SUPREME VISIONS
The exhibition of the following day was preceded by two important
pieces of news which appeared in the evening papers. A group of
financiers had offered Theodore Massignac the sum of ten million
francs in consideration of Noel Dorgeroux's secret and the right to
work the amphitheatre. Theodore Massignac was to give them his answer
next day.
But, at the last moment, a telegram from the south of France announced
that the maid-of-all-work who had nursed Massignac in his house at
Toulouse, a few weeks before, now declared that her master's illness
was feigned and that Massignac had left the house on several
occasions, each time carefully concealing his absence from all the
neighbours. Now one of these absences synchronized with the murder of
Noel Dorgeroux. The woman's accusation therefore obliged the
authorities to reopen an enquiry which had already elicited so much
presumptive evidence of Theodore Massignac's guilt.
The upshot of these two pieces of news was that my uncle Dorgeroux's
secret depended on chance, that it would be saved by an immediate
purchase or lost for ever by Massignac's arrest. This alternative
added still further to the anxious curiosity of the spectators, many
of whom correctly believed that they were witnessing the last of the
Meudon exhibitions. They discussed the articles in the papers and the
proofs or objections accumulated for or against the theory. They said
that Prevotelle, to whom Massignac was refusing admission to the
amphitheatre, was preparing a whole series of experiments with the
intention of proving the absolute accuracy of his theory, the simplest
of which experiments consisted in erecting a scaffolding outside the
Yard and setting up an intervening obstacle to intercept the rays that
passed from Venus to the screen.
I myself who, since the previous day, had thought of nothing but
Berangere, whom I had pursued in vain through the crowd amid which she
had succeeded in escaping me, I myself was smitten with the fever and
that day abandoned the attempt to discover upon the close-packed tiers
of seats the mysterious girl whom I had held to me all quivering,
happy to abandon herself for a few moments to a kiss on which she
bestowed all the fervour of her incomprehensible soul. I forgot her.
The screen alone counted, to my mind. The problem of my life was
swallowed up in the great riddle which those solemn minutes in the
history of mankind set before us.
They began, after the most sorrowful and heart-rending look that had
yet animated the miraculous Three Eyes, they began with that singular
phantasmagoria of creatures which Benjamin Prevotelle proposed that we
should regard as the inhabitants of Venus and which, for that matter,
it was impossible that we should not so regard. I will not try to
define them with greater precision nor to describe the setting in
which they moved. One's confusion in the presence of those grotesque
Shapes, those absurd movements and those startling landscapes was so
great that one had hardly time to receive very exact impressions or to
deduce the slightest theory from them. All that I can say is that we
were the observers, as on the first occasion, of a manifestation of
public order. There were numbers of spectators and a connected
sequence of actions tending towards a clearly-defined end, which
seemed to us to be of the same nature as the first execution.
Everything, in fact--the grouping of certain Shapes in the middle of
an empty space and around a motionless Shape, the actions performed,
the cutting up of that isolated Shape--suggested that there was an
execution in progress, the taking of a life. In any case, we were
perfectly well aware, through the corresponding instance, that its
real significance resided only in the second part of the film. Since
nearly all the pictures were twofold, impressing us by antithesis or
analogy, we must wait awhile to catch the general idea which directed
this projection.
This soon became apparent; and the mere narrative of what we saw
showed how right my uncle Dorgeroux's prophecy was when he said:
"Men will come here as pilgrims and will fall upon their knees and
weep like children!"
A winding road, rough with cobbles and cut into steps, climbs a steep,
arid, shadowless hill under a burning sun. We almost seem to see the
eddies rising, like a scorching breath, from the parched soil.
A mob of excited people is scaling the abrupt slope. On their backs
hang tattered robes; their aspect is that of the beggars or artisans
of an eastern populace.
The road disappears and appears again at a higher level, where we see
that this mob is preceding and following a company consisting of
soldiers clad like the Roman legionaires. There are sixty or eighty
of them, perhaps. They are marching slowly, in a ragged body, carrying
their spears over their shoulders, while some are swinging their
helmets in their hands. Now and again one stops to drink.
