ALL GODS, ALL RELIGIONS.
Antony, walking slowly--"That was really Hell!
"Nebuchadnezzar did not dazzle me so much. The Queen of Sheba did not
bewitch me so thoroughly. The way in which he spoke about the gods
filled me with a longing to know them.
"I recollect having seen hundreds of them at a time, in the Island of
Elephantinum, in the reign of Dioclesian. The Emperor had given up to
the nomads a large territory, on condition that they should protect the
frontiers; and the treaty was concluded in the name of the invisible
Powers. For the gods of every people were ignorant about other people.
The Barbarians had brought forward theirs. They occupied the hillocks of
sand which line the river. One could see them holding their idols
between their arms, like great paralytic children, or else, sailing amid
cataracts on trunks of palm-trees, they pointed out from a distance the
amulets on their necks and the tattooings on their breasts; and that is
not more criminal than the religion of the Greeks, the Asiatics, and the
Romans.
"When I dwelt in the Temple of Heliopolis, I used often to contemplate
all the objects on the walls: vultures carrying sceptres, crocodiles
playing on lyres, men's faces joined to serpents' bodies, women with
cows' heads prostrated before the ithyphallic deities; and their
supernatural forms carried me away into other worlds. I wished to know
what those calm eyes were gazing at. In order that matter should have so
much power, it should contain a spirit. The souls of the gods are
attached to their images. Those who possess external beauty may
fascinate us; but the others, who are abject or terrible ... how to
believe in them? ..."
And he sees moving past, close to the ground, leaves, stones, shells,
branches of trees, vague representations of animals, then a species of
dropsical dwarfs. These are gods. He bursts out laughing.
Behind him, he hears another outburst of laughter; and Hilarion presents
himself, dressed like a hermit, much bigger than before--in fact,
colossal.
Antony is not surprised at seeing him again.
"What a brute one must be to adore a thing like that!"
_Hilarion_--"Oh! yes; very much of a brute!"
Then advance before them, one by one, idols of all nations and all ages,
in wood, in metal, in granite, in feathers, and in skins sewn together.
The oldest of them, anterior to the Deluge, are lost to view beneath the
seaweed which hangs from them like hair. Some, too long for their lower
portions, crack in their joints and break their loins while walking.
Others allow sand to flow out through holes in their bellies.
Antony and Hilarion are prodigiously amused. They hold their sides from
sheer laughter.
After this, idols pass with faces like sheep. They stagger on their
bandy legs, open wide their eyelids, and bleat out, like dumb animals:
"Ba! ba! ba!"
In proportion as they approach the human type, they irritate Antony the
more. He strikes them with his fist, kicks them, rushes madly upon them.
They begin to present a horrible aspect, with high tufts, eyes like
bulls, arms terminated with claws, and the jaws of a shark. And, before
these gods, men are slaughtered on altars of stone, while others are
pounded in vats, crushed under chariot-wheels, or nailed to trees. There
is one of them, all in red-hot iron, with the horns of a bull, who
devours children.
_Antony_--"Horror!"
_Hilarion_--"But the gods always demand sufferings. Your own, even, has
wished--"
_Antony_, weeping--"Say no more--hold your tongue!"
The enclosure of rocks changes into a valley. A herd of oxen pastures
there on the shorn grass. The shepherd who has charge of them perceives
a cloud; and in a sharp voice pierces the air with words of urgent
entreaty.
_Hilarion_--"As he wants rain, he tries, by his strains, to coerce the
King of Heaven to open the fruitful cloud."
_Antony_, laughing--"This is too silly a form of presumption!"
_Hilarion_--"Why, then, do you perform exorcisms?"
The valley becomes a sea of milk, motionless and illimitable.
In the midst of it floats a long cradle, formed by the coils of a
serpent, all whose heads, bending forward at the same time, overshadow
a god who lies there asleep. He is young, beardless, more beautiful than
a girl, and covered with diaphanous veils. The pearls of his tiara shine
softly, like moons; a chaplet of stars winds itself many times above his
breast, and, with one hand under his head and the other arm extended, he
reposes with a dreamy and intoxicated air. A woman squatted before his
feet awaits his awakening.
_Hilarion_--"This is the primordial duality of the Brahmans--the
absolute not expressing itself by any form."
Upon the navel of the god a stalk of lotus has grown; and in its calyx
appears another god with three faces.
_Antony_--"Hold! what an invention!"
_Hilarion_--"Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in the same way make only one
person!"
The three heads are turned aside, and three immense gods appear. The
first, who is of a rosy hue, bites the end of his toe. The second, who
is blue, tosses four arms about. The third, who is green, weaves a
necklace of human skulls. Immediately in front of them rise three
goddesses, one wrapped in a net, another offering a cup, and the third
brandishing a bow.
And these gods, these goddesses multiply, become tenfold. On their
shoulders rise arms, and at the ends of their arms are hands holding
banners, axes, bucklers, swords, parasols and drums. Fountains spring
from their heads, grass hangs from their nostrils.
Riding on birds, cradled on palanquins, throned on seats of gold,
standing in niches of ivory, they dream, travel, command, drink wine
and inhale flowers. Dancing-girls whirl around; giants pursue monsters;
at the entrances to the grottoes, solitaries meditate. Myriads of stars
and clouds of streamers mingle in an indistinguishable throng. Peacocks
drink from the streams of golden dust. The embroidery of the pavilions
blends with the spots of the leopards. Coloured rays cross one another
in the blue air, amid the flying of arrows and the swinging of censers.
And all this unfolds itself, like a lofty frieze, leaning with its base
on the rocks and mounting to the very sky.
_Antony_, dazzled--"What a number of them there are! What do they wish?"
_Hilarion_--"The one who is scratching his abdomen with his elephant's
trunk is the solar god, the inspirer of wisdom. That other, whose six
heads carry towers and fourteen handles of javelins, is the prince of
armies, the fire-devourer. The old man riding on a crocodile is going to
bathe the souls of the dead on the seashore. They will be tormented by
this black woman with rotten teeth, the governess of hell. The chariot
drawn by red mares, which a legless coachman is driving, is carrying
about in broad daylight the master of the sun. The moon-god accompanies
him in a litter drawn by three gazelles. On her knees, on the back of a
parrot, the goddess of beauty is presenting her round breast to Love,
her son. Here she is farther on; she leaps with joy in the prairies.
Look! look! With a radiant mitre on her head, she runs over the
cornfields, over the waves, mounts into the air, and exhibits herself
everywhere. Between these gods sit the genii of the winds, of the
planets, of the months, of the days, and a hundred thousand others! And
their aspects are multiplied, their transformations rapid. Here is one
who from a fish has become a tortoise, he assumes the head of a wild
boar, the stature of a dwarf!"
_Antony_--"For what purpose?"
_Hilarion_--"To establish equilibrium, to combat evil. Life is
exhausted, its forms are used up; and it is necessary to progress by
metamorphoses of them."
Suddenly a naked man appears, seated in the middle of the sand with his
legs crossed. A large circle vibrates, suspended behind him. The little
curls of his black hair, deepening into an azure tint, twist
symmetrically around a protuberance at the top of his head. His arms, of
great length, fall straight down his sides. His two hands, with open
palms, rest evenly on his thighs. The lower portions of his feet present
the figures of two suns; and he remains completely motionless in front
of Antony and Hilarion, with all the gods around him placed at intervals
upon the rocks, as if on the seats of a circus. His lips open, and in a
deep voice he says:
"I am the master of the great charity, the help of creatures, and I
expound the law to believers and to the profane alike. To save the world
I wished to be born amongst men; the gods wept when I went away. At
first, I sought a woman suitable for the purpose--of warlike race, the
spouse of a king, exceedingly virtuous and beautiful, with a deep navel,
a body firm as a diamond; and at the time of the full moon, without the
intervention of any male, I entered her womb. I came out through her
right side. Then the stars stopped in their motions."
