Paris Before the Deluge

by Hippolyte Mettais

  These monuments, as can easily be imagined, were very fragile. The facts that they were intended to perpetuate could only weaken and be distorted as time passed, for tradition alone was their depository, and tradition, as everyone knows, always takes on the coloration of the epoch in which it arrives, the intelligence that receives and transmits it. What confidence can it inspire, in consequence, when it is found in a people where written history does not come to its aid?

  The Atlantean scholars thought they had discovered, however, after extraordinary efforts of labor and imagination, that the small group of families of Sequania could well have emerged from the heart of Asia, as the Pah-ri-ziz had emerged from Atlantis and the Teutchs had emerged from the frontiers of India. But who had led them and the others here? How long had they been living in these islands? It was impossible to determine.

  The mores of the Sequans offered nothing very particular to the Atlanteans, except for the simplicity of their legal code, which was enclosed in its entirety in a single question of judgment.

  A judge was anyone to whom the accused and the accuser gave that title.

  If your adversary had done to you what you have done to him, said the judge to the accused, what would you say?

  The response of silence of the accused formed the judgment, which he never sought to falsify by subterfuge.

  I do not know whether our costly and hypocritical civilization does any better than the Sequans. Their question was the corollary of the axiom that we recommend but never practice: Do not do to someone else what you would not want him to do to you.

  After a few days of rest on the island of Sequania taken by the woman of the peaceful expedition, and a few days of futile preaching on the part of the Buddha Sylax, and geographical and astronomical studies to the advantage of the scholars, they embarked once again in order to take their research further into regions where they would henceforth find nothing but the unknown, the mysterious and the terrible, according to the Teutchs and the Pah-ri-ziz.

  They had, indeed, scarcely put to sea when a number of ominous symptoms were manifest around them. A cold, moist and penetrating wind suddenly succeeded an air that was stifling but agreeable, in that it had never ceased to bring the two vessels the perfume of flowers from the nearby islands.

  Sequania was lost in a thick fog that made it disappear completely from the voyagers’ sight. The sky was covered with black, menacing clouds, traversed from time to time by fiery streaks, as a thunderstorm was in preparation. A few dull rumbles were, indeed, not long in becoming audible in the bosom of the clouds, probably reverberated by the profound echoes of the sea, for there too rumblings were heard—unless, Me-nu-tche thought, the latter rumbles were those of subterranean volcanoes.

  An indefinable sentiment of unease gripped everyone. The voyagers huddled together, trembling as if at the moment of a catastrophe. The opinion was universal that they ought to go back to Sequania, but there was suddenly such an upheaval of the waters round them that the pilots were no longer masters of their vessels. Liquid mountains of a prodigious height, which appeared and disappeared by turns, drove them in spite of their efforts, without their being able to determine where they were going.

  They had been struggling thus for several hours when they suddenly saw a column of water bearing down on them that seemed to them to rise up to the clouds, and which fell upon their vessels, gripping them as a giant might seize a wisp of straw, throwing them into the distance onto a forest of reefs, the points of which, sometimes sharp and sometimes broad, rose above sea level.20

  The vessels were broken up; nothing more of them could be seen than a quantity of debris floating on the waters. Some of the victims of the shipwreck disappeared into the gulf, never to emerge again, while others clung on to a few pieces of floating debris, or onto the points of the reefs.

  As if to insult them in such great misfortune the sea suddenly calmed down again.

  At that moment, Me-nu-tche appeared, holding the unconscious Lutecia in one arm, pressed against his breast, while the other was wrapped around a wooden beam that dipped beneath the waves continually, to reappear thereafter.

  Sylax, who could swim like a fish, had taken refuge on a protruding rock, around which he had already gathered a considerable number of victims, fixing them as best he could on the surrounding reefs, but his friend was not there; his eyes were searching for him everywhere when he perceived him struggling against exhaustion, on the point of being swallowed up. He leapt toward him, and was fortunate enough to bring him and his precious burden back to the precarious refuge where he was huddled.

  The situation was critical, however; it was evident that it was impossible to remain there for long, so they set about seeking a means of escape. There was only one thing to do, if there was any possibility of salvation, and that was to construct a raft. There was no shortage of wreckage in the vicinity; the least exhausted and most agile immediately set to work. After hard labor and incredible difficulties, a miraculous deployment of energy and practical science, the raft finally appeared to be capable of taking to the sea.

  In fact, it held together for ten days without breaking up, but, tossed about by the caprice of the currents and the waves, it drifted haphazardly over a sea in which they perceived the occasional island or scrap of land, only to see it recede every time they made an effort to get closer to it.

  The castaways did not encounter anyone else, neither a ship nor a small boat; on the land they sometimes glimpsed in the distance no people ever appeared.

  They had no oars and no tiller—and, what was more alarming, no food.

  Finally, on the tenth day after the shipwreck, the raft ran aground on a deserted shore, in a land that none of them could name. It now only contained six passengers: Sylax, his friend Me-nu-tche, Lutecia and a young slave she had taken into her service, and two Buddhist nuns.

