I am still the Great Isis!—none has yet lifted my veil! My fruit is the Sun!
I am still the Great Isis!—none has yet lifted my veil! My fruit is the Sun!
I am still the Great Isis!—none has yet lifted my veil! My fruit is the Sun!
"Sim of Springtime, clouds now obscure thy face! The breath of Typhon devours the pyramids. But a little while ago I beheldthe Sphinx flee away. He was galloping like a jackal.
"I look for my priests,—my priests clad in mantles of linen, with their great harps, and bearing a mysterious bark, adorned with silver pateras. There are no more festivals upon the lakes!—no more illuminations in my delta!—no more cups of milk at Philæ! Apis has long ceased to reappear.
"Egypt! Egypt! thy great motionless gods have their shoulders already whitened by the dung of birds; and the wind that passes over the desert rolls with it and the ashes of thy dead!—Anubis, guardian of ghosts, abandon me not!"
(The Cynocephalos has vanished. She shakes her child.)
"But ... what ails thee ... thy hands are cold, thy head droops!"
(Harpocrates expires. Then she cries aloud with a cry so piercing, funereal, heart-rending, that Anthony answers it with another cry, extending his arms as to support her.
She is no longer there. He lowers his face, overwhelmed by shame.
All that he has seen becomes confusedwithin his mind. It is like the bewilderment of travel, the illness of drunkenness. He wishes to hate; but a vague and vast pity fills his heart. He begins to weep, and weeps abundantly.)
Hilarion. "What makes thee sorrowful?"
Anthony(after having long sought within himself for a reply):
"I think of all the souls that have been lost through these false gods!"
Hilarion. "Dost thou not think that they ... sometimes ... bear much resemblance to theTrue?"
Anthony. "That is but a device of the Devil to seduce the faithful more easily. He attacks the strong through the mind, the weak through the flesh."
Hilarion. "But luxury, in its greatest fury, has all the disinterestedness of penitence. The frenzied love of the body accelerates the destruction thereof,—and proclaims the extent of the impossible by the exposition of the body's weakness."
Anthony. "What signifies that to me! My heart sickens with disgust of these beautiful bestial gods, forever busied with carnages and incests!"
Hilarion. "Yet recollect all those things in the Scripture which scandalize thee because thou art unable to comprehend them! So also may these Gods conceal under their sinful forms some mighty truth. There are more of them yet to be seen. Look around!"
Anthony. "No, no!—it is dangerous!"
Hilarion. "But a little while ago thou didst desire to know them! Is it because thy faith might vacillate in the presence of lies? What fearest thou?"
(The rocks fronting Anthony have become as a mountain. A line of clouds obscures the mountain half way between summit and base; and above the clouds appears another mountain, enormous, all green, unequally hollowed by valleys nestling in its slopes, and supporting at its summit, in the midst of laurel-groves a palace of bronze, roofed with tiles of gold, and supported by columns having capitals of ivory.
In the centre of the peristyle Jupiter,—colossal, with torso nude,—holds Victory in one hand, his thunderbolts in the other; and his eagle, perched between his feet, rears its head.
Juno, seated near him, rolls her large eyes,beneath a diadem whence her wind-blown veil escapes like a vapour.
Behind them, Minerva, standing upon a pedestal, leans on her spear. The skin of the Gorgon covers her breast, and a linen peplos falls in regular folds to the nails of her toes. Her glaucous eyes, which gleam beneath her vizor, gaze afar off, attentively.
On the right of the palace, the aged Neptune bestrides a dolphin beating with its fins a vast azure expanse which may be sea or sky, for the perspective of the Ocean seems a continuation of the blue ether: the two elements are interblended.
On the other side weird Pluto in night-black mantle, crowned with diamond tiara and bearing a sceptre of ebony, sits in the midst of an islet surrounded by the circumvolutions of the Styx;—and this river of shadow empties itself into the darknesses, which form a vast black gulf below the cliff,—a bottomless abyss!
Mars, clad in brass, brandishes as in wrath his broad shield and his sword.
Hercules, leaning upon his club, gazes at him from below.
Apollo, his face ablaze with light, graspswith outstretched right arm the reins of four white horses urged to a gallop; and Ceres in her ox-drawn chariot advances toward him with a sickle in her hand.
Behind her comes Bacchus, riding in a very low chariot, gently drawn by lynxes. Plump and beardless, with vine leaves garlanding his brow, he passes by holding in his hand an overflowing cup of wine. Silenus riding beside him reels upon his ass. Pan of the pointed ears, blows upon his syrinx; the Mimalonæides beat drums; the Mænads strew flowers; the Bacchantes turn in the dance with heads thrown back and hair dishevelled.
