Suddenly they heard the clatter of footsteps in the corridors outside. The tension became unbearable.
Then, in came the head – Mannaeï holding it aloft by the hair and proudly acknowledging the applause which greeted him.
He put it on a plate and gave it to Salome, who carried it nimbly up the steps to the balcony.
A few minutes later, the head was brought back, carried by the old woman that the Tetrarch had noticed sitting on the roof of a house that morning and again later, in Herodias' room.
Antipas stepped back so as not to see it. Vitellius gave it a cursory glance.
Mannaeï stepped down from the platform and displayed the head to the Roman captains, and then to everyone who was dining on that side of the hall.
They all had a close look at it.
The sharp blade of the sword, as it was brought down on to the head, had sliced into the jaw. The corners of the mouth were drawn back in a grimace. The beard was spattered with clots of already congealed blood. The closed eyelids were as pale as shells. The head was bathed in the light of the candelabra that shone around it.
It was brought to the table where the priests were sitting. One of the Pharisees turned it over to have a closer look at it. Mannaeï set it upright again and placed it in front of Aulus, who woke up with a start. From between their lashes, the eyes of the dead man and the eyes of the sluggard seemed to be saying something to each other.
Finally Mannaeï presented the head to Antipas. Tears were streaming down the Tetrarch's face.
The torches were extinguished. The guests left, leaving only Antipas in the hall. He stood with his head in his hands, still gazing at the severed head. In the centre of the great nave, Phanuel, with his arms extended, muttered prayers to himself.
Just as the sun was rising, two men, who had been sent off in search of information by Jokanaan some time before, returned with the long-awaited news.
They confided it to Phanuel, who was overjoyed.
Then he showed them the gruesome object on the plate among the remains of the banquet. One of the men said:
‘Have no fear! He has gone down among the dead to proclaim the coming of Christ!’
And then the Essene understood the meaning of the words: ‘If his reign is to come, mine must end.’
They picked up Jokanaan's head and all three went off in the direction of Galilee.
Because the head was very heavy, they took it in turns to carry it.
Notes
A SIMPLE HEART
1. just one hundred francs a year: Félicité's very modest earnings are the equivalent of around £1,000 a year. Her mistress's annual income from farm rents is the equivalent of £50,000 a year.
2. Pont-l'Evêque… Toucques and Geffosses: The tale is set in the landscape of Flaubert's childhood, a small area just inland from the seaside village of Trouville, on the Normandy coast. Place-names and topographical details are all authentic. Precise imaginative reminiscence lends this tale its special richness of feeling.
3. The clock… designed to look like a Temple of Vesta: The Temple of Vesta stood near the river Tiber in Rome. It was a relatively modest circular building with a shallow conical roof and twenty slender fluted columns with Corinthian capitals. The temple housed the sacred hearth where the Vestal Virgins kept an eternal fire burning. In this context, the clock is a fine example of bourgeois neo-classical style.
4. etchings by Audran: Jean Audran (1667–1756) produced engraved copies of paintings by Italian and French masters. In this context, his etchings signify good taste.
5. thirty sous: The equivalent of about £5.
6. his parents had paid for someone else to do his military service: Military service was decided by annual lottery. It was customary, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, for young men who drew a high number in the lottery to pay for a substitute to do their military service.
7. he would go to the Préfecture: The Préfecture was the centre of local administration. Conscription was organized at the Préfecture.
8. Paul and Virginie: These two names had an archetypal resonance for the nineteenth-century reader. They are taken from Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's bestselling brother-and-sister tale, Paul et Virginie (1787).
9. to play Boston: Boston whist was the eighteenth-century ancestor of bridge.
10. Trouville: A fishing-village on the Normandy coast, Trouville was ‘discovered' in the 1830s and became fashionable with Parisians for its spacious sandy beaches and its cliff walks. When Flaubert was a boy, his family usually spent their summer holidays in Trouville.
11. she had to take Virginie to catechism: Classes of elementary religious education, in preparation for a child's first communion, an important rite of passage.