From time to time we become aware that these soldiers are serving as
escort to a central group, consisting of a few officers and of
civilians clad in long robes, like priests, and, a little apart from
them, four women, the lower half of whose faces is hidden by a long
veil. Then, suddenly at a turn in the road, where the group has become
slightly disorganized, we see a heavy cross outspread, jolting its way
upwards. A man is underneath, as it were crushed by the intolerable
burden which he is condemned to bear to the place of martyrdom. He
stumbles at each step, makes an effort, stands up again, falls again,
drags himself yet a little farther, crawling, clutching at the stones
on the road, and then moves no more. A blow from a staff, administered
by one of the soldiers, makes no difference. His strength is
exhausted.
At that moment, a man comes down the stony path. He is stopped and
ordered to carry the cross. He cannot and quickly makes his escape.
But, as the soldiers with their spears turn back towards the man lying
on the ground, behold, three of the women intervene and offer to
carry the burden. One of them takes the end, the two others take the
two arms and thus they climb the rugged hill, while the fourth woman
raises the condemned man and supports his hesitating steps.
At two further points we are able to follow the painful ascent of him
who is going to his death. And on each occasion his face is shown by
itself upon the screen. We do not recognize it. It is unlike the face
which we expected to see, according to the usual representations. But
how much more fully satisfied the profound conception which it evokes
in us by its actual presence!
It is _He_: we cannot for a moment doubt it. _He_ lives before us.
_He_ is suffering. _He_ is about to die before us. _He_ is about to
die. Each of us would fain avert the menace of that horrible death;
and each of us prays with all his might for some peaceful vision in
which we may see Him surrounded by His Disciples and His gentle
womenfolk. The soldiers, as they reach the place of torture, assume a
harsher aspect. The priests with ritual gestures curse the stones amid
which the tree is to be raised and retire, with hanging heads.
Here comes the cross, with the women bending under it. The condemned
man follows them. There are two of them now supporting Him. He stops.
Nothing can save Him now. When we see Him again, after a short
interruption of the picture, the cross is set up and the agony has
begun.
I do not believe that any assembly of men was ever thrilled by a more
violent and noble emotion than that which held us in its grip at this
hour, which, let it be clearly understood, was the very hour at which
the world's destiny was settled for centuries and centuries. We were
not guessing at it through legends and distorted narratives. We did
not have to reconstruct it after uncertain documents or to conceive it
according to our own feelings and imagination. It was there, that
unparalleled hour. It lived before us, in a setting devoid of
grandeur, a setting which seemed to us very lowly, very
poverty-stricken. The bulk of the sightseers had departed. A dozen
soldiers were dicing on a flat stone and drinking. Four women were
standing in the shadow of a man crucified whose feet they bathed with
their tears. At the summit of two other hillocks hard by, two figures
were writhing on their crosses. That was all.
But what a meaning we read into this gloomy spectacle! What a
frightful tragedy was enacted before our eyes! The beating of our
hearts wrung with love and distress was the very beating of that
Sacred Heart. Those weary eyes looked down upon the same things that
we beheld, the same dry soil, the same savage faces of the soldiers,
the same countenances of the grief-stricken women.
When a last vision showed us His rigid and emaciated body and His
sweet ravaged head in which the dilated eyes seemed to us abnormally
large, the whole crowd rose to its feet, men and women fell upon their
knees and, in a profound silence that quivered with prayer, all arms
were despairingly outstretched towards the dying God.
* * * * *
Such scenes cannot be understood by those who did not witness them.
You will no more find their living presentment in the pages in which I
describe them than I can find it in the newspapers of the time. The
latter pile up adjectives, exclamations and apostrophes which give no
idea of what the vivid reality was. On the other hand, all the
articles lay stress upon the essential truth which emerges from the
two films of that day and, very rightly, declare that the second
explains and completes the first. Yonder also, among our distant
brethren, a God was delivered to the horrors of martyrdom; and, by
connecting the two events, they intended to convey to us that, like
ourselves, they possessed a religious belief and ideal aspirations. In
the same way, they had shown us by the death of one of their rulers
and the death of one of our kings that they had known the same
political upheavals. In the same way, they had shown us by visions of
lovers that, like us, they yielded to the power of love. Therefore,
the same stages of civilizations, the same efforts of belief, the same
instincts, the same sentiments existed in both worlds.
