by Edgar Quinet
2.
And truly, nothing about you pleases me entirely, except for your war-horses. When one lays a hand on them, those old chargers, who remember what bloody grass they have eaten, cry again: “Take me to graze on a field of glory.” But you, without saying anything, take them by the bridle along a road where a crop of shame is growing, of which they want neither the grain nor the straw. Men of Lodi, of Castiglione, of Marengo, where are you? Emerge from the earth. You have gone to bed an hour too soon. Come and execute the task that your children have not the heart to finish. Cold as you are, pale as death has made you, it is the least that you owe your sons.
3.
For, in my opinion, your greatest mistake is this: to have twice allowed this great country to be surrounded, tormented and foraged by your evil enemies; seeing that it would have been better to have rendered your souls to the last, men and children two months old, and all served together as prey for crows, than to have such an insult on the body. And again, I will tell you that I would prefer, personally, to see half of your cities still deserted to this day, overthrown by flame and battle, but with souls armored and barded with hope in the little that remained, than all your cities standing with strong bastions and well-aligned walls, but with all hearts sick to death, on seeing the insult posted in their squares, parading their defeat.
4.
As it is necessary, however, I want to salute the soil of France that nourishes you. Salutations to its four rivers, all full to the brim, to its cities full to the rooftops with men valiant in anger, to its furrows of wheat, of oats, well nourished for a hundred years by a hundred armies of warriors fallen thereon. Salutations to its roads, powdered by the dust of empires, to its forests of birches that still shiver on the eve of the great battle, to its houses of straw where its Emperor once set on the bench, when he said to the world, on the day when he distributed alms: “Heads or tails! The world or Saint Helena!”
5.
After the salute come the vows. To the country that I am contemplating, to the sky that I envy, to the field that I fertilize, I wish a bright sun to warm her, and two morning stars, one that scintillates to light her, the other that mourns to moisten her with its dew! In war, may her pike be trenchant, high, firm and sure; may the point of her sword cry out in the scabbard; may her blood grease the axle and wheels of her chariot! In peace may her shuttle weave her clothing tirelessly, and may her horse draw the ploughshare on its fertile travels from Burgundy to Brittany, from where the Ain makes and unmakes its litter to where the Rhone chews on its bit. To make her enclosure more secure, may the river that flows toward Cologne give her its fresher and more beautiful bank, with the castles, balconies and turrets, and the women who bathe in it! On for your part, in your Alpine aerie, eagle of Austria, let your claws fall on thatched villages lost in the clouds, crumbling mountains, forests, snows, with which to make a nest for your eaglets.
6.
My God! France, sweet France, flower of heaven sown on earth, you have already cost me, without knowing it, tears that no one can give back to me! Beautiful boat without an oarsman, for which I have waited in the dark night until morning many a time, hoping for nothing more than to find you alone on your bank! Beautiful bird with golden claws, how often have I looked out of my window to see whether your wing was broken when the window brought a feather from your breast! As a small child, barefoot in the rain, I followed your great battalions beyond the frontier in the direction of Cologne, and your soldiers have taken me in their arms to enable me to touch, fearlessly, the mane of your war-horse. Oh, why did they give me, when I was hungry, their bread to eat, better than my father and my mother, if it was to hear, from the other side of the barrier: Hola! Are these bourgeois of the city really the people who, yesterday, trampled their blood in their vat at Rivoli, and took twenty steps without trembling on the Bridge of Arcole?
7.
For you I have made vows, for you I shall mourn. The earth is fretful; it no longer knows what to do, since your Emperor no longer remains hidden, to amuse itself beneath a flap of his glory. Since your name no longer covers the Babel of the world, every man who passes by, every worker who goes forth whistling, has a different name on his lips; if one says “empire,” another replies “smoke,” if “flower,” “thorn,” if “cup,” lees,” if “honey,” “venom.” Where one wants balm, another throws his poison, and if I cry “world” or “universe” someone takes up “mud” or “ashes, master—as your choose.”
