The Mirror of Present Events

by Brian Stableford

  “The ship of Lutetia was well-guarded on the two banks by a good number of citizen soldiers. I have also seen it served by the Druids that live there and the nymphs of the Seine who serve them as wives—without, however, losing their quality as virgins.”

  “How is that?” asked all the guests, simultaneously

  “Such is the effect of the communication of peoples, that along with the best things, the most prejudicial are introduced. Isis, at the same time as she gave the inhabitants of the Seine the what she had taken from the banks of the Nile, also brought them the execrable abuse of the most civilized, and hence the most corrupt, people on earth. There exists in Memphis a very great distinction between the ‘children of the Gods,’ or ‘children of the Vessel,’ and the ‘children of Men.’ Young women, after having given birth in the vessel to a few babies ‘of the Gods,’ emerge therefrom and are espoused as virgins by the ‘children of man.’ The reason is quite simple; there is such a vast inequality between the Almighty and humans that a young woman who has enjoyed the caresses of an Almighty is presumed to have gained by that celestial commerce and to be worth more for the earth than an entirely new young woman.”36

  “Oh, what stupid credulity!” exclaimed Nicator. “And the inhabitants of Lutetia adopted that unworthy refinement of theocratic pride and lust?”

  “What do you expect?” Frankestein continued. “It was not examined at first; people yield with heads bowed to superstition; devils appear to be celestial creatures; then evil pullulates like weeds, and it’s the devil of a job to uproot it. For a long time, the Kings of Lutetia did all that they could, without success, to make the people lose confidence in the Druids, but the latter were dangerous, especially when they combined their ascendancy with the power of the nobles, or Iarles,37 petty Regules that swarm in Gaul, and whose combined strength has more than once shaken the throne of the sovereign, to whom they give no other title that that of ‘general of conquering soldiers.’

  “‘No one dared, for a long time, to resist the Druids, who took sole charge of the education of the young in order to inspire them early on and in an unalterable fashion with the most horrible opinions. Iarles have been seen to have the right of life and death over vassals whom they governed to their profit. Those two classes of citizens, one of which employed cunning and the other force to make itself feared, were balanced against one another, but they joined forces to tyrannize the people, whom they treated with sovereign scorn. I’ve seen that a man of the people could not succeed, among the Gauls, in fulfilling a public responsibility; it seemed that the nation was only made for the priests and the aristocrats. Instead of being consoled by the former and protected by the latter, as justice required, the Druids frightened in order that the Iarles could oppress.’38 The Kings who were most successful were, however, those who overtly took up the defense of the weak.”

  “You speak of all that,” said Aglaonice, “as something past.”

  “A considerable fraction of those abuses no longer exists, in fact,” Frankestein replied. “The Nation itself has destroyed them; but not without difficulty. It was first necessary to make the truth known everywhere, leaving no doubt as to the rapacity of the Iarles, who, taking advantage of the facile generosity of the King, had themselves given under the title of recompense, the major part of the tax revenue, which reduced the people to languishing in opprobrium, only procuring their subsistence be serving in the manner most dishonorable to humanity. It was necessary to prove that the Druids had caused weak minds to give them so many arpents of the best-yielding land that they alone possessed a third of the wealth of the republic of Gaul, without, however, wanting it to be touched, without contributing, other than under the title of loans, to the settlement of the State’s debts; and that their intolerance had occasioned massacres that, if they were renewed, might depopulate the land.39 It was necessary to climb on to trestles to make the people hear that the king’s counselors, charged with sending dispatches, abused his name, depriving honest citizens of their liberty in order to have their wives, and were no less predatory than the brigands stifled by Hercules. It was necessary to prove, in sum, that the plague was in the vessel.