  When they set foot on land, the first sentiment experienced by Sylax was gratitude to the God of the sea, who had preserved him and his friend; his first action was to kneel down on the edge of the perfidious waters to thank Him.

  Me-nu-tche, for his part, although he was no less exhausted than his companions in misfortune, and probably as glad as Sylax to be safe and sound, immediately started searching for some edible plant or crustacean that he could bring back to the unfortunate castaways, who were dying of hunger. Perhaps he thanked God while collecting nourishment for everyone.

  VI. Dream and Reality

  In that epoch, continents were rare; to a greater or lesser extent, those we know today were under the sea; history and science tell us so.

  There was nothing but islands almost everywhere.

  The land on which the Atlantean castaways had run aground was one more island, and an island of no great extent, but which seemed isolated in the sea, for as far as the eye could see it only encountered the immensity of the waves.

  It was deserted, although it presented a few traces of anterior habitation—but devastated, ruined habitations, as if they had been under the water, probably inundated by some invasion of the sea, perhaps some deluge that had carried the inhabitants away.

  Sylax and Me-nu-tche had no doubt of that, knowing full well how frequent inundations and partial deluges were in the world, and how many countries had disappeared in consequence, while others had been born.

  However unenviable a sojourn on that island seemed, they nevertheless found it at that moment to be a charming Elysium. They resigned themselves to installing themselves therein, and made arrangements to live there, temporarily at least, while awaiting a favorable opportunity to escape from the beneficent prison.

  The awning of a few rocks served them as a retreat, the wild fruits of the island and the crustaceans that the sea yielded to them served as their nourishment for want of anything better.

  Sylax and his friend were both scholars, educated in all subjects and very well versed in the theory of cultivating cereals. They therefore had no difficulty in finding the seeds of alimentary
grains in the fields; courage and necessity immediately started them to work on the land.

  When all those preparations had been made for the care of the body, Sylax naturally reverted to his preaching, and thought seriously once again about converting his friend, whose mind, it seemed to him, ought to be more accessible than before to the religious truths that would give him, he supposed, an immense consolation in the midst of the misfortunes that had recently overtaken them.

  “My friend,” he said to him one day, you’re giving me a great deal of pain, for I see you marching resolutely over a terrain that will lead you straight to the abyss. You call yourself a philosopher, you’re a true scholar, and yet you don’t believe in God.”

  “Sylax, Sylax,” replied Me-nu-tche, animatedly, “don’t make me out to be more wicked than I am. I don’t believe in God! But how can a man, at the sight of the brilliant spectacle of nature, not become ecstatic and seek the author of all the phenomena that surround him, and not recognize a God?

  “I don’t believe in God? Yes, I do believe—but what is that God? I’ve told you many times: it’s the unknown God.21 I seek Him, but you don’t want me to seek Him. You tell me that you’ve found Him: good for you! But so many philosophers also say that they’ve found Him, and show Him to me in such various forms that I beg leave to doubt them all and continue searching.

  “Sensitive and poetic souls have made a God as whimsical as themselves; philosophers and positive men have made a profound God, mystical in part, often material, and in any event incomprehensible.

  “Where, then, is the true God? Are not all of them mistaken? The conclusion is not reckless, when we see how often the most expert scholars have erred in all times with regard to more graspable things, phenomena that we can touch with our fingers—the earth, for example, its formation, its composition, its form and its limits, its various transformations and the laws that regulate them.

  “For our ancestors there was not one unique God; their Heaven was populated with an infinite number of gods. I believe that they made them themselves. Our modern civilization has found it more apt only to admit one God. Brahmanism only wants one, but in three persons. You, my friend only preach one, but also in several persons, with incoherent attributes, permit me to tell you, and with powerful passions based on ours. You give Him an essence that you don’t understand, virtues that you don’t understand, an existence of which you understand nothing, a will that is nothing other than your own imagination. Who, then, has told you all that?

  “The Egyptians have a god other than yours. The Teutchs, among whom we have lived for some time—and, in sum, all the peoples who cover the Earth—have their own gods.

  “What, then, my friend, is God? Is He not a king of stone or marble, who only speaks through the mouths of the fakirs who have built his altars?”

  “Ingrate!” Sylax relied. “There is no God then.”

  “Have I said that, Sylax?” Me-nu-tche retorted, sharply. “Have I said that? God is! I affirm that, but I seek him, and in the meantime I have raised an altar in my heart to the unknown God! I don’t want your God of all, as I’ve told you thousands of times, and I repeat to you firmly today, because you don’t understand Him any better than I do, and, given that no one understands Him, everyone has made a God in his own fashion, in accordance with his own views, prejudices, interests and passions.”

  “What passions can I have, Me-nu-tche?” said the Buddha, sadly, “other than the desire to see you happy in the present and the future?”

  “Oh, my friend, my friend,” Me-nu-tche replied, embracing Sylax affectionately, “can I speak here for you? You talk about God as a scholar and a philanthropist, but your logic is faulty, your heart and mind have gone astray in the void of asceticism, and you want to summon the whole world to be happy. Poor friend, your fault is there—at least, I believe so. Well, I beg you, let me continue seeking; if I’m mistaken, perhaps I’ll realize it someday.”

