Nonetheless, since everything—even speeches—must come to an end, the machine stopped. The oratorical exercises having been terminated without incident, the Ceremony proceeded to the actual awarding of the prizes.

The question given to the Grand Competition of Higher Mathematics was as follows: Given two circumferences OO': from a point A on O, tangents are drawn to O'; the contact points of these tangents are joined: the tangent at A is drawn to the circumference O; what is the point of intersection of this tangent with the chord of contacts in the circumference O'?

The importance of such a theorem was universally understood. Many were familiar with how it had been solved according to a new method by the student Gigoujeu (François Némorin) from Briançon (Hautes Alpes). Bravos rang out when this name was called; it was uttered seventy-four times in the course of this memorable day: benches were broken in honor of the laureate, an activity which, even in 1960, was not yet merely a metaphor intended to describe the outbreaks of enthusiasm.

On this occasion Gigoujeu (François Némorin) was awarded a library of some three thousand volumes. The Academic Credit Union did things properly.

We cannot cite the endless nomenclature of the Sciences which were taught in this barracks of learning: an honors list of the day would have certainly astonished the great-grandfathers of these young scholars. The prize giving continued, and jeers rang out when some poor devil from the Division of Letters, shamed when his name was called, received a prize in Latin composition or an honorable mention for Greek translation. But there came a moment when the taunts redoubled, when sarcasm assumed its most disconcerting forms. This was when Monsieur Frappeloup pronounced the following words:

"First prize for Latin verse: Dufrénoy (Michel Jérome) from Vannes (Morbihan). "Hilarity was universal, amid remarks of this sort:

"A prize for Latin verse!"

"He must have been the only competitor!"

"Look at that darling of the Muses!"

"A habitue of Helicon!"

"A pillar of Parnassus!" et cetera, et cetera.

Nonetheless, Michel Jérome Dufrénoy stepped forward and faced down his detractors with a certain aplomb; he was a blond youth with a delightful countenance and a charming manner, neither awkward nor insolent. His long hair gave him a slightly girlish appearance, and his forehead shone as he advanced to the dais and snatched rather than received his prize from the Director's hand. This prize consisted of a single volume: the latest Factory Manual.

Michel glanced scornfully at the book and, flinging it to the ground, calmly returned to his seat, still wearing his crown and without even having kissed His Excellency's official cheeks.

"Well done, " murmured Monsieur Richelot.

"Brave boy, " said Monsieur Huguenin.

Murmurs broke out on all sides. Michel received them with a disdainful smile and sat down amid the cat-calls of his schoolfellows.

This grand ceremony concluded without hindrance around seven in the evening; fifteen thousand prizes and twenty-seven thousand honorable mentions were distributed. The chief laureates of the Sciences dined that same evening at Baron de Vercampin's table, among members of the Administrative Council and the major stockholders.

The joy of these latter was explained by... figures! The dividend for the 1960 exercises had been set at 1, 169 francs, 33 centimes per share. The current interest already exceeded the issue price.

Chapter II:        A Panorama of the Streets of Paris

Michel Dufrénoy had followed the crowd, a mere drop of water in this stream transformed into a torrent by the removal of its obstructions. His excitement had subsided; the champion of Latin poetry became a timid young man amid this joyous throng; he felt alone, alien, and somehow isolated in the void. Where his fellow students hurried ahead, he made his way slowly, hesitantly, even more orphaned in this gathering of contented parents; he seemed to regret his labors, his school, his professor.

Without father or mother, he would now have to return to an unsympathetic household, certain of a grim reception for his Latin verse prize. "All right, " he resolved, "let's get on with it! I shall endure their nastiness along with all the rest! My uncle is a literal-minded man, my aunt a practical woman, and my cousin a boy out for the main chance—ideas like mine are not welcome at home, but so what? Onward!"

Yet he proceeded quite unhurriedly, not being one of those schoolboys who rush into vacation like a subject people into freedom. His uncle and guardian had not even thought enough of the occasion to attend the prize giving; he knew what his nephew was "incapable" of, as he said, and would have been mortified to see him crowned a nursling of the Muses.

The crowd, however, impelled the wretched laureate forward; he felt himself borne on by the current like a drowning man. "A good comparison, " he thought. "Here I am abandoned on the high seas; requiring the talents of a fish, all I have are the instincts of a bird; I want to live in space, in the ideal regions no longer visited—the land of dreams from which one never returns!"

