Ahasuerus

by Edgar Quinet

  2.

  Courage! Bravo! Raise yourselves up on your limbs, my lords, as if my horse hadn’t trampled you as thoroughly as the vintner treads his wine in his vat. Courage, accursed! Germinate in my furrow, as if I had not harvested you with my sickle and beaten you on my threshing-floor. Without laughing, kings and queens, put back on your heads the crowns that I had taken under my roof. The key to tombs and crypts hung jangling from my bunch; who has taken it from me to open the lock? I laid every man under his slab myself, whistling my tune to send him to sleep; who has come to wake them up at my door? Hey, accursed flock, do you hear my bagpipe? Return to my fold before the master sees you. What shall I do now to fill all my empty tombs, if, by chance, they trip over them in passing by?

  AHASUERUS, to Rachel

  Do you hear that shepherd?

  RACHEL

  It’s not a shepherd; it’s Mob pursuing the dead with her whip. There she is, coming down our path.

  MOB, to Ahasuerus.

  Still here, Ahasuerus! Still wandering! I thought you were asleep in some tomb. Do you want me to make your bed, now, like a king sculpted in stone? If you want, I’ll give you the mausoleum of an emperor or the crypt of a doge in beautiful Candian marble. If you want, I’ll heap up for you, in a single tomb, all the tombs that the kings have left me. They’ll rise up higher than the highest hill. You can sleep easy on its slope.

  AHASUERUS

  I can no longer sleep.

  MOB

  Who has robbed you of it?

  AHASUERUS

  Hope.

  MOB

  Bah! That’s the word I give the dead to press between their lips, with their dust, to amuse them; a soothing empty word, only made for them—leave that plaything to them. What are you hoping for?

  AHASUERUS

  Another life.

  MOB

  That’s too modest, my dear. What else?

  AHASUERUS

  Forgiveness.

  MOB

  I’ll give you that.

  AHASUERUS

  Not from you, but from your master.

  MOB

  If he’s pursuing you, I’ll hide you in my shadow.

  AHASUERUS

  And my soul? Where will you hide that?

  MOB

  Soul, spirit, love, hope—big words that I carved myself, I tell you, like my five great pyramids in the desert, into which I only put three grains of sand and a bench on which to sit down.

  AHASUERUS

  You’re returning the burden I had on my breast.

  MOB

  Will you continue to take it seriously until the last day? Life isn’t possible with those crazy dreams. You have but a minute, and it’s only the positive that lasts.

  AHASUERUS

  What you call the positive is what I have before my eyes?

  MOB

  Of course.

  AHASUERUS

  But look—the sun is getting fainter, the Ocean is withdrawing, the forest is dying; this evening, they won’t be here anymore.

  MOB

  But I’ll always be here. Truly, what would I become if I were like you? Fortunately, my wings are broad enough to cover the universe, and my ideas go no further than the shaft of my scythe.

  AHASUERUS

  Judgment is nigh; don’t your knees tremble when you think about it?

  MOB

  The awestruck imagination exaggerates everything, my dear. It will be a day like any other, a little smoky, especially with ashes, and that will be all.

  AHASUERUS

  At every word from your mouth, my heart becomes heavier.

  MOB

  It is indeed a very inconvenient organ on rising paths. I suffered a great deal from it in my youth, and I still have hiccups now, as you can see.

  AHASUERUS

  Leave me alone; you’re giving me a chill, but you can’t kill me.

  MOB

  Oh well! Hang on to the dreams that angel brought you as a dowry, then. Handsome couple, let them follow you to Jehosophat; you’ll see there how they’ll be repaid. But take the short cut—this way, stay to the left. The firmament is cracked from top to bottom. Within an hour, it’s going to collapse. I can already hear the eternal swarm of my bats, whistling in the vault of the heavens, and down there, the last drop of water weeping and gurgling, lamenting and sinking for the last time in the pond of the world.

  IX.

  The valley of Jehosophat gradually fills with the dead during the following choruses. The saints sing the litanies and prayers of the Virgin.

