by Gustave Kahn
of hope, and emerald is her palace,
her lips the calyx that sprinkles
the honeyed water of Heaven and the milk of stars;
one reads in the book of her life
her eternal footsteps among the forests of stars.
She lives. I forget the customary disaster
of the hours of the enchained Earth:
O to nestle in the immense tresses
that fall in rays of immaterial purity
from the Empyrean to the crowns of these forests
and sleep in the perfume that endures
in the flower-baskets of her beauty.
OTHER CHOIR
Seek among the lilies, seek among the dawns,
behold the towers spraying forth fires of hope
as beautiful as crowns, and calm.
The sea polishes her own immense mirror.
Behold the galleys returning from afar,
behold the old pilots leaping on to jetties,
the Astarte of the prow laughs at the sea
as calm as a green-tinted mirror;
one sees large spongy plants afloat,
and little narwhals playing around the galleys.
CHOIR
We raise to our lips the eternal cups,
the cups of yore, the cups of forever,
the great birds of the dusk bring us lilies
plucked from the lakes of Eden, the isles of delight
that the Lord’s right still hides from our eyes,
but already our souls are equipped,
the oars of our senses star the first wave
and the younger Sun will spring from the clouds,
there, on the horizon, the benevolent mirages
that deploy great beds in which golden dreams sleep,
the trees of youth spread voices of shade
beneath the clouds of all the saps of the Earth
and amid the flight of clouds with white wings
love laughs, love waits, love is strong!
OTHER CHOIR
The hymn of your servants, the hymn of your slaves,
O queen, among the fresh nocturnal mists
fly toward your grace; listen, O queen,
to those who break the silence and enchant the Earth
and the voice to feeble to declare your beauty
the pale voices, the vanquished voices, will fall silent
so the instruments may tell how Nature
throws at your victorious feet her flowers and crowns,
all her perfumes and her beauty, which she gives to you.
And a benevolent calm spread through Samuel’s feverish sleep. It seemed to him that years had passed, that a wall of grey cloud covered the horizon, and that he was marching in constant shadow. He sensed himself marching, but he could not see anything, and the shadow was both hot and heavy.
Finally, the clouds parted.
In a high-ceilinged hall—so high that the cupola becomes uncertain in the smoky torchlight, King Solomon seems to be meditating next to a bed of rest on which a corpse is lying. The rigidity of the final sleep is weighing upon that form, and the king is dreaming aloud:
“Bathsheba, mother, they are closed, those eyes which conquered the kingdom, cold, those hands which, posed upon my father’s arm, calmed the lions of his wrath. You can no longer move that finger, which a little while ago, raised to our lips, commanded a silence in which you could have heard the sound of a thought. A reaping-hook has passed, and the stubble of your life is scattered—your will and your regrets, and the soft inflection of your voice. And if you are undertaking your last dream, if, nearby, your spirit is contemplating that which was your matrix, what do you love now? Where are you going, if you still exist? But if your immobility maintains your entirety, what good was your life? If the same cold will soon invade me, what good is my life?
“I have seen her eyes die like an opal. What use to you now is your life’s past? I know its story, and that Uriah died for the excessively beautiful jewel that he possessed.21 That was your goal. The serene and tragic beauty in which the glorious Sun slept that King David glimpsed on the terrace and the distant forests has become like the vertical carpet on which your body lies, unable to belong to anyone but the King. How much, disdainful of an obscure rank and blushing at an unmerited birth, you desired to mount the steps of the throne—which doubtless gave you the destiny marked out in your regal stride. At any rate, good or bad, you had a goal: the crown; and afterwards, the same objective continued in me.
“And my father, who was the conqueror and the proscribed, who departed from his own father’s field rich in ambition and valor—I understand his relentless struggle, and his dolorous but love-strewn wanderings. The eyes of heroines were drawn to his vigorous arm. Victory led him to this palace, to your beauty. After the exiles and the pain, he had the softest pillow. The hard Earth in the solitude of companions-in-arms had told him of its divine luxury. To be the greatest was his goal; and then that was to continue in me—to continue, and also to be perpetuated. A challenge! What is perpetual beneath these mute skies, save perhaps for the appearance of the river in which all lives are renewed at every instant, and the high mountains, the dense cadavers of fire.
