Part 2

I went up to him. He took my arm, and the action seemed quite natural. Were we not old friends? Had I not known him since I was three or four years old? Yes, and although he was certainly much older than I, he had played with me in my cot. All this settled itself clearly in my head. I repeat, from that moment until sunrise the next morning, that is to say, all the time I spent with him, I had not one moment of astonishment. What happened, what I heard, what I said, the unusual phenomena, everything seemed to me to be perfectly in place.

So I went up to him, and, when his arm was passed under mine, which I folded very respectfully and with a lover's joy, a long and precious conversation began between us.

HE

It is this that they call my mother! They are full of such good intentions. Admit, my friend, that they are good people.

I

Very good people. You do not think your mother well portrayed?

HE

I have had so many mothers that this image doubtless resembles one of the women who have believed that they gave birth to me; it is their innocence that makes me smile, their virginal conception of maternity, the white robe, the blue scarf. And yet, this church, one of the ugliest in the whole world, is one of the least puerile. The priests who serve it have preserved some intellectual illusion. They have a scrupulous and argumentative piety. The miracles anciently described seem to them proved by their very antiquity. They know that I walked on the waters, one tempestuous evening, but, if they had seen the windows of their church on fire with lights, would they have believed their eyes? You saw, you believed, and you came, my friend. That light shone for you alone.

I

Oh, my friend!

HE

To speak to mankind I need a man as intermediary, and I chose you, I gave you a sign. You were not obliged to respond. My power is not such as to compel men's wills. I can seduce; but I cannot command.

I

I was greatly surprised, I was frightened, but I walked as if to happiness, as if towards a moment of love. But why did the light go out, at the moment when I came near you?

HE

Because your curiosity had become desire. No longer could anything stop you. The iron was on its way towards the magnet. Are you happy?

I

It seems to me that my life is being fulfilled; it seems to me that my past days were only a preparation for the present hour.

HE

Then you are happy? You are going to be much more so. There are things of which mankind have always appeared to be ignorant. When you have heard them from my lips you will, in that moment, have received the courage to repeat them, and that will win you an eternal glory, a glory that will last as long as the earth itself, perhaps as long as the civilisation of which you are a part.

I

Is there not another eternity, a true eternity?

My master--for I now felt that this old friend was my master still more than my friend--my master was kind enough to smile, looking at me with tender irony, but he did not answer my question.

"Let us go," he said, after a moment's silence, "and walk in the Luxembourg."

I

Not really?

This time, he laughed indeed. He laughed softly.

We walked all round the sombre church, and left it by the Rue Palatine. I noticed that he took no holy water, and, even, as I stretched out my hand towards the stone shell, he murmured:

"Useless."

It was now night. We reached the Rue Servandoni in silence. The rare passengers met or passed us without emotion, without curiosity. A young woman, however, who was coming slowly down the street, observed my companion with eyes that seemed on fire. Perhaps, if he had been alone, she would have been still bolder. An idea, madder than the young woman's glance, crossed my mind.

"She looked at you," I said, "as if she knew you."

HE

Everybody recognises me, when I wish it. That young woman does not know who I am. She thinks me a man like other men, and yet, if I had been alone, her glance would have been much more lively, for she desires soft words, she desires kisses. But what would be her destiny, if I yielded to her mute sympathy! The women whom I love lose all reasonable notions of life, and I have no sooner touched their hands, caressed their hair, than all their flesh weeps with pleasure. If I insist, they melt like figs in my sunlight. Sweet flavour and cruel! If I withdraw myself from them they die of grief, and if I stay with them they die of love.

I

The mystics have said something of that.

HE

Something of it they have shown, but wrapped in the withered herbs of their piety.

I

Saint Teresa ...

