The Temptation of St. Antony

  Then in a whirlwind disappears at the same time, Orthia the sanguinary, Hymnia of Orchomena, the Saphria of the Patræans, Aphia of Ægina, Bendis of Thrace, and Stymphalia with the leg of a bird. Triopas, in place of three eyeballs, has nothing more than three orbits. Erichthonius, with spindle-shanks, crawls like a cripple on his wrists.

  Hilarion—"What happiness, is it not, to see all of them in a state of abjectness and agony? Mount with me on this stone, and you will be like Xerxes reviewing his army.

  "Yonder, at a great distance, in the midst of fogs, do you perceive that giant with yellow beard who lets fall a sword red with blood? He is the Scythian Zalmoxis between two planets—Artimpasa, Venus; and Orsiloche, the Moon.

  "Farther off, emerging out of the pale clouds, are the gods who are adored by the Cimmerians, beyond even Thule!

  "Their great halls were warm, and by the light of the naked swords that covered the vault they drank hydromel in horns of ivory. They ate the liver of the whale in copper plates forged by the demons,[Pg 136] or else they listened to the captive sorcerers sweeping their hands across the harps of stone. They are weary! they are cold! The snow wears down their bearskins, and their feet are exposed through the rents in their sandals.

  "They mourn for the meadows where, upon hillocks of grass, they used to recover breath in the battle, the long ships whose prows cut through the mountains of ice, and the skates they used in order to follow the orbit of the poles while carrying on the extremities of their arms the firmament, which turned around with them."

  A shower of hoar-frost pours down upon them. Antony lowers his glance to the opposite side, and he perceives—outlining themselves in black upon a red background—strange personages with chin-pieces and gauntlets, who throw balls at one another, leap one on top of the other, make grimaces, and dance frantically.

  Hilarion—"These are the gods of Etruria, the innumerable Æsars. Here is Tages, the inventor of auguries. He attempts with one hand to increase the divisions of the heavens, while with the other he leans upon the earth. Let him come back to it!

  "Nortia is contemplating the wall into which she drove nails to mark the number of the years. Its surface is covered and its last period accomplished. Like two travellers driven about by a tempest, Kastur and Polutuk take shelter under the same mantle."

  Antony, closes his eyes—"Enough! Enough!"

  But now through the air with a great noise of wings pass all the Victories of the Capitol, hiding their foreheads in their hands, and losing the trophies suspended from their arms.[Pg 137]

  Janus, master of the twilight, flies away upon a black ram, and of his two faces one is already putrefied, while the other is benumbed with fatigue.

  Summanus—god of the gloomy sky, who no longer has a head—presses against his heart an old cake in the form of a wheel.

  Vesta, under a ruined cupola, tries to rekindle her extinguished lamp.

  Bellona gashes her cheeks without causing the blood, which used to purify her devotees, to flow out.

  Antony—"Pardon! They weary me!"

  Hilarion—"Formerly they used to be entertaining!"

  And he points out to Antony, in a grove of beech-trees a woman perfectly naked—with four paws like a beast—bestridden by a black man holding in each hand a torch.

  "This is the goddess Aricia with the demon Virbius. Her priest, the monarch of the woods, happened to be an assassin; and the fugitive slaves, the despoilers of corpses, the brigands of the Salarian road, the cripples of the Sublician bridge, all the vermin of the garrets of the Suburra, had not dearer devotion!

  "The patrician ladies of Mark Antony's time preferred Libitina."

  And he shows him under the cypresses and rose-trees another woman clothed in gauze. She smiles, though she is surrounded by pickaxes, litters, black hangings, and all the utensils of funerals. Her diamonds glitter from afar among cobwebs. The Larvæ, like skeletons, display their bones amid the branches, and the Lemures, who are phantoms, spread out their bats' wings.[Pg 138]

  On the side of a field the god Terma is bent down, torn asunder, and covered with filth.

  In the midst of a ridge the huge corpse of Vertumnus is being devoured by red dogs. The rustic gods depart weeping, Sartor, Sarrator, Vervactor, Eollina, Vallona, and Hostilenus—all covered with little hooded cloaks, and each bearing a mattock, a fork, a hurdle, and a boar-spear.

