WHICH FAR SURPASSES IN AUDACITY THE IMAGINATIVE FLIGHTS OF
DANTE AND MILTON
Maurice at length turned his head, saw the figure, and perceiving that
it moved, was also frightened. Meanwhile, Gilberte was regaining her
senses. She imagined that what she had seen was some mistress whom her
lover had hidden in the room. Inflamed with anger and disgust at the
idea of such treachery, boiling with indignation, and glaring at her
supposed rival, she exclaimed:
"A woman ... a naked woman too! You bring me into a room where you allow
your women to come, and when I arrive they have not had time to dress.
And you reproach me with arriving late! Your impudence is beyond belief!
Come, send the creature packing. If you wanted us both here together,
you might at least have asked me whether it suited me...."
Maurice, wide-eyed and groping for a revolver that had never been there,
whispered in her ear:
"Be quiet ... it is no woman. One can scarcely see, but it is more like
a man."
She put her hands over her eyes again and screamed harder than ever.
"A man! Where does he come from? A thief. An assassin! Help! Help! Kill
him.... Maurice, kill him! Turn on the light. No, don't turn on the
light...."
She made a mental vow that should she escape from this danger she would
burn a candle to the Blessed Virgin. Her teeth chattered.
The figure made a movement.
"Keep away!" cried Gilberte. "Keep away!"
She offered the burglar all the money and jewels she had on the table if
he would consent not to stir. Amid her surprise and terror the idea
assailed her that her husband, dissembling his suspicions, had caused
her to be followed, had posted witnesses, and had had recourse to the
Commissaire de Police. In a flash she distinctly saw before her the long
painful future, the glaring scandal, the pretended disdain, the cowardly
desertion of her friends, the just mockery of society, for it is indeed
ridiculous to be found out. She saw the divorce, the loss of her
position and of her rank. She saw the dreary and narrow existence with
her mother, when no one would make love to her, for men avoid women who
fail to give them the security of the married state. And all this, why?
Why this ruin, this disaster? For a piece of folly, for a mere nothing.
Thus in a lightning flash spoke the conscience of Gilberte des Aubels.
"Have no fear, Madame," said a very sweet voice.
Slightly reassured, she found strength to ask:
"Who are you?"
"I am an angel," replied the voice.
"What did you say?"
"I am an angel. I am Maurice's guardian angel."
"Say it again. I am going mad. I do not understand...."
Maurice, without understanding either, was indignant. He sprang forward
and showed himself; with his right hand armed with a slipper he made a
threatening gesture, and said in a rough voice:
"You are a low ruffian; oblige me by going the way you came."
"Maurice d'Esparvieu," continued the sweet voice, "He whom you adore as
your Creator has stationed by the side of each of the faithful a good
angel, whose mission it is to counsel and protect him; it is the
invariable opinion of the Fathers, it is founded on many passages in the
Bible, the Church admits it unanimously, without, however, pronouncing
anathema upon those who hold a contrary opinion. You see before you one
of these angels, yours, Maurice. I was commanded to watch over your
innocence and to guard your chastity."
"That may be," said Maurice; "but you are certainly no gentleman. A
gentleman would not permit himself to enter a room at such a moment. To
be plain, what the deuce are you doing here?"
"I have assumed this appearance, Maurice, because, having henceforth to
move among mankind, I have to make myself like them. The celestial
spirits possess the power of assuming a form which renders them apparent
to the eye and to the touch. This shape is real, because it is apparent,
and all the realities in the world are but appearances."
Gilberte, pacified at length, was arranging her hair on her forehead.
The Angel pursued:
"The celestial spirits adopt, according to their fancy, one sex or the
other, or both at once. But they cannot disguise themselves at any
moment, according to their caprice or fantasy. Their metamorphoses are
subject to constant laws, which you would not understand. Thus I have
neither desire nor power to transform myself under your eyes, for your
amusement or my own, into a lion, a tiger, a fly, or into a
sycamore-shaving like the young Egyptian whose story was found in a
tomb. I cannot change myself into an ass as did Lucius with the pomade
of the youthful Photis. For in my wisdom I had fixed beforehand the
hour of my apparition to mankind, nothing could hasten or delay it."
Impatient for enlightenment, Maurice asked for the second time:
"Still, what are you up to here?"