How could messages so positive, so stimulating have failed to increase
our longing to know more about it all and to communicate more closely?
How could we do other than think of the questions which it was
possible to put and of the problems which would be elucidated,
problems of the future and the past, problems of civilization,
problems of destiny?
But the same uncertainty lingered in us, keener than the day before.
What would become of Noel Dorgeroux's secret? The position was this:
Massignac accepted the ten millions which he was offered, but on
condition that he was paid the money immediately after the performance
and that he received a safe-conduct for America. Now, although the
enquiries instituted at Toulouse confirmed the accusations brought
against him by the maid-of-all-work, it was stated that the compact
was on the point of being concluded, so greatly did the importance of
Noel Dorgeroux's secret outweigh all ordinary consideration of justice
and punishment. Finding itself confronted with a state of things which
could not be prolonged, the government was yielding, though
constraining Massignac to sell the secret under penalty of immediate
arrest and posting all around him men who were instructed to lay him
by the heels at the first sign of any trickery. When the iron curtain
fell, twelve policemen took the place of the usual attendants.
And then began an exhibition to which special circumstances imparted
so great a gravity and which was in itself so poignant and so
implacable.
As on the other occasions, we did not at first grasp the significance
which the scenes projected on the screen were intended to convey.
These scenes passed before our eyes as swiftly as the love-scenes
displayed two days before.
There was not the initial vision of the Three Eyes. We plunged
straight into reality. In the middle of a garden sat a woman, young
still and beautiful, dressed in the fashion of 1830. She was working
at a tapestry stretched on a frame and from time to time raised her
eyes to cast a fond look at a little girl playing by her side. The
mother and child smiled at each other. The child left her sand-pies
and came and kissed her mother.
For a few minutes there was merely this placid picture of human life.
Then, a dozen paces behind the mother, a tall, close-trimmed screen of
foliage is gently thrust aside and, with a series of imperceptible
movements, a man comes out of the shadow, a man, like the woman, young
and well-dressed.
His face is hard, his jaws are set. He has a knife in his hand.
He takes three or four steps forward. The woman does not hear him, the
little girl cannot see him. He comes still farther forward, with
infinite precautions, so that the gravel may not creak under his feet
nor any branch touch him.
He stands over the woman. His face displays a terrible cruelty and an
inflexible will. The woman's face is still smiling and happy.
Slowly his arm is raised above that smile, above that happiness. Then
it descends, with equal slowness; and suddenly, beneath the left
shoulder, it strikes a sharp blow at the heart.
There is not a sound; that is certain. At most, a sigh, like the one
sigh emitted, in the awful silence, by the crowd in the Yard.
The man has withdrawn his weapon. He listens for a moment, bends over
the lifeless body that has huddled into the chair, feels the hand and
then steals back with measured steps to the screen of foliage, which
closes behind him.
The child has not ceased playing. She continues to laugh and talk.
The picture fades away.
* * * * *
The next shows us two men walking along a deserted path, beside which
flows a narrow river. They are talking without animation; they might
be discussing the weather.
When they turn round and retrace their steps, we see that one of the
two men, the one who hitherto had been hidden behind his companion,
carries a revolver.
They both stop and continue to talk quietly. But the face of the armed
man becomes distorted and assumes the same criminal expression which
we beheld in the first murderer. And suddenly he makes a movement of
attack and fires; the other falls; and the first flings himself upon
him and snatches a pocket-book from him.
* * * * *
There were four more murders, none of which had as its perpetrator or
its victim any one who was known to us. They were so many sensational
incidents, very short, restricted to the essential factors; the
peaceful representation of a scene in daily life and the sudden
explosion of crime in all its bestial horror.
The sight was dreadful, especially because of the expression of
confidence and serenity maintained by the victim, while we, in the
audience, saw the phantom of death rise over him. The waiting for the
blow which we were unable to avert left us breathless and terrified.
* * * * *
And one last picture of a man appeared to us. A stifled exclamation
rose from the crowd. It was Noel Dorgeroux.