  Hilarion—"It was their spirits that made the villa prosper with its dove-cotes, its park for dormice, its poultry-yards protected by snares, and its hot stables embalmed with cedar.

  "They protected all the wretched people who dragged the fetters with their legs over the pebbles of the Sabina, those who called the hogs with the sound of the trumpet, those who gathered the grapes on the tops of the elm-trees, those who drove through the by-roads the asses laden with dung. The husbandman, while he panted over the handle of his plough, prayed to them to strengthen his arms; and the cow-herds, in the shadow of the lime-trees, beside gourds of milk, chanted their eulogies by turns upon flutes of reeds."

  Antony sighs.

  And in the middle of a chamber, upon a platform, a bed of ivory is revealed, surrounded by persons lifting up pine-torches.

  "Those are the gods of marriage. They are awaiting the bride.

  "Domiduca has to lead her in, Virgo to undo her girdle, Subigo to stretch her upon the bed, and Præma to keep back her arms, whispering sweet words in her ear.

  "But she will not come! and they dismiss the others—Nona and Decima, the nurses; the three[Pg 139] Nixii, who are to deliver her; the two wet-nurses, Educa and Potina; and Carna, the cradle-rocker, whose bunch of hawthorns drives away bad dreams from the infant. Later, Ossipago will have strengthened its knees, Barbatus will have given the beard, Stimula the first desires, and Volupia the first enjoyment; Fabulinus will have taught it how to speak, Numera how to count, Cam[oe]na how to sing, and Consus how to think."

  The chamber is empty, and there remains no longer at the side of the bed anyone but Nænia—a hundred years old—muttering to herself the lament which she poured forth on the death of old men.

  But soon her voice is lost amid bitter cries, which come from the domestic lares, squatted at the end of the atrium, clad in dogs' skins, with flowers around their bodies, holding their closed hands up to their cheeks, and weeping as much as they can.

  "Where is the portion of food which is given to us at each meal, the good attentions of maid-servant, the smile of the matron, and the gaiety of the little boys playing with huckle-bones on the mosaic of the courtyard? Then, when they have grown big, they hang over our breasts their gold or leather bullæ.

  "What happiness, when, on the evening of a triumph, the master, returning home, turned towards us his humid eyes! He told the story of his contests, and the narrow house was more stately than a palace, and more sacred than a temple.

  "How pleasant were the repasts of the family, especially the day after the Feralia! The feeling of tenderness towards the dead dispelled all discords; and people embraced one another, drinking to the glories of the past, and to the hopes of the future.[Pg 140]

  "But the ancestors in painted wax, shut up behind us, became gradually covered with mouldiness. The new races, to punish us for their own deceptions, have broken our jaws; and under the rats' teeth our bodies of wood have crumbled away."

  And the innumerable gods, watching at the doors, in the kitchen, in the cellar, and in the stoves, disperse on all sides, under the appearance of enormous ants running away, or huge butterflies on the wing.

  Then a thunderclap.

  A voice—"I was the God of armies, the Lord, the Lord God!

  "I have unfolded on the hills the tents of Jacob, and nourished in the sands my fugitive people. It was I who burned Sodom! It was I who engulfed the earth beneath the Deluge! It was I who drowned Pharaoh, with the royal princes, the war-chariots, and the charioteers. A jealous God, I execrated the other gods. I crushed the impure; I overthrew the proud; and my desolation rushe
d to right and left, like a dromedary let loose in a field of maize.

  "To set Israel free, I chose the simple. Angels, with wings of flame, spoke to them in the bushes.

  "Perfumed with spikenard, cinnamon, and myrrh, with transparent robes and high-heeled shoes, women of intrepid heart went forth to slay the captains. The passing wind bore away the prophets.

  "I engraved my law on tablets of stone. It shut in my people as in a citadel. They were my people. I was their God! The earth was mine, and men were mine, with their thoughts, their works, the implements with which they tilled the soil, and their posterity.

  "My ark rested in a triple sanctuary, behind purple curtains and flaming lamps. For my ministry I[Pg 141] had an entire tribe, who swung the censers, and the high-priest in a robe of hyacinth, and wearing precious stones upon his breast arranged in regular order.

