THE CONCLAVE
That day, convoked by Arcade and Zita, the rebellious angels met
together on the banks of the Seine at La Jonchère, in a deserted and
tumble-down entertainment-hall that Prince Istar had hired from a
pot-house keeper called Barattan. Three hundred angels crowded together
in the stalls and boxes. A table, an arm-chair, and a collection of
small chairs were arranged on the stage, where hung the tattered
remnants of a piece of rustic scenery. The walls, coloured in distemper
with flowers and fruit, were cracked and stained with damp, and were
crumbling away in flakes. The vulgar and poverty-stricken appearance of
the place rendered the grandeur of the passions exhibited therein all
the more striking.
When Prince Istar asked the assembly to form its Committee, and first of
all to elect a President, the name that was renowned throughout the
world entered the minds of all present, but a religious respect sealed
their lips; and after a moment's silence, the absent Nectaire was
elected by acclamation. Having been invited to take the chair between
Zita and an angel of Japan, Arcade immediately began as follows:
"Sons of Heaven! My comrades! You have freed yourselves from the bonds
of celestial servitude--you have shaken off the thrall of him called
Iahveh, but to whom we should here accord his veritable name of
Ialdabaoth, for he is not the creator of the worlds, but merely an
ignorant and barbarous demiurge, who having obtained possession of a
minute portion of the Universe has therein sown suffering and death.
Sons of Heaven, tell me, I charge you, whether you will combat and
destroy Ialdabaoth?"
All with one voice made answer:
"We will!"
And many speaking all together swore they would scale the mountain of
Ialdabaoth, and hurl down the walls of jasper and porphyry, and plunge
the tyrant of Heaven into eternal darkness.
But a voice of crystal pierced through the sullen murmur.
"Tremble, ye impious, sacrilegious madmen! The Lord hath already lifted
his dread arm to smite you!"
It was a loyal angel who, with an impulse of faith and love, envying the
glory of confessors and martyrs, jealous and eager, like his God
himself, to emulate man in the beauty of sacrifice, had flung himself
in the midst of the blasphemers, to brave them, to confound them, and to
fall beneath their blows. The assembly turned upon him with furious
unanimity. Those nearest to him overwhelmed him with blows. He continued
to cry, in a clear, ringing voice, "Glory to God! Glory to God! Glory to
God!"
A rebel seized him by the neck and strangled his praises of the Almighty
in his throat. He was thrown to the ground, trampled underfoot. Prince
Istar picked him up, took him by the wings between his fingers, then
rising like a column of smoke, opened a ventilator, which no one else
could have reached, and passed the faithful angel through it. Order was
immediately restored.
"Comrades," continued Arcade, "now that we have affirmed our stern
resolve, we must examine the possible plans of campaign, and choose the
best. You will therefore have to consider if we should attack the enemy
in full force, or whether it were better, by a lengthy and assiduous
propaganda, to win the inhabitants of Heaven to our cause."
"War! War!" shouted the assembled host.
And it seemed as if one could hear the sound of trumpets and the rolling
of drums.
Théophile, whom Prince Istar had dragged to the meeting, rose, pale and
unstrung, and, speaking with emotion, said:
"Brethren, do not take ill what I am about to say; for it is the
friendship I have for you that inspires me. I am but a poor musician.
But, believe me, all your plans will come to naught before the Divine
Wisdom which has foreseen everything."
Théophile Belais sat down amid hisses. And Arcade continued:
"Ialdabaoth foresees everything. I do not contest it. He foresees
everything, but in order to leave us our free will he acts towards us
absolutely as if he foresaw nothing. Every instant he is surprised,
disconcerted; the most probable events take him unawares. The obligation
which he has undertaken, to reconcile with his prescience the liberty of
both men and angels, throws him constantly into inextricable
difficulties and terrible dilemmas. He never sees further than the end
of his nose. He did not expect Adam's disobedience, and so little did he
anticipate the wickedness of men that he repented having made them, and
drowned them in the waters of the Flood, and all the animals as well,
though he had no fault to find with the animals. For blindness he is
only to be compared with Charles X, his favourite king. If we are
prudent it will be easy to take him by surprise. I think that these
observations will be calculated to reassure my brother."
Théophile made no reply. He loved God, but he was fearful of sharing
the fate of the faithful angel.
One of the best-informed Spirits of the assembly, Mammon, was not
altogether reassured by the remarks of his brother Arcade.
"Bethink you," said this Spirit, "Ialdabaoth has little general culture,
but he is a soldier--to the marrow of his bones. The organisation of
Paradise is a thoroughly military organisation. It is founded on
hierarchy and discipline. Passive obedience is imposed there as a
fundamental law. The angels form an army. Compare this spot with the
Elysian Fields which Virgil depicts for you. In the Elysian Fields reign
liberty, reason, and wisdom. The happy shades hold converse together in
the groves of myrtle. In the Heaven of Ialdabaoth there is no civil
population. Everyone is enrolled, numbered, registered. It is a barracks
and a field for manoeuvres. Remember that."
Arcade replied that they must look at their adversary in his true
colours, and that the military organisation of Paradise was far more
reminiscent of the villages of King Koffee than of the Prussia of
Frederick the Great.