HE

She believed that I loved her with passion. That fatuity made me leave her. Hers was the solidest woman's heart I have ever met, and with it what facility in self-deceit. She really thought she died in my arms: I was far away. However, in that supreme moment, I consoled her with a thought, for she had earned it by her constancy. What she wrote herself is not without interest for mankind, but the priests, who set themselves to excite her genius, inspired her with many follies, such as her vision of hell. I shall not tell you, my friend, who are the women I have most loved. Scarcely one of them has left a name among you. A woman who is loved and loves does not pass her time, like the illustrious Teresa, in describing the stations of love. She lives and she dies, and that is all.

While I was considering these words, which a little troubled my understanding, we had arrived before the railing of the garden. There I stopped, observing the sombre drawing of the great naked trees. Heavy black clouds were passing in the sky, that was very feebly lit by an invisible crescent of moon.

"How gloomy," I said, "is this park on a winter evening, and gloomier still through these bars."

But the gate opened a little way, and we went in. I had seen so many strange things, heard so many strange words, felt so many strange emotions, that this new miracle gave me but a mediocre surprise. We were in the garden.

"Let us go," he said, "towards the roses."

I

Towards the rose-trees.

HE

Towards the roses.

A soft and clear daylight was born as we advanced. The trees, suddenly in leaf, the chestnuts blossoming in shafts of white and red, were filled with the songs of birds. Blackbirds, on the topmost branches, launched their shrill calls. Bees were already murmuring by; a fly settled on my hand.

The great flower-bed was in full bloom. A perfume enveloped me with a precious sweetness. We disturbed a cat that was stalking two cooing pigeons. My friend plucked a red rose, then a white, then a yellow. At this moment it seemed to be five o'clock in the morning of a beautiful summer day.

I

I am happy. I am happy.

HE

Roses, these roses, are enough to make me jealous of men. The rose of your gardens, the woman of your civilisation, these are two creations that make you the equals of the gods. And to think that you still regret the earthly paradise! Eve! Eve, my friend, was a milkmaid, the pleasure of a bird-catcher or an early-rising oxherd. Eve, when you have all these real young women to enchant your eyes and make desperate your dreams!

I

She was, however, a divine work. Your father ...

But I said no more, trembling with happiness. Three young women were coming towards us. They were dressed in white. Delicate garlands of flowers adorned their corn-coloured hair. They walked slowly, holding each other's hands; their smiles made a light within the light. At the sight of the new roses, they all cried out together like children, and stayed, stretching their arms towards the rose-trees, timorous and troubled by desire.

I watched, a prisoner of the spell, but my friend, with the ease of a king, made a few steps towards them, and offered them the roses he had plucked. They took them, blushing, and slipped them into their girdles. She who was the tallest, who had the most beautiful hair, and the most beautiful eyes, thanked him with a smile and a few words, and then added:--

"We were looking for you."

HE

They say that when one looks for me, he always finds me.

Then there was charming laughter, laughter that made my heart laugh.

SHE

How beautiful are the roses on this earth!

Oh! I love this big red one!

HE

Take it for your hair, my friend.

SHE

I am happy.

I too dared to pluck a rose.

"The one which is red and yellow, the one with many thorns," said close to me the voice of another of the young women.

She had rightly divined that I was thinking of her.

I

The one that makes the hands bleed, and the heart, perhaps.

THE OTHER

Do not prick your fingers. I should be wretched.

I

And what if I pricked my heart?

She lowered her eyes without answering, took the rose and rejoined her companion. She was more feminine, more human. She who had my friend's favour seemed of a higher nature, and her very childishnesses could not but be divine.

The third young woman was not forgotten. She was small and frail, timid, with a heaven of innocence in her eyes. She did not leave the tallest, whose sister or chosen friend she seemed to be. She was not forgotten; but she disdained the flower I meant for her, and, going into the flower-bed, plucked herself a whole bouquet of roses. My friend observed her with complacency.

HE

Spoilt child.

THE LITTLE ONE

I have them of all colours. For me! For me! For me!

And taking them one after another, she inhaled their scent with a selfish delight.

My friend walked on with two of the young women. I followed him with the other, with her who seemed to have chosen me.

THE OTHER

Look! Are you bleeding? I warned you.

