Damis — ”As for me, they told me nothing, so that I do not know what I was.”
Antony — ”They have the unsubstantial air of shadows.”
Apollonius — ”We met on the seashore the cynocephali, glutted with milk, who were returning from their expedition in the Island of Taprobane. The tepid waves pushed white pearls before us. The amber cracked under our footsteps. Whales’ skeletons were bleaching in the crevices of the cliffs. In short, the earth grew more contracted than a sandal; — and, after casting towards the sun drops from the ocean, we turned to the right to go back. We returned through the region of the Aromatæ, through the country of the Gangaridæ, the promontory of Comaria, the land of the Sachalitæ, of the Aramitæ, and the Homeritæ; then across the Cassanian mountains, the Red Sea, and the Island of Topazes, we penetrated into Ethiopia, through the kingdom of the Pygmæi.”
Antony, aside — ”How large the earth is!”
Damis — ”And when we got home again, all those whom we had known in former days were dead.”
Antony hangs his head. Silence.
Apollonius goes on:
“Then they began talking about me in the world. The plague ravaged Ephesus; I made them stone an old mendicant.”
Damis — ”And the plague was gone!”
Antony — ”What! He banishes diseases?”
Apollonius — ”At Cnidus, I cured the lover of Venus.”
Damis — ”Yes, a madman, who had even promised to marry her. To love a woman is bad enough; but a statue — what idiocy! The Master placed his hand on this man’s heart, and immediately the love was extinguished.”
Antony — ”What! He drives out demons?”
Apollonius — ”At Tarentum, they brought to the stake a young girl who was dead.”
Damis — ”The Master touched her lips; and she arose, calling on her mother.”
Antony — ”Can it be? He brings the dead back to life?”
Apollonius — ”I foretold that Vespasian would be Emperor.”
Antony — ”What! He divines the future?”
Damis — ”There was at Corinth — — ”
Apollonius — ”While I was supping with him at the waters of Baia — — ”
Antony — ”Excuse me, strangers; it is late!”
Damis — ” — — A young man named Menippus.”
Antony — ”No! no! go away!”
Apollonius — ” — — A dog entered, carrying in its mouth a hand that had been cut off.”
Damis — ” — — One evening, in one of the suburbs, he met a woman.”
Antony — ”You do not hear me. Take yourselves off!”
Damis — ” — — He prowled vacantly around the couches.”
Antony — ”Enough!”
Apollonius — ” — — They wanted to drive him away.”
Damis — ” — — Menippus, then, surrendered himself to her; and they became lovers.”
Apollonius — ” — — And, beating the mosaic floor with his tail, he deposited this hand on the knees of Flavius.”
Damis — ” — — But, in the morning, at the school-lectures, Menippus was pale.”
Antony, with a bound — ”Still at it! Well, let them go on, since there is not ...”
Damis — ”The Master said to him: ‘O beautiful young man, you are caressing a serpent; and a serpent is caressing you. For how long are these nuptials?’ Every one of us went to the wedding.”
Antony — ”I am doing wrong, surely, in listening to this!”
Damis — ”Servants were busily engaged at the vestibule; the doors flew open; nevertheless, one could hear neither the noise of footsteps, nor the sound of opening doors. The Master seated himself beside Menippus. Immediately, the bride was seized with anger against the philosophers. But the vessels of gold, the cup-bearers, the cooks, the attendants, disappeared; the roof flew away; the walls fell in; and Apollonius remained alone, standing with this woman all in tears at his feet. It was a vampire, who satisfied the handsome young men in order to devour their flesh — because nothing is better for phantoms of this kind than the blood of lovers.”
Apollonius — ”If you wish to know the art — — ”
Antony — ”I wish to know nothing.”
Apollonius — ”On the evening of our arrival at the gates of Rome — — ”
Antony — ”Oh! yes, tell me about the City of the Popes.”
Apollonius — ” — — A drunken man accosted us who sang with a sweet voice. It was an epithalamium of Nero; and he had the power of causing the death of anyone who heard him with indifference. He carried on his back in a box a string taken from the cithara of the Emperor. I shrugged my shoulders. He threw mud in our faces. Then I unfastened my girdle and placed it in his hands.”
Damis — ”In this instance you were quite wrong!”