Amid such reflections, jostled and buffeted, he reached the Grenelle station of the Metro. This line served the Left Bank of the river along the Boulevard Saint-Germain, which extended from the Gare d'Orléans to the buildings of the Academic Credit Union; here, curving toward the Seine, it crossed the river on the Pont d'Iéna, utilizing an upper level reserved for the railroad, and then joined the Right Bank line, which, through the Trocadéro tunnel, reached the Champs-Élysées and the axis of the Boulevards, which it followed to the Place de la Bastille, crossing the Pont d'Austerlitz to rejoin the Left Bank line.

This first ring of railroad tracks more or less encircled the ancient Paris of Louis XV, on the very site of the wall survived by this euphonious verse:

Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant.

A second line reached the old faubourgs of Paris, extending for some thirty-two kilometers neighborhoods formerly located outside the peripheral boulevards. A third line followed the old orbital roadway for a length of some fifty-six kilometers. Finally, a fourth system connected the line of fortifications, its extent more than a hundred kilometers.

It is evident that Paris had burst its precincts of 1843 and made incursions into the Bois de Boulogne, the Plains of Issy, Vanves, Billancourt, Montrouge, Ivry, Saint-Mandé, Bagnolet, Pantin, Saint-Denis, Clichy, and Saint-Ouen. The heights of Meudon, Sevres, and Saint-Cloud had blocked its development to the west. The delimitation of the present capital was marked by the forts of Mont Valérien, Saint- Denis, Aubervilliers, Romainville, Vincennes, Charenton, Vitry, Bicêtre, Montrouge, Vanves, and Issy; a city of one hundred and five kilometers in diameter, it had devoured the entire Department of the Seine.

Four concentric circles of railways thus formed the Metropolitan network; they were linked to one another by branch lines, which, on the Right Bank, extended the Boulevard de Magenta and the Boulevard Malesherbes and on the Left Bank, the Rue de Rennes and the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Victor. It was possible to circulate from one end of Paris to the other with the greatest speed.

These railways had existed since 1913; they had been built at State expense, following a system devised in the last century by the engineer Joanne[3]. At that time, many projects were submitted to the Government, which had them examined by a council of civil engineers, those of the Ponts et Chausées no longer existing since 1889, when the École Polytechnique had been suppressed; but this council had long remained divided on the question; some members wanted to establish a surface line on the main streets of Paris; others recommended underground networks following London's example; but the first of these projects would have required the construction of barriers protecting the train tracks, whence an obvious encumbrance of pedestrians, carriages, carts, et cetera; the second involved enormous difficulties of execution; moreover, the prospect of even temporary burial in an endless tunnel was anything but attractive to the riders. Every roadway formerly created under these deplorable conditions had had to be remade, among others the Bois de Boulogne line, which by both bridges and tunnels compelled riders to interrupt reading their newspapers twenty-seven times during a trajectory of some twenty-three minutes.

Joanne's system seemed to unite all the virtues of rapidity, facility, and comfort, and indeed for the last fifty years the Metropolitan railways had functioned to universal satisfaction.

This system consisted of two separate roadbeds on which the trains proceeded in opposite directions; hence there was no possibility of a collision. Each of these tracks was established along the axis of the boulevards, five meters from the housefronts, above the outer rim of the sidewalks; elegant columns of galvanized bronze supported them and were attached to one another by cast armatures; at intervals these columns were attached to riverside houses, by means of transverse arcades. Thus, this long viaduct, supporting the railway track, formed a covered gallery, under which strollers found shelter from the elements; the asphalt roadway was reserved for carriages; by means of an elegant bridge the viaduct traversed the main streets which crossed its path, and the railway, suspended at the height of the mezzanine floors, offered no obstacle to boulevard traffic.

Some riverside houses, transformed into waiting rooms, formed stations which communicated with the track by broad footbridges; underneath a double-ramp staircase gave access to the waiting room. Boulevard stations were located at the Trocadéro, the Madeleine, the Bonne Nouvelle department store, the Rue du Temple, and the Place de la Bastille.

This viaduct, supported on simple columns, would doubtless not have resisted the old means of traction, which required locomotives of enormous weight; but thanks to the application of new propulsors, the modern trains were quite light; they ran at intervals of ten minutes, each one bearing some thousand riders in its comfortably arranged cars.

The riverside houses suffered from neither steam nor smoke, quite simply because there was no locomotive: the trains ran by means of compressed air, according to the Williams System, recommended by the famous Belgian engineer Jobard[4], who flourished in the mid-nineteenth century.

A vector tube some twenty centimeters in diameter and two millimeters thick ran the entire length of the track between the two rails; it enclosed a soft-iron disc,

which slid inside it under the action of several atmospheres of compressed air provided by the Catacomb Company of Paris.