“How weary I am already of omnipotence! Where shall I send armies that I take no joy in guiding? Something akin to the slow lassitude of advanced age is already filing my limbs, and my strength, whose surge no desire commands, is no use to me. I was born on the calm summit, to which one can no longer ascend, and at the top of the citadel that anterior foresights had built for me, in the midst of archers they had gathered; I live monotonously and the royal headband almost weighs upon me, even though I cannot envisage without terror a life in which I would be stripped of it—not because of the lost power, but because of the terror of rubbing shoulders with the crowd, whose members will then become aware of how different I am from them, a lazy and sedentary traveler on a road on which everyone is running and hastening. I believe that I was born with an old soul, a soul from the earliest days of the world, and I regret Eden because it was empty, and I shall never love an oasis hidden in a desert without travelers.
“Bathsheba, mother, what will you leave behind you? If, as I believe, the soul dies at the same instant that the organs cease to be its servants, if it is extinguished like a lamp in the wind, what will remain of so much beauty? A memory…smoke. And what, then, will remain of Solomon? A name among names, a stele among steles, a rumor that the pedant will evoke momentarily among other rumors, when he opens the slender casket of human memory. The wine of life is heavy and the cup is crude...”
Abruptly, Samuel saw Solomon again.
He is seated, upper body upright, on a golden throne. Among the thick and regular curls of his hair and his black beard, his face is immobile and his eyes are staring. The calm stasis of autumnal things is imprinted in his dull splendor. His precious robe is embroidered with red roses and pomegranate flowers, the emblems of his opulent power. His white hands are motionless on his knees. With him are the high officials and the sages, the golden breastplates and the white linen robes, the white tiara of a black-skinned magician next to the ephod of a priest, and draped in their white burnooses, bending their knees before him, the Ishmaelite ambassadors.
Coiffed in gilded miters, clad in long red robes, leaning on long scepters, the Tyrians wait for the sovereign to deign to address himself to them, and afterwards for the royal ear to listen; and that immobile mask will see the dwellers on the banks of the Euphrates, the horsemen with legs bound by leather laces ornamented with metal fasteners, who are begging for the shelter of the reflection of his law.
Soon, when the affairs of state are terminated, difficult disputes between his subjects will be submitted to the king’s arbitration, for the king sometimes comes to life in the study of various and somber souls. He is just, for passion has never disturbed his clear vision; he is clement, for his indifference is profound.
When the king list
ens, words are reflected in his mind like an image in water devoid of any other ripple. When he speaks, his voice is distant, and yet as strong as the wind that comes from the Liban and has wearied itself running over the expanse...
The grey mist comes to invade Samuel’s eyes, and suddenly there is an expanse of gold; there is a silvery Sun at ground level; bubbles of ardent metal race over the tips of the grass and the reeds; there is a blue canopy of triumphal light; there is, in an ardent midday, an unlimited light brown splendor that extends without limit to a horizon of blue mountains: the plain near Jordan.
And the Queen of Sheba’s cortege of surged forth in a blaze of scarlet, perfect whiteness and streams of amber and gold.
Her face was an admirable April; a golden thread lost itself in her black hair, and gemstones emerged like multicolored birds among leaves. A profound and innocent generosity emanated from her large dark eyes. Her white, polished, elevated forehead was the peristyle of a temple. A pale melancholy was resident in the line of her face, and the slightly large mouth that presaged gentle speech. She smiled, the ardent gleam filtering at first light.