Apollonius — ”The Emperor, during the night, made me call at his residence. He played at ossicles with Sporus, leaning with his left arm on a table of agate. He turned round, and, knitting his fair brows: ‘Why are you not afraid of me?’ he asked. ‘Because the God who made you terrible has made me intrepid,’ I replied.”
Antony, to himself — ”Something unaccountable fills me with fear.”
Silence.
Damis resumes, in a shrill voice — ”All Asia, moreover, could tell you ...”
Antony, starting up — ”I am sick. Leave me!”
Damis — ”Listen now. At Ephesus, he witnessed the death of Domitian, who was at Rome.”
Antony making an effort to laugh — ”Is this possible?”
Damis — ”Yes, at the theatre, in broad daylight, on the fourteenth of the Kalends of October, he suddenly exclaimed: ‘They are murdering Cæsar!’ and he added, every now and then, ‘He rolls on the ground! Oh! how he struggles! He gets up again; he attempts to fly; the gates are shut. Ah! it is finished. He is dead!’ And that very day, in fact, Titus Flavius Domitianus was assassinated, as you are aware.”
Antony — ”Without the aid of the Devil ... No doubt ...”
Apollonius — ”He wished to put me to death, this Domitian. Damis fled by my direction, and I remained alone in my prison.”
Damis — ”It was a terrible bit of daring, I must confess!”
Apollonius — ”About the fifth hour, the soldiers led me to the tribunal. I had my speech quite ready, which I kept under my cloak.”
Damis — ”The rest of us were on the bank of Puzzoli! We saw you die; we wept; when, towards the sixth hour, all at once, you appeared, and said to us, ‘It is I.’“
Antony, aside — ”Just like Him!”
Damis, very loudly — ”Absolutely!”
Antony — ”Oh, no! you are lying, are you not? You are lying!”
Apollonius — ”He came down from Heaven — I ascend there, thanks to my virtue, which has raised me even to the height of the Most High!”
Damis — ”Tyana, his native city, has erected a temple with priests in his honour!”
Apollonius draws close to Antony, and, bending towards his ear, says:
“The truth is, I know all the gods, all the rites, all the prayers, all the oracles. I have penetrated into the cavern of Trophonius, the son of Apollo. I have moulded for the Syracusans the cakes which they use on the mountains. I have undergone the eighty tests of Mithra. I have pressed against my heart the serpent of Sabacius. I have received the scarf of the Cabiri. I have bathed Cybele in the waves of the Campanian Gulf; and I have passed three moons in the caverns of Samothrace!”
Damis, laughing stupidly — ”Ah! ah! ah! at the mysteries of the Bona Dea!”
Apollonius — ”And now we are renewing our pilgrimage. We are going to the North, the side of the swans and the snows. On the white plain the blind hippopodes break with the ends of their feet the ultramarine plant.”
Damis — ”Come! it is morning! The cock has crowed; the horse has neighed; the ship is ready.”
Antony — ”The cock has not crowed. I hear the cricket i
n the sands, and I see the moon, which remains in its place.”
Apollonius — ”We are going to the South, behind the mountains and the huge waves, to seek in the perfumes for the cause of love. You shall inhale the odour of myrrhodion, which makes the weak die. You shall bathe your body in the lake of pink oil of the Island of Juno. You shall see sleeping under the primroses the lizard who awakens all the centuries when at his maturity the carbuncle falls from his forehead. The stars glitter like eyes, the cascades sing like lyres, an intoxicating fragrance arises from the opening flowers. Your spirit shall expand in this atmosphere, and it will show itself in your heart as well as in your face.”
Damis — ”Master, it is time! The wind is about to rise; the swallows are awakening; the myrtle-leaf is shed.”
Apollonius — ”Yes, let us go!”
Antony — ”No — not I! I remain!”
Apollonius — ”Do you wish me to show you the plant Balis, which resuscitates the dead?”
Damis — ”Ask him rather for the bloodstone, which attracts silver, iron and bronze!”
Antony — ”Oh! how sick I feel! how sick I feel!”
Damis — ”You shall understand the voices of all creatures, the roarings, the cooings!”
Apollonius — ”I will make you mount the unicorns, the dragons, and the dolphins!”
Antony, weeps — ”Oh! oh! oh!”
Apollonius — ”You shall know the demons who dwell in the caverns, those who speak in the woods, those who move about in the waves, those who drive the clouds.”