Joining her voice to his, Madame des Aubels asked: "Yes, indeed, what
are you doing here?"
The Angel replied:
"Man, lend your ear. Woman, hear my voice. I am about to reveal to you a
secret on which hangs the fate of the Universe. In rebellion against Him
whom you hold to be the Creator of all things visible and invisible, I
am preparing the Revolt of the Angels."
"Do not jest," said Maurice, who had faith and did not allow holy things
to be played with.
But the Angel answered reproachfully: "What makes you think, Maurice,
that I am frivolous and given to vain words?"
"Come, come," said Maurice, shrugging his shoulders. "You are not going
to revolt against----"
He pointed to the ceiling--not daring to finish.
But the Angel continued:
"Do you not know that the sons of God have already revolted and that a
great battle took place in the heavens?"
"That was a long time ago," said Maurice, putting on his socks.
Then the Angel replied:
"It was before the creation of the world. But nothing has changed since
then in the heavens. The nature of the Angels is no different now from
what it was originally. What they did then they could do again now."
"No! It is not possible. It is contrary to faith. If you were an angel,
a good angel as you make out you are, it would never occur to you to
disobey your Creator."
"You are in error, Maurice, and the authority of the Fathers condemns
you. Origen lays it down in his homilies that good angels are fallible,
that they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies. Possibly you
may be tempted to reject the authority of this Father, despite his
knowledge of the Scriptures, because he is excluded from the Canon of
the Saints. If this be so, I would remind you of the second chapter of
Revelation, in which the Angels of Ephesus and Pergamos are rebuked for
that they kept not ward over their church. You will doubtless contend
that the angels to whom the Apostle here refers are, properly speaking,
the Bishops of the two cities in question, and that he calls them angels
on account of their ministry. It may be so, and I cede the point. But
with what arguments, Maurice, would you counter the opinion of all those
Doctors and Pontiffs whose unanimous teaching it is that angels may fall
from good into evil? Such is the statement made by Saint Jerome in his
Epistle to Damasus...."
"Monsieur," said Madame des Aubels, "go away, I beg you."
But the Angel hearkened not, and continued:
"Saint Augustine, in his _True Religion_, Chapter XIII; Saint Gregory,
in his _Morals_, Chapter XXIV; Isidore----"
"Monsieur, let me get my things on; I am in a hurry."
"In his treatise on _The Greatest Good_, Book I, Chapter XII; Bede on
Job----"
"Oh, please, Monsieur ..."
"Chapter VIII; John of Damascus on _Faith_, Book II, Chapter III. Those,
I think, are sufficiently weighty authorities, and there is nothing for
it, Maurice, but to admit your error. What has led you astray is that
you have not duly considered my nature, which is free, active, and
mobile, like that of all the angels, and that you have merely observed
the grace and felicity with which you deem me so richly endowed. Lucifer
possessed no less, yet he rebelled."
"But what on earth are you rebelling for?" asked Maurice.
"Isaiah," answered the child of light, "Isaiah has already asked, before
you: '_Quomodo cecidisti de coelo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris?_'
Hearken, Maurice. Before Time was, the Angels rose up to win dominion
over Heaven, the most beautiful of the Seraphim revolted through pride.
As for me, it is science that has inspired me with the generous desire
for freedom. Finding myself near you, Maurice, in a house containing one
of the vastest libraries in the world, I acquired a taste for reading
and a love of study. While, fordone with the toils of a sensual life,
you lay sunk in heavy slumber, I surrounded myself with books, I
studied, I pondered over their pages, sometimes in one of the rooms of
the library, under the busts of the great men of antiquity, sometimes at
the far end of the garden, in the room in the summer-house next to your
own."
On hearing these words, young d'Esparvieu exploded with laughter and
beat the pillow with his fist, an infallible sign of uncontrollable
mirth.
"Ah ... ah ... ah! It was you who pillaged papa's library and drove poor
old Sariette off his head. You know, he has become completely idiotic."
"Busily engaged," continued the Angel, "in cultivating for myself a
sovereign intelligence, I paid no heed to that inferior being, and when
he thought to offer obstacles to my researches and to disturb my work I
punished him for his importunity.