She came forward upright, guiding the white horses with the fine manes like spun silver herself; her chariot of odorant wood, embellished with gilded plaques, skimmed the ground. A young slave by her side held a large long-handled fan of white plumes, and all around her the great horsemen of the desert made the most spirited horses prance, and after them came the equivalent of an entire army encampment, packed up on camels swaying their long necks and on laden mules, with people on foot accompanying the beasts of burden.
And on the parvis of the great palace, Solomon waited for the beautiful and wise Queen.
The palace resounds with noises of celebration, and the splendid halls are like enamel plates that pleasure holds up to the sky. The king and the queen are alone on a large terrace that winds around the palace. From one of its extremities they can see all the rejoicing in the city; every street is a torch, every courtyard a lake of light, and instruments color the soul of the city. Its smoke is incense. At the other extremity, the terrace overlooks the gardens. And between the halls of joy, dazzling topazes of life, and that profound and seductive density of darkness and repose, they talk.
“Queen Balkis, you have come to remove with your fingers of splendor a kind of mantle of darkness that enveloped me, and through my tunic I can see my heart. It seems to me that I am beginning to be born. On how many evenings like this one I have questioned the silence and expectation of the Earth. They sent me back nothing but indecisive gleams, troubled images and perfumes, reflections of fugitive illusions, an all those signs signified the slight, the undulating and the ephemeral. You come, and your bountiful fingers touch my forehead, and it is circled by a tranquil crown of certainty. This is the first moment to which I would like to say: Stop!”
“Why, King Solomon? Why has the voyager, if you are telling the truth, already built her wing in your palace? Do you not fear that it is only the unexpectedness of my arrival as your guest might be dazzling you? Are you not embellishing my face with all the attractions of hazard?”
“What a hazard it was that brought you, beauty of all beauties, as wise as temples, from the distant depths of your country. Yesterday or tomorrow, hazard might perhaps have evoked in you the desire to meet me, but could hazard direct your march toward the moment when the tents of my desire were ready and waiting? For you, my thoughts have returned from exile. The agile servants of my sensuality are filling the jars and the foundation that will quench or thirst; my patience is recalling from afar the marvelous flowers embroidered on these carpets. My memory is effacing all its engraved stones, purifying itself and preparing itself for the most beautiful of effigies. The singing moments that were familiar to me are disposing attenuated lanterns, whose light ought only to be rivaled by the milky gleam of the pearl that will soon be knotted in our blaze. But how beautiful and tall you are, and how proud and enamored your peoples must be! Captives and slaves undoubtedly serve them, and their entire lives flow in happy meditation that rises toward you envelops you with innumerable individual gazes.”
“No,” said the Queen, laughing. “But I have not come for you to admire my beauty; I have come to understand your wisdom.”
“Do not call Wisdom that which was, until you, the disguise of my soul, and which I believed to be—how foolish and ignorant pretended sages are!—my very essence. My erstwhile wisdom? The Heavens are empty, no one holds the sword of justice, generosity is merely the cool of the evening. Beauty is the reflection of ourselves made sublime, having embellished us, which we seek in all the fragile impetuosity and debility of our knowledge—but what does it matter? Your beauty has dissolved my memory.”
“King Solomon, I am as old as the world.”
“What does it matter? I too have seen myself in the depths of dreams, as in the depths of dark cellars...”
“King Solomon, I am, in reality, as old as the world.”
“Like the youth that has been flowing for so many thousands of years, then, and the dawn whose arms are always fresh, and the exquisite gentleness of favorable sleep.”
“Would you love me, King Solomon, if you believed that I am as old as the world?”
“What, then, is the minute of duration that has vanquished Azrael?”
“Me,” she said—and she seemed to the king to be enlarged and transfigured.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“All that is capable of fecundity, the mother of death, and all the grandeur of appearance, and all the flowers on the edge of oblivion.”
“I shall pick you, then.”