Hilarion murmurs between his teeth:
"'And when they saw the stars stop, they conceived a great joy!'"
Antony looks more attentively at the Buddha, who resumes:
"From the bottom of the Himalaya, a religious centenarian set forth to
see me."
_Hilarion_--"'A man called Simeon, who was not to die before he had seen
the Christ!'"
_The Buddha_--"They brought me to the schools. I knew more than the
doctors."
_Hilarion_--" ... 'In the midst of the doctors; and all those who heard
him were ravished by his wisdom.'"
Antony makes a sign to Hilarion to keep silent.
_The Buddha_--"I went continually to meditate in the gardens. The
shadows of the trees used to move; but the shadow of the one that
sheltered me did not move. No one could equal me in the knowledge of the
Sacred Writings, the enumeration of atoms, the management of elephants,
waxworks, astronomy, poetry, boxing, all exercises and all arts. In
compliance with custom, I took a wife; and I passed the days in my royal
palace, arrayed in pearls, under a shower of perfumes, fanned by the
fly-flappers of thirty-three thousand women, and gazing at my people
from the tops of my terraces adorned with resounding bells. But the
sight of the world's miseries made me turn aside from pleasures. I fled.
I went a-begging on high-ways, covered with rags collected in the
sepulchres; and, as there was a very learned hermit, I offered myself as
his servant. I guarded his door; I washed his feet. All sensation, all
joy, all languor, were annihilated. Then, concentrating my thoughts on
a larger field of meditation, I came to know the essence of things, the
illusion of forms. I speedily abandoned the science of the Brakhmans.
They are eaten up with lusts beneath their austere exterior; they anoint
themselves with filth, and sleep upon thorns, believing that they arrive
at happiness through the path of death!"
_Hilarion_--"Pharisees, hypocrites, whited sepulchres, race of vipers!"
_The Buddha_--"I, too, have done astonishing things--eating for a day
only a single grain of rice--and at that time grains of rice were not
bigger than they are now--my hair fell off; my body became black; my
eyes, sunken in their sockets, seemed like stars seen at the bottom of a
well. For six years I never moved, remaining exposed to flies, to lions,
and to serpents; and I subjected myself to burning suns, heavy showers,
snow, lightning, hail, and tempest, without even shielding myself with
my hand. The travellers who passed, assuming that I was dead, flung
clods of earth at me from a distance.
"There only remained for me to be tempted by the Devil.
"I invoked him.
"His sons came--hideous, covered with scales, nauseous as charcoal,
howling, hissing, bellowing, flinging at each other armour and dead
men's bones. Some of them spirted out flames through their nostrils;
others spread around darkness with their wings; others carried chaplets
of fingers that had been cut off; others drank the venom of serpents out
of the hollows of their hands. They have the heads of pigs,
rhinoceroses, or toads--all kinds of figures calculated to inspire
respect or terror."
_Antony_, aside--"I endured that myself in former times."
_The Buddha_--"Then he sent me his daughters--beautiful, well-attired
with golden girdles, teeth white as the jasmine, and limbs round as an
elephant's trunk. Some of them stretched up their arms when they yawned
to display the dimples in their elbows; others blinked their eyes;
others began to laugh and others unfastened one another's garments.
Amongst them were blushing virgins, matrons full of pride, and queens
with great trains of baggage and attendants."
_Antony, aside_--"Ah! that also!"
_The Buddha_--"Having vanquished the demon. I passed twelve years in
nourishing myself exclusively on perfumes,--and, as I had acquired the
five virtues, the five faculties, the ten forces, the eighteen
substances and penetrated into the four spheres of the invisible world,
the Intelligence was mine, and I became the Buddha!"
All the gods bow down, those who have many heads lower them all at the
same time. He raises his hand on high in the air, and resumes:
"In view of the deliverance of beings, I have made hundreds of thousands
of sacrifices; I have given to the poor robes of silk, beds, chariots,
houses, heaps of gold and diamonds. I have given my hands to the
one-handed, my legs to the lame, my eyes to the blind; I have cut off my
head for the decapitated. At the time when I was king, I distributed the
provinces; at the time when I was Brakhman, I despised nobody. When I
was a solitary I spoke words of tenderness to the thief who tried to cut
my throat. When I was a tiger, I let myself die of hunger. And in this
final stage of existence, having preached the law, I have nothing more
to do. The great period is accomplished. The men, the animals, the gods,
the bamboos, the oceans, the mountains, the grains of sand of the
Ganges, with the myriads of myriads of stars, everything, must perish;
and, until the new births, a flame will dance on the ruins of a world's
overthrow."
Then a vertigo seizes the gods. They stagger, fall into convulsions, and
vomit forth their existences. Their crowns break to pieces; their
standards fly away. They get rid of their attributes and their sexes,
fling over their shoulders the cups from which they drink immortality,
strangle themselves with their serpents, and vanish in smoke; and, when
they have all disappeared:
_Hilarion_, slowly--"You have just seen the creed of many hundreds of
millions of men!"
Antony is on the earth, his face in his hands. Standing close to him,
and turning his back to the cross, Hilarion watches him.
A rather lengthened period elapses.
Then a singular being appears, with the head of a man and the body of a
fish. He advances straight through the air, tossing the sand with his
tail; and his patriarchal face and his little arms make Antony laugh.
_Oannes_, in a plaintive voice--"Treat me with respect! I am the
contemporary of the beginning of things.
"I have dwelt in the shapeless world, where slumbered hermaphrodite
animals, under the weight of an opaque atmosphere, in the depths of
gloomy waves--when the fingers, the fins, and the wings were confounded,
and eyes without heads floated like molluscs amongst human-faced bulls
and dog-footed serpents.
"Over the whole of those beings Omoroca, bent like a hoop, stretched her
woman's body. But Belus cut her clean in two halves, made the earth with
one, and the heavens with another; and the two worlds alike mutually
contemplate each other. I, the first consciousness of chaos, I have
arisen from the abyss to harden matter, to regulate forms; and I have
taught men fishing, the sowing of seed, the scripture, and the history
of the gods. Since then, I live in the ponds that remained after the
Deluge. But the desert grows larger around them; the wind flings sand
into them; the sun consumes them; and I expire on my bed of lemon while
gazing across the water at the stars. Thither am I returning."
He makes a plunge and disappears in the Nile.
_Hilarion_--"This is an ancient god of the Chaldeans!"
_Antony_, ironically--"Who, then, were the gods of Babylon?"
_Hilarion_--"You can see them!"
And they find themselves upon the platform of a quadrangular tower
rising above other towers, which, growing narrower in proportion as they
rise, form a monstrous pyramid. You may distinguish below a great, black
mass--the city, without doubt--stretching along the plain. The air is
cold; the sky is of a sombre blue; the multitudinous stars palpitate.
In the middle of the platform stands a column of white stone. Priests in
linen robes pass and return all round, so as to describe in their
evolutions a moving circle, and, with heads raised, they contemplate the
stars.
Hilarion points out several of them to Saint Antony:
"There are thirty chief priests. Fifteen gaze upon the region above the
earth, and fifteen on the region below it. At regular intervals one of
them rushes from the upper regions to the lower, whilst another abandons
the lower to mount towards the empyrean.
