Electric Life by Albert Robida

Author:Albert Robida
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press

“Excursions into enemy territory, lance in hand,” said Philox Lorris. “The conquest of some territory—or to put it another way, the violent expulsion or oppression of the occupants, who arrived earlier in the same fashion...”

“Or to put it yet another way, the ravages of mercenaries—brutal ravages,” Monsieur Pigott went on, “the hideous violence of barbaric times! Well, one can’t deny progress! I dare to claim that in due course, that the historians who look into the origin of the noble family founded by me in my Duchy in the Dordogne, where I hope I shall have the pleasure of having you at my great hunts, will distinguish something else! No violence, no brutal mercenaries! They’ll be able to say: The ancestral Pigott, the founder, was entirely different from a vulgar Montmorency; he was a gentle rogue, a combatant of intelligence who was able to levy the tithe of intelligence on inferior creatures...”

“Two or three hundred thousand five-thousand-franc shares, wasn’t it, in your last affair?”

“Plus a few small extras, to compensate for serious expenses. I’ll go on! This is what the historians will say: He was able to levy the tithe of intelligence and came to our beautiful province bearing riches, to found an illustrious house, to plant the seigneurial tree whose branches extend so broadly today, sheltering our heads with their shade, and contribute greatly to the regeneration of principles of authority and sane ideas of social hierarchy too long weakened by our revolutions... There! That’s how a new aristocracy is founded!”

And Monsieur Pigott was right.

On the soon-to-be-swept-away ruins of the old world, a new aristocracy is being founded. What has become of the old one? Old and decadent families seem to be melting away and disappearing with greater rapidity with every passing day. We see their descendants impoverished, deterred from public affairs by suspicion of the masses, with no aptitude for practical sciences, unsuited to great industrial or commercial affairs, twiddling their thumbs in their dilapidated châteaux, which they cannot maintain or repair, or vegetating in wretched petty positions with no future prospects.

Their lands, their châteaux and their very names are being transferred to the new aristocracy, the lords of the new strata, the Croesuses of the Bourse, enriched by others’ savings, to the notabilities of great industry or productive politics. Alongside those items of illustrious debris, happy to obtain petty employments in ministerial departments or factories, where the active blood of the old riders rots in lamentable stagnation, we see such great industrialists, gigantic strong-boxes, planting the flag of Plutus on the ancient domains of the ex-nobility, gradually renconstituting the vast fiefs of old on more solid bases.

A few examples, in addition to the one furnished by the billionaire Pigott:

The celebrated Marius Capouriès, the founder of a hundred factories, the organizer of syndicates taking possession of all the sewage-works and distilleries of an immense region. With his profits, which he can scarcely count, Marius Capouriès has gradually built up a nucleus of vast estates comprising the extent of a département and has recently been awarded a marquisate.

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