"Already," said he, "at the time of the first revolt, before the
beginning of Time, the conflict raged for two days, and Ialdabaoth's
throne was made to totter. Nevertheless, the demiurge gained the
victory. But to what did he owe it? To the thunderstorm which happened
to come on during the conflict. The thunderbolts falling on Lucifer and
his angels struck them down, bruised and blackened, and Ialdabaoth owed
his victory to the thunderbolts. Thunder is his sole weapon. He abuses
its power. In the midst of thunder and lightning he promulgates his
laws. 'Fire goeth before him,' says the Prophet. Now Seneca, the
philosopher, said that the thunderbolt in its fall brings peril to very
few, but fear to all. This remark was true enough for men of the first
century of the Christian era; it is no longer so for the angels of the
twentieth; all of which goes to prove that, in spite of his thunder, he
is not very powerful; it was acute terror that made men rear him a tower
of unbaked brick and bitumen. When myriads of celestial spirits,
furnished with machines which modern science puts at their disposal,
make an assault upon the heavens, think you, comrades, that the old
master of the solar system surrounded with his angels, armed as in the
time of Abraham, will be able to resist them? To this day the warriors
of the demiurge wear helmets of gold and shields of diamond. Michael,
his best captain, knows no other tactics than the hand-to-hand combat.
To him Pharaoh's chariots are still the latest thing, and he has never
heard of the Macedonian phalanx."
And young Arcade lengthily prolonged the parallel between the armed
herds of Ialdabaoth and the intelligent fighting men of the rebel army.
Then the question of pecuniary resources arose.
Zita asserted that there was enough money to commence war, that the
electrophores were in order, that an initial victory would obtain them
credit.
The discussion continued, amid turbulence and confusion. In this
parliament of angels, as in the synods of men, empty words flowed in
abundance. Disturbances grew more violent and more frequent as the time
for putting the resolution drew near. It was beyond question that
supreme command would be entrusted to him who had first raised the flag
of revolt. But as everyone aspired to act as Lucifer's Lieutenant, each
in describing the kind of fighting man to be preferred drew a portrait
of himself. Thus Alcor, the youngest of the rebellious angels, arose and
spoke rapidly as follows:
"In Ialdabaoth's army, happily for us, the officers obtain their posts
by seniority. This being the case, there is little likelihood of the
command falling into the hands of a military genius, for men are not
made leaders by prolonged habits of obedience, and close attention to
minutiæ is not a good apprenticeship for the evolution of vast plans of
campaign. If we consult ancient and modern history, we shall see that
the greatest leaders were kings like Alexander and Frederick,
aristocrats like Cæsar and Turenne, or men impatient of red-tape like
Bonaparte. A routine man will always be poor or second-rate. Comrades,
let us appoint intelligent leaders, men in the prime of life, to command
us. An old man may retain the habit of winning victories, but only a
young man can acquire it!"
Alcor then gave place to an angel of the philosophic order, who mounted
the rostrum and spoke thus:
"War never was an exact science, a clearly defined art. The genius of
the race, or the brain of the individual, has ever modified it. Now how
are we to define the qualities necessary for a general in command in the
war of the future, where one must consider greater masses and a larger
number of movements than the intelligence of man can conceive? The
multiplication of technical means, by infinitely multiplying the
opportunities for mistake, paralyses the genius of those in command. At
a certain stage in the progress of military science, a stage which our
models, the Europeans, are about to reach, the cleverest leader and the
most ignorant become equalized by reason of their incapacity. Another
result of great modern armaments is, that the law of numbers tends to
rule with inflexible rigour. It is of course true that ten angels in
revolt are worth more than ten angels of Ialdabaoth; it is not at all
certain that a million rebellious angels are worth more than a million
of Ialdabaoth's angels. Great numbers, in war as elsewhere, annihilate
intelligence and individual superiority in favour of a sort of
exceedingly rudimentary collective soul."
A buzz of conversation drowned the voice of the philosophic angel, and
he concluded his speech in an atmosphere of general indifference.
The tribune then resounded with calls to arms and promises of victory.
The sword was held up to praise, the sword which defends the right. The
triumph of the angels in revolt was celebrated twenty times beforehand,
to the plaudits of a delirious crowd.
Cries of "War!" rose to the silent heavens; "Give us war!"
In the midst of these transports Prince Istar hoisted himself on to the
platform, and the floor creaked under his weight.
"Comrades," said he, "you wish for victory, and it is a very natural
desire, but you must be mouldy with literature and poetry if you expect
to obtain it from war. The idea of making war can nowadays only enter
the brain of a sottish bourgeois or a belated romantic. What is war? A
burlesque masquerade in the midst of which fatuous patriots sing their
stupid dithyrambs. Had Napoleon possessed a practical mind he would not
have made war; but he was a dreamer, intoxicated with Ossian. You cry,
'Give us war!' You are visionaries. When will you become thinkers? The
thinkers do not look for power and strength from any of the dreams which
constitute military art: tactics, strategy, fortifications, artillery,
and all that rubbish. They do not believe in war, which is a phantasy;
they believe in chemistry, which is a science. They know the way to put
victory into an algebraic formula."
And drawing from his pocket a small bottle, which he held up to the
meeting, Prince Istar exclaimed:
"Victory--it is here!"