A drop of blood had been crushed on my finger. I looked at the young woman without answering. She had not the ironic air of which I suspected her. Reassured, I came up to her again; she laid her hand on my arm.

While these charming scenes were occurring, I was adapting myself to my singular circumstances. The continuation of the adventure soon seemed most natural. We were walking in the morning in a beautiful, solitary and flowery park. Such things happen in life as well as in dreams, and I was soon quite at my ease.

We were now walking in a wood of young chestnuts. Red stalks fell now and again at our feet. We went down steps and climbed others; we saw ponds and pools, stone statues and orange-trees, a cyclop and the nakedness of a nymph, flowers of every colour, trees of all forms, bushes of all leaves, and pigeons which, with slanting flight, dropped on the lawns amid the fluttering of startled sparrows.

THE OTHER

My name? What an idea! You will learn it if you are destined to know it. It is not mysterious. Call me friend; for this day, I will permit you to do so.

I

Are we to have a whole day?

THE OTHER

Does a day seem long to you?

I

Long and short at the same time in your company.

THE OTHER

You will see that it will be short.

I

Alas!

THE OTHER

Where are they? I have lost sight of them. Ah. There they are. Yonder, under the cherry-tree in bloom.

I

And she?

THE OTHER

What do you mean?

I

Her name?

THE OTHER

She? She is SHE, she is life, she is youth, she is beauty, she is love. She!

I

I ask nothing further. I am happy.

THE OTHER

Already?

I

I am happy, and I still desire, but without anxiety. I desire with delight, with calm. I feel a divine peace, a peace full of present pleasures and of pleasures to come.

THE OTHER

With him one is always happy, one becomes accustomed to one's happiness, and yet one feels it continually increase. I said "already." Do not interpret that word according to your ideas of yesterday.

I

None the less, it gave me something to dream of.

She lowered her eyes, as she had lowered them before, without confusion, with more than human coquetry. When her eyelids lifted, slowly, it seemed to me that I saw in her look a dawn of tenderness. She took my hand and hurried me along.

THE OTHER

Come quickly, they are waiting for us.

Under a green arbour, rustic chairs were arranged round a heavy table of axe-hewn wood. A bowl of milk, cups of flowers, brown bread, strawberries; it was Virgilian. The little one spread the petals of a red rose on the milk into which she was dropping the strawberries.

THE LITTLE ONE

They are my lips. I give you my kisses.

She blushed deeply as she said it, and her big friend drew her into her arms and kissed her eyes.

When we had begun to take this matutinal repast, my friend, taking no further notice of the young women, renewed the conversation their arrival had interrupted. We were seated facing each other, two of our companions together on one side, and on the other the little one, who was busied in arranging according to their shades all kinds of flowers that she had picked in the course of the walk.

HE

My father ... You were speaking of my father. I am afraid you have an exaggerated idea of him. He was certainly very powerful, fairly intelligent, just, but, admit it, he was not good ...

I

You speak as if he no longer existed.

HE

He is not dead, but he is old. The gods end by growing old. He has retired into the eternal silence of disabused intellects. He still gives advice, he alone is capable of explaining certain human evolutions, but the indifference of age has dried up his heart. He has never much loved mankind, and now has turned from them entirely. I, on the other hand, love them....

I

Lord....

I rose, to fall on my knees. He calmed my emotion with a gesture.

HE

Why "Lord"? I am not your lord. Listen to me, and reassure yourself. Observe these beautiful young women, their quiet, and their smiles. They play with flowers, they watch you with amused eyes: are you afraid of them? And yet, would you not say that they were goddesses? Ah! How your women are nearer than you men to nature, nearer to the divine! If you had had a mistress, I should have asked you to go and fetch her: she would have looked at me without timidity.

The young women began to laugh. All three were now on the same side of the table, and, as they leaned over their scented harvest, murmuring like bees, stirring like lilies where the wind passes, one did not know if they were listening to the words of the master or to the words of the flowers.