FIRST SECTION OF THE CHORUS
The past has balconies and arched windows that are crumbling. Master, rebuild its ruin.
SECOND SECTION OF THE CHORUS
The present is mud. Knead your pinnacle and your threshold from it at your leisure.
FIRST SECTION OF THE CHORUS
Don’t speak, you. You don’t know what I am.
SECOND SECTION OF THE CHORUS
Nor you what I am.
THE ENTIRE CHORUS
1.
Neither you, not him, what I will be. Go to your discords without troubling me; I shall make my harmony. Back, though, your vile generations, lashed in being born, in your own houses, with the foreigner’s whip! From you, nor them, I only want your children, the only wealth that you have not yet soiled.
2.
France without fear, nest of courage and not cowardice, listen to me; lady of true beauty, it is getting late, so get out of bed, in order that the world might attach its strings to your shoes. At the ball, it is necessary to lead you in the dance, not the dead but the living; not bourgeois, but empires. Dust of men, dust of kings, dust of gods, dust of nothing, have no fear of trampling us; laughing, crush beneath your feet our regrets, our desires, our terrors and our hopes, fallen from their stems. The undressed Orient awaits you without moving; America too is ready; and tomorrow, and always, cause the round-dance of nations to turn around us, beneath the harmony of your sky.
3.
But you, kings coifed with rubies, the fête is not for you. What have I done to you that you have betrayed me so vilely? I have given you wine, you have returned the lees; I have given you bread, you have returned ashes; I have given you my flower, you have returned the thorn. At present your mare no longer wants a rider; you have used your spurs to excess. In her quivering mouth the bit has broken. Whinnying, she is dragging you along an ensorcelled road into her pasturage, where nothing serves to stroke her rump. There you shall learn, in your turn, how many hairs on a discrowned head can turn white overnight; you shall see whether the spur of exile was gentle, and whether the evil of countries only takes the evildoers to heart; you shall see whether it is good, foreigner, to stammer a strange language, with the result that, when you ask for oil for your wound, you are given salt and vinegar. Today your table is full; tomorrow you shall barter your crown with passers-by for a piece of barley or oat bread; and some of you shall encounter others on your path, and you shall sit down, pale, to weep together, not as kings but as serfs.
4.
That, spectators, bourgeois, merchants, citizens, is what I have to say about that which concerns you. Time is pressing; I can say no more. Do not listen to those who speak to you in a different way; remove them from your assemblies and your governments, and regard them as wicked enemies; for if you follow other advice than mine, you will regret it, and the commonweal will perish; on the contrary, if you do as I say, I will hold you up as just people, glorious and reasonable.
And now, without turning round, listen to the fourth day, you who are interested in the conclusion of this Mystery.
THE THIRD DAY
DEATH
I.
Inside a city on the banks of the Rhine
CHORUS OF WORKERS IN THE STREET
From forest to forest,
Forever I shall march
The last judgment
Will end my torment.
A WORKMAN
It’s getting dark; let’s go. Go to bed, Fritz. Adieu, friends. Here’s the watchman coming
down from his door with his iron-bound rod.
THE WATCHMAN
Go home, gentlemen; cover your fire with ashes, in order that no misfortune will occur.
CHORUS OF WORKMEN, moving away
The last judgment
Will end my torment.
THE WATCHMAN, alone on the bank of the Rhine
I’ve seen the Rhône when it descends from the Alps; it’s a chamois that bounds over the rocks, fleeing the hunter. I’ve seen the Necker when it dries up in the sand; it’s a work-horse dying under the whip at its master’s gate. I’ve seen the Danube when it turns back in order to gaze at Ulm cathedral twice; it’s the noble archbishop’s silver crosier, gleaming and twisting in the sunlight. But neither the chamois on the rock, nor the archbishop’s crosier, not the horse at its master’s gate gives me as much pleasure as an evening on the bank of the Rhine.