"One particular winter's night in the abode of the philosophers and
globes I let fall a volume of great weight on his head, which he tried
to tear from my invisible hand. Then more recently, raising, with a
vigorous arm composed of a column of condensed air, a precious
manuscript of Flavius Josephus, I gave the imbecile such a fright, that
he rushed out screaming on to the landing and (to borrow a striking
expression from Dante Alighieri) fell even as a dead body falls. He was
well rewarded, for you gave him, Madame, to staunch the blood from his
wound, your little scented handkerchief. It was the day, you may
remember, when behind a celestial globe you exchanged a kiss on the
mouth with Maurice."
"Monsieur," said Madame des Aubels, with a frown, "I cannot allow
you...."
But she stopped short, deeming it was an inopportune moment to appear
over-exacting on a matter of decorum.
"I had made up my mind," continued the Angel impassively, "to examine
the foundations of belief. I first attacked the monuments of Judaism,
and I read all the Hebrew texts."
"You know Hebrew, then?" exclaimed Maurice.
"Hebrew is my native tongue: in Paradise for a long time we have spoken
nothing else."
"Ah, you are a Jew. I might have deduced it from your want of tact."
The Angel, not deigning to hear, continued in his melodious voice: "I
have delved deep into Oriental antiquities and also into those of
Greece and Rome. I have devoured the works of theologians,
philosophers, physicists, geologists, and naturalists. I have learnt. I
have thought. I have lost my faith."
"What? You no longer believe in God?"
"I believe in Him, since my existence depends on His, and if He should
fail to exist, I myself should fall into nothingness. I believe in Him,
even as the Satyrs and the Mænads believed in Dionysus and for the same
reason. I believe in the God of the Jews and the Christians. But I deny
that He created the world; at the most He organised but an inferior part
of it, and all that He touched bears the mark of His rough and
unforeseeing touch. I do not think He is either eternal or infinite, for
it is absurd to conceive of a being who is not bounded by space or time.
I think Him limited, even very limited. I no longer believe Him to be
the only God. For a long time He did not believe it Himself; in the
beginning He was a polytheist; later, His pride and the flattery of His
worshippers made Him a monotheist. His ideas have little connection; He
is less powerful than He is thought to be. And, to speak candidly, He is
not so much a god as a vain and ignorant demiurge. Those who, like
myself, know His true nature, call Him Ialdabaoth."
"What's that you say?"
"Ialdabaoth."
"Ialdabaoth. What's that?"
"I have already told you. It is the demiurge whom, in your blindness,
you adore as the one and only God."
"You're mad. I don't advise you to go and talk rubbish like that to Abbé
Patouille."
"I am not in the least sanguine, my dear Maurice, of piercing the dense
night of your intellect. I merely tell you that I am going to engage
Ialdabaoth in conflict with some hopes of victory."
"Mark my words, you won't succeed."
"Lucifer shook His throne, and the issue was for a moment in doubt."
"What is your name?"
"Abdiel for the angels and saints, Arcade for mankind."
"Well, my poor Arcade, I regret to see you going to the bad. But confess
that you are jesting with us. I could at a pinch understand your leaving
Heaven for a woman. Love makes us commit the greatest follies. But you
will never make me believe that you, who have seen God face to face,
ultimately found the truth in old Sariette's musty books. No, you will
never get me to believe that!"
"My dear Maurice, Lucifer was face to face with God, yet he refused to
serve Him. As to the kind of truth one finds in books, it is a truth
that enables us sometimes to discern what things are not, without ever
enabling us to discover what they are. And this poor little truth has
sufficed to prove to me that He in whom I blindly believed is not
believable, and that men and angels have been deceived by the lies of
Ialdabaoth."
"There is no Ialdabaoth. There is God. Come, Arcade, do the right thing.
Renounce these follies, these impieties, dis-incarnate yourself, become
once more a pure Spirit, and resume your office of guardian angel.
Return to duty. I forgive you, but do not let us see you again."
"I should like to please you, Maurice. I feel a certain affection for
you, for my heart is soft. But fate henceforth calls me elsewhere
towards beings capable of thought and action."
"Monsieur Arcade," said Madame des Aubels, "withdraw, I implore you. It
makes me horribly shy to be in this position before two men. I assure
you I am not accustomed to it."