He joined himself to a band of adventurers who were passing.
He learned to know hunger, thirst, fevers, and vermin. He became
accustomed to the din of mellays and the sight of the dying. The wind
tanned his skin. His limbs became calloused by contact with his armour;
and since he was very strong, courageous, temperate, and of good
counsel, he had no trouble in obtaining the command of a company.
At the beginning of a battle he roused his soldiers with a great wave
of his sword. With a knotted rope he climbed the walls of citadels at
night, swayed about by the hurricane, while the drops of Greek fire
stuck to his cuirass, and the boiling pitch and melted lead streamed
down from the battlements. Often the hurtling of a stone shivered his
buckler. Bridges overloaded with men collapsed beneath him. With a
sweep of his mace he rid himself of fourteen horsemen. In the lists he
defeated all who came forward. More than a score of times he was taken
for dead.
Thanks to divine favour he always escaped; for he protected churchmen,
orphans, widows, and especially aged men. When he saw one of these last
walking in front of him, he called to him, in order to see his face, as
if he were afraid of killing him by mistake.
Fugitive slaves, revolted peasants, portionless bastards, all sorts of
desperate men flocked to his banner, and he gathered an army of his own.
It increased. He became famous. He was sought after.
He aided in turn the Dauphin of France and the King of England, the
Templars of Jerusalem, the Surenas of the Parthians, the Negus of
Abyssinia, and the Emperor of Calicut. He fought Scandinavians covered
with fish-scales, negroes furnished with targets of hippopotamus hide
and mounted on red asses, golden-skinned Indians, brandishing above
their diadems broad sabres brighter than mirrors. He vanquished the
Troglodytes and the Anthropophagi. He traversed regions so torrid that
under the burning heat of the sun the hair of men’s heads took fire of
itself like torches; and others so icy that men’s arms came away from
their bodies and fell to the ground; and countries where there were so
many fogs that they marched surrounded by phantoms.
States in difficulty consulted him. He obtained unhoped-for terms in
interviews with ambassadors. If a monarch governed ill, he arrived
suddenly and remonstrated with him. He set peoples free. He delivered
queens shut up in towers. It was he, and no other, who smote the great
serpent of Milan and the dragon of Oberbirbach.
Now, the Emperor of Occitania, having triumphed over the Spanish
Mussulmans, had united in concubinage with the sister of the Caliph
of Cordova, and had a daughter by her, whom he had brought up as a
Christian. But the Caliph, making as if he wished to be converted, came
to him on a visit accompanied by a numerous escort, massacred all his
garrison and plunged him into a dungeon-pit, where he treated him most
harshly, in order to extract treasure from him.
Julian hastened to his aid, destroyed the army of the infidels, laid
siege to the town, slew the Caliph, cut off his head, and threw it like
a ball over the ramparts. Then he took the Emperor from his prison and
caused him to remount his throne in presence of all his court.
As the price of such a service, the Emperor presented him with much
silver in baskets; Julian would have none of it. Believing that he
desired more, he offered him three-quarters of his wealth; another
refusal. Then to share his kingdom; Julian thanked him and declined.
And the Emperor wept for vexation, not knowing how to testify his
gratitude, when he struck his forehead, said a word into the ear of
a courtier, the curtains of a tapestry were raised, and a young girl
appeared.
Her great black eyes shone like two soft lamps. A charming smile parted
her lips. The ringlets of her hair were caught in the jewels on her
open dress; and under the transparence of her tunic her youthful form
was half-revealed. She was all dainty and plump, with a slender waist.
Julian was dazzled with love, the more so as he had so far led a life
of extreme chastity.
So he received the Emperor’s daughter in marriage, with a castle which
she held of her mother; and, the nuptials ended, they parted with no
end of compliments on either side.
The palace was of white marble, built in the Moresque style, on a
headland, in a grove of orange-trees. Terraces of flowers stretched
down to the border of a bay, where pink shells crunched under the feet.
Behind the castle extended a forest in the shape of a fan. The sky was
always blue, and the trees bent now beneath the sea-breeze, now beneath
the wind from the mountains that framed the distant horizon.
The rooms, full of twilight, were illumined by the incrustations upon
the walls. Tall columns, slender as reeds, supported the vaulting of
the cupolas, which were decorated with reliefs in imitation of the
stalactites of grottoes.