Damis — ”Fasten your girdle! tie your sandals!”
Apollonius — ”I will explain to you the reasons for the shapes of divinities; why it is that Apollo is upright, Jupiter sitting down, Venus black at Corinth, square at Athens, conical at Paphos.”
Antony, clasping his hands — ”I wish they would go away! I wish they would go away!”
Apollonius — ”I will snatch off before your eyes the armour of the Gods; we shall force the sanctuaries; I will make you violate the pythoness!”
Antony — ”Help, Lord!”
He flings himself against the cross.
Apollonius — ”What is your desire? your dream? There’s barely time to think of it ...”
Antony — ”Jesus, Jesus, come to my aid!”
Apollonius — ”Do you wish me to make Jesus appear?”
Antony — ”What? How?”
Apollonius — ”It shall be He — and no other! He shall cast off His crown, and we shall speak together face to face!”
Damis, in a low tone — ”Say what you wish for most! Say what you wish for most!”
Antony, at the foot of the cross, murmurs prayers. Damis continues to run around him with wheedling gestures.
“See, worthy hermit, dear Saint Antony! pure man, illustrious man! man who cannot be sufficiently praised! Do not be alarmed; this is an exaggerated style of speaking, borrowed from the Orientals. It in no way prevents — ”
Apollonius — ”Let him alone, Damis! He believes, like a brute, in the reality of things. The fear which he has of the gods prevents him from comprehending them; and he eats his own words, just like a jealous king! But you, my son, quit me not!”
He steps back to the verge of the cliffs, passes over it and remains there, hanging in mid-air:
“Above all forms, farther than the earth, beyond the skies, dwells the World of Ideas, entirely filled with the Word. With one bound we leap across Space, and you shall grasp in its infinity the Eternal, the Absolute Being! Come! give me your hand. Let us go!”
The pair, side by side, rise softly into the air.
Antony, embracing the cross, watches them ascending.
They disappear.
CHAPTER V.
All Gods, All Religions.
ANTONY, walking slowly — ”That was really Hell!
“Nebuchadnezzar did not dazzle me so much. The Queen of Sheba did not bewitch me so thoroughly. The way in which he spoke about the gods filled me with a longing to know them.
“I recollect having seen hundreds of them at a time, in the Island of Elephantinum, in the reign of Dioclesian. The Emperor had given up to the nomads a large territory, on condition that they should protect the frontiers; and the treaty was concluded in the name of the invisible Powers. For the gods of every people were ignorant about other people. The Barbarians had brought forward theirs. They occupied the hillocks of sand which line the river. One could see them holding their idols between their arms, like great paralytic children, or else, sailing amid cataracts on trunks of palm-trees, they pointed out from a distance the amulets on their necks and the tattooings on their breasts; and that is not more criminal than the religion of the Greeks, the Asiatics, and the Romans.
“When I dwelt in the Temple of Heliopolis, I used often to contemplate all the objects on the walls: vultures carrying sceptres, crocodiles playing on lyres, men’s faces joined to serpents’ bodies, women with cows’ heads prostrated before the ithyphallic deities; and their supernatural forms carried me away into other worlds. I wished to know what those calm eyes were gazing at. In order that matter should have so much power, it should contain a spirit. The souls of the gods are attached to their images. Those who possess external beauty may fascinate us; but the others, who are abject or terrible ... how to believe in them? ...”
And he sees moving past, close to the ground, leaves, stones, shells, branches of trees, vague representations of animals, then a species of dropsical dwarfs. These are gods. He bursts out laughing.
Behind him, he hears another outburst of laughter; and Hilarion presents himself, dressed like a hermit, much bigger than before — in fact, colossal.
Antony is not surprised at seeing him again.
“What a brute one must be to adore a thing like that!”
Hilarion — ”Oh! yes; very much of a brute!”
Then advance before them, one by one, idols of all nations and all ages, in wood, in metal, in granite, in feathers, and in skins sewn together. The oldest of them, anterior to the Deluge, are lost to view beneath the seaweed which hangs from them like hair. Some, too long for their lower portions, crack in their joints and break their loins while walking. Others allow sand to flow out through holes in their bellies.
Antony and Hilarion are prodigiously amused. They hold their sides from sheer laughter.
