by Edgar Quinet
5.
The universe! You have forgotten, perhaps, that it is extinguished at every breath. That drop of water on your lips will dry up. Today or tomorrow, Rachel will die. Of the eternity that burns in your breast you would give her half, but you do not have an hour to lend her. She cannot take you with her in her death; you cannot take her with you in your life. More alone, more accursed, you will walk your blind alley. When you return to her city, the heather will bar your way, and the thorns on the bushes will ask you: “Where has she gone, the woman who said she loved you, who was worth more than the centuries and empires that have scorned you?”
XI.
MOB
Forgive me for entering without knocking; I thought I heard you sobbing; I’ve made you a drink that will calm your down.
AHASUERUS
You take care of me too well, truly; I’m confused by your generosity.
MOB
Is there still that same anguish in the heart? Two grains of foxglove will cure you. The specific is infallible; I know that from experience.
AHASUERUS
Such hospitality is found nowhere but here; but reassure yourself, the sobs you heard came from an excess of joy.
MOB
Joy, dolor—it’s forgivable, isn’t it, to confuse them? Why do they have the same cry? I’ve been deceived by that before, and I’ve often given the same remedy for the two fits.
AHASUERUS
What you say, my dear, is truer than you know; but without wanting to, you’re renewing all my pain.
MOB
Forgive me; my intentions were good. Alas, all men nowadays are made like you. What has become of the iron armor of their fathers? In their bosom, they all have a wound; one can’t touch them without wrenching a cry from them; lips wound them, a word kills them.
AHASUERUS
Be sure that my pain is sincere, and that you would take pity on it if you knew it.
MOB
My God! I share it in advance. I’m racking my brains to find you a remedy. Could you not try traveling? A change of air might dissipate your melancholy. It was my great resource when I was young: for every pain in the heart, a new climate; nothing but the dust on my road was already doing me good.
AHASUERUS
Sometimes, in the depths of the soul, there is a void that the dust of all the worlds would be insufficient to fill; I have experience of it. And then again, where would I go?
MOB
The Orient is very beautiful, the Occident no less so. The sun warms up the heart, but the moon chills it again. In truth, I no longer know what advice to give you.
AHASUERUS
I thought, at first, that I might find some consolation by devoting myself to poetry.
MOB
Bravo! It’s the art that I would have liked to cultivate, if I’d been left free to do so. To hurl fine words into the bright light, to dress with phrases a shadow, a skeleton, less than that—a mere nothing. A hairdresser of rhymes, a hunter of adverbs, a plume-maker of adjectives, a powderer of commas: what a faculty in a man, Monsieur! And think that everything obeys him, primarily that which is not! To plunge into the transparent ocean of things in order to fish up the sky and bring back to shore a dozen polished, glittering, streaming words. Oh, that’s a life of emotion of which I shall be eternally jealous.
AHASUERUS
I don’t know, but I might need something more real. A vague desolation surrounds me; I’ve become the echo of all the melancholies of the places through which I pass. The wild grass, the winter wind and the fallen leaf all resound, everything cries with despair in my heart.
MOB
If what you say is accurate, it’s a truly great inconvenience to hear that pell-mell at close range in the bony box of your brain. Instead of dreams, why not occupy yourself with the positive aspects of things? Science is made for men like you; at your age, you could still penetrate the secrets of nature. Take up alchemy, for example. Go on, to work! Stoke up the forge, crush the diamond, melt the gold, stir the crucible—go on, that’s it! One more hour. In the end, a little smoke evaporates, and there’s a life passed. Isn’t it true?
AHASUERUS
No, science thus reduced is too dry. I’ve tried; it has never been able to fill my heart.
MOB
Oh, as for the heart, you see—let’s not talk about that; mine is as empty as yours and I have more to complain about than anyone. You have an unfortunate constitution: the real displeases you, the ideal doesn’t suit you; however, it’s necessary to choose one of the two.
AHASUERUS
That necessity is one of my greatest torments.
MOB
Listen; if you can trust the advice of a friend, let exaltation alone; youth vanishes, illusion too. At your age, the world opens its arms to you, all careers are open to you; obtain a solid status and a position in the world. The most honorable profession is that of war; merely thinking about it makes the head giddy. The sword befits a gentleman; see how the sun gilds his breastplate; axes, halberds, iron gauntlets, falcon’s beaks glistening at his side. He curls his lips, pronounces a word: “Battle;” and the echo responds, “Battle;” and the saber too in its sheath: “Battle.” How many lances have been broken already! And swords will never cease to clash, until everything is ground down, flattened, cut to ribbons and taken apart. The horses sniff blood, the dagger, which is thirsty, slakes its thirst, and the vulture drinks its residues. Evening comes; one goes home, and one kills time.
AHASUERUS
More than one dart has already been blunted on my escutcheon; more than one double-edged sword has broken on my crest; I’ve ridden through many banners. I know how a standard flutters at the end of a halberd, how a bowstring resonates, how an unhorsed cavalier groans under his coat of mail . Many poisoned javelins have sought my bosom, whistling; many fletched arrows have screeched over my head: “Let the best-plumed lift the visor of his horse!”