12. made an altar of repose: During the feast of Corpus Christi, a popular summer festival, the sacrament was paraded through the streets, pausing at a series of temporary altars, all of them elaborately decorated.
13. the Ursuline convent school in Honfleur: Honfleur is 10 miles from Pontl'Evêque, a journey of several hours in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The education of middle-class girls, still in the hands of the Church, was conducted in fiercely conservative convent schools.
14. the Calvary: A large wayside crucifix, like a signpost; in this context the symbol of popular religious devotion.
15 lye: An alkaline solution made with water and vegetable ashes, then used as a detergent.
16. She had a standing arrangement with a job-master: A job-master kept a livery stable, hiring out horses and carriages.
17. the July Revolution: King Charles X, an ultra-royalist, was deposed to great liberal rejoicing in July 1830.
18. terrible atrocities in '93: The year 1793 – forty years ago, in the story – was the year of the Terror, notorious in popular memory for its ruthless political murders.
19. her husband had been promoted to a Préfecture: A Prefect admin-stered a whole region, in the name of central government.
20. and eventually reached Saint-Gatien: Félicité's encounter with the mail-coach is a hidden reference to Flaubert's first epileptic attack, which occurred on the same spot in January 1844.
21. the Comte d'Artois: King Charles X, formerly Comte d'Artois, came to the throne in 1824 and was deposed in 1830.
22. Epinal colour print: Brightly coloured popular prints, often on religious or nationalist themes, they were named after the town of Epinal in north-eastern France.
23. discovered his vocation – the Registry Office!: A very minor civil service post. Paul is being mocked for the modesty of his ambitions.
24. bandeaux: A respectable style, with the hair worn in coils.
25.a pension of three hundred and eighty francs: Less than four years' wages for fifty years of service, implicitly a very meagre bequest.
26. the Holy Sacrament, which was carried by Monsieur le Curé: A respectful reference to the village priest, in surreptitious mimicry of Félicité's pious idiom.
27. ophicleides: A deep wind instrument, like a bass version of the bugle.
THE LEGEND OF SAINT JULIAN HOSPITATOR
A ‘hospitator' is one who provides lodging. The French title refers to Saint Julian as ‘l'Hospitalier’, a term which would normally refer to a religious order such as the Knights Hospitallers. There is no clear evidence in the story or in Flaubert's sources that Julian ever becomes a member of a religious order. Thus the title ‘Hospitator' is unique to him and his chosen mode of penance.
1. mall: Sometimes referred to as ‘pall-mall’, a game in which players, using a mallet, attempt to strike a wooden ball through a suspended iron ring.
2. his vassals: His feudal inferiors, tenants who owed him their allegiance.
3. scallop-shells: The scallop-shell was worn as the badge of a Christian pilgrim who had been to the shrine of St James of Compostela.
4. he would dip into his purse: By thus giving money to the poor, Julian is practising the virtue of charity.
 
; 5. almost exactly as you will find it told in a stained-glass window in a church near to where I was born: There is a Saint Julian window in Rouen cathedral, half a mile from where Flaubert was born. The window tells the story of the saint in an elaborate series of small panels. Flaubert liked to emphasize the discrepancies between the window and his story. He authorized a contemporary edition of this tale with a black-and-white line-drawing of the window. Looking at the image, the reader would be puzzled, asking ‘How on earth did this come from that?’ Above the main door of the same cathedral there is also a bas-relief depicting Salome dancing before Herod.
HERODIAS
‘Herodias' is set in Judaea (southern Palestine) at the time of Jesus' ministry. Subject to Rome, the Jewish people are smouldering with messianic hopes of liberation. Herod-Antipas, their puppet-king, the protagonist of this tale, is scheming to ensure his own political survival. Antipas has divorced his first wife, daughter of the king of the adjacent desert kingdom, in order to marry his niece Herodias, formerly the wife of his half-brother. The marriage has offended his former father-in-law and alienated his Jewish subjects. Jokanaan (John the Baptist), a radical Jewish religious leader, has publicly reproached Antipas for this marriage, insisting that it transgresses Mosaic law. Herodias has pushed her husband into imprisoning Jokanaan. This is the point at which the story begins.