There were fountains in the halls, mosaics in the courtyards, festooned
partition-walls, a thousand refinements of architecture and everywhere
such silence that one could hear the rustling of a scarf or the echo of
a sigh.
Julian made war no longer. He rested, surrounded by a people at
peace; and each day a crowd passed before him with genuflexions and
hand-kissing in the Oriental fashion.
Clad in purple he leaned on his elbows in a window-recess and recalled
his hunts of bygone days; and he could have wished to be coursing over
the desert after the gazelles and the ostriches, to be hiding in the
bamboos on the watch for leopards, to be traversing the forests full of
rhinoceroses, climbing to the summit of the most inaccessible mountains
to get better aim at the eagles, or fighting the white bears on the
icebergs of the sea.
Sometimes in a dream he saw himself like our father Adam in the midst
of Paradise among all the beasts; he stretched out his arm and made
them die; or else they passed before him two by two in order of their
bigness, from the elephants and the lions to the ermines and the ducks,
as on the day when they entered Noah’s Ark. In the shade of a cavern he
darted unerring javelins upon them; others came; there was no end to
them; and he woke up rolling his eyes savagely.
Princes of his acquaintance invited him to hunt. He always refused,
thinking by this sort of penance to avert his misfortune; for it seemed
to him that the fate of his parents depended on the murder of the
animals. But he suffered from not seeing them, and his other desire
became intolerable.
To divert him his wife sent for jugglers and dancing-girls.
She walked with him, in an open litter, in the country; at other times
stretched on the side of a skiff they watched the fish straying in the
water clear as the sky. Often she threw flowers in his face; sitting at
his feet she drew music from a three-stringed mandoline; then, placing
her clasped hands on his shoulder, she would ask in a timid voice,
“Why, what ails you, my dear lord?”
He gave no reply, or burst into sobs; at last one day he confessed his
horrible thought.
She opposed it with very sound arguments: his father and mother were
probably dead; if ever he saw them again, by what chance, with what
purpose, would he come to work this abomination? Therefore his fears
were groundless, and he ought to take to hunting again.
Julian smiled as he heard her, but he did not decide to satisfy her
desire.
One evening in the month of August, when they were in their room, she
had just gone to bed, and he was kneeling for his prayers, when he
heard the barking of a fox, then light footsteps under the window; and
caught sight in the dusk of something that looked like animals. The
temptation was too strong. He took his quiver down from the peg.
She seemed surprised.
“It is to obey you!” he said, “I shall be back by sunrise.”
For all that, she was apprehensive of some unhappy accident.
He reassured her, then went out, astonished at the inconsequence of her
moods.
Soon afterwards a page came to announce that two strangers, in the
absence of the lord, asked to see the lady at once.
And soon came into the room an old man and an old woman, bent, dusty,
in coarse garments, each leaning on a staff.
They took courage and declared that they brought Julian news of his
parents.
She leant forward to listen to them.
Meanwhile, having understood each other by a glance, they asked her if
he always loved them still, if he ever spoke about them.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
Then they exclaimed:
“Well, we are they!” And they sat down very weary and overcome with
fatigue.
Nothing could persuade the young wife that her husband was their son.
They proved it to her by describing certain marks which he had on his
body.
She sprang from her couch, called her page, and a repast was set before
them.
Although they were very hungry, they could not eat much; and even at
a distance she could perceive the trembling of their gnarled hands as
they took the goblets.
They had a thousand questions to ask about Julian. She answered them
all, but was careful to say nothing about his gloomy notion with regard
to them.
When there was no sign of his return, they had left their castle; and
they had travelled for several years, following vague indications,
without losing hope. They had required so much money for the ferries
and in the hostelries, for the rights of princes and the exactions of
robbers, that they had come to the bottom of their purse and were now
begging. What matter, now that they were soon to embrace their son?
They extolled his happiness in having so gracious a wife, and never
wearied admiring her and kissing her.
The richness of the apartment astonished them greatly, and the old
man, having examined the walls, asked why they bore the blazon of the
Emperor of Occitania.
She replied:
“He is my father!”
At that he trembled, recalling the prediction of the gipsy, and the
old woman thought of the word of the hermit. Doubtless her son’s glory
was but the dawn of the splendours of eternity; and the pair remained
awestruck in the light of the candelabra which illumined the table.