Diana, with tunic tucked up, issues from the wood together with her nymphs.
At the further end of a cavern, Vulcan among his Cabiri, hammers the heated iron; here and there the aged Rivers leaning recumbent upon green rocks pour water from their urns; the Muses stand singing in the valleys.
The Hours, all of equal stature, link hands; and Mercury poses obliquely upon a rainbow, with his caduceus, winged sandals, and winged petasus.
But at the summit of the stairway of the Gods,—among clouds soft as down, fromwhose turning volutes a rain of roses falls,—Venus Anadyomene stands gazing at herself in a mirror:—her eyes move languorously beneath their slumbrous lids.
She has masses of rich blond hair rolling down over her shoulders; her breasts are small; her waist is slender; her hips curve out like the sweeping curves of a lyre; her thighs are perfectly rounded; there are dimples about her knees; her feet are delicate: a butterfly hovers near her mouth. The splendour of her body makes a nacreous-tinted halo of bright light about her; while all the rest of Olympus is bathed in a pink dawn, rising gradually to the heights of the blue sky.)
Anthony. "Ah! my heart swells! A joy never known before thrills me to the depths of my soul! How beautiful, how beautiful it is!"
Hilarion. "They leaned from the heights of cloud to direct the way of swords; one used to meet them upon the high roads; men had them in their houses—and this familiarity divinized life.
"Life's aim was only to be free and beautiful. Nobility of attitude was facilitated by the looseness of garments. The voice of theorator, trained by the sea, rolled its sonorous waves against the porticoes of marble. The ephebus, anointed with oil, wrestled all naked in the full light of the sun. The holiest of actions was to expose perfection of forms to all.
"And these men respected wives, aged men, suppliants.
"Behind the temple of Hercules there was an altar erected to Pity.
"Victims were immolated with flowers wreathed about the fingers of the sacrificer. Even memory was exempted from thoughts of the rottenness of death. Nothing remained but a little pile of ashes. And the Soul, mingling with the boundless ether, rose up to God."
(Bending to whisper in Anthony's ear:—)
"And they still live! The Emperor Constantine adores Apollo. Thou wilt find the Trinity in Samothracian mysteries,—baptism in the religion of Isis,—redemption in the faith of Mithra,—a martyrdom of a God in the festivals of Bacchus. Prosperpine is the Virgin!... Aristæus is Jesus!"
Anthony(remains awhile with downcast eyes, as if in deep thought; then suddenly repeatsaloud the Symbol of Jerusalem, as he remembers it, uttering a long sigh between each phrase):—
"I believe in one only God, the Father,—and in one only Lord, Jesus Christ,—the first born son of God, who was incarnated and made man,—who was crucified, and buried,—who ascended into Heaven,—who will come to judge the living and the dead,—of whose Kingdom there shall be no end;—and in one Holy Spirit,—and in one baptism of repentance,—and in one Holy Catholic Church,—and in the resurrection of the flesh,—and in the life everlasting!"
(Immediately the cross becomes loftier and loftier; it pierces the clouds, and casts its shadow upon the heaven of the gods.
All grow pale;—Olympus shudders.
And at its base Anthony beholds vast bodies enchained, sustaining the rocks upon their shoulders,—giant figures half buried in the deeps of caverns. These are the Titans, the Giants, the Hecatonchires, the Cyclops.)
A Voice
(rises, indistinct and awful, like the far roar of leaves, like the voice of forests in time oftempest, like the mighty moaning of the wind among the precipices):
"We knew these things!—we knew them! There must come an end even for the Gods! Uranus was mutilated by Saturn,—Saturn by Jupiter. And Jupiter himself shall be annihilated. Each in his turn;—it is Destiny!"
(And little by little they sink into the mountain, and disappear.
Meanwhile the golden tiles of the palace rise and fly away.)
Jupiter(has descended from his throne. At his feet the thunderbolts lie, smoking like burning coals about to expire;—and the great eagle bends its neck to pick up its falling feathers):
"Then I am no longer the master of all things,—most holy, most mighty, god of the phatrias and Greek peoples,—ancestor of all the Kings,—Agamemnon of heaven.
"Eagle of apotheoses, what wind from Erebus has wafted thee to me? or, fleeing from the Campus Martins, dost thou bear me the soul of the last of the Emperors?