"Of the seven planets, two are benevolent, two malevolent, and three
ambiguous; everything in the world depends on these eternal fires.
According to their position and their movements, one may draw
prognostications, and you are now treading on the most sacred spot on
earth. There Pythagoras and Zoroaster may be met. Two thousand years
have these men been observing the sky, the better to comprehend the
gods."
_Antony_--"The stars are not gods!"
_Hilarion_--"Yes! say they; for, while things are continually passing
around us, the sky, like eternity, remains unchangeable!"
_Antony_--"Nevertheless, it has a master."
_Hilarion_, pointing at the column--"That is Belus, the first ray, the
sun, the male!--the other, which is fruitful, is under him!"
Antony observes a garden lighted up with lamps. He is in the midst of
the crowd in an avenue of cypress-trees. To right and left little paths
lead towards huts erected in a wood of pomegranate-trees, which protect
lattices of reeds. The men, for the most part, have pointed caps with
laced robes, like the plumage of peacocks. There are people from the
North clad in bearskins; nomads in brown woollen cloaks; pale Gangarides
with long ear-rings; and the classes, like the nationalities, appear to
be confused, for sailors and stone-cutters jostle against princes
wearing tiaras of carbuncles and carrying large walking-sticks with
carved heads. All hurry forward with dilated nostrils, filled with the
same desire.
From time to time they got out of the way, in order to allow a long,
covered chariot, drawn by oxen, to pass, or perhaps it is an ass jolting
on his back a woman closely veiled, who also disappears in the direction
of the huts.
Antony is frightened. He desires to turn back. However, an inexpressible
curiosity leads him on.
Beneath the cypress-trees women are squatted in rows upon deerskins,
each of them having for a diadem a plait of cords. Some of them,
magnificently attired, address the passers-by in loud tones. The more
timid keep their features hidden between their hands, whilst, from
behind, a matron--no doubt, their mother--encourages them. Others, with
heads enveloped in black shawls, and the rest of their bodies quite
nude, seem, at a distance, like statues of flesh. As soon as a man
flings money on their knees, they rise. And one can hear kisses amid the
foliage, and sometimes a great, bitter cry.
_Hilarion_--"Those are the virgins of Babylon who prostitute themselves
to the goddess."
_Antony_--"What goddess?"
_Hilarion_--"There she is!"
And he shows Antony, at the very end of the avenue, on the threshold of
an illuminated grotto, a block of stone representing a woman.
_Antony_--"Infamy! What an abomination to give a sex to God!"
_Hilarion_--"You conceive Him, surely, as a living person!"
Once more Antony finds himself in darkness.
He perceives in the air a luminous circle placed on horizontal wings.
This species of ring surrounds, like a girdle that is too loose, the
figure of a small man with a mitre on his head and a crown in his hand,
the lower part of whose body is shut out from view by the huge feathers
exhibited in his kilt.
This is Ormuz, the God of the Persians. He flutters while he exclaims:
"I am terrified! I catch a glimpse of his mouth. I have vanquished thee,
Ahriman! But thou art beginning again!
"At first, revolting against me, thou didst destroy the eldest of
creatures, Kaiomortz, the man-bull. Then, thou didst seduce the first
human pair, Meschia and Meschiana, and didst fill their hearts with
darkness, and press forward thy battalions towards Heaven.
"I had my own, the inhabitants of the stars, and I gazed down from my
throne on all the planets in their different spheres.
"Mithra, my son, dwelt in an inaccessible spot. There he received souls,
and sent them forth, and, each morning he arose to pour out his riches.
"The splendour of the firmament was reflected by the earth. The fire
shone on the mountains--image of the other fire with which I have
created all beings. To secure it from defilement, they did not burn the
dead, who were transported to Heaven on the beaks of birds.
"I have regulated pasturages, labours, the wood of sacrifice, the forms
of cups, the words that must be uttered in insomnia; and my priests
prayed continually in order that their worship should correspond to the
eternity of God. They purified themselves with water; they offered up
loaves on the altars; they confessed their sins in loud tones.
"Homa gave himself to men to drink in order to communicate his strength
to them.
"While the genii of Heaven were fighting the demons, the children of
Iran chased the serpents. The King, whom a countless train of courtiers
served on bended knees, was attired so as to resemble me in person, and
wore my head-dress. His gardens had the magnificence of a celestial
earth; and his tomb represented him slaying a monster--emblem of the
good which exterminates evil. For, one day, it came to pass--thanks to
the endless course of time--that I triumphed over Ahriman. But the
interval that separates us is disappearing; the night is rising! Help,
Amschaspands, Irzeds, Ferouers! Come to my assistance, Mithra! take thy
sword! Caosyac, who must come back to save the world, defend me! How is
this? ... No one!
"Ah! I am dying! Ahriman, thou art the master!"
Hilarion, behind Antony, restrains an exclamation of joy, and Ormuz
plunges into the darkness.
Then appears the great Diana of Ephesus, black, with enamelled eyes,
elbows at her sides, forearms turned out, and hands open.
Lions crouch upon her shoulders; fruits, flowers and stars cross one
another upon her chest; further down three rows of breasts exhibit
themselves, and from the belly to the feet she is caught in a close
sheath, from which sprout forth, in the centre of her body, bulls,
stags, griffins and bees. She is seen in the white gleaming caused by a
disc of silver, round as the full moon, placed behind her head.
"Where is my temple? Where are my amazons? How is it with me--me, the
incorruptible--that I find myself so impotent?"
Her flowers wither; her fruits, over-ripe, hang loose; the lions and the
bulls bow down their necks; the stags, exhausted, begin to pant; the
bees, with a faint buzzing, fall dying upon the ground. She presses her
breasts one after the other. They are empty! But, yielding to a
desperate pressure, her sheath bursts open. She clutches the end of it,
like the skirt of a dress, flings into it her animals and her
flower-wreaths, then goes back into the darkness; and in the distance
voices murmur, grumble, roar, cry, or bellow. The density of the night
is increased by the winds. A warm shower begins to fall in heavy drops.
_Antony_--"How pleasant is this odour of palm-trees, this rustling of
green leaves, this transparency of fountains! I would like to lie down
flat upon the ground, in order to feel it close to my heart, and my life
would be renewed in eternal youth!"
He hears the sound of castanets and cymbals, and, in the midst of a
rustic crowd, men clad in white tunics, with red bands, lead out an ass,
richly harnessed, his tail adorned with ribands and his hoofs painted. A
box, covered with a saddle-cloth of yellow linen, sways to and fro upon
his back, between two baskets, one of which receives the offerings
deposited there--eggs, grapes, pears, cheeses, poultry, and small
coins--while the second is full of roses, which the drivers of the ass
scatter before him as they move along. The latter wear pendants in their
ears, large cloaks, plaited tresses, and have their cheeks painted. Each
of them has an olive crown fastened around his forehead by a figured
medallion. They carry daggers in their girdles, and flourish whips with
ebony handles, each having three thongs mounted with ossicles. The last
in the procession fix in the ground erect, as a chandelier, a huge
pine-tree, whose summit is on fire, and the lowest branches of which
overshadow a little sheep.