They must have been very handsome in their youth. The mother still had
all her hair, the fine braids of which, like wreaths of snow, hung down
to the bottom of her cheeks; and the father, with his tall form and his
long beard, was like a church statue.
Julian’s wife counselled them not to wait for him. She put them to bed
herself in her own room, then closed the casement; they fell asleep.
Day was about to appear and outside the window the little birds were
beginning to sing.
* * * * *
Julian had crossed the park; and was marching in the forest with
vigorous step, rejoicing in the softness of the grass and the sweetness
of the air.
The shadows of the trees lay upon the moss. Sometimes the moon made
white patches in the glades, and he hesitated to go on, thinking that
he saw a sheet of water, or again the surface of calm pools blended
with the colour of the herbage. Everywhere was a great silence; and he
discovered none of the animals which had been roaming round his castle
only a few minutes before.
The wood became thicker, the darkness profound. Puffs of warm wind
passed by, full of softening perfumes. He sank in heaps of dead leaves,
and leant against an oak to take breath.
All at once, behind him leapt a darker mass, a wild boar. Julian
had not time to seize his bow, and grieved at that as if it were a
misfortune.
Then, coming out of the wood, he caught sight of a wolf slinking along
a hedge.
Julian sent an arrow after it. The wolf halted, turned its head to look
at him, and went on its way. It trotted on, always keeping the same
distance between them, halted now and then, and, as soon as it was
aimed at, took to flight again.
In this manner Julian traversed an interminable plain, then sandhills,
and found himself at last on a table-land commanding a great stretch
of country. Flat rocks were strewn among caves and ruins. He stumbled
over dead men’s bones; here and there mouldering crosses leaned over
in melancholy fashion. But shapes moved in the uncertain shadow of
the tombs, and out of it came hyenas, excited, panting. Their claws
clattering on the flagstones, they came up to him, and smelled him with
yawns that showed their gums. He unsheathed his sabre. They fled at
once in all directions and, continuing their limping and precipitate
gallop, were lost in the distance amid a cloud of dust.
An hour later, he met in a ravine a furious bull, his horns levelled,
pawing the sand with his hoof. Julian thrust his lance under his
dewlap. It shattered as if the animal had been made of brass; he shut
his eyes and waited for his death. When he opened them again, the bull
had disappeared.
At that his soul was overwhelmed with shame. A superior power was
taking away his strength; and he went back to the forest to return home.
It was entangled with creepers; and he was cutting them with his sabre
when a polecat suddenly slipped between his legs, a panther made a
spring over his shoulder, a serpent climbed in a spiral about an
ash-tree.
In its foliage was a monstrous jackdaw, which looked at Julian; and,
here and there, a number of great sparks showed among the branches, as
if the sky had caused all its stars to rain down on the forest. They
were the eyes of animals, wild cats, squirrels, owls, parrots, monkeys.
Julian darted his arrows at them; the arrows with their feathers
settled on the leaves like white butterflies. He hurled stones at them;
the stones fell back without hitting anything. He cursed himself, could
have struck himself, howled imprecations, was like to choke with rage.
And all the animals that he had pursued were represented, forming
a circle close about him. Some were squatted on their rumps, the
others standing at their full height. He stood in the centre, frozen
with terror, incapable of the smallest movement. By a supreme effort
of will, he took a step; the animals perched on the trees spread
their wings, those which trod the ground moved their limbs; and all
accompanied him.
The hyenas marched before him, the wolf and the wild boar behind. The
bull at his right hand rocked its head, and at his left the serpent
writhed through the plants, while the panther, with arched back,
advanced with velvety step in great strides. He moved as gently as
possible, not to irritate them, and from the depths of the thickets he
saw issuing porcupines, foxes, vipers, jackals and bears.
Julian started to run; they ran too. The serpent hissed, the
foul-smelling beasts drooled. The wild boar rubbed his heels with its
tusks, the wolf the palms of his hands with its hairy muzzle. The
monkeys grimaced as they pinched him, the polecat rolled over his feet.
A bear took away his bonnet with a back-stroke of its paw; and the
panther scornfully let fall an arrow which it carried in its mouth.