Listen, my bagpipe is ready to resonate! Midnight has chimed, thank the Lord and the Virgin Mary. The Rhine also knows me with my trumpet; it’s me who sends it to sleep at the foot of towers, next to boats, around islets; it’s me who wakes it up, once every ten years, when it changes its bed like a bourgeois coming home at midnight by the side door. For curtains it has a forest of chestnut-trees; for litter, it has white shells, and a mountain ready to stand on its head.
The shadow of ensorcelled towers sobs today in each of your waves, my old Rhine. Is that a phantom swimming in your dream, the sound of grass in the woods, of rain in the grottoes, or is it halting speech in the dream of the stars, like the words one hears at every door as soon as a city goes to sleep? The moon, the king of watchmen, knows better than me. Here he is, emerging from his hut with his bagpipe and his silver staff, to go and cry the hour in the city of the heavens.
KING DAGOBERT,14 at the window of his tower
Kindly watchman, lower your voice. The queen is asleep at his hour in her solid gold bed. My lamp has gone out; I’ve put on my scarlet cloak by moonlight and my brass crown, to watch you go by. Tell me what can be seen at midnight in my kingdom.
THE WATCHMAN
On the mountain there’s a castle; in the castle there are three towers; in each tower there’s a phantom: in the first, Herrmann is leaning on the balcony with a blue doublet and a toque the color of fire; he’s gazing at the Rhine; in the second, Dietrich is leaning out of the window like the branch of a pear-tree, looking toward the town; in the third, our lord the Emperor has been asleep for a hundred years on his elbow; his russet bead has pierced his stone table and would seven times around it; his sword is hanging from the wall like birch-twig.
THE KING
Let him sleep. Look at the foot of the castle; do you see a forester’s house? There’s an owl on its roof; it screeches day and night. The leaves of the trees rattle on the door in summer like the footsteps of skeletons coming back from the dance of the dead.
THE WATCHMAN
I’ve seen the forester’s house. There are three steps leading up to the door. On the window-sill there are wallflowers growing pale and carnations going green. A stork has built its nest around the chimney. Under the roof, the walls are painted as red as a gleaner’s dress.
THE KING
My kingdom is very large, its limit can’t be seen from the highest stairway of the tallest church. The starlings, when their wings go gray, and the crows, when their beaks go yellow, come to tell me where it ends. Well, there aren’t two woodcutters in my kingdom like the one who comes down those three steps every day. Have you encountered an old woman with a limp who goes out to collect dead wood? At midnight, when she goes home, I’ve seen her from my perron carrying beneath her apron a scepter of fleurs-de-lis, three archbishop’s and papal crosiers. If that’s the widow of a forester, tell me the name of the wood where fleur-de-lis scepters grow in the earth, and where the woodcutter cuts the silver crosiers of archbishops or popes from the green branch.
THE WATCHMAN
I’ve encountered two women in the forester’s house. The older is wrinkled; all day long she spins, with her feet in the ashes; the younger one sings with the starling. They came at Christmas in a pilgrim’s boat. They’re worthy women who don’t neglect the sacraments. They always have a silver coin when the monk comes to make the collection. May God reward them!
SAINT ELIGIUS
Oh, my king, you have woken me up beneath my awning. Have no fear. What you have seen is a dream you had in your solid gold bed, Go up to your throne; I shall explain. The old woman who looks for dead wood in her apron is the Church, which rises from its bed to save the faithful. The gilded scepter is the soul it finds, lost beneath the dew in the undergrowth. The forester’s house with three steps is heaven, where the Eternal Father is seated. The leaves that rattle are the world moaning. The owl that screeches on the roof is Christ, who calls from the height of paradise to the soul gone astray and belated in its path.
