Aiglor is still listening, but his eyes, charged with a mute interrogation, say clearly enough that he does not understand what his mistress means. Féliah continues in a voice that is almost cheerful, in spite of the sadness of her story.
“That is what he has become, the sublime actor! By dint of playing the role of duped lovers, he has ended up believing himself to be an unhappy lover…his reason has capsized in the fictions that he makes so much effort to live in order to render them truer and more poignant...and you know very well, my Aiglor, that in the theater, the amorous are always the elder sons of great individuals, and the objects of their amour beauties like none that exist on earth. So, the poor madman has come to believe that he really is the son of a king...that his name is Prince Lowenol, and that he is madly infatuated with an infidel baptized with the name of Féliah, which caused you to believe momentarily...”
Aiglor contemplates Féliah tenderly; he takes her hands, which he is kissing gently when a slow melody becomes faintly audible. They both listen, in a profound delight, to the nebulous song that is gradually detached from the silence that envelops them.
It is a plaintive voice, droning indefinable words, which are, in any case, soon completely drowned by a great tumult, and a band composed of about ten individuals advances in the wake of a man with graying hair on a head that seems almost juvenile; under his left arm he carries a small lyre made of dark wood veined with red. In order to make himself more clearly audible to his companions he turns toward them, while walking with an uneven and unsteady tread.
“Thus destiny is accomplished! We are going toward this goal, which is not the one of which we have dreamed. Here we all are, docile pilgrims of eternal rest, we whose hands have molded wings of clay in order to attempt gigantic flights into these heights, where no azure has ever seemed to us serene enough! Alas, we have all fallen, one by one, through the blue spaces that we hate, on to the implacable ground! Our bodies are bruised! Our blood has been drunk by the soil and that reddened earth, warm with our blood, our hands have taken up endlessly, to knead it again into new wings—but always, we have fallen back from the full height of our broken dreams! Now, it is finished. Our veins have dried up, the vanity of our efforts has appeared in bright sunlight! Oh, the sunlight!”
To ward off the imprecation, the plaintive voice rises again, and, with two hands extended, a man clad in a dark doublet decorated with bright embroideries detaches himself from the approaching group.
“No, no, I beg you! He is good, the God who will forgive us. Our temerity has gone as far as the absurd folly of wanting to be creators too. The just God has removed the scales from our eyes, and at this moment, his clemency deigns to welcome us, to pour over us a healing balm for our disappointed dreams...”
Another tearful voice emerges from the mouth of an old man with an ecstatic gaze: “Our dreams! Our poor dreams remain down there, in the mansards of Panbiole! Our etheric dreams are lying in the gutters, in the depths of narrow streets, like punctured balloons! Our lamentable dreams, broken by the jolts of life like uncertain flames extinguished by the wind…!”
He represses a sob, and the young man with the gray hair, brandishing his lyre of dark wood veined with red, interrupts him.
“Come on, pious singers of defeat, enough humility! What? Has the struggle not cost us enough? We have made the complete sacrifice of all joys and all pleasures; we have accepted the formal menace, long since realized, of all anguish and the worst suffering! We have locked up our pride in the deepest recesses of our hearts, and there, like a captive driven mad by the chains with which he is laden, without respite or release, it has rent the walls of its prison! Our convulsed flesh, ever ready to weaken, has howled to infinity its distress and its dolor, sprung from our souls toward the Beauty with which we were infatuated!
“Oh, poor Humanians! You have all passed by, indifferent, curbed by the somber weight of salvation, like mules laden with leather bottles swollen with precious wines, who go over the burning sand, their desiccated tongues hanging out; if one of those goatskins opens, letting out the ambrosia, the mules pass by disdainfully, their tongues still grazing the ground, in which the liquid that would slake their thirst drains away...
“Ah, but if you had wanted it, Beauty would have become the glorious mistress of Humania; her august harmony would have delivered matter, captive of time and space, and the liberated earth would finally have attained its destiny, the freedom of eternity! But it is in vain that we have struggled, in vain that we have suffered! The fearful slaves have fled the ardent breath of our hearts, which blazed to reignite the extinct torch! Eyes have not wanted to see, or ears to hear, because God came to affirm that Beauty had once been sent to earth by him, as a punishment for distant crimes, to torture men with inextinguishable love, and that he promised to deliver the world from her if the world would lay down at his feet. Then, the Humanians had faith in your word, deceptive God, perfidious God!”
A cry of horror emerges simultaneously from all the mouths, breathless with fear, but the blasphemer, raising his lyre toward the sky, continues furiously: “God the thief! Under the weight of years you have crushed our youth. You have extinguished our pride while cradling our dolors with mitigating hopes, and our own essence, the Beauty that we love, the Beauty that makes us greater than you, slyly, by night, like the most infamous of sneak-thieves, you have taken her from us!”