MOB
A terrible moment! My teeth are chattering. What happened?
AHASUERUS
Hand to hand, tooth and claw, the combat trampled, foamed and panted; forwards and backwards, upstream and downstream, far and near, the axe of arms stripped the bark from the battle-tree. The eagle, passing overhead, closed his yellow eyelid, in order not to see the dew turn red at such close range.
MOB
You’re making me shiver on your behalf.
AHASUERUS
Me! A cavalier followed me everywhere are parried the blows. From daybreak on, in the mêlée, he was my brother in arms. A thousand darts sought me, but not one reached me.
MOB
The brave companion! May the earth protect him. What armories did he have?
AHASUERUS
On his escutcheon he bore a death’s-head; his pale horse did not whinny by day or night; he never took off his helmet; his arm was never weary when evening came.
MOB
So, thank God, this time your merit was recognized.
AHASUERUS
Until, in mid-mêlée, one day, a memory—oh, a rapid hour, passed in another clime—covered for me the racket of both armies; the chariots of war were passing by furiously, but I heard nothing rumbling but my voice in my bosom. Lances resounded on lances, but my eyes, behind my visor, saw nothing but myself: nothing but an image, I tell you; a shadow of myself, nothing more, who has been, who is no more, who can no longer be, and who was fighting a gigantic battle in my soul; yes, a battle within a battle! What sighs that cannot be heard! What wounds that cannot be seen! Memories more trenchant than two-handed broadswords; dreams more tangled than the plumed arrow of an arbalest: life, death, oblivion, regrets, doubts more reckless, more ponderous, more rapid and more flamboyant than cavaliers leaning breathlessly over their bridles.
MOB
My word, that second war is crueler than the first. I had no idea. If, decidedly, war no longer suits you, you might launch yourself into State politics. Self-interest, of course, would be your infallible
guide. The equilibrium of powers is the doctrine that I advise you to adopt to begin with. Monarchy has merit. Aristocrats have a sense of ancestry. Democrats are all bone and sinew. The mixture is my business; be positive, no compassion. Only numbers, bare, fleshless, unshod, filleted, you hear? All rights are recognized. With a stroke of the pen, you’ll bury two or three peoples, and that always brings honor.
AHASUERUS
Don’t go on; I’ve already had enough.
MOB
How terribly blasé you are, for your age, and how quickly people live these days! But enough resources still remain to you, and you’d be very wrong to lost heart. You could throw yourself into the arms of religion.
AHASUERUS
Explain yourself. I admit that more than once, on hearing the bells of an abbey, I’ve shivered from head to toe; at that moment, I envied the repose of a hermit in his convent.
MOB
My own sect is Methodism. Life therein proceeds on a small scale. I can introduce you to it if you so desire. Can you imagine that we have reduced all of life to half a dozen petty maxims that, carefully counted and well-calculated, could be packed into an eggshell. Earth, sky, waters, clouds: everything there is goes into the shell; that’s the universe; everything that can’t go in, that’s nothingness. I hope the division is easy to retain, and you’ll see that it’s really very comfortable to possess thus, all the time, all the secrets of life, al the mysteries of the soul and heaven, all the science of the heart and nature, on a piece of paper as large, at the most, as a prescription for a headache-cure.
AHASUERUS
If you’re not joking, that idea is disheartening.
MOB
Me, joking? Can you think so? A conversion like yours would make me very happy, and to bring you back to the pure spirit of the gospel, my director Paulus19 will first inform you of dogmatics, dialectics, diplomacy and hypercriticism.
AHASUERUS
Please leave those empty words there. To render me repose, it’s a new religion that I require, which no one has yet drawn upon. That’s what I’m looking for. Only by that means could I slake the infinite thirst that’s devouring me.
MOB
Novelty pleases me as much as you. It often happens, in fact, that a god is dead and buried in heaven, while we’re still worshiping him on earth. The entire difficulty lies in knowing the exact moment of the decease, in order not to waste time before a skeleton dangling from the vault of eternity. After all, though, a clever man can always, if necessary, be his own god for fifteen years or so, while waiting for heaven to declare itself.
AHASUERUS
Thus far, alas, I have only wandered from place to place, from hope to hope, from cult to cult. Tearfully, my soul has knocked on all the points of the universe, and found no echo anywhere. I would often have liked, during my insomnia, to embrace with my thought the rolling skies, to bed swallowed up in the whirlwind of worlds. Oh, often, while traveling, at the sound of an Alpine waterfall, I have waited foolishly until dusk for my soul to evaporate with the stream! How many times, while swimming in a remote bay, I have hugged the swell passionately to my breast! The waves hung, tangled, from my neck, the foam kissed my lips. Around me, embalmed sparks sprang forth. In the distance, shores, cities, villages, the shadows of citrus trees, valleys, mountains, everything was rocked and palpitated by my breath. At every exhalation I said, without speaking: “Love me, forgive me,” and from the bottomless abyss there emerged in part, tremulously, a sigh.