The ass stops. The saddle-cloth is removed; and underneath appears a
second covering of black felt. Then one of the men in a white tunic
begins to dance, while playing upon castanets; while another, on his
knees before the box, beats a tambourine; and the oldest of the band
commences:
"Here is the Bona Dea, the divinity of the mountains, the great mother
of Syria! Draw hither, honest people! She procures joy, heals the sick,
bestows fortunes, and satisfies lovers. It is we who bring her out to
walk in the country in fine weather and bad weather. We often sleep in
the open air, and we have not a well-served table every day. The thieves
dwell in the woods. The beasts rush forth from their dens. Slippery
paths line the precipices. Look here! look here!"
They raise the coverlet and disclose a box incrusted with little
pebbles.
"Higher than the cedar-trees she hovers in the blue ether. More
circumambient than the winds, she surrounds the world. Her respiration
is exhaled through the nostrils of tigers; her voice growls beneath the
volcanoes; her anger is the storm; and the pallor of her face has made
the moon white. She ripens the harvests; she swells out the rinds; she
makes the beard grow. Give her something, for she hates the
avaricious!"
The box flies open; and beneath an awning of blue silk is seen a little
image of Cybele, glittering with spangles, crowned with towers, and
seated on a chariot of red stone, drawn by two lions with raised paws.
The crowd presses forward to see.
The archi-gallus continues:
"She loves the sounds of dulcimers, the stamping of feet, the howling of
wolves, the echoing mountains and the deep gorges, the flower of the
almond-tree, the pomegranate and the green figs, the whirling dance, the
high-sounding flute, the sweet sap, the salt tear,--blood! Help! help!
Mother of mountains!"
They flagellate themselves with their whips, and the strokes resound on
their breasts. The skins of the tambourines vibrate till they almost
burst. They seize their knives and inflict gashes on their arms:
"She is sad: let us be sad! He who is doomed to suffer must weep! In
that way your sins will be remitted. Blood washes out everything: shed
drops of it around, then, like flowers. She demands that of another--of
one who is pure!"
The archi-gallus raises his knife above the sheep,
_Antony_, seized with horror--"Don't slaughter the lamb!"
A purple flood gushes forth. The priests sprinkle the crowd with it; and
all--including Antony and Hilarion--ranged around the burning tree,
silently watch the last palpitations of the victim. From the midst of
the priests comes a woman, exactly like the image enclosed in the little
box. She stops on seeing a young man in a Phrygian cap.
His thighs are covered with tight-fitting breeches opened here and there
by lozenges which are fastened with coloured bows. He rests his elbows
against one of the branches of the tree, holding a flute in his hand, in
a languishing attitude.
_Cybele_, encircling his figure with her arms--
"To rejoin thee I have travelled through every region--and famine
ravaged the fields. Thou hast deceived me! No matter,--I love thee! Warm
my body! Let us unite!"
_Atys_--"The spring-time will return no more, O eternal Mother! Despite
my love, it is not possible to penetrate thy essence. I should like to
cover myself with a coloured robe like thine. I envy thy breasts,
swollen with milk, the length of thy tresses, thy mighty sides from
which spring living creatures. Would that I were like thee! Would that I
were woman! But no! that can never be! My virility fills me with
horror!"
With a sharp stone he mutilates himself; then he begins to run madly
around.
The priests imitate the god; the faithful, the priests. Men and women
exchange their garments and embrace one another; and this whirlwind of
blood-stained flesh hurries away, whilst the voices, ever continuing,
become more clamorous and shrill, like those one hears at funerals.
A great catafalque hung with purple carries on its summit a bed of
ebony, surrounded by torches and baskets of silver filigree, in which
are contained green lettuces, mallows, and fennel. Upon the seats, above
and below, are seated women, all attired in black, with girdles undone
and naked feet, and holding with a melancholy air huge bouquets of
flowers.
On the ground, at the corners of the platform, alabaster urns filled
with myrrh are sending up light wreaths of smoke. On the bed may be
seen the corpse of a man. Blood trickles from his thigh. His arm is
hanging down, and a dog, who is howling, licks his nails. The line of
torches placed too close to one another prevents his figure from being
completely visible. Antony is seized with anguish. He is afraid of
seeing the face of some one he knew.
The women cease their sobbing; and, after an interval of silence, all,
at the same time, burst into a psalm:
"Beautiful! beautiful! he is beautiful! Enough of sleep--raise his head!
Up! Inhale our bouquets! These are narcissi and anemones gathered in thy
gardens to please thee. Return to life! thou fillest us with fear!
"Speak! What dost thou require? Dost thou wish to drink wine? Dost thou
wish to sleep in our beds? Dost thou wish to eat the honey-cakes which
have the form of little birds?
"Let us press close to his hips! let us kiss his breast! Hold! hold!
feel thou our fingers covered with rings which are stealing over thy
body, and our lips which are seeking thy mouth, and our hair which is
sweeping thy legs, insensible god, deaf to our prayers!"
They burst into shrieks, tearing their faces with their nails, then
become silent; and only the howling of the dog is heard.
"Alas! alas! The dark blood rushes over his snowy flesh. See how his
knees writhe, how his sides give way! The flowers upon his face have
soaked the gore. He is dead! Let us weep! let us lament!"
They come all in a row to fling down between the torches their flowing
locks, resembling at a distance black or yellow serpents; and the
catafalque is softly lowered to the level of a cave--a gloomy sepulchre,
which is yawning in the background.
Then a woman bends over the corpse. Her hair, which never has been cut,
covers her from head to foot. She sheds so many tears that her grief
does not seem to be like that of others, but superhuman, infinite.
Antony thinks of the mother of Jesus.
She says:
"Thou didst escape from the East, and thou didst press me in thy arms
all quivering with dew, O sun! Doves fluttered above the azure of thy
mantle, our kisses caused breezes amid the foliage, and I abandoned
myself to thy love, delighting in the exquisite sensation of my own
weakness.
"Alas! alas! Why art thou about to rush away over the mountains? At the
autumnal equinox a wild boar wounded thee! Thou art dead, and the
fountains weep and the trees droop, and the winter wind is whistling
through the leafless branches.
"My eyes are about to close, seeing that darkness is covering thee. By
this time thou art dwelling on the other side of the world, near my more
powerful rival.
"O Persephone, all that is beautiful goes down to thee and returns no
more!"
While she has been speaking, her companions have taken the dead body to
lower it into the sepulchre. It remains in their hands. It was only a
corpse of wax!
Antony experiences a kind of relief. The whole scene vanishes, and the
cell, the rocks, and the cross reappear! And now he distinguishes on the
other side of the Nile a woman standing in the middle of the desert.
She holds with her hand the end of a long black veil, which conceals her
figure; while she carries on her left arm a little child, which she is
suckling. At her side a huge ape is squatted on the sand. She lifts her
head towards the sky, and, in spite of the distance, her voice can be
heard.
_Isis_--"O Neith, beginning of things! Ammon, lord of eternity! Ptha,
demiurgus! Thoth, his intelligence! Gods of Amenthi! Special Triads of
the Nomes! Sparrow-hawks in the azure! Sphinxes on the outsides of
temples! Ibises standing between the horns of oxen! Planets!
Constellations! River-banks! Murmurs of wind! Reflections of light! Tell
me where to find Osiris!
"I have sought for him through all the water-courses and all the lakes,
and, farther still, in the Ph[oe]nician Byblos. Anubis, with ears erect,
jumped round me, barking, and with his nose scenting out the clumps of
tamarind. Thanks, good Cynocephalus, thanks!"
She gives the ape two or three friendly little slaps on the head.
"The hideous red-haired Typhon killed him and tore him to pieces. We
have found all his members. But I have not got that which made me
fruitful!"
She utters bitter lamentations.
_Antony_ is seized with rage. He casts pebbles at her insultingly:
"Impure one! begone, begone!"