Grabbing hold of the old man with the ecstatic gaze, who tries to stop him, he continues: “He has taken her”! He has stolen her! Listen to me, you: do you remember the festival of Beauty in which you rode in glorious triumph? Alas, it was the last of all. We were ranged around the statue raised by you for the magnification of the ideal feminine form. The people of Panbiole, piously, came to contemplate your work, and the women, grateful to the artistic celebrator of their beauty, spread before you the flowers from their baskets; the ground disappeared completely under the litter, which, in large patches of different colors, in accordance with the flowers offered, in a carpet that feet did not dare to trample, extended from the statue into the distance...”
All the watchers are listening silently, and each new detail seems to remove a little of the ecstasy from the old man’s eyes.
“At the edge of the iridescent field, naked, amid the flight of amethyst waves scattered around her, in the splendor of her flesh, a woman appeared; like the marble statue, she stood motionless, her hands, clasped behind the nape of her neck, arrested the black undulations of her hair; her solemn gaze was fixed upon you, and, responding to the mute interrogation of her eyes, you bent down to pick up a rose with red petals from the ground, which you held out to the living image of beauty...”
“How beautiful she was! How beautiful she was!” murmurs the old man, whose features are rejuvenated by the evocation of the glorious day.
“Slowly, in order not to injure the harmony of her stride, the woman advanced; the veils of amethyst squashed beneath her feet, whose whiteness was bloodied by the red of roses, to be washed subsequently in the milk of jasmines and lilies, and, pausing at all the spots on the ground, like the fur of some fantastic animal, she did not seem to be the same creature from one moment to the next; on the changing colors of the spread flowers, she gave birth to an infinite succession of new forms, all alive with ideal beauty, and when, in order to take the rose with the red petals from your hand, her fingers came apart, allowing the black tresses to obscure the ivory of her shoulders, the woman appeared to be the twin sister of the one hatched from your soul in its marble dream...”
“How beautiful she was! How beautiful she was!” the old man repeats, incessantly, in an increasingly forceful voice.
“Yes, she was beautiful! And also beautiful were the eurhythmic creatures who, one by one, undressed themselves; first the courtesans, sure of their power, proudly displayed their victorious charms; then, like impatient flowers, ready to open at the brush of the first caress, blushing virgins, frightened of an ardently sighing unknown�
��and brunettes with heavy flesh impregnated with heavy perfumes, like fruits gown in the depths of valleys, and blondes with the slender contours of plants stretched by the sunlight on the hillsides, all bearing within them a fraction of the absolute beauty...”
“They awoke the holy joy of eyes and came to pluck the roses of our adoration from our hands,” the man in the somber doublet puts in.
“And, judging themselves unworthy of that honor, they offered them to the one among them who was the most beautiful, the woman who, emerged from veils of amethyst, now stood immobile, lost in the odorous dream exhaled by her rose with the bloody petals. The queen of beauty held the sovereign flowers to her bosom for a few moments; then her knees bent before the marble statue and, abdicating her royalty, she deposited the bouquet of triumph at the feet of her rival...”
“Yes, Beauty was victorious!” roars the old man, his fists raised against the sky.
“Beauty, you reigned over Humania, when...”
“When,” resumes the brazen voice, “the God came, the annunciator of a new faith! In vain was he annihilated in the well of infamy! Alas like the poison that runs through all the veins in the vertigo of an instant, his lying words had already corrupted all souls, and behind the veils of illusory promises, he had already hidden Beauty! Oh Beauty, created of the purest of ourselves, finally to open the era of eternal happiness, the perfidious God learned to hate you as the most terrible of scourges! Into the hearts of women he put horrible jealousy, and their hands broke your image one night...”
“The night! The night!” moans the dolorous chorus of artists.
“And now, all is finished…God has stolen Beauty from the earth…my lyre is dead!” sobs the poet. Mechanically, he sets it against his shoulder; his fingers, clenched upon the strings at first, gradually recover their suppleness, and harmonious chords make themselves heard. The poet, dreading that he might be the victim of a hallucination, interrogates his companions with his eyes—who, full of surprise, also listen religiously to the melody with which an improvised song soon mingles.
Pure and radiant child of men,
O Beauty!
the master of the azure envies your sovereign light,
and comes among us to take possession of you!
Humanians, credulous in your fallacious word,
deny the white daughter of their dream!
O perfidious God, she becomes your prey,
and into your heaven you bear her away
our Beauty,
pure and radiant child of men!
By force you sit her down at your side
on your throne of deceit,
the white daughter of our dreams!
but your caresses cannot dry up her tears,
which the meadow grass drinks in the morning.
Without cease, her sobs make the seas quiver;
her heart-rending plaint whistles in the tempest;
and from the one who laments on your throne of deceit,
the hectic dolor has cried out to us!
Your dolor is our dolor,
pure and radiant child of men,
Beauty,
whose light was the envy of the master of the azure!
O perfidious God, between her and us,
in vain you put insurmountable space,
sown with moving reefs of cloud and lightning!
Yes, we shall go to rediscover her,
the white daughter of our dreams
who calls to us for help!
We shall deliver her, our exiled saint,
your saddened captive who weeps by your side!
Her collected tears will shine in our hearts
like bright diamonds mounted by our love!
Her eyes will open again to the sovereign clarities
momentarily obscured by your hateful power.