This spectacle helped to reassure me, after my friend's sayings, which, however, I did not understand.

HE

The religious conception of the world that you now have, the conception that you call Christian, from the name that was given me on the occasion of one of my earthly visits, is one of the feeblest that humanity has ever imagined. Practical intelligence has, in a certain sense, made progress since the Greek philosophers before Socrates, but speculative intelligence has almost consistently gone backward. To make a system that should have some distant relation to the truth, the cinematic philosophy of Epicurus would have to be poured into the fables of pagan mythology. Take, if you like, if Latin thought is more familiar to you, the poem of Lucretius, and Ovid's "Metamorphoses"; attempt an interpretation which should derive part from universal determinism, and part from divine caprice.... It is difficult? Why? Are not men apt in appearance to initiative, though ruled, as you know, and very narrowly, by fatal physical laws? You are free, when you think yourselves free. It is the same with the gods, but the liberty of the gods is exercised on a very much more extensive material, a material which, without being infinite (infinity does not exist), is immense. Their power, superior though it is, is of the same order as human power. Greece touched the knot of the question, and, if she did not untie it, it is that it is not to be untied: the creator of the world, the regulator of the world, is Destiny. Fatality rules over the gods, as the gods rule over men, and under her hand, my friend, we are all equal, exactly as you are under death, genii, kings, and beggars alike.

To dissimulate the trouble into which these words threw me, I turned towards the young women. There were but two of them.

SHE

The little one has gone off to look for more flowers. Some of them fade so quickly. One would say that the warmth of the earth is enough to dry them up.

THE OTHER

How many times love has been killed by kisses.

I

Do not say so, my friend; that was not love, but caprice.

THE OTHER

Caprice and love hide under the same dress.

I wanted to lay my hand on hers. She took it away, and I had but a finger, but I pressed it unresisted.

THE LITTLE ONE

Here are other flowers.

THE OTHER

They will fade too.

HE

No, they will not fade.

THE LITTLE ONE

There, you see.

I

I have needed this diversion, my friend, to accustom myself to your discourse.

HE

Yes, you are a man, and such you will remain. It is necessary that you should remain a man.

I

Shall I not become superior to other men, when I have heard, when I have understood?

HE

Yes, if you understand.

I

The Christian phase, then, has been an error of humanity?

HE

Humanity has never lived but in error, and, besides, there is no truth, since the world is perpetually changing. You have acquired the notion of evolution, which, within certain limits, is correct, but you have wished at the same time to preserve the notion of truth: that is contradictory. If you were to succeed in constructing, in your intellect, a true image of the world, it would be already untrue for your grandchildren. For, if the world evolves, you likewise evolve, and man, from one generation to another, is not the same man. You ceaselessly struggle to find the likeness of the old man in the portrait of the child. It is a game. After all, it is something for you to do.

I

Yes, the search for truth is one of the great occupations of men. One is held happy when one has found it; and, if one is unable to find it oneself, one shares in a neighbour's discovery. The neighbour never refuses. This need of truth torments men about the time that their carnal passions let them rest.

HE

Nature was cruel in allowing her creatures to survive the period of physical expansion. But of this very cruelty you have taken advantage, and I think that many old men among you are happier than many of the young. In Truth, at last, they find a faithful mistress.

As he said this, I could not prevent myself from glancing at the young woman whom I have called "The Other." She looked at me, too, but lowered her eyes, blushing.

HE

I cannot modify even for an instant the form of your human brain, the habits of your understanding. That is why I enter into all your fantasies of language, and use even your abstract words. Do not let that dupe you. It is not approval. Truth is an illusion, and illusion is a truth.

I

None the less, your presence here, your words....

HE

You will no longer believe in me when you no longer see me, and you will never know if this night, this winter night, clear and warm as a summer morning, if this night of happiness was a truth or an illusion.

It seemed to me, for the space of less than a second, that the whole spectacle before me went back into the nothingness of dreams, but my eyes, that I had not closed, found the light again, and I was comforted.