_Hilarion_--"Respect her! This is the religion of your ancestors! You
have worn her amulets in your cradle!"
_Isis_--"In former times, when the summer returned, the inundation drove
to the desert the impure beasts. The dykes flew open; the boats dashed
against one another; the panting earth drank the stream till it was
glutted. O god! with horns of bull, thou didst stretch thyself upon my
breast, and the lowing of the eternal cow was heard!
"The new-sown crops, the harvests, the thrashing of corn, and the
vintages succeeded each other regularly in unison with the changes of
the seasons. In the nights, ever clear, the great stars shed forth their
beams. The days were steeped in an unchanging splendour. The sun and the
moon were seen like a royal pair on either side of the horizon.
"We were enthroned in a world more sublime--twin monarchs, spouses from
the bosom of eternity; he holding a sceptre with the head of a
conchoupha, and I a sceptre with a lotus-flower, we stood with hands
joined;--and the crash of empires did not change our attitude.
"Egypt lay stretched beneath us, monumental and solemn, long, like the
corridor of a temple, with obelisks at the right, pyramids at the left,
its labyrinth in the middle; and everywhere avenues of monsters, forests
of columns, massive archways flanking gates which have for their summit
the earth's sphere between two wings.
"The animals of her zodiac found their counterparts in her plains, and
with their forms and colours filled her mysterious writings. Divided
into twelve regions, as the year is into twelve months--each month, each
day, having its god--she reproduced the immutable order of the heavens;
and man, though he died, did not lose his lineaments, but, saturated
with perfumes and becoming imperishable, he went to sleep for three
thousand years in a silent Egypt.
"The latter, greater than the other, spread out beneath the earth.
Thither one descended by means of staircases leading to halls where were
reproduced the joys of the good, the tortures of the wicked, everything
that takes place in the third invisible world. Ranged along the walls,
the dead, in painted coffins, awaited each their turn; and the soul,
free from migrations, continued its sleep till it awakened in another
life.
"Meanwhile, Osiris sometimes came back to see me. His shade made me the
mother of Harpocrates."
She gazes on the child:
"It is he! Those are his eyes; those are his tresses, curling like a
ram's horns. Thou shalt begin his works over again. We shall bloom
afresh, like the lotus. I am always the great Isis! Nobody has ever yet
lifted my veil! My offspring is the sun!
"Sun of spring, let the clouds obscure thy face! The breath of Typhon
devours the pyramids. Just now I have seen the Sphinx fly away. He
galloped off like a jackal.
"I am seeking for my priests--my priests in their linen robes, with
great harps, carrying along a mystic skiff ornamented with paterae of
silver. No more feasts on the lakes! no more illuminations in my Delta!
no more cups of milk at Philae! For a long time Apis has not reappeared.
"Egypt! Egypt! Thy great immovable gods have their shoulders whitened by
the dung of birds, and the wind, as it passes along the desert, carries
with it the ashes of the dead!--Anubis, protector of shadows, do not
leave me!"
The Cynocephalus vanishes.
She gives her child a shaking.
"But what aileth thee? ... thy hands are cold, thy head fallen back!"
Harpocrates has just died. Then she utters a cry so bitter, mournful,
and heartrending, that Antony replies to it by another cry, while he
opens his arms to support her.
She is no longer there. He hangs his head, overwhelmed with shame.
All that he has just seen becomes confused in his mind. It is like the
stunning effect of a voyage, the uncomfortable sensation of drunkenness.
Fain would he hate; and yet a vague pity softens his heart. He begins to
weep abundantly.
_Hilarion_--"What is it now that makes you sad?"
_Antony_, after questioning himself for a long time--"I am thinking of
all the souls lost through these false gods!"
_Hilarion_--"Do you not find that they have--in some
respects--resemblances to the true?"
_Antony_--"This is a trick of the Devil the better to seduce the
faithful. He attacks the strong through the spirit, and the others
through the flesh."
_Hilarion_--"But lust, in its furies, possesses the disinterestedness of
penitence. The frantic love of the body accelerates its destruction--and
by its weakness proclaims the extent of the impossible."
_Antony_--"How is it that this affects me? My heart revolts with disgust
against those brutish gods, always occupied with carnage and incest."
_Hilarion_--"Recall to yourself in the Scriptures all the things that
scandalise you because you cannot understand them. In the same way,
these gods, under the outward form of criminals, may contain the truth.
There are some of them left to see. Turn aside!"
_Antony_--"No! no! it is a peril!"
_Hilarion_--"A moment ago you wished to make their acquaintance. Do
falsehoods make your faith totter? What do you fear?"
The rocks in front of Antony have become a mountain.
A range of clouds intersects it half-way from the top; and overhead
appears another mountain, enormous, quite green, which hollows out the
valley unevenly, having on its summit, in a wood of laurels, a palace of
bronze, with tiles of gold and ivory capitals.
In the midst of the peristyle, upon a throne, Jupiter, colossal, and
with a naked torso, holds victory in one hand, and the thunderbolt in
the other; and his eagle, between his legs, erects its head.
Juno, close to him, rolls her great eyes, surmounted by a diadem, from
which escapes, like a vapour, a veil floating in the wind.
Behind, Minerva, standing on a pedestal, leans upon her spear. The
Gorgon's skin covers her breast, and a linen peplum descends in regular
folds even to her toe-nails. Her grey eyes, which shine beneath her
vizor, gaze intently into the distance.
At the right of the palace the aged Neptune is riding on a dolphin
beating with its fins a vast expanse of azure, which is the sky or the
sea, for the perspective of the ocean prolongs the blue ether; the two
elements become mingled in one.
On the other side, Pluto, fierce, in a mantle black as night, with a
tiara of diamonds and a sceptre of ebony, is in the midst of an isle
enclosed by the windings of the Styx;--and this ghostly stream rushes
into the darkness, which forms under the cliff a great black gap, a
shapeless abyss.
Mars, clad in bronze, brandishes, with an air of fury, his huge sword
and shield.
Hercules, standing lower, gazes up at him, leaning on his club.
Apollo, with radiant face, is driving, with his right arm extended, four
white horses at a gallop; and Ceres, in a chariot drawn by oxen, is
advancing towards him with a sickle in her hand.
Bacchus goes before her on a very low car slowly drawn along by lynxes.
Erect, beardless, with vine-branches over his forehead, he passes,
holding a goblet from which wine is flowing. Silenus, at his side, is
dangling upon an ass. Pan, with pointed ears, is blowing his pipe; the
Mimallones beat drums; Maenads scatter flowers; the Bacchantes throw back
their heads with hair dishevelled.
Diana, with her tunic tucked up, sets out from the wood with her nymphs.
At the bottom of a cavern, Vulcan is hammering the iron between the
Cabiri; here and there, the old river-gods, resting upon green stones,
water their urns; and the Muses, standing up, are singing in the dales.
The Hours, of equal height, hold each other by the hand; and Mercury is
placed in a slanting posture, upon a rainbow, with his magic wand, his
winged sandals and his broad-brimmed hat.
But at the top of the staircase of the gods, amid clouds soft as
feathers, whose folds as they wind around let fall roses, Venus
Anadyomene is gazing at her image in a mirror; her pupils cast
languishing glances underneath her rather heavy eyelashes. She has long,
fair tresses, which spread out over her shoulders, her dainty breasts,
her slender figure, her hips widening like the curves of a lyre, her
two rounded thighs, the dimples around her knees, and her delicate
feet. Not far from her mouth a butterfly is fluttering. The splendour of
her body sheds around her a halo of brilliant mother-of-pearl; and all
the rest of Olympus is bathed in a rosy dawn, which, by insensible
degrees, reaches the heights of the azure sky.