After this, idols pass with faces like sheep. They stagger on their bandy legs, open wide their eyelids, and bleat out, like dumb animals: “Ba! ba! ba!”
In proportion as they approach the human type, they irritate Antony the more. He strikes them with his fist, kicks them, rushes madly upon them. They begin to present a horrible aspect, with high tufts, eyes like bulls, arms terminated with claws, and the jaws of a shark. And, before these gods, men are slaughtered on altars of stone, while others are pounded in vats, crushed under chariot-wheels, or nailed to trees. There is one of them, all in red-hot iron, with the horns of a bull, who devours children.
Antony — ”Horror!”
Hilarion — ”But the gods always demand sufferings. Your own, even, has wished — ”
Antony, weeping — ”Say no more — hold your tongue!”
The enclosure of rocks changes into a valley. A herd of oxen pastures there on the shorn grass. The shepherd who has charge of them perceives a cloud; and in a sharp voice pierces the air with words of urgent entreaty.
Hilarion — ”As he wants rain, he tries, by his strains, to coerce the King of Heaven to open the fruitful cloud.”
Antony, laughing — ”This is too silly a form of presumption!”
Hilarion — ”Why, then, do you perform exorcisms?”
The valley becomes a sea of milk, motionless and illimitable.
In the midst of it floats a long cradle, formed by the coils of a serpent, all whose heads, bending forward at the same time, overshadow a god who lies there asleep. He is young, beardless, more beautiful than a girl, and covered with diaphanous veils. The pearls o
f his tiara shine softly, like moons; a chaplet of stars winds itself many times above his breast, and, with one hand under his head and the other arm extended, he reposes with a dreamy and intoxicated air. A woman squatted before his feet awaits his awakening.
Hilarion — ”This is the primordial duality of the Brahmans — the absolute not expressing itself by any form.”
Upon the navel of the god a stalk of lotus has grown; and in its calyx appears another god with three faces.
Antony — ”Hold! what an invention!”
Hilarion — ”Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in the same way make only one person!”
The three heads are turned aside, and three immense gods appear. The first, who is of a rosy hue, bites the end of his toe. The second, who is blue, tosses four arms about. The third, who is green, weaves a necklace of human skulls. Immediately in front of them rise three goddesses, one wrapped in a net, another offering a cup, and the third brandishing a bow.
And these gods, these goddesses multiply, become tenfold. On their shoulders rise arms, and at the ends of their arms are hands holding banners, axes, bucklers, swords, parasols and drums. Fountains spring from their heads, grass hangs from their nostrils.
Riding on birds, cradled on palanquins, throned on seats of gold, standing in niches of ivory, they dream, travel, command, drink wine and inhale flowers. Dancing-girls whirl around; giants pursue monsters; at the entrances to the grottoes, solitaries meditate. Myriads of stars and clouds of streamers mingle in an indistinguishable throng. Peacocks drink from the streams of golden dust. The embroidery of the pavilions blends with the spots of the leopards. Coloured rays cross one another in the blue air, amid the flying of arrows and the swinging of censers. And all this unfolds itself, like a lofty frieze, leaning with its base on the rocks and mounting to the very sky.
Antony, dazzled — ”What a number of them there are! What do they wish?”
Hilarion — ”The one who is scratching his abdomen with his elephant’s trunk is the solar god, the inspirer of wisdom. That other, whose six heads carry towers and fourteen handles of javelins, is the prince of armies, the fire-devourer. The old man riding on a crocodile is going to bathe the souls of the dead on the seashore. They will be tormented by this black woman with rotten teeth, the governess of hell. The chariot drawn by red mares, which a legless coachman is driving, is carrying about in broad daylight the master of the sun. The moon-god accompanies him in a litter drawn by three gazelles. On her knees, on the back of a parrot, the goddess of beauty is presenting her round breast to Love, her son. Here she is farther on; she leaps with joy in the prairies. Look! look! With a radiant mitre on her head, she runs over the cornfields, over the waves, mounts into the air, and exhibits herself everywhere. Between these gods sit the genii of the winds, of the planets, of the months, of the days, and a hundred thousand others! And their aspects are multiplied, their transformations rapid. Here is one who from a fish has become a tortoise, he assumes the head of a wild boar, the stature of a dwarf!”
Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert Page 385