MOB
You make the Ocean more modest than a girl. Her response is all that you could hope for.
AHASUERUS
I believed, wrongly, that I would one day be able to drown my desires in its immensity.
MOB
Who embraces too much grips poorly, you know. It is, permit me to say, a great vanity of our time to believe that nature has sympathies and antipathies, whatever they might be. Nature has atoms, and that’s all; you’ll admit that she would have been wrong to place herself at the disposition of anyone at all who wanted to become the confidant of her vapors. That’s a sad thing to say, but true; and if you were honest, you’d recognize that all your troubles are internal.
AHASUERUS
So everything flees from me, everything falls, everything crumbles into ashes around me.
MOB
Not at all. If, at all costs, you require a religion, love, when it is pure, is one, in its fashion. You have a fortune, birth, you’re independent, you can be excused a little folly.
AHASUERUS
Do you think so? To forget the universe that escapes me, to shelter myself entirely in a loving heart; to make it my heaven, my religion, my roof; to seek nothing else, to hear nothing else, to breathe nothing else, to plunge myself thereinto, annihilating myself alive; to quit, for a voice that blesses me, the worlds that curse me. Oh, yes, an obscure being, vile in the eyes of men—if there were only a tear for me!
MOB
That’s not enough. The senses shouldn’t be entirely sacrificed, and you’d be wrong to discount them entirely.
AHASUERUS
To challenge at her feet the wrath of the worlds!
MOB
It’s necessary to say everything, though: there are some conventions that can’t be infringed, some customs that can’t be changed. One has a rank, a name, a position to protect, duties of fortune. Then again, you see, above all, opinion demands respect.
AHASUERUS
Yes, there’s a parting; a thousand things separate you, life and death. But there’s a moment when the secret that burns in your breast has passed your lips. People never see one another again—never—but the world is full; a single instant suffices to embalm an eternity of centuries.
MOB
Embalm, that’s the word; but what? A mummy? Don’t exaggerate. Every sentiment conceals a calculation, and deep down, all women are alike. Who says one says the other. Sooner or later, the best will deceive you; besides which, provided that you amuse them, you owe them absolutely nothing. They’re there for the pleasure of men, they take that as read, and nothing is easier, you see, than to make them adore you.
AHASUERUS
Love has never been a game to me; if things are as you say, it’s better to destroy that last hope within me, as soon as possible.
MOB
Don’t get excited. On the contrary, you need love, and plenty of it. Without it, what does one know? What does one do? What does one see? And what is life? Nothing, nothing, nothing: that word says more than it means. One has only savored half of things, and intimacy is the most delicious of all.
AHASUERUS
You’re giving me heart.
MOB
Except, let’s be clear, that it’s necessary not to abuse it; past thirty, it’s already rather ridiculous. Sentiments run out like everything else; then again, one thing I forgot is that it’s really very disagreeable to think that those eyes, before they have read the utmost depths of yours, will be filled up with earth; that a spider’s web will close that mouth before it has been able to finish its secret, and that tomorrow, that beauty, adored body and soul, will be one of those brazen I-don’t-know-whats laughing at all comers in a niche in the catacombs.
AHASUERUS
On listening to you a mortal chill grips me, freezing my tongue beneath my palate.
MOB
I didn’t know, my dear, that your illness was so serious. I thought that reason would have had more empire over you, and that our friends were right to hope that you wouldn’t get carried away to that extent. Anyway, in your state of mind, one can always tell oneself that death isn’t far away. If you knew how effective death is as a remedy for all dolors! No, you let yourself be too easily distracted. You don’t think about her enough; you don’t desire her enough; you don’t love her enough; she’s a woman too, though, so light, so profound, so serious, so old, so young, so flighty, so kind, so changeable, an angel, a queen, a great lady, a gypsy—anything you like; any situation, any rank,
easy to live with, ready for anything, good at everything—playing the guitar, the tambourine, the harmonica, the tom-toms—a good neighbor, a good housekeeper, not prudish, not monotonous, hard-working, a trifle sarcastic, but very happy, provided that she has a piece of charcoal with which to write: Here lies…your name, if you please?
AHASUERUS
What does the name matter? She’s so slow in coming.
MOB
There are, in the final analysis, extraordinary situations in which it’s excusable to anticipate her by means of suicide. Morality condemns you, but heaven absolves you. It’s something that remains for you to try. A wisp of straw would suffice, and you might find oblivion amusing.
AHASUERUS
And when that too is impossible, nothing remains but endless despair.
MOB
I know, like you, and better than anyone, that one is often hanging by a thread—but that thread is sacred. One has duties to fulfill, a career to carry forward, a family to raise, friends who are dear to you. Then too, it’s necessary to be patient and take life as it comes. It’s short—not short enough, I confess, but fifty years, at the most, isn’t too exorbitant. At present, it all depends on you; think about it, reflect, and make a decision.