_Antony_--"Ah! my bosom dilates. A joy, which I cannot analyse, descends
into the depths of my soul. How beautiful it is! how beautiful it is!"
_Hilarion_--"They stooped down from the height of the clouds to direct
the swords. You might meet them on the roadsides. You kept them in your
home; and this familiarity made life divine.
"Her only aim was to be free and beautiful. Her ample robes rendered her
movements more graceful. The orator's voice, exercised beside the sea,
struck the marble porticoes in unison with the sonorous waves. The
stripling, rubbed with oil, wrestled, quite naked, in the full light of
day. The most religious action was to expose pure forms.
"Those men, too, respected spouses, the aged and suppliants. Behind the
Temple of Hercules, an altar was raised to Pity.
"They used to immolate victims with flowers around their fingers. Memory
was not even troubled by the decay of the dead, for there remained of
them only a handful of ashes. The soul, mingled with the boundless
ether, ascended to the gods!"
Bending towards Antony's ear:
"And they live for ever! The Emperor Constantine adores Apollo. You will
find the Trinity in the mysteries of Samothrace, baptism in the case of
Isis, the redemption in that of Mithra, the martyrdom of a god in the
feasts of Bacchus. Proserpine is the Virgin; Aristaeus, Jesus!"
Antony keeps his eyes cast down; then all at once he repeats the creed
of Jerusalem--as he recollects it--emitting, after each phrase, a long
sigh:
"'I believe in one only God, the Father;--and in one only Lord, Jesus
Christ, first-born son of God, who became incarnate and was made man;
who was crucified and buried; who ascended into Heaven; who will come to
judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom will have no end;--and in
one only Holy Ghost;--and in one only baptism of repentance;--and in one
holy Catholic Church;--and in the resurrection of the flesh;--and in the
life everlasting!'"
Immediately the cross becomes larger, and, piercing the clouds, it casts
a shadow over the heaven of the gods.
They all grow dim. Olympus vanishes.
Antony distinguishes near its base, half lost in the caverns, or
supporting the stones on their shoulders, huge bodies chained. These are
the Titans, the Giants, the Hecatonchires, and the Cyclops.
A voice rises, indistinct and formidable,--like the murmur of the waves,
like the sound heard in woods during a storm, like the roaring of the
wind down a precipice:
"We knew it, we of all others! The gods were doomed to die. Uranus was
mutilated by Saturn, and Saturn by Jupiter. He will be himself
annihilated. Each in its turn. It is destiny!"
And, by degrees, they plunge into the mountain, and disappear.
Meanwhile, the roof of the palace of gold flies away.
Jupiter descends from his throne. The thunder at his feet smokes like a
brand that is almost extinguished; and the eagle, stretching its neck,
gathers with its beak its falling plumes.
"So, then, I am no longer the master of things, all-good, all-powerful,
god of the phratriae and of the Greek peoples, ancestor of all the kings,
the Agamemnon of Heaven!
"Eagle of the apotheoses, what breath of Erebus has driven thee to me?
or, flying from the Campus Martius, dost thou bring to me the soul of
the last of the Emperors?
"I no longer desire those of men! Let the earth guard them, and let them
be moved on a level with its baseness. They now have hearts of slaves;
they forget injuries, ancestors, oaths; and everywhere the folly of
mobs, the mediocrity of the individual, and the hideousness of races
reign supreme!"
His respiration makes his sides swell even to bursting, and he writhes
with his hands. Hebe in tears presents a cup to him. He seizes it:
"No! no! As long as there will be, no matter where, a head enclosing
thought which hates disorder and realises the idea of Law, the spirit of
Jupiter will live!"
But the cup is empty. He turns it around slowly on his finger-nail.
"Not a drop! When ambrosia fails, there is an end of the Immortals!"
It slips out of his hand, and he leans against a pillar, feeling that he
is dying.
_Juno_--"There was no need of so many loves! Eagle, bull, swan, golden
shower, cloud and flame, thou hast assumed every form, scattered thy
light in every element, hidden thy head on every couch! This time the
divorce is irrevocable--and our sway, our very existence, is dissolved!"
She rushes away into the air!
Minerva no longer has her spear; and the ravens, which nestled in the
sculptures of the frieze, whirl round her, and bite at her helmet.
"Let me see whether my vessels, cleaving the shining sea, have returned
into my three ports, wherefore the fields are deserted, and what the
daughters of Athens are now doing.
"In the month of Hecatombaeon, all my people came to me led by their
magistrates and priests. Then, in white robes, with chitons of gold, the
long files of virgins advanced, holding cups, baskets, and parasols;
then, the three hundred oxen for the sacrifice, old men shaking green
boughs, soldiers clashing their armour against each other, youths
singing hymns, players on the flute and on the lyre, rhapsodists and
dancing-girls--and finally, on the mast of a trireme, supported by coils
of rope, my great veil embroidered by virgins, who, for the space of a
year, had been nourished in a particular fashion; and, when it had been
shown in every street, in every square, and before every temple, in the
midst of a procession continually chanting, it ascended to the
Acropolis, brushed passed the Propylaeum, and entered the Parthenon.
"But a difficulty faces me--me, the ingenious one! What! what! not a
single idea! Here am I more terrified than a woman."
She perceives behind her a ruin, utters a cry, and, struck on the
forehead, falls backward to the ground.
Hercules has cast off his lion's skin, and, resting on his feet, bending
his back, and biting his lips, he makes desperate efforts to sustain
Olympus, which is toppling down.
"I have vanquished the Cercopes, the Amazons, and the Centaurs. I have
slain many kings, I have broken the horn of Achelous, a great river. I
have cut through mountains; I have brought oceans together. I have
liberated enslaved nations; I have peopled uninhabited countries. I have
travelled over Gaul. I have traversed the desert where one feels thirst.
I have defended the gods, and I have freed myself from Omphale. But
Olympus is too heavy. My arms are growing feeble. I am dying!"
He is crushed beneath the ruins.
_Pluto_--"It is thine own fault, Amphitrionades! Why didst thou descend
into my realms? The vulture who devours the entrails of Tityus has
raised its head; Tantalus has had his lips moistened; and Ixion's wheel
is stopped.
"Meanwhile, the Keres stretch forth their nails to detain the souls; the
Furies in despair twist the serpents in their locks; and Cerberus,
fastened by thee with a chain, has a rattling in the throat, while he
slavers from his three mouths.
"Thou didst leave the gate ajar. Others have come. The light of human
day has penetrated Tartarus!"
He sinks into the darkness.
_Neptune_--"My trident no longer raises tempests. The monsters who
caused terror have rotted at the bottom of the sea.
"Amphitrite, whose white feet rushed over the foam; the green nereids,
who could be seen on the horizon; the scaly sirens, who used to stop the
ships to tell stories; and the old tritons, who used to blow into
shells, all are dead! The gaiety of the sea has vanished!
"I will not survive it! Let the vast ocean cover me."
He disappears into the azure.
_Diana_, attired in black, among her dogs, who have become wolves--
"The freedom of great woods intoxicated me with its odour of deer and
exhalations of swamps. The women, over whose pregnancy I watched, bring
dead children into the world. The moon trembles under the incantations
of sorcerers. I am filled with violent and boundless desires. I long to
drink poisons, to lose myself in vapours or in dreams! ..."
And a passing cloud bears her away.