  Sylax shook his head, meaning that his friend’s resolution was not that of a sage.

  “A traveler,” Me-un-tche said to him then, “one day finds on his route the magnificent ruins of an ancient city. Naturally, he wonders about the people who lived in it, and what evil befell them. He finds no one amid the ruins, but he takes shelter from a storm in the bosom of a magical monument, the remains of an enchanted castle. He is anxious to go in quest of the master of the castle, to render him homage. If that master had written on the frontispiece: ‘I am who am…traveler, rest, drink, eat, sleep and believe in me without worrying any longer about the master of the house; such is my will.’ Oh, then I would obey that order—but that order alone.

  “Everywhere that I have seen that order on the frontispiece of a palace, however, it is a human hand that has written it, in the name of the God it causes to speak. Alas, my friend, I am still looking on high, and have only ever heard voices calling to me from below.”

  Me-nu-tche was still talking, becoming more and more animated. Sylax tried more than once to interrupt in order to reply to him, but the intractable philosopher seemed to be in haste to finish, and to end the religious discussion once and for all, in the face of the necessities of the present life, and he implored his friend with a gesture to let him continue speaking.

  “In conclusion,” he said, “you have found God, you have surrounded Him with very scholarly attributes, it’s true, and then you’ve created a religion, a doctrine, a morality, and you’ve damned all those who don’t believe as you do. Well, my friend, I can say this to you: Why that religion? Why your dogma? Why your morality? Where have you got them from?

  “In your morality, you want people to torment their bodies, annihilate their senses, bend their minds to an incomprehensible mysticism. Why, then, has God made those senses? Why has He given humans the power of reason? Was it so that people could make a virtue out of preventing the regular functioning of the being that God created? No, no, no! Leave me my belief, Sylax, my philosophy, my studies, and let’s not talk about it any more. We have other things to do for the time being. Before thinking about tomorrow, let’s think about today. In any case, to think about today is still to think about tomorrow.”

  Me-nu-tche’s recommendations were futile; the Buddha could not give up his apostolic role like that, nor did he give it up. But the arguments became so sharp on the part of the incorrigible philosopher, his critiques were so cogent, his intelligence so brilliant and true throughout his polemic, that Sylax did not take long to perceive that, although he could not succeed in converting his friend, his friend was in the process of converting the two nuns. He therefore thought it prudent to reach an agreement with his friend not to make themselves apostles of any belief whatsoever.

  It was agreed that the new inhabitants of the island would separate into two groups, as distant from one another as was necessary for the cultivation of the land, which was divided into two lots.

  The two friends arranged a meeting place where they could argue at their ease every day.

  That separation, which seemed painful to everyone, was nevertheless understood by everyone and accepted without opposition. Visits between the two groups were, in any case, not prohibited on either side. They softened the sadness of the separation somewhat, for they became frequent.

  A time nevertheless arrived when the visits became rarer; then they finally stopped altogether, without the daily meetings of the two friends ceasing. That was the work of the Buddha.

  Sylax, who still feared for the souls of his nuns, and who had made them expiate the sin of their indecision between his doctrine and Me-nu-tche’s, gave them so many tasks to perform that the day was not long enough to complete them. Such, at least, was the excuse that the Buddha gave his friend.

  And the days and the months went by in that fashion.

  A day came when Me-nu-tche did not find his friend at the rendezvous—the rendezvous that he had never missed since the day of their separation. He was anxious about him, and without further ado he headed for his h
abitation at top speed. As he got close to it, he heard a few stifled cries, and then heart-rending screams.

  He was only one bound away by then, and he burst like lightning into the little cavern that served the Buddha as a shelter. Dionah, one of his companions, was lying on a bed of dry moss; Sylax and Clito, the other nun, were beside her, lavishing cares and consolations upon her.

  The unexpected arrival of Me-nu-tche took everyone by surprise; the cries ceased. Sylax lowered his head before his friend, without saying a word. One might have thought him a guilty man before his judge.

  Me-nu-tche did not experience anything before the Buddha but a sentiment of amicable compassion; his heart was too noble to enjoy his adversary’s defeat. He put his arms around him and embraced him with all the tenderness of a father forgiving his guilty and repentant son.

  “Why lower your head before me, my friend,” he said, “as if I were about to reproach you for having obeyed nature and God? Have I not said it to you? You’ve tried to stop a torrent, and it has dragged you away; you’ve tried to hold back the lightning, and it has knocked you down. What God has done is good, my worthy Sylax, and as you see, philosophy will always be in default when it tries to suppress is decrees...”

  Me-nu-tche fell silent in order to hold out his hands to a little child who had entered the world by the way of pain, suffering and causing suffering, overwhelming his father and making his mother, who had unluckily been charged with a burden too heavy for her to bear, to turn red.

  The course of the Buddha’s ideas changed from that moment on. The voice of the family spoke more loudly in his heart than the sophisms of his mind. He modified his doctrine of celibacy, which he no longer imposed on his followers, but which, by virtue of a residue of habit, he advised them to adopt, without their being destined for a more brilliant throne in Heaven than others.