We shall bring her back to Humania,
the white daughter of our dreams,
our Beauty,
stolen by trickery from our adoration.
The earth, beneath her footsteps,
will be clad with flowers,
and eternal happiness will be born of her kiss!
Pure and radiant child of men,
O Beauty!
to take you back from the perfidious God,
toward you we shall climb,
to cross the insurmountable space,
sown with moving reefs of cloud and lightning!
Among us your sovereign light will revive,
O Beauty!
mother of eternal happiness!
Suddenly, the song that the poet is accompanying, on his lyre, with long chords, is intoned by all the artists, impotent to contain their emotion, and all the voices repeat, in an enthusiastic chorus:
Pure and radiant child of men,
O Beauty!
to take you back from the perfidious God,
toward you we shall climb,
to cross the insurmountable space,
sown with moving reefs of cloud and lightning!
Among us your sovereign light will revive,
O Beauty!
mother of eternal happiness!
The artists become increasingly excited by the sound of their own voices. A kind of frenzy takes possession of them; some shout insults, raising their closed fists at the sky—and all of them, behind the poet, hurl themselves on to the road along which the religious cortege of the faithful promised to the kingdom of heaven has preceded them.
The last echoes of the song of revolt fade away into the distance, and, after a long time, seemingly fearful of troubling the silence, Féliah whispers supplicant words into Aiglor’s ear, to which he makes no reply.
Finally, they both emerge from the clump of rose-bushes, Féliah dragging Aiglor after her. Féliah extends her arm toward the road that rises upwards into the powdering of the sunlight, while Aiglor turns his head back toward the city. Then they look at one another for a long time, without speaking. In their eyes a supplication is legible of similar intensity, that of the woman wanting to vanquish her lover’s last resistance, that of the man hoping that the weight of the past will be sufficiently powerful to make his mistress resume the road to Panbiole.
Aiglor, however, has lowered his gaze before that of Féliah; he confesses his definitive resignation with a gesture in which the complete abandonment of his will is expressed.
The woman takes hold of both the man’s hands; she covers them with kisses—and, retaining one of them in her own, Féliah, followed by Aiglor, begins to climb the steep slope that rises up toward the east, all the way to heaven.
THE PETITPAON ERA
or
WORLD PEACE
I
In the indecisive pallor of dawn, formidable detonations burst forth at multiple points in Paris.
“It’s cannon-fire!” shouted multiple cries from hastily-opened windows, in tones of anguish or joy, in accordance with whether those proffering them were enthusiastic about war or horrified by it.
However, the prospect that some of them were hoping for, and which frightened others, vanished instantaneously; the windows closed again, violently slammed by the bellicose, disappointed by the false alarm, and carefully replaced by the placid, secretly grateful for the brutality of the awakening, which brought a more intense sensation to their quietude.
The artillery salvos, perfectly innocent, simply announced the anniversary of a great event.
A year ago, to the day, the Earth had followed France in the path laboriously prepared by several phases of the Republican government.
The giant charm of the three words Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, once inscribed, in hours of provocative delirium on the front of monuments, had transformed human nature in its intimate essence; it was a veritable new era that had risen over the world.
International treaties, solemnly agreed, had assured, without it costing the parties present the slightest drop of blood, the solution of differences emerging between nations.
A f
ew emperors or kings, by divine right or brute force, still seated on the worm-eaten thrones of their fathers, had not renounced military ostentation, however, and even France, the glorious heroine of the sublime action universally revered under the name of the Great Revolution, had accepted as peremptory the reason of a moral and economic order invoked in favor of the maintenance of permanent armies.
In every country, in fact, the prestige of the uniform was still so powerful over great ladies and pert young women that the sudden suppression of generals, officers, sergeants, corporals and soldiers would have caused excessively profound perturbations in social mechanics.
An ecumenical congress, in which every temporal power capable of establishing regular jurisdiction over a minimum of a hundred and fifty subjects was represented, had been held in Paris, and, as much out of gratitude for a hostess overflowing with charms as deference to the country that had taken the initiative of the assembly, the members of the congress had unanimously placed exclusively in French hands the care of finding the means to abolish war, while conserving for warriors the integrality of their natural attributions.
The problem was arduous; after the accumulation by the hundreds of unrealizable projects in which the most various cerebral originalities had been given free rein, the President of the Republic had put forward an idea whose simplicity was pure genius.
Before having climbed, one by one, the steps leading to the supreme magistracy, Bernard Petitpaon had been in the theater.1 The “Or de Perpignan” had generously employed the son of the people to form its larynx.2 Previously equipped with all the laurels of which the Conservatoire de Musique et de Déclamation can provide for the glory of its most illustrious pupils, Bernard Petitpaon, favored by a renewal of Antique form, had triumphantly baritoned on the greatest stages in the two hemispheres. Then, yielding to the pleas of a southern Minister glad to mark his succession to the Ministry of Fine Arts by a nomination satisfying both his compatriotic duties and the esthetic interests of France, he had descended from his singer’s pedestal to preside over the artistic and commercial destiny of the Lyrique Grand-Mondial.
The Petitpaon Era Page 5