_Mars_, bare-headed and blood-stained--
"At first, I fought single-handed, provoking by insults an entire army,
indifferent to countries, and for the pleasure of carnage. Then, I had
companions. They marched to the sound of flutes, in good order, with
even step, breathing upon their bucklers, with lofty plume and slanting
spear. We flung ourselves into the battle with loud cries like those of
eagles. War was as joyous as a feast. Three hundred men withstood all
Asia.
"But they returned, those barbarians! and in tens of thousands, nay, in
millions! Since numbers, war-engines, and strategy are more powerful, it
is better to make an end of it, like a brave man!"
He kills himself.
_Vulcan_, wiping the sweat from his limbs with a sponge--
"The world is getting cold. It is necessary to heat the springs, the
volcanoes, and the rivers, which run from metals under the
earth!--Strike harder! with vigorous arm! with all your strength!"
The Cabiri hurt themselves with their hammers, blind themselves with the
sparks, and, groping their way along, are lost in the shadow.
_Ceres_, standing in her chariot which is drawn by wheels having wings
in their naves--"Stop! Stop!
"They had good reason to exclude the strangers, the atheists, the
epicureans, and the Christians! The mystery of the basket is unveiled,
the sanctuary profaned--all is lost!"
She descends with a rapid fall--bursting into exclamation of despair,
and dragging back the horses.
"Ah! falsehood! Daira is not given up to me. The brazen bell calls me to
the dead. It is another kind of Tartarus. There is no returning from it.
Horror!"
The abyss swallows her up.
_Bacchus_, laughing frantically:
"What does it matter! The wife of Archontes is my spouse! Even the law
goes down before drunkenness. For me the new song and the multiplied
forms!
"The fire which consumed my mother runs in my veins. Let it burn the
stronger, even though I perish!
"Male and female, good for both, I deliver myself to ye, Bacchantes! I
deliver myself to ye, Bacchantes! and the vine will twist around the
trunks of trees! Howl! dance! writhe! Unbind the tiger and the slave!
bite the flesh with ferocious teeth!"
And Pan, Silenus, the Satyrs, the Bacchantes, the Mimallones, and the
Maenades, with their serpents, their torches, and their black masks,
scatter flowers, then shake their dulcimers, strike their thyrsi, pelt
each other with shells, crunch grapes, strangle a he-goat, and rend
Bacchus.
_Apollo_, lashing his coursers, whose glistening hairs fly off--
"I have left behind me Delos the stony, so empty that everything there
now seems dead; and I am striving to reach the Delphian oracle before
its inspiring vapour should be completely lost. The mules browse on its
laurel. The pythoness, gone astray, is found there no longer.
"By a stronger concentration, I will have sublime poems, eternal
monuments; and all matter will be penetrated with the vibrations of my
cithara."
He fingers its chords. They break and snap against his face. He flings
down the instrument, and driving his four-horse chariot furiously:
"No! enough of forms! Farther still--to the very summit--to the world of
pure thought!"
But the horses, falling back, begin to prance so that the chariot is
smashed; and, entangled in the fragments of the pole and the knottings
of the horses, he falls head-foremost into the abyss.
The sky is darkened. Venus, blue as a violet from the cold, shivers.
"I covered with my girdle the entire horizon of Hellas. Its fields shone
with the roses of my cheeks; its shores were cut according to the form
of my lips; and its mountains, whiter than my doves, palpitated under
the hands of the sculptors. My spirit showed itself in the order of
festivities, the arrangements of head-dresses, the dialogues of
philosophers, and the constitution of republics. But I have loved men
too much. It is Love that has dishonoured me!"
She falls back in tears.
"The world is abominable. My bosom feels the lack of air.
"O Mercury, inventor of the lyre, and conductor of souls, bear me away!"
She places a finger upon her mouth, and, describing an immense parabola,
topples over into the abyss.
And now nothing can be seen. The darkness is complete.
In the meantime two red arrows seem to escape from the pupils of
Hilarion.
Antony at length notices his high stature:
"Many times already, while you were speaking, you appeared to me to be
growing tall; and it was not an illusion. How is this? Explain it to me.
Your appearance appals me!"
Steps draw nigh.
"What is this now?"
Hilarion stretches forth his arms:
"Look!"
Then, under a pale ray of the moon, Antony distinguishes an interminable
caravan which defiles over the crest of the rocks; and each passenger,
one after another, falls from the cliff into the gulf.
First, there are the three great gods of Samothrace--Axieros, Axiokeros,
and Axiokersa--joined in a cluster, with purple masks, and their hands
raised.
AEsculapius advances with a melancholy air, without even seeing Samos and
Telesphorus, who question him with anguish. Sosipolis, the Elean, with
the form of a python, rolls out his rings towards the abyss.
Doesp[oe]na, through vertigo, flings herself in there of her own accord.
Britomartis, shrieking with fear, clasps the folds of her fillet. The
Centaurs arrive with a great galloping, and dash, pell-mell, into the
black hole.
Limping behind them come the sad group of nymphs. Those of the meadows
are covered with dust; those of the woods groan and bleed, wounded by
the woodcutters' axes.
The Gelludae, the Stryges, the Empusae, all the infernal goddesses
intermingling their hooks, their torches, and their snakes, form a
pyramid; and at the summit, upon a vulture's skin, Eurynomus, bluish
like flesh-flies, devours his own arms.
Then in a whirlwind disappears at the same time, Orthia the sanguinary,
Hymnia of Orchomena, the Saphria of the Patraeans, Aphia of AEgina, Bendis
of Thrace, and Stymphalia with the leg of a bird. Triopas, in place of
three eyeballs, has nothing more than three orbits. Erichthonius, with
spindle-shanks, crawls like a cripple on his wrists.
_Hilarion_--"What happiness, is it not, to see all of them in a state of
abjectness and agony? Mount with me on this stone, and you will be like
Xerxes reviewing his army.
"Yonder, at a great distance, in the midst of fogs, do you perceive that
giant with yellow beard who lets fall a sword red with blood? He is the
Scythian Zalmoxis between two planets--Artimpasa, Venus; and Orsiloche,
the Moon.
"Farther off, emerging out of the pale clouds, are the gods who are
adored by the Cimmerians, beyond even Thule!
"Their great halls were warm, and by the light of the naked swords that
covered the vault they drank hydromel in horns of ivory. They ate the
liver of the whale in copper plates forged by the demons, or else they
listened to the captive sorcerers sweeping their hands across the harps
of stone. They are weary! they are cold! The snow wears down their
bearskins, and their feet are exposed through the rents in their
sandals.
"They mourn for the meadows where, upon hillocks of grass, they used to
recover breath in the battle, the long ships whose prows cut through the
mountains of ice, and the skates they used in order to follow the orbit
of the poles while carrying on the extremities of their arms the
firmament, which turned around with them."
A shower of hoar-frost pours down upon them. Antony lowers his glance to
the opposite side, and he perceives--outlining themselves in black upon
a red background--strange personages with chin-pieces and gauntlets, who
throw balls at one another, leap one on top of the other, make grimaces,
and dance frantically.
_Hilarion_--"These are the gods of Etruria, the innumerable AEsars. Here
is Tages, the inventor of auguries. He attempts with one hand to
increase the divisions of the heavens, while with the other he leans
upon the earth. Let him come back to it!
"Nortia is contemplating the wall into which she drove nails to mark the
number of the years. Its surface is covered and its last period
accomplished. Like two travellers driven about by a tempest, Kastur and
Polutuk take shelter under the same mantle."