THE KING
Great saint, I know that you have more wisdom than all the long-haired kings have beneath their crowns. It was a dream, I believe, but a dream that resembled what one sees while awake. My God, what has become of the times when we hunted without a care in your goldsmith’s shop for my shiny crown, my holy cope and my horse’s shoes? Since then, my crown has tarnished in the mist and my bay horse has lost his golden horseshoes in the forest of Ardennes; oh, the earth has grown old, Saint Eligius, like my crumbling castle; our fleshless towers, open to the wind, are great skeletons that wear crows of crenellations on their heads. The end of the world is nigh.
Look! Our cathedrals have dressed in black one after another, like kneeling mourners clad in crepe at a graveside. The stars, weary of shining, are golden bees tarnishing on the Lord’s royal cloak. While awaiting the last judgment, the dead are lifting up the grass of the cemetery with their fingernails, in order to be ready for the first blast of the trumpet. Those who have heard the watchman’s bagpipe are already sitting down at the crossroads and leaning over the balconies of castles. The Angel of Death is beating his wings against the stained-glass windows of churches; he will efface with the breath of his mouth their vermilion cloaks and their purple robes.
SAINT ELIGIUS
As you have said, O King, our best days are past. The world today is a great mass for the dead. The earth is the coffin suspended in the nave. The long-haired kings lead the mourning. When the peoples have wept on the day when they are to weep, the evening stars and the waters that murmur in the night will say once again: Miserere. Hold firm in your hand, without weakening, your scepter and your orb, as I shall hold on to my holy palm, in order that the Angel of Death, when he cries at your door, will recognize you without delay, and lead you to the crystal niche that he has built to await you on a rock in Jehosophat.
THE KING
Let us go and see, through her silver curtains, whether the queen is still asleep. Stand guard well, Watchman. I’m going back into my nave with Saint Eligius.
(They go.)
II.
A dark house at a crossroads.
Death, under the name of Mob, an old woman, is warming herself in the ashes. Rachel, the young woman who lives with her is the fallen angel who was beside Christ’s cradle during the scene of the Mage-Kings.
MOB
Where’s my apron, Rachel? Bring me some dead wood to warm up my skeleton. While you’re chirping there with your starling, my knees are trembling, my teeth are chattering and my hands are shivering. I’ve covered a lot of ground tonight. I watched for three hours at a pope’s bedside; I’ve brought his miter with a little ash. Here’s a ducal crown; here’s a baron’s ermine mantle. Hide them in my dresser with this urn, in which they put their tears. I’ve only slept for an hour; that was on the knees of a fiancé with brown hair; without knowing it, he filled my empty orbits with his tears, and polished the bones of my forehead like ivory with the coals of his lips. For your festival day, I’ve brought you a bouquet of lilacs from a newly-wed I led to the ball by the hand. Oh, my life is a party once I’ve gone down the thre
e steps at our door. My horse doesn’t touch the ground with his hooves. The leaves on the trees wither as he breathes, and fall to make his path. The wind carried me wherever I wish. The stars twinkle, the sea falls silent like a vulture chick in its nest; the bells open their mouths and say to the towers: “Listen! Here she comes, our queen, passing under the porch.”
RACHEL
Is that what you call a party? Holy angels, come to my aid.
MOB
Patience, daughter, I know full well that you haven’t always been with old Mob. Before being an Angel of Death, placed at my door to keep me company in my ashes in the evenings, you too were an angel with diaphanous wings. What has become of the time when you got up evening and morning to bring white bread to the gryphons crouching beside the Lord? Do you remember the songs with which you were able then, with the bow of your viol, to wake the angels and souls in their niches in the cloud? Tell me, do you recall the azure meadows to which you went every year to sow blossoming words, as I sow the ashes of my apron behind me here; when you spun threads of light at your door, and your spindle, as it plunged into the abyss, wound up a blessed star that spun until morning, suspended from your golden distaff? Do you remember when the bells of heaven called you by name, and the little angels clung on to the hem of your robe, laughing, to enter the city of God with you?