Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert

by Gustave Flaubert

  Hilarion has disappeared; and Antony, pressed forward by the crowd, finds himself facing the Carpocratians, stretched with women upon scarlet cushions:

  “Before re-entering the centre of unity, you will have to pass through a series of conditions and actions. In order to free yourself from the Powers of Darkness, do their works for the present! The husband goes to his wife and says, ‘Act with charity towards your brother,’ and she will kiss you.”

  The Nicolaites, assembled around a smoking dish:

  “This is meat offered to idols; let us take it! Apostacy is permitted when the heart is pure. Glut your flesh with what it asks for. Try to destroy it by means of debaucheries. Prounikos, the mother of Heaven, wallows in iniquity.”

  The Marcosians, with rings of gold and dripping with balsam:

  “Come to us, in order to be united with the Spirit! Come to us, in order to drink immortality!”

  And one of them points out to him, behind some tapestry, the body of a man with an ass’s head. This represents Sabaoth, the father of the Devil. As a mark of hatred he spits upon it.

  Another discloses a very low bed strewn with flowers, saying as he does so:

  “The spiritual nuptials are about to be consummated.”

  A third holds forth a goblet of glass while he utters an invocation. Blood appears in it:

  “Ah! there it is! there it is! the blood of Christ!”

  Antony turns aside; but he is splashed by the water, which leaps out of a tub.

  The Helvidians cast themselves into it head foremost, muttering:

  “Man regenerated by baptism is incapable of sin!”

  Then he passes close to a great fire, where the Adamites are warming themselves completely naked to imitate the purity of Paradise; and he jostles up against the Messalians wallowing on the stone floor half-asleep, stupid:

  “Oh! run over us, if you like; we shall not budge! Work is a sin; all occupation is evil!”

  Behind those, the abject Paternians, men, women, and children, pell-mell, on a heap of filth, lift up their hideous faces, besmeared with wine:

  “The inferior parts of the body, having been made by the Devil, belong to him. Let us eat, drink, and enjoy!”

  Ætius — ”Crimes come from the need here below of the love of God!”

  But all at once a man, clad in a Carthaginian mantle, jumps among them, with a bundle of thongs in his hand; and striking at random to right and left of him violently:

  “Ah! imposters, brigands, simoniacs, heretics, and demons! the vermin of the schools! the dregs of Hell! This fellow here, Marcion, is a sailor from Sinope excommunicated for incest. Carpocras has been banished as a magician; Ætius has stolen his concubine; Nicolas prostituted his own wife; and Manes, who describes himself as the Buddha, and whose name is Cubricus, was flayed with the sharp end of a cane, so that his tanned skin swings at the gates of Ctesiphon.”

  Antony has recognised Tertullian, and rushes forward to meet him.

  “Help, master! help!”

  Tertullian, continuing — ”Break the images! Veil the virgins! Pray, fast, weep, mortify yourselves! No philosophy! no books! After Jesus, science is useless!”

  All have fled; and Antony sees, instead of Tertullian, a woman seated on a stone bench. She sobs, her head resting against a pillar, her hair hanging down, and her body wrapped in a long brown simar.

  Then they find themselves close to each other far from the crowd; and a silence, an extraordinary peacefulness, ensues, such as one feels in a wood when the wind ceases and the leaves flutter no longer. This woman is very beautiful, though faded and pale as death. They stare at each other, and their eyes mutually exchange a flood of thoughts, as it were, a thousand memories of the past, bewildering and profound. At last Priscilla begins to speak:

  “I was in the lowest chamber of the baths, and I was lulled to sleep by the confused murmurs that reached me from the streets. All at once I heard loud exclamations. The people cried, ‘It is a magician! it is the Devil!’ And the crowd stopped in front of our house opposite to the Temple of Æsculapius. I raised myself with my wrists to the height of the air-hole. On the peristyle of the temple was a man with an iron collar around his neck. He placed lighted coals on a chafing-dish, and with them made large furrows on his breast, calling out, ‘Jesus! Jesus!’ The people said, ‘That is not lawful! let us stone him!’ But he did not desist. The things that were occurring were unheard of, astounding. Flowers, large as the sun, turned around before my eyes, and I heard a harp of gold vibrating in mid-air. The day sank to its close. My arms let go the iron bars; my strength was exhausted; and when he bore me away to his house — ”

  Antony — ”Whom are you talking about?”