A certain irony was evident in their stealthy proceedings. Looking at
him out of the corner of their eyes, they seemed to be meditating a
plan of revenge; and, deafened by the humming of insects, beaten by
birds’ tails, suffocated by breaths, he walked with his arms stretched
forward, his eyelids closed, like a blind man, without even the
strength to cry “Mercy!”
The crow of a cock vibrated in the air. Others answered it; it was day;
and over the orange-trees he recognized the summit of his palace.
Then, at the edge of a field, he saw, three paces off, some red
partridges fluttering in the stubble. He undid his cloak and flung it
over them like a net. When he uncovered them, he could find only one,
and that one long dead and rotten.
This deception exasperated him more than all the others. His thirst for
carnage came back to him; failing beasts, he could have massacred men.
He climbed the three terraces, burst in the door with a blow of his
fist; but at the foot of the stairs the thought of his dear wife
relieved his heart. She was sleeping, no doubt, and he would go and
surprise her.
Having drawn off his sandals, he turned the lock gently and entered.
The leaded panes obscured the pale light of the dawn. Julian caught his
feet in some garments on the floor; further on, he stumbled against
a side-board still covered with dishes. “She must have been eating,”
he said to himself, and went towards the bed, which was lost in the
darkness of the farther side of the room. When he reached the bed-side,
in order to embrace his wife, he leant over the pillow where the two
heads were reposing side by side. Thereupon he felt the touch of a
beard against his mouth.
He recoiled, thinking he was going mad; but he returned to the
bed-side, and his fingers, as he felt about, came against hair which
was very long. To convince himself of his error, he passed his hand
gently over the pillow yet again. It was indeed a beard, this time, and
a man!--a man lying with his wife!
Bursting into a wrath beyond measure, he fell upon them with his
poniard; and he stamped and foamed, with howls like a savage beast.
Then he stopped. The dead, pierced to the heart, had not so much as
moved. He listened attentively to the two groanings almost equal, and,
as they subsided, another one far away continued them. Indistinct at
first, this plaintive, long-drawn voice came nearer, became loud,
cruel: and to his terror he recognized it for the belling of the great
black stag.
And, as he turned round, he thought he saw in the door-way the phantom
of his wife, light in hand.
The din of the murder had brought her. With one staring glance she
comprehended all, and, flying in horror, let fall her candle.
He picked it up.
His father and mother lay before him, stretched on their backs, with
their bosoms pierced; and their countenances, of a majestic gentleness,
were as if they guarded some eternal secret. Smears and clots of blood
showed on their white skin, on the sheets, on the floor, upon an ivory
crucifix hanging in the alcove. The crimson reflection of the window,
touched at that moment by the sun, lit up those crimson stains, and
cast yet others all over the apartment. Julian went up to the two
bodies saying to himself, trying to persuade himself, that it could
not be, that he was mistaken, that there are sometimes extraordinary
resemblances. At last he stooped to look more closely at the old man;
and he saw between the half-closed eyelids a lifeless eye that burnt
him like fire. Then he crossed to the other side of the couch, occupied
by the other corpse, the face of which was partially concealed by
its white hair. Julian passed his hand under its braids, lifted its
head;--and he gazed at it, holding it at the length of his rigid arm,
while he lighted himself with the candle in his other hand. Some drops
soaking through the mattress fell one by one upon the boards.
At the end of the day he presented himself before his wife; and, in a
voice unlike his own, commanded her first, not to answer him, not to
come near him, not even to look at him, then to follow, under pain of
damnation, all his orders, which were irrevocable.
The obsequies were to be carried out according to the instructions
which he had left in writing on a faldstool in the chamber of the dead.
He left her his palace, his vassals, all his possessions, not even
retaining the clothes on his body, nor his sandals, which they would
find at the top of the staircase.
She had obeyed the will of God in being the occasion of his crime, and
was to pray for his soul, since thenceforward he should be as one dead.
* * * * *
The dead were magnificently interred in the chapel of a monastery three
days’ journey from the castle. A monk with his cowl drawn over his head
followed the train far apart from the rest, and no one dared to speak
to him.
During the Mass he remained flat on his belly in the porch, his arms
out-stretched in a cross, and his brow in the dust.
After the burial, they saw him take the road that led to the mountains.
He turned round several times, and at last disappeared.