  “Weary of the miseries resulting from these tyrannical powers, the inhabitants of Lutetia then precipitated themselves with a kind of rage upon the mysterious ship; they devastated it with blows of the ax, after having let out the young women. The servants of the vessel and their friends the Iarles did not have a good time, but a short time afterwards calm succeeded the massacres and the burning. The same hands that destroyed the old poisoned ship have made a completely new one in which the children of men now replace the children of the gods. It is enormous in size and strong enough to endure for six thousand years and beyond.

  “That is the key to the enigma. Furthermore, Isis has been banished; it is no longer her religious figurehead that is seen on the prow of the ship; it is that of the King of Lutetia, crowned with a civic branch, holding panthers on a leash in one hand and an olive branch in the other. At the top of the mainmast floats a large banner on which is written: legum servi sumus, it liberi esse possimus.40 The gallery is ornamented with balustrades, from which emerges a lantern surmounted by a bonnet in the form of an epiroge.”41

  “Oh, you have charmed me,” said Bazilide to her husband, embracing him in a bourgeois fashion, as was done in the times of Hector. “You talk about the change of fortune of the Lutetians with a kind of satisfaction that makes the greatest eulogy of your heart.42 I cannot tell you all the tender sentiments that you make me feel.”

  “Is the King of Lutetia beloved, then?” asked Nicator.

  “Greatly,” said Frankestein, “and not only by the Lutetians, but all the people of Gaul. Look, I have in my pocket two medallions that can give you proof of it. The first, imagined by gratitude, was struck a few years after the King, at the time of his coronation, had handed back certain onerous rights due to the chief of the conquerors on his accession to the throne, in the temple of Mars. The Gauls then came to experience great calamities; the people lacked bread; touched by their misery, he reformed his expenditure; he had wheat imported from abroad at great expense, and distributed it first and foremost to the unfortunate cultivators. He is represented here in the emblem of the pelican, which bleeds itself to nourish its children.”

  “The idea isn’t new,” said Nicator.”

  “No,” said Aglaonice, “but it has justice. Let us see the other.”

  “This one is very recent,” said Frankestein. “It makes allusion to the reestablishment of the finances exhausted by depredations. The people are doing for their King here what he has done for them. You see the good city of Lutetia presenting her breasts to her father. Behind her is displayed the desire of all others to enjoy the same happiness as her.”

  “Oh,” said Cornelius, “that trait of filial piety belongs to us, but the comparison is fortunate.”

  Aglaonice and Bazilide, indignant at the gluttony of the pontiffs serving the former vessel and the tyrannical spirit of the Iarles, wanted to know what had become of both parties after such an upheaval.

  “Let it suffice for you to know, ladies,” said Frankestein, “that all distinctions have been abolished: that the great Druids, the servants of the god Tor-Tir,43 the Druid sacrificers who lived on pure wheat steeped in human blood, are reduced at present to a fine broth of lupins and beech-nuts, all washed down with the milk of goats of the race that once nourished the father of men; for that posterity of Amaltheia was imported specially from Crete, on the grounds that such a mild aliment would surely bring about a complete change in their mores.”

  As he finished speaking, Frankestein put his arm around Bazilide amorously. Nicator leaned toward Aglaonice with a voluptuous expression; her eyes did not react badly to that attack. Cornelius, who was only serving as a witness, did not want to put a longer obstacle in the way of their impatience; he got up from the table and embraced all four of them, with tears in his eyes.

  “One mo
re word only,” he said to them, “so that before I retire I shall know your projects.”

  Nicator had a father advanced in age, and could not renounce returning to him immediately

  Frankestein made it a duty and a joy to introduce Bazilide to his family; he proposed then to take her to Aglaonice in the beautiful land of Sennaar, in order never to separate again from her and Nicator.

  “My friends,” said Cornelius, “At least wait until the end of my Praetorship. If you leave me so soon, I shall think that I am losing all my children at the same time...”

  He was promised what he requested; they swore it. They embraced again, and then they went their separate ways.44

  Thus, in my gardens, where the mysterious Acacia is flowering—a partisan of sweet union, peace and equality—I take my pleasure in composing these stories, similar in their ensemble to those paintings that present one object seen at a distance, but change and become something else as one draws closer, glad to think they might perhaps make some contribution to preventing my brothers from butchering one another...