  Priscilla — ”Why, of Montanus!”

  Antony — ”But Montanus is dead.”

  Priscilla — ”That is not true.”

  A voice — ”No, Montanus is not dead!”

  Antony comes back; and near him, on the other side upon a bench, a second woman is seated — this one being fair, and paler still, with swellings under her eyelids, as if she had been a long time weeping. Without waiting for him to question her, she says:

  Maximilla — ”We were returning from Tarsus by the mountains, when, at a turn of the road, we saw a man under a fig-tree. He cried from a distance, ‘Stop!’ and he sprang forward, pouring out abuse on us. The slaves rushed up to protect us. He burst out laughing. The horses pranced. The mastiffs all began to howl. He was standing up. The perspiration fell down his face. The wind made his cloak flap.

  “While addressing us by name, he reproached us for the vanity of our actions, the impurity of our bodies; and he raised his fist towards the dromedaries on account of the silver bells which they wore under their jaws. His fury filled my very entrails with terror; nevertheless, it was a voluptuous sensation, which soothed, intoxicated me. At first, the slaves drew near. ‘Master,’ said they, ‘our beasts are fatigued’; then there were the women: ‘We are frightened’; and the slaves ran away. After that, the children began to cry, ‘We are hungry.’ And, as no answer was given to the women, they disappeared. And now he began to speak. I perceived that there was some one close beside me. It was my husband: I listened to the other. The first crawled between the stones, exclaiming, ‘Do you abandon me?’ and I replied, ‘Yes! begone!’ in order to accompany Montanus.”

  Antony — ”A eunuch!”

  Priscilla — ”Ah! coarse heart, you are astonished at this! Yet Magdalen, Jane, Martha and Susanna did not enter the couch of the Saviour. Souls can be madly embraced more easily than bodies. In order to retain Eustolia with impunity, the Bishop Leontius mutilated himself — cherishing his love more than his virility. And, then, it is not my own fault. A spirit compels me to do it; Eotas cannot cure me. Nevertheless, he is cruel. What does it matter? I am the last of the prophetesses; and, after me, the end of the world will come.”

  Maximilla — ”He has loaded me with his gifts. None of the others loved me so much, nor is any of them better loved.”

  Priscilla — ”You lie! I am the person he loves!”

  Maximilla — ”No: it is I!”

  They fight.

  Between their shoulders appears a negro’s head.

  Montanus, covered with a black cloak, fastened by two dead men’s bones:

  “Be quiet, my doves! Incapable of terrestrial happiness, we by this union attain to spiritual plenitude. After the age of the Father, the age of the Son; and I inaugurate the third, that of the Paraclete. His light came to me during the forty nights when the heavenly Jerusalem shone in the firmament above my house at Pepuza.

  “Ah! how you cry out with anguish when the thongs flagellate you! How your aching limbs offer themselves to my burning caresses! How you languish upon my breast with an inconceivable love! It is so strong that it has revealed new worlds to you, and you can now behold spirits with your mortal eyes.”

  Antony makes a gesture of astonishment.

  Tertullian, coming up close t
o Montanus — ”No doubt, since the soul has a body, that which has no body exists not.”

  Montanus — ”In order to render it less material I have introduced numerous mortifications — three Lents every year, and, for each night, prayers, in saying which the mouth is kept closed, for fear the breath, in escaping, should sully the mental act. It is necessary to abstain from second marriages — or, rather, from marriage altogether! The angels sinned with women.”

  The Archontics, in hair-shirts:

  “The Saviour said, ‘I came to destroy the work of the woman.’“

  The Tatianists, in hair-cloths of rushes:

  “She is the tree of evil! Our bodies are the garments of skin.”

  And, ever advancing on the same side, Antony encounters the Valesians, stretched on the ground, with red plates below their stomachs, beneath their tunics.

  They present to him a knife.

  “Do like Origen and like us! Is it the pain you fear, coward? Is it the love of your flesh that restrains you, hypocrite?”