  "Woe! woe! The Holy of Holies is flung open; the veil is rent; the odours of the holocaust are scattered to all the winds. The jackals whine in the sepulchres; my temple is destroyed; my people are dispersed!

  "They have strangled the priests with the cords of their vestments. The women are captives; the sacred vessels are all melted down!"

  The voice, dying away:

  "I was the God of armies, the Lord, the Lord God!" Then comes an appalling silence, a profound darkness.

  Antony—"They are all gone!"

  "I remain!" says some one.

  And, face to face with him stands Hilarion, but transfigured—beautiful as an archangel, luminous as a sun, and so tall that, in order to see him, Antony lifts up his head—"Who, then, are you?"

  Hilarion—"My kingdom is as wide as the universe, and my desire has no limits. I am always going about enfranchising the mind and weighing the worlds, without hate, without fear, without love, and without God. I am called Science."

  Antony, recoiling backwards—"You must be, rather, the Devil!"

  Hilarion, fixing his eyes upon him—"Do you wish to see him?"

  Antony no longer avoids his glance. He is seized with curiosity concerning the Devil. His terror increases; his longing becomes measureless.[Pg 142]

  "If I saw him, however—if I saw him?" ... Then, in a spasm of rage:

  "The horror that I have of him will rid me of him forever. Yes!"

  A cloven foot reveals itself. Antony is filled with regret. But the Devil overshadows him with his horns, and carries him off.[Pg 143]

  * * *

  CHAPTER VI.

  The Mystery of Space.

  E flies under Antony's body, extended like a swimmer; his two great wings, outspread, entirely concealing him, resemble a cloud.

  Antony—"Where am I going? Just now I caught a glimpse of the form of the Accursèd One. No! a cloud is carrying me away. Perhaps I am dead, and am mounting up to God? ...

  "Ah! how well I breathe! The untainted air inflates my soul. No more heaviness! no more suffering!

  "Beneath me, the thunderbolt darts forth, the horizon widens, rivers cross one another. That light spot is the desert; that pool of water the ocean. And other oceans appear—immense regions of which I had no knowledge. There are black lands that smoke like live embers, a belt of snow ever obscured by the mists. I am trying to discover the mountains where each evening the sun goes to sleep."

  The Devil—"The sun never goes to sleep!"

  Antony is not startled by this voice. It appears to him an echo of his thought—a response of his memory.[Pg 144]

  Meanwhile, the earth takes the form of a ball, and he perceives it in the midst of the azure turning on its poles while it winds around the sun.

  The Devil—"So, then, it is not the centre of the world? Pride of man, humble thyself!"

  Antony—"I can scarcely distinguish it now. It is intermingled with the other fires. The firmament is but a tissue of stars."

  They continue to ascend.

  "No noise! not even the crying of the eagles! Nothing! ... and I bend down to listen to the music of the spheres."

  The Devil—"You cannot hear them! No longer will you see the antichthon of Plato, the focus of Philolaüs, the spheres of Aristotle, or the seven heavens of the Jews with the great waters above the vault of crystal!"

  Antony—"From below it appeared as solid as a wall. But now, on the contrary, I am penetrating it; I am plunging into it!"

  And he arrives in front of the moon—which is like a piece of ice, quite round, filled with a motionless light.

  The Devil—"This was formerly the abode of souls. The good Pythagoras had even supplied it with birds and magnificent flowers."

  Antony—"I see nothing there save desolate plains, with extinct craters, under a black sky.

  "Come towards those stars with a softer radiance, so that we may gaze upon the angels who hold them with the ends of their arms, like torches!"

  The Devil carries him into the midst of the stars.

  "They attract one another at the same time that they repel one another. The action of each has an[Pg 145] effect on the others, and helps to produce their movements—and all this without the medium of an auxiliary, by the force of a law, by the virtue simply of order."

  Antony—"Yes ... yes! my intelligence grasps it! It is a joy greater than the sweetness of affection! I pant with stupefaction before the immensity of God!"