  Meanwhile, a new Erostratus, the furious Bergasse,45 too eager to render his name celebrated, spreads in profusion throughout France the new fruits of his incendiary pen, and avarice trembles to open its coffers...

  Recalcitrant to the voice of wisdom, which invites tolerance, the inhabitant of the countryside blindly obeys the seditious declamations of a host of false prophets; blood is flowing again; the sky is darkening, obscured by a thick cloud of unclean spirits that Hell has vomited forth, and which are breathing hatred, fanaticism, vengeance and discord everywhere. Vile ogre with eight hundred farms!

  O Aristos! I would like to think that you are mistaken if you believe you see the armed plebeians exterminating one another like the soldiers born from the teeth of Cadmus’ serpent, or of you flatter yourself by seeing them at your feet demanding shackles once again, while you, prideful despot, continue to live on their substance. Your unworthy heart is for me the image of Tartarus.

  Deadly partisan of a detested power

  Monster jealous of the air that human breathe;

  Succumb; die in the end of the infected sting

  Of black serpents that tear you apart.

  In his simple redoubt, let the humble pauper.

  Sure of the little wealth that enables him to live

  Subsist, blessing a King that freed him

  From the deadly effects of your voracity.

  APPENDIX

  Massacres

  An Englishman46 has compiled a summary of all the massacres perpetrated for the cause of religion, since the first century of our vulgar era. This is a translation of it.

  Christians had already excited some troubles in Rome when, in the year 251 of out vulgar era, the priest Novatien disputed what we call the seat of Rome, the papacy of Corneille, for it was already an important position that was worth a great deal of money. And at exactly the same time, the seat of Carthage was similarly disputed by Cyprian and another priest named Novat, who had killed his wife by kicking her in the stomach. Those two schisms occasioned a great many murders in Carthage and in Rome. The emperor Decius was obliged to repress those furies with a few executions, which became known as the “great” or the “terrible” persecution of Decius. We shall not talk about that here; we shall limit ourselves to the murders of Christians committed by other Christians. If we estimate at two hundred the number of individuals killed or grievously wounded in those first two schisms, which were the model for so many others, we believe that that item will not be overly exaggerated. Let us therefore say:

  200.

  As soon as the Christians could deliver themselves with impunity to their vengeances under Constantine, they assassinated the young Candidian, son of the emperor Galerus, the hope of the empire, who was compared to Marcellus; a child of eight, the son of the emperor Maximin; and a daughter of the same emperor aged seven. The empress, their mother, was dragged out of her palace with her women into the streets of Antioch and they were thrown into the Oronte. The Empress Valerie, widow of Galere and daughter of Diocletian, was killed in Thessalonika in 315 and had the sea for a sepulcher.

  It is true that a few authors do not accuse the Christians of that murder and impute it to Licinius, but let us reduce the number of those that the Christians butchered on that occasion to two hundred; that is not too many. So:

  200.

  In the schism of the Donatists in Africa, one can hardly count less than four hundred people killed by blows of clubs, for the bishops did not want anyone to fight with swords. Put: 400.

  It is well-known of what horrors and how many civil wars the mere word “consubstantial” was the origin and the pretext. That conflagration set the entire empire ablaze several times and was reignited in all the provinces devastated by the Goths, the Burgundians and the Vandals for nearly four hundred years.

  If we only include the three hundred thousand Christians butchered by Christians for that quarrel, without counting the errant families reduced to mendicity, we cannot be reproached for having inflated our count. So:

  300,000.

  The quarrel of the iconoclasts and the iconoclaters certainly cost no less than sixty thousand lives.

  60,000.

