegeneral indignation. There are things that are not to be laughed at inthe New World.
Impey Barbicane became from that day one of the greatest citizens of theUnited States, something like a Washington of science, and one factamongst several will serve to show the sudden homage which was paid by anation to one man.
Some days after the famous meeting of the Gun Club the manager of anEnglish company announced at the Baltimore Theatre a representation of_Much Ado About Nothing_, but the population of the town, seeing in thetitle a damaging allusion to the projects of President Barbicane,invaded the theatre, broke the seats, and forced the unfortunate managerto change the play. Like a sensible man, the manager, bowing to publicopinion, replaced the offending comedy by _As You Like It_, and forseveral weeks he had fabulous houses.