_Antony_, closes his eyes--"Enough! Enough!"
But now through the air with a great noise of wings pass all the
Victories of the Capitol, hiding their foreheads in their hands, and
losing the trophies suspended from their arms.
Janus, master of the twilight, flies away upon a black ram, and of his
two faces one is already putrefied, while the other is benumbed with
fatigue.
Summanus--god of the gloomy sky, who no longer has a head--presses
against his heart an old cake in the form of a wheel.
Vesta, under a ruined cupola, tries to rekindle her extinguished lamp.
Bellona gashes her cheeks without causing the blood, which used to
purify her devotees, to flow out.
_Antony_--"Pardon! They weary me!"
_Hilarion_--"Formerly they used to be entertaining!"
And he points out to Antony, in a grove of beech-trees a woman perfectly
naked--with four paws like a beast--bestridden by a black man holding in
each hand a torch.
"This is the goddess Aricia with the demon Virbius. Her priest, the
monarch of the woods, happened to be an assassin; and the fugitive
slaves, the despoilers of corpses, the brigands of the Salarian road,
the cripples of the Sublician bridge, all the vermin of the garrets of
the Suburra, had not dearer devotion!
"The patrician ladies of Mark Antony's time preferred Libitina."
And he shows him under the cypresses and rose-trees another woman
clothed in gauze. She smiles, though she is surrounded by pickaxes,
litters, black hangings, and all the utensils of funerals. Her diamonds
glitter from afar among cobwebs. The Larvae, like skeletons, display
their bones amid the branches, and the Lemures, who are phantoms, spread
out their bats' wings.
On the side of a field the god Terma is bent down, torn asunder, and
covered with filth.
In the midst of a ridge the huge corpse of Vertumnus is being devoured
by red dogs. The rustic gods depart weeping, Sartor, Sarrator,
Vervactor, Eollina, Vallona, and Hostilenus--all covered with little
hooded cloaks, and each bearing a mattock, a fork, a hurdle, and a
boar-spear.
_Hilarion_--"It was their spirits that made the villa prosper with its
dove-cotes, its park for dormice, its poultry-yards protected by snares,
and its hot stables embalmed with cedar.
"They protected all the wretched people who dragged the fetters with
their legs over the pebbles of the Sabina, those who called the hogs
with the sound of the trumpet, those who gathered the grapes on the tops
of the elm-trees, those who drove through the by-roads the asses laden
with dung. The husbandman, while he panted over the handle of his
plough, prayed to them to strengthen his arms; and the cow-herds, in the
shadow of the lime-trees, beside gourds of milk, chanted their eulogies
by turns upon flutes of reeds."
Antony sighs.
And in the middle of a chamber, upon a platform, a bed of ivory is
revealed, surrounded by persons lifting up pine-torches.
"Those are the gods of marriage. They are awaiting the bride.
"Domiduca has to lead her in, Virgo to undo her girdle, Subigo to
stretch her upon the bed, and Praema to keep back her arms, whispering
sweet words in her ear.
"But she will not come! and they dismiss the others--Nona and Decima,
the nurses; the three Nixii, who are to deliver her; the two
wet-nurses, Educa and Potina; and Carna, the cradle-rocker, whose bunch
of hawthorns drives away bad dreams from the infant. Later, Ossipago
will have strengthened its knees, Barbatus will have given the beard,
Stimula the first desires, and Volupia the first enjoyment; Fabulinus
will have taught it how to speak, Numera how to count, Cam[oe]na how to
sing, and Consus how to think."
The chamber is empty, and there remains no longer at the side of the bed
anyone but Naenia--a hundred years old--muttering to herself the lament
which she poured forth on the death of old men.
But soon her voice is lost amid bitter cries, which come from the
domestic lares, squatted at the end of the atrium, clad in dogs' skins,
with flowers around their bodies, holding their closed hands up to their
cheeks, and weeping as much as they can.
"Where is the portion of food which is given to us at each meal, the
good attentions of maid-servant, the smile of the matron, and the gaiety
of the little boys playing with huckle-bones on the mosaic of the
courtyard? Then, when they have grown big, they hang over our breasts
their gold or leather bullae.
"What happiness, when, on the evening of a triumph, the master,
returning home, turned towards us his humid eyes! He told the story of
his contests, and the narrow house was more stately than a palace, and
more sacred than a temple.
"How pleasant were the repasts of the family, especially the day after
the Feralia! The feeling of tenderness towards the dead dispelled all
discords; and people embraced one another, drinking to the glories of
the past, and to the hopes of the future.
"But the ancestors in painted wax, shut up behind us, became gradually
covered with mouldiness. The new races, to punish us for their own
deceptions, have broken our jaws; and under the rats' teeth our bodies
of wood have crumbled away."
And the innumerable gods, watching at the doors, in the kitchen, in the
cellar, and in the stoves, disperse on all sides, under the appearance
of enormous ants running away, or huge butterflies on the wing.
Then a thunderclap.
_A voice_--"I was the God of armies, the Lord, the Lord God!
"I have unfolded on the hills the tents of Jacob, and nourished in the
sands my fugitive people. It was I who burned Sodom! It was I who
engulfed the earth beneath the Deluge! It was I who drowned Pharaoh,
with the royal princes, the war-chariots, and the charioteers. A jealous
God, I execrated the other gods. I crushed the impure; I overthrew the
proud; and my desolation rushed to right and left, like a dromedary let
loose in a field of maize.
"To set Israel free, I chose the simple. Angels, with wings of flame,
spoke to them in the bushes.
"Perfumed with spikenard, cinnamon, and myrrh, with transparent robes
and high-heeled shoes, women of intrepid heart went forth to slay the
captains. The passing wind bore away the prophets.
"I engraved my law on tablets of stone. It shut in my people as in a
citadel. They were my people. I was their God! The earth was mine, and
men were mine, with their thoughts, their works, the implements with
which they tilled the soil, and their posterity.
"My ark rested in a triple sanctuary, behind purple curtains and flaming
lamps. For my ministry I had an entire tribe, who swung the censers,
and the high-priest in a robe of hyacinth, and wearing precious stones
upon his breast arranged in regular order.
"Woe! woe! The Holy of Holies is flung open; the veil is rent; the
odours of the holocaust are scattered to all the winds. The jackals
whine in the sepulchres; my temple is destroyed; my people are
dispersed!
"They have strangled the priests with the cords of their vestments. The
women are captives; the sacred vessels are all melted down!"
The voice, dying away:
"I was the God of armies, the Lord, the Lord God!" Then comes an
appalling silence, a profound darkness.
_Antony_--"They are all gone!"
"I remain!" says some one.
And, face to face with him stands Hilarion, but transfigured--beautiful
as an archangel, luminous as a sun, and so tall that, in order to see
him, Antony lifts up his head--"Who, then, are you?"
_Hilarion_--"My kingdom is as wide as the universe, and my desire has no
limits. I am always going about enfranchising the mind and weighing the
worlds, without hate, without fear, without love, and without God. I am
called Science."
_Antony_, recoiling backwards--"You must be, rather, the Devil!"
_Hilarion_, fixing his eyes upon him--"Do you wish to see him?"
Antony no longer avoids his glance. He is seized with curiosity
concerning the Devil. His terror increases; his longing becomes
measureless.
"If I saw him, however--if I saw him?" ... Then, in a spasm of rage:
"The horror that I have of him will rid me of him forever. Yes!"
A cloven foot reveals itself. Antony is filled with regret. But the
Devil overshadows him with his horns, and carries him off.