  THE VIRGIN MARY

  The withered flowers on the tombs are the first resuscitated; I see them here, standing up again on their stems.

  CHORUS OF FLOWERS

  If this is the Day of Judgment, we shall raise ourselves higher on our stems, in order that our gardener might pick us. We have nothing to fear from the gardener of Golgotha. We have carried out the task he gave us. Every morning we have washed our sashes and tunics in the dew, in order that the kiss of the bee would leave no traces there. Every evening we have threaded our spindle, perfumed by our fingers, on to our distaff. Not once has the sun, on rising, blossoming in the highest foliage of the sky, found us sleeping in our beds. Nor once has the sea, in setting in its corolla of rocks, called to us quietly in its last murmur, without out letting fall thereinto our basket full of the leaves of lemon-trees and wild roses. In winter, we have put our mantles of snow on our shoulders. In summer, we have taken our girdles from our trunk, which the radiance of the stars has woven for us. If a woman’s tear chanced to fall upon the ground, we have always collected it on the edge of our calyx. If Ahasuerus passed close by, we have always bathed our crown in the blood of Golgotha.

  ROSA MYSTICA

  I have put all perfumes in my cassolette; have no fear, they are not lost; I shall render them for eternity.

  CHORUS OF FLOWERS

  Without ever wearying, we have climbed by the paths of the chamois to the very summit of the Alps, to see Our Lord at closer range. Without ever bending our knees, we have descended, fresh and matinal, into the depths of grottoes, to ask whether our master might be sleeping there. From our summits we have seen, without being afraid, the lava of volcanoes knock on the door of cities and sit down, like a crowd, on the thresholds of house and the benches of theaters. From the rim of our caverns, smiling, we have seen armies, chariots of war, and horses with bounding rumps, bathing in their dew of blood, crests stand tall, shields glisten and swords reap their ripe fruit from the branch of the tree of battles. When the scepters of kings dried out in their hands, when the peoples, one after another, withered in their autumn, we came in their place to sprout in their valleys, and to anoint our crowns in the rain of their crypts. Of our past, we don’t regret a single hour; what will become of us now?

  MATER SANCTISSIMA

  Have no fear; I shall pick you in your hedge to make myself a garland, like a young gardener.

  CHORUS OF BIRDS

  And we too have done what our fowler has commanded; in the depths of the woods we have dipped our wings in the silver steams that ran drop by drop, and that no one but us ever knew. We have sharpened our eagle’s beaks on the edges of blazing clouds and reddened our warbler’s throats at the heath-fires of laborers. Oh, how small the cities were when we passed with the clouds, necks extended, over their brushwood! With their bridges and their walls with seven rings, with their ships in harbor, with their bells that sang at daybreak, how many times have we said on seeing them beneath the shadow of our wings: “Come on! Let’s go down to them; it’s the brood of a warbler, leaning out of its nest to fill its beak.” Without ever worrying in our travels, we have been, every year, to seek the golden grain that our fowler held out to us in the palm of his hand, across the Ocean and the desert. Now, our wings are weary; we are about to fall into the abyss, if a finger does not retain us. All the masts have returned to port; all the cities are closed. We have begged the kings of the earth: “Kings of the earth, gi
ve us a tuft of grass on which to rest. Give us in your kingdoms a branch of dry wood on which we might perch for an hour.” Not one of them was able to find, in his land, either a tuft of grass or a dry branch. The valleys are trembling, the summits quivering like autumn leaves.

  MATER CASTISSIMA

  Have no fear any longer; in the Tower of Heaven I shall make you a silken nest in the corner of my window.