As if in the dazzling heart of a colossal lotus, with sat-colored petals blazing in the night, the two lovers lie down. The queen’s long hair is loosened, and entwines around her lover’s body, and everywhere the tresses rest, a kiss awakens. The triumphal lotus grows with their happiness and rises up into the depths of the sky, and the stars, like orbs of gold and ice and fiery wheels, form an escort for the slow ascent. The king’s head rests on the queen’s shoulder; lips parted, neck swollen, one might think him a placid child. She has absolute majesty in all the curves of her body; the amplitude of her gaze occupies the broad vaults of worlds; one might think that something new were about to be born in the endless lands of being, that a totality is about to spring forth and illuminate.
Balkis’ voice softens again. “King Solomon, I fainted just now. Creature issued from the profound desires of humankind, you have embraced in your arms the very objective of its desires. The voluptuousness that I can give you, however, is so transient that you will only have the memory of it tomorrow, and within you, it will be like a beautiful idea that has germinated, and will arrive at the plenitude of its essence. And yet, I have ornamented your slumber for a long time. From this night on, the barges of memory will descend toward you, and today’s happiness will be a cherished wound tomorrow. I have ornamented the empty depths of your horizon with an image—and since I am a phantom, no trace will remain of our embrace. From old souls, no power can create a new soul. Our embrace will remain sterile, but within you, at tender moments, springs will gush forth; you will lean over to listen to their sound; you will get up in order to repeat their music to others.”
The vision retreated and faded away; it seemed to the dreamer that he was Solomon; that before him was the queen, no longer brilliant but afflicted, bathed by a calm beauty.
He saw once again the little house in the city, and Rizpah, who murmured: “Poor boy! Poor boy!”
A mirror reflected his face. Ah! It was certainly not that of King Solomon, but a pale and hollow face of dolor.
He opened his eyes again. There were familiar objects around him, and Rizpah, weeping, who wiped her eyes and took his hands.
Samuel fell back into a delirious sleep.
Chapter Five
THE SECRET
Trumpets had traveled through the city. They preceded a herald who announced the imminent betrothal o
f Princess Marie and the King of Scania, a valiant warrior returned with honors from the oriental wars, and that to mark the occasion, imperial munificence would stream through the city. In the meantime, amnesties were extended and the prisons opened—and that was how Samuel had been returned to his home, ill.
During that interval, the Emperor had also received, with ostentation, the envoys of the King of Hibernia. Among other matters, the latter had asked His Most Serene Highness if he would permit Laurent Télice, one of their master’s subjects, to return with them; they hoped that the Emperor would put his supreme persuasion at the service of this desire, and, if necessary, a parcel of his strength. Without overmuch explanation, and making it known that Télice was not a criminal, but merely that his refusal to return to the lands of his king would assume the appearance of rebellion, the King, not wanting to unleash a bloody litigation—no threat intended, lest there be any misunderstanding—insisted in the name of the ancient alliance and a sequence of services mutually rendered between the two powers.
Consulted, Télice asked for a little more time to make preparations and to free himself from an obligation that he believed he had contracted with regard to the great welcome that the Emperor and the city had given him. He wanted the princess’s betrothal to give him an opportunity to offer the city a perfect product of his art, and that the moment of happiness for the princess, before being acclaimed by bells and artillery, might chime from the frame of a marvelous clock that he wanted to offer to the palace of which the city was proud.
Anxiety about not wanting to appear to accept anything from a vassal, and also a slight disdain, led the Emperor to indicate that the cathedral seemed to him to be a more appropriate place, in order that everyone might enjoy the beautiful work of art, and Télice acquiesced, saying: “Then I shall fashion it differently.”
For long days, his house was closed, as it had been before for brief periods. In the evenings, the windows were ardently ablaze. Only the merchants of precious materials were welcomed into the ground-floor rooms, and he sculptors and ornamentalists were not allowed to see the whole of the work in which there were participating. No curiosity-seeker or courier was able to get into the sealed house. A lateral wing of the cathedral, near the choir, was abandoned to Télice, and the pieces were secretly transported there. Before the celebration of any ceremony, however, the Emperor wanted to see for himself what Télice’s labor had produced.