  The Devil—"Like the firmament, which rises in proportion as you ascend, He will become greater according as your imagination mounts higher; and you will feel your joy increase in proportion to the unfolding of the universe, in this enlargement of the Infinite."

  Antony—"Ah! higher! ever higher!"

  The stars multiply and shed around their scintillations. The Milky Way at the zenith spreads out like an immense belt, with gaps here and there; in these clefts, amid its brightness, dark tracts reveal themselves. There are showers of stars, trains of golden dust, luminous vapours which float and then dissolve.

  Sometimes a comet sweeps by suddenly; then the tranquillity of the countless lights is renewed.

  Antony, with open arms, leans on the Devil's two horns, thus occupying the entire space covered by his wings. He recalls with disdain the ignorance of former days, the limitation of his ideas. Here, then, close beside him, were those luminous globes which he used to gaze at from below. He traces the crossing of their paths, the complexity of their directions. He sees them coming from afar, and, suspended like stones in a sling, describing their orbits and pushing forward their parabolas.[Pg 146]

  He perceives, with a single glance, the Southern Cross and the Great Bear, the Lynx and the Centaur, the nebulæ of the Gold-fish, the six suns in the constellation of Orion, Jupiter with his four satellites, and the triple ring of the monstrous Saturn! all the planets, all the stars which men should, in future days, discover! He fills his eyes with their light; he overloads his mind with a calculation of their distances;—then he lets his head fall once more.

  "What is the object of all this?"

  The Devil—"There is no object!

  "How could God have had an object? What experience could have enlightened Him, what reflection enabled Him to judge? Before the beginning of things, it would not have operated, and now it would be useless."

  Antony—"Nevertheless, He created the world, at one period of time, by His mere word!"

  The Devil—"But the beings who inhabit the earth came there successively. In the same way, in the sky, new stars arise—different effects from various causes."

  Antony—"The variety of causes is the will of God!"

  The Devil—"But to admit in God several acts of will is to admit several causes, and thus to destroy His unity!

  "His will is not separable from His essence. He cannot have a second will, inasmuch as He cannot have a second essence—and, since He exists eternally, He acts eternally.

  "Look at the sun! From its borders escape great flames emitting sparks which scatter themselves to become new worlds; and, further than the last, beyond those depths where only night is visible, other[Pg 147] suns whir
l round, and behind these others again, and others still, to infinity ..."

  Antony—"Enough! enough! I am terrified! I am about to fall into the abyss."

  The Devil stops, and gently balancing himself—

  "There is no such thing as nothingness! There is no vacuum! Everywhere there are bodies moving over the unchangeable realms of space—and, as if it had any bounds it would not be space but a body, it consequently has no limits!"

  Antony, open-mouthed—"No limits!"

  The Devil—"Ascend into the sky forever and ever, and you will never reach the top! Descend beneath the earth for millions upon millions of centuries, and you will never get to the bottom—inasmuch as there is no bottom, no top, no end, above or below; and space is, in fact, comprised in God, who is not a part of space, of a magnitude that can be measured, but immensity!"

  Antony, slowly—"Matter, in that case, would be part of God?"

  The Devil—"Why not? Can you tell where He comes to an end?"

  Antony—"On the contrary, I prostrate myself, I efface myself before His power!"

  The Devil—"And you pretend to move Him! You speak to Him, you even adorn Him with virtues—goodness, justice, clemency,—in place of recognising the fact that He possesses all perfections!

  "To conceive anything beyond is to conceive God outside of God. Being outside of Being. But then He is the only Being, the only Substance.

  "If substance could be divided, it would lose its nature—it would not be itself; God would no longer[Pg 148] exist. He is, therefore, indivisible as well as infinite, and if He had a body, He would be made up of parts. He would no longer be one; He would no longer be infinite. Therefore, He is not a person!"

  Antony—"What? My prayers, my sobs, the sufferings of my flesh, the transports of my zeal, all these things would be no better than a lie ... in space ... uselessly—like a bird's cry, like a whirlwind of dead leaves!"

  He weeps.

  "Oh! no! There is above everything some One, a Great Spirit, a Lord, a Father, whom my heart adores, and who must love me!"