HE

I shall, then, not tell you the truth, because no concordance is possible between your mind, served by your senses, and that which is outside your senses. There is a representation; it is inexact, because it is fragmentary and momentary. A few little cubes of mosaic have fallen from the vault; you put them in the palm of your hand, you set their tints side by side, and you believe you have reconstructed the drama of the world. I shall not tell you the truth; I shall tell you what you wish to know. When you know it, you will know no more of it, but you will be satisfied.

I

Master of enigmas and of parables....

HE

The gospels, my gospels! Poor and happy books! What a strange fate had these pious dreams of some Jews disturbed by drunken prophets! Imposture has made in them such naïve arabesques with faith! Have you read the Acts of the Apostles? It is not as good as "Aladdin and the Marvellous Lamp," but how moving it is! These men touch God with their hands. And it is pastoral and fairy tale at once. It is a pantheism of ingenuous conjurors. Behold me a carpenter, a fisherman, a prophet, a magician; I am hanged and buried; I am resuscitated and mount to heaven; thence I re-descend in the form of tongues of fire. I am one, I am two, I am three; I am a dove, I am a lamb, I am God, and all at once. And the nations understand; the doctors explain. Everybody believes. Truth reigns. Happiness is poured into pacified hearts.

I

Is not that what you intended?

HE

Jesus, whom I inspired with some elementary ideas, made a mistake in taking twelve disciples. He would have done wrong to take a single one. My ideas, falling into these twelve heads, became twelve different kinds of folly. It was then that I interested myself in Paul. It was too late. Besides, I abandoned him almost at once. None the less, the Church that he founded has become a curious institution.

I

Men have thought it divine.

HE

For nearly twenty centuries I have watched with sorrow its ironical development. It has made me curse, it has made me scorn....

I

It has also made you love.

HE

With what love! Ah! my beautiful feast-days of Ephesus and Corinth!

I

What are you saying?

HE

You hear in this moment the confession of a god. A moment unique in your life, and rare in the life of humanity. Take the hand of your friend, and carry it to your lips. You will listen to me more wisely if your heart is at peace. Call her Elise; she will answer your smile with a smile.

I obeyed with joy. Elise let me take her hand, and I tenderly kissed it. Her friend watched us with an air of kindly complicity. Delightful betrothal!

I

I love you, Elise. Do you love me?

ELISE

I love you, my friend. But give me my hand again, that I may arrange these flowers for the feast-day of our hearts. Let us listen to our master and be wise.

I let fall Elise's hand, after kissing it once more. A very sweet smile thanked me, and I saw, under the white robe, her bosom swell with love.

The little one, tired of running about, had sat down on a low chair, leaning her head against the knees of her comrade, who, absently, was playing with her yellow hair. My master, his eyes on this charming picture, whose emotion he seemed to make his own, said nothing. After several moments of a silence that enriched my life, he spoke again:--

HE

If I have sometimes come to visit men, it has been for love of their women. Not that, like the gods whose stories are written by the poets, I desire a multiplicity of embraces. I come less to love than to let myself be loved. I belong to those who wish to make me theirs, and I make myself for their hearts the ideal man whom earth refuses them.

For you have created woman, you men, and you have remained inferior to your creation. You have not known how to acquire the gifts that would have completed the miracle, and your loves are always lame. You take, and you do not give; you impoverish the fields that are fertilised by your desire, and the women you have loved die of thirst as they look at the dryness of your eyes.

All three were listening, very attentively. Elise, however, was good enough to take my fingers and press them, while her two friends rose, and were going to kiss the hand of the master. But he opened his arms, and they fell on his breast as fall two flowers plucked by the wind. Elise and I watched with pleasure this charming episode, and I said to myself, naïvely: "He welcomes these two women as he would have welcomed all women, and I understand that he can belong at the same time to all at once and to each one in particular." Elise's hand, meanwhile, began to grow restless in mine. She said in a whisper and unevenly, these enigmatic words:--

ELISE

Friend, friend, are we not more beautiful than women?