  CHORUS OF MOUNTAINS

  Like a herd of wild mares that wake up one day and lift up the hair from their foreheads if they hear a noise, our rumps and our flanks have reared up beneath the whip of the tempest. Our mane is made of forests, the hooves on our feet are made of white marble; our saddle-bows and bits are made of gilded clouds; our foam is a river that blanches our bits; and our nostrils, when the spur pricks us, vomit their lava into the Ocean. All the gods, one after another, have passed over our summits. Of their treasures, Lord, we have only kept your cross to cover our peaks with storms. By our narrow paths, we have risen up day and night to catch the rivers and springs in our cups. Every evening, we have enclosed the embalmed breezes and perfumes of summer that we have collected during the day in the depths of our grottoes. To please you, every winter, we have wound our accumulated snow around our heads; and we have groaned, in the depths of our volcanoes, like a man whose sleep is troubled, in his bed, by the weight of your name.

  THE VOICE OF MONT BLANC

  I have driven my white heifers to pasture before me; the mountains of the Alps are my white heifers; their horns are of snow; they shake the clouds of winter above their heads like a sheaf of mown grass. To patch their flanks they have three forests of dark firs; their udders are crystal; their tails sweep my path. When they bellow in the wind and the squalls they wash the hooves of their feet in the basins of lakes. Towns and villages are suspended from their necks, with the voices of people and crumbling states, like fine steel cowbells, that they may be heard from afar in the pasturage of the Lord.

  CHORUS OF THE ALPS

  Search where you will for your white heifers; we no longer recognize your bagpipe. We are now a round-dance of maidens, ready to give our hands in marriage. Lord, please exchange, for a garment of celebration, our old robe of vapors. For a lover, we have only ever had at our door the eagle who kissed us with his black wing, for a fiancé, the chamois, and for a husband, the torrent falling beneath our feet. Sinless, every day we have carried the rivers in our bowls, like a milkmaid descending from her chalet; but summer is over; the winter of the world is nigh. Let us, too, descend from our summits to see in the valley, in our turn, travelers, merchants, monks and pipers passing over our open threshold.

  THE ETERNAL FATHER

  You have doubted for an hour in the depths of your grottoes. Go on, I shall make of all your summits, put together one atop the other, a stone bench on which to sit down at my door.

  THE OCEAN

  Do you remember, Lord, the day when you led me to pasture for the first time? Do you remember the time when I was alone, under your eyes, in your immensity? Your hand caressed me then like a faithful dog; you took me in your arms then to teach me to bound on my rock like a little chamois taken for the first time by its father to the Alpine meadow. You loved me then; my breeze was so fresh, my sand so new! I saw myself azured and my limbs limpid all the way to my bed, like a young woman beneath hr bridal curtains. What have I done since then, Lord? I have kissed my shores; is it of them that you are jealous? I have rocked passing shades in my waves. When you left me for another, more beautiful than me, I cast my sighs upon the wind that woke me up, on the stones of my pier, on the rocky strand, in the fisherman’s net, in the sail that dressed me with linen. Are you jealous of the sail, or the fisherman’s net, or the rocky strand, or he stones of the pier? I can no longer see anything in my abyss but the carcasses of wrecked ships; my waves no longer flow free of weed wrenched from my shores; my sand is made of the dust of the dead, so many crowns and broken scepters, so many prows of vessels, so many drowned cities, so many shields and rusty sabers, colliding in my waves, that they prevent my voice reaching you!

  THE ETERNAL FATHER

  You have doubted in the depths of your waves. Go on! I shall take all your water in the palm of my hand to wash my son’s wound and his chalice.

  CHORUS OF STARS

  As a pilgrim from Palestine wears on his habit the shells of the shore, so we have attached ourselves to the edge of morning’s mantle. As the mules of an archbishop going to Toledo shake gilded bells beneath their manes, so our silvery voices hang down and resonate beneath the manes of the mules of the night. To cut short our journey, it only required a drop of dew in which we could be reflected as we passed. Until daylight came to shine, we related our dreams; and if any cloud moistened our tresses, we asked for directions, smiling, to the road to the desert. But now, the storm wind is chasing us, with the leaves of the forest, to Jehosophat.

  STELLA MATUTINA

  You did not weep enough in the eastern night of the Passion, when I held my dead son in my arms on Calvary, and you smiled the next day!