  And while he watches them struggling, extended on their backs swimming in their own blood, the Cainites, with their hair fastened by vipers, pass close to him, shouting in his ears:

  “Glory to Cain! Glory to Sodom! Glory to Judas!

  “Cain begot the race of the strong; Sodom terrified the earth with its chastisement, and it is through Judas that God saved the world! Yes, Judas! without him no death and no Redemption!”

  They pass out through the band of Circoncellions, clad in wolf-skin, crowned with thorns, and carrying iron clubs.

  “Crush the fruit! Attack the fountain-head! Drown the child! Plunder the rich man who is happy, and who eats overmuch! Strike down the poor man who casts an envious glance at the ass’s saddle-cloth, the dog’s meal, the bird’s nest, and who is grieved at not seeing others as miserable as himself.

  “As for us — the Saints — in order to hasten the end of the world, we poison, burn, massacre. The only salvation is in martyrdom. We give ourselves up to martyrdom. We take off with pincers the skin of our heads; we spread our limbs under the ploughs; we cast ourselves into the mouths of furnaces. Shame on baptism! Shame on the Eucharist! Shame on marriage! Universal damnation!”

  Then, throughout the basilica, there is a fresh accession of frenzy. The Audians draw arrows against the Devil; the Collyridians fling blue veils to the ceiling; the Ascitians prostrate themselves before a wineskin; the Marcionites baptise a corpse with oil. Close beside Appelles, a woman, the better to explain her idea, shows a round loaf of bread in a bottle; another, surrounded by the Sampsians, distributes like a host the dust of her sandals. On the bed of the Marcosians, strewn with roses, two lovers embrace each other. The Circoncellions cut one another’s throats; the Velesians make a rattling sound; Bardesanes sings; Carpocras dances; Maximilla and Priscilla utter loud groans; and the false prophetess of Cappadocia, quite naked, resting on a lion and brandishing three torches, yells forth the Terrible Invocation.

  The pillars are poised like trunks of trees; the amulets round the necks of the Heresiarchs have lines of flame crossing each other; the constellations in the chapels move to and fro, and the walls recede under the alternate motion of the crowd, in which every head is a wave which leaps and roars.

  Meanwhile, from the very depths of the uproar rises a song with bursts of laughter, in which the name of Jesus recurs. These outbursts come from the common people, who all clap their hands in order to keep time with the music. In the midst of them is Arius, in the dress of a deacon:

  “The fools who declaim against me pretend to explain the absurd; and, in order to destroy them entirely, I have composed little poems so comical that they are known by heart in the mills, the taverns, and the ports.

  “A thousand times no! the Son is not co-eternal with the Father, nor of the same substance. Otherwise He would not have said, ‘Father, remove from Me this chalice! Why do ye call Me good? God alone is good! I go to my God, to your God!’ and other expressions, proving that He was a created being. It is demonstrated to us besides by all His names: lamb, shepherd, fountain, wisdom, Son of Man, prophet, good way, corner-stone.”

  Sabellius — ”As for me, I maintain that both are identical.”

  Arius — ”The Council of Antioch has decided the other way.”

  Antony — ”Who, then, is the Word? Who was Jesus?”

  The Valentinians — ”He was the husband of Acharamoth when she had repented!”

  The Sethianians — ”He was Sem, son of Noah!”

  The Theodotians — ”He was Melchisidech!”

  The Merinthians — ”He was nothing but a man!”

  The Apollonarists — ”He assumed the appearance of one! He simulated the Passion!”

  Marcellus of Ancyra — ”He is a development of the Father!”

  Pope Calixtus — ”Father and Son are the two forms of a single God!”

  Methadius — ”He was first in Adam, and then in man!”

  Cerinthus — ”And He will come back to life again!”

  Valentinus — ”Impossible — His body is celestial.”

  Paul of Samosta — ”He is God only since His baptism.”

  Hermogenes — ”He dwells in the sun.”

  And all the heresiarchs form a circle around Antony, who weeps, with his head in his hands.

  A Jew, with red beard, and his skin spotted with leprosy, advances close to him, and chuckling horribly:

  “His soul was the soul of Esau. He suffered from the disease of Bellerophon; and his mother, the woman who sold perfumes, surrendered herself to Pantherus, a Roman soldier, under the corn-sheaves, one harvest evening.”