1. citadel of Machaerus: The citadel of Machaerus (present-day Mekaur) is of great political significance. It controls the crossroads between the continents of Asia, Africa and Europe. A symbol of secular power, the citadel is set against the distant vision of the temple in Jerusalem, some 20 miles away across the Dead Sea. Flaubert had seen this exotic landscape at first hand.
2. Perhaps Agrippa had spoken ill of him to the Emperor: Herod Agrippa was a cousin of Antipas. Agrippa lived in Rome and schemed against Antipas.
3. during the reign of King Hyrcanus: Hyrcanus was high priest and ruler of the Jewish nation from 135 to 104 BC.
4. If his reign is to come, mine must end!: See the words of John the Baptist in the Bible: ‘He must increase, but I must decrease' (John 3:30).
5. he wanted Caius to be Emperor: Caius, the future emperor Caligula, was a close friend of Agrippa. As emperor-in-waiting, Caius attracted many plots, and Agrippa was involved in one of these.
6. they saw an Essene coming towards them: Subsequently referred to as Phanuel, the Essene is a member of a Jewish secret society, once thought to be connected with John the Baptist and with Jesus.
7. prophecies made in the time of Nehemiah: Nehemiah lived in the fifth century BC, more than four hundred years earlier. The prophecies said that Elijah would return, bringing the Messiah.
8. Vitellius: As the political representative of Roman power, Vitellius holds the office of proconsul, or provincial governor.
9. laticlave: A badge consisting of two broad purple stripes on the edge of the tunic, worn by senators and others of high rank.
10. great King Herod: Vitellius responds to Antipas' eulogy by praising not Antipas but Antipas' father, King Herod, which amounts to answering a compliment with an insult.
11. ‘Even if you go behind someone else's back?’: Vitellius had concluded a treaty with the king of the Parthians, but Antipas had managed to steal the credit for it.
12. This flower from the gutters of Capri: The Emperor Tiberius had a villa on the island of Capri. It was the scene of notorious orgies, in which Aulus played a prominent role.
13. publicans: Tax-gatherers.
14. velites: Lightly armed soldiers.
15. Aulus could not contain himself: Aulus Vitellius, later emperor (AD 69), was famed for his gluttony.
16. comparing him to the ungodly Ahab: Ahab was king of Israel in the ninth century BC. Ahab's Phoenician queen, Jezebel, antagonized the people by imposing worship of a foreign god, Baal. Ahab was subsequently denounced by the prophet Elijah. See 1 Kings 16–21.
17. Polyclitus: A Greek sculptor of the fifth century BC who specialized in graceful statues of young athletes.
18. his Chaldean name: Chaldea, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, was situated in modern southern Iraq.
19. Elijah: The greatest of the prophets of Israel.
20. In their mind's eye… the widow of Sarepta: Three incidents from the life of Elijah, as recounted in the First Book of Kings. The ravens fed Elijah while he was hiding in the desert. Elijah humiliated the priests of the rival god Baal when Elijah's sacrifice was consumed by fire from heaven after that of Baal's priests failed to ignite. The widow of Sarepta was miraculously able to feed Elijah from her meagre store.
21. Nec crescit… videtur: ‘After death, the body is seen neither to grow nor to remain' (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, iii. 339).
22. they worshipped Moloch: Moloch was a deity to whom child sacrifices were made throughout the ancient Middle East. Mosaic law forbade the Jewish people to worship Moloch.
23. Psyche: In classical mythology, Psyche is the beautiful maiden who wanders the earth in search of her lover Cupid. ‘Psyche' in Greek means ‘soul’. Psyche began to be depicted as a human woman in the fifth century BC; previously the soul had been represented as a bird or a butterfly.
Gustave Flaubert, Three Tales
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