  CHORUS OF STARS

  Forgive us, Mary! What other crime have we committed? Is it having brushed in the night the closed lips and eyelids of a Turkish woman, having lowered her turban, her poniard with her tresses and then untied her girdle under her tent? Is it having been too slow to rise in the bay of Naples or too lazy to cradle myself in the climbing vines or her islands? Is it having forgotten the time in the gondolas of Venice, at the doors of deserted palaces, or having taken the poet’s message too frequently from his window, to carry it to the ends of infinity?

  THE ETERNAL FATHER

  That’s enough! You too have doubted, in your time, beneath your tent of light. Render me all your brilliants, that I might make an ear-ring of them. From dawn to sunset, from afar to nearby, from the folds of the firmament, from the summit of the wave, from the treetops where you awaken, render me all your sparkling jewels that I might make a ring for my finger.

  CHORUS OF WOMEN

  1.

  The earthly road that we follow, weeping, is too rugged for our feet. It wounds without thorns, bruises without stones. When it is weary, the flower leans on its stem; the tired star rests on a cloud; but our breathless hearts can no longer lean on a cloud or a stem.

  2.

  Many sighs, which no one has heard, have consumed our breath on our lips; an everyday evil, with no name and no scar, has worn away the hope in our breasts like a rasp. I would rather count the hairs on my head than the invisible tears that have flowed in my soul. Without complaint, in my house, I have done my work, I have spun my wheel, I have suffered in my ashes; my embers are extinct. Too many tears have fallen there, one after another; and the spindle on which my murmurous desires wound and unwound their fabric during the vigil has broken in my fingers.

  MATER DOLOROSA

  Pity! Pity! Miserere!

  CHORUS OF WOMEN

  1.

  I did nothing but sigh and dream. Before my heart as full, all my days had flown; my life was worn away between my fingers, and my soul has stayed in the middle of its task of love, as a piece of needlework, set aside when scarcely commenced, falls back on your knee when the needle and the thread are broken. I would like another life, and would render an entire glance tomorrow to anyone who would give it to me.

  2.

  Yes, an entire glance! Nothing but a glance! And no heaven, inevitably! No God! No Christ! Nothing but a sigh, nothing but a breath, nothing but a flower that he has touched. And afterwards, the abyss, the night without tomorrow on my empty head, oblivion beneath my feet.

  THE ETERNAL FATHER

  In that love so long, you alone have kept me memory without knowing it. The earth has been your time of betrothal. Your wedding will be in the heavens. Here, for your dowry, is the ring I have made from the gold of the stars.

  X.

  The Valley of Jehosophat, where all the dead are assembled.

  TIME, to the Eternal Fathe
r

  Lord, I have managed my hour-glass as best I could. Grain by grain, slowly, I have allowed my dust to fall back on the footsteps of the human race. If some more rapid year, lightened by its happiness, chanced to escape my fingers, I rendered all the others after it heavier than a century. Hour by hour, I have poured the life of the poor into their ulcerated hearts, like drops of oil in the leaden lamps that no longer illuminate their tables. Like a devouring tear that burns the gaze and cannot run away, I have suspended in the thoughts of the poet, beneath his sleepless eyelid, memories of the sweat of his years. I have given to Ahasuerus, drop by drop, the venom of his innumerable years wherever he paused. And yet, in the end, my hour-glass has run out. Forgive me; I have been unable to conserve my sand or my oil as a soul does its life and a spirit its breath.

  MOB

  Here is my scythe, Lord. When you gave it to me, its glittered in the sunlight, and I could mirror my face with it; but it has been necessary for me to mow down in your pasturage so many towers and posterns, so many lighthouses on the strand, so many pyramids in the sand, that its trenchant blade is chipped. Give me another, I beg you.

  THE ETERNAL FATHER

  My meadow is mown, and the haymakers have carried the fodder beneath the roof of my stable, for my mares. Now, take your scythe to the entrance. Have all the dead pass before me, in order that I know what work you have done and what wages are owed to you.