  We must not pass over in silence the hundred thousand Manicheans that the empress Theodora, widow of Theophilus, had butchered in the Greek empire in 845. It was a penitence that her confessor had ordered, because until that epoch no more than twenty thousand had been hanged, impaled and garroted. Those people merited all being killed, in order to teach them that there is only one good principle and no bad one. The total amounted to a hundred and twenty thousand at least. So:

  120,000.

  Let us only count twenty thousand in the seditions excited by the priests who disputed all the Episcopal seats; it is necessary to exercise extreme discretion.

  20,000.

  It has been supposed that the horrible folly of the holy crusades cost the lives of two million Christians, but I would like, by the greatest reduction that has ever been made, to reduce them to one million. So:

  1,000,000.

  The crusade of the sword-wielding religious knights that devastated so honestly and in such saintly fashion all the shores of the Baltic Sea must have left at least a hundred thousand dead. So:

  100,000.

  As many for the crusade against the Languedoc, where one saw nothing for a long time but the ashes of pyres and the bones of the dead devoured by wolves in the country. So:

  100,000.

  The devotion with which the priests Jan Huss and Jerome of Prague were burned in the city of Constance at the end of the great schism did great honor to the emperor Sigismund and the council, but it caused, I know not how, the war of the Hussites, in which we can boldly count a hundred and fifty thousand dead. Hence:

  150,000.

  After those great butcheries, we admit that the massacres of Merindol and Cabrieres were very minor affairs. It is only a matter of twenty-two large towns reduced o ashes, eighteen thousand innocents slaughtered and burned, infants at the teat thrown into the flames, young women raped and then cut into quarters, old women who were no longer good for anything made to leap into the air by forcing cartridges charged with powder into their two orifices. But as that execution was done juridically, with all the formalities of the law, by men in robes, it is necessary not to omit that part of French law. So put:

  18,000.

  Now we reach the holiest and most glorious epoch of Christianity, which a few people wanted to reform without consent at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The saintly popes, the saintly bishops and the saintly priests having refused to mend their ways, the two parties marched over the bodies of the dead for two entire centuries, with only a few intervals of peace.

  If the amicable reader wishes to take the trouble to add up all the murders committed between the reigns of the saintly Pope Leo X and the saintly Pope Clement IX, whether juridical or non-juridical, the heads of
the priests, secular individuals and princes felled by the executioner, the wood whose price was driven upwards in several provinces by the multitude of pyres lit, the blood spilled from one end of Europe to the other, the executioners worn out in Flanders, Germany, Holland, France and even England; thirty civil wars for transubstantiation, predestination, the surplice and holy water, the massacres of Saint Bartholomew’s Eve, the massacres in Ireland, the massacres in the Vaudois, the massacres in the Cévennes, etc. etc. etc, one would doubtless find more than two million bloody deaths, with more than three million unfortunate families plunged into a misery perhaps worse than death. But as it is only a matter of deaths here, let is quickly pass with horror over two million.

  2,000,000.

  Let us not be unjust and impute more crimes to the Inquisition than it actually committed in surplice and in stole; let us not exaggerate anything and reduce to two hundred thousand the number of souls it sent to Heaven or Hell. So:

  200,000.

  Let us even reduce to five millions the twelve million humans that Bishop Las Casas claimed to have immolated to the Christian religion in America, and let us, above all, make the consoling reflection that they were not human, since they were not Christians.47 Hence:

  5,000,000.

  Let us reduce with the same economy the four hundred thousand humans who perished in the civil war in Japan excited by the Reverend Father Jesuits, and only raise our count by three hundred thousand:

  300,000.

  TOTAL: 9,718, 800

  Whoever you might be, reader, if you conserve the archives of your family, consult them, and you will see that you have had more than one ancestor immolated on the pretext of religion, or at least cruelly persecuted, or who was a persecutor, which is even worse, etc. Whatever your calculation might be, you descend from murderers or the murdered; choose and tremble. But you, prelate of my country, rejoice; our blood is worth an income of five thousand guineas to you.