  Antony eagerly lifts up his head, and gazes at them without uttering a word; then, treading right over them:

  “Doctors, magicians, bishops and deacons, men and phantoms, back! back! Ye are all lies!”

  The Heresiarchs — ”We have martyrs, more martyrs than yours, prayers more difficult, higher outbursts of love, and ecstasies quite as protracted.”

  Antony — ”But no revelation. No proofs.”

  Then all brandish in the air rolls of papyrus, tablets of wood, pieces of leather; and strips of cloth; and pushing them one before the other:

  The Corinthians — ”Here is the Gospel of the Hebrews!”

  The Marcionites — ”The Gospel of the Lord! The Gospel of Eve!”

  The Encratites — ”The Gospel of Thomas!”

  The Cainites — ”The Gospel of Judas!”

  Basilides — ”The treatise of the spirit that has come!”

  Manes — ”The prophecy of Barcouf!”

  Antony makes a struggle and escapes them, and he perceives, in a corner filled with shadows, the old Ebionites, dried up like mummies, their glances dull, their eyebrows white.

  They speak in a quavering tone:

  “We have known, we ourselves have known, the carpenter’s son. We were of his own age; we lived in his street. He used to amuse himself by modelling little birds with mud; without being afraid of cutting the benches, he assisted his father in his work, or rolled up, for his mother, balls of dyed wool. Then he made a journey into Egypt, whence he brought back wonderful secrets. We were in Jericho when he discovered the eater of grasshoppers. They talked together in a low tone, without anyone being able to hear them. But it was since that occurrence that he made a noise in Galilee and that many stories have been circulated concerning him.”

  They repeat, tremulously:

  “We have known, we ourselves; we have known him.”

  Antony — ”One moment! Tell me! pray tell me, what was his face like?”

  Tertullian — ”Fierce and repulsive in its aspect; for he was laden with all the crimes, all the sorrows, and all the deformities of the world.”

  Antony — ”Oh! no! no! I imagine, on the contrary, that there was about his entire person a superhuman beauty.”

  Eusebius of Cæsarea — ”There is at Paneadæ, close to an old ruin, in the midst of a rank growth of weeds, a
statue of stone, raised, as it is pretended, by the woman with the issue of blood. But time has gnawed away the face, and the rain has obliterated the inscription.”

  A woman comes forth from the group of Carpocratians.

  Marcellina — ”I was formerly a deaconess in a little church at Rome, where I used to show the faithful images, in silver, of St. Paul, Homer, Pythagoras and Jesus Christ.

  “I have kept only his.”

  She draws aside the folds of her cloak.

  “Do you wish it?”

  A voice — ”He reappears himself when we invoke him. It is the hour. Come!”

  And Antony feels a brutal hand laid on him, which drags him along.

  He ascends a staircase in complete darkness, and, after proceeding for some time, arrives in front of a door. Then his guide (is it Hilarion? he cannot tell) says in the ear of a third person, “The Lord is about to come,” — and they are introduced into an apartment with a low ceiling and no furniture. What strikes him at first is, opposite him, a long chrysalis of the colour of blood, with a man’s head, from which rays escape, and the word Knouphis written in Greek all around. It rises above a shaft of a column placed in the midst of a pedestal. On the other walls of the apartment, medallions of polished brass represent heads of animals — that of an ox, of a lion, of an eagle, of a dog, and again, an ass’s head! The argil lamps, suspended below these images, shed a flickering light. Antony, through a hole in the wall, perceives the moon, which shines far away on the waves, and he can even distinguish their monotonous ripple, with the dull sound of a ship’s keel striking against the stones of a pier.

  Men, squatting on the ground, their faces hidden beneath their cloaks, give vent at intervals to a kind of stifled barking. Women are sleeping, with their foreheads clasped by both arms, which are supported by their knees, so completely shrouded by their veils that one would say they were heaps of clothes arranged along the wall. Beside them, children, half-naked, and half devoured with vermin, watch the lamps burning, with an idiotic air; — and they are doing nothing; they are awaiting something.