"I no longer desire to receive those of men. Let the Earth keep them; and let them move upon the level of its baseness. Their heartsare now the hearts of slaves;—they forget injuries, forget their ancestors, forget their oaths,—and everywhere the folly of crowds, the mediocrity of individuals, the hideousness of races, hold sway!"
(He pants with such violence that his sides seem ready to burst asunder; he clenches his hands. Weeping,Hebeoffers him a cup. He seizes it.)
"No, no! So long as there shall be a brain enclosing a thought, in whatsoever part of the world;—so long as there shall exist a mind hating disorder, creatingLaw,—so long will the spirit of Jupiter live!"
(But the cup is empty. He turns its edge down over his thumbnail.)
"Not one drop left! When the ambrosia fails, the Immortals must indeed depart!"
(The cup drops from his hands; and he leans against a column, feeling himself about to die.)
Juno. "Thou shouldst not have had so many amours! Eagle, bull, swan, rain of gold, cloud and flame, thou didst assume all forms,—dissipate thy light in all elements,—lose thy hair upon all beds! This time thedivorce is irrevocable; and our domination, our very existence, dissolved."
(She passes away in air.)
Minerva(has no longer her spear; and the ravens nesting among the sculptures of the friezes, wheel about her, peeking at her helmet.)
"Let me see whether my vessels cleave the bright sea, returning to my three ports,—let me discover why the fields are deserted, and learn what the daughters of Athens are now doing.
"In the month of Hecatombeon my whole people came to worship me, under the guidance of their magistrates and priests. Then, all in white robes and wearing chitons of gold, they advanced the long line of virgins bearing cups, baskets, parasols; then the three hundred sacrificial oxen, and the old men having green boughs, the soldiers with clashing of armour, the ephebi singing hymns, flute players, lyre players, rhapsodists, dancing women;—and lastly attached to the mast of a trireme mounted upon wheel, my great veil embroidered by virgins who had been nourished in a particular way for a whole year. And when it had been displayedin all the streets, in all the squares, and before the temples, in the midst of the ever-chanting procession, it was borne step by step up the hill of the Acropolis, grazed the Propylæa, and entered the Parthenon....
"But a strange feebleness comes upon me,—me the Industrious One! What! what! not one idea comes to me! Lo! I am trembling more than a woman!"
(She turns, beholds a ruin behind her, utters a cry, and stricken by a fallen fragment, falls backward upon the ground.)
Hercules(has flung away his lion-skin; and with feet firmly braced, back arched, teeth clenched, he exhausts himself in immeasurable efforts to bear up the mass of crumbling Olympus.)
"I vanquished the Cercopes, the Amazons, and the Centaurs. Many were the kings I slew. I broke the horn of the great river, Achelous. I cut the mountains asunder; I freed nations from slavery; and I peopled lands that were desolate. I travelled through the countries of Gaul; I traversed the deserts where thirst prevails. I defended the gods from their enemies; and I freed myself from Omphale. But the weight of Olympus is toogreat for me. My arms grow feebler:—I die!"
(He is crushed beneath the ruins.)
Pluto. "It is thy fault, Amphytrionad;—wherefore didst thou descend into my empire?
"The vulture that gnaws the entrails of Tityus lifted its head;—the lips of Tantalus were moistened;—the wheel of Ixion stopped.
"Meanwhile the Kæres extended their claws to snatch back the escaping ghosts; the Furies tore the serpents of their locks; and Cerberus fettered by thee with a chain, sounded the death rattle in his throat, and foamed at all his three mouths.
"Thou didst leave the gate ajar; others have come. The daylight of men has entered into Tartarus!"
(He sinks into the darkness.)
Neptune. "My trident can no longer call up the tempests. The monsters that terrified of old, lie rotting at the bottom of the sea.
"Amphitrite whose white feet tripped lightly over the foam, the green Nereids seen afar off in the horizon, the scaly Sirens who stopped the passing vessels to tell stories, and the ancient Tritons mightily blowingupon their shells, all have passed away. All is desolate and dead; the gaiety of the great Sea is no more!"
(He vanishes beneath the azure.)
Diana(clad in black and surrounded by her dogs, which have been changed into wolves).
"The freedom of the deep forests once intoxicated me; the odours of the wild beasts and the exhalations of the marshes made me as one drank with joy. But the women whose maternity I protected, now bring dead children into the world. The moon trembles with the incantations of witches. Desires of violence, of immensity, seize me, fill me! I wish to drink poisons,—to lose myself in vapours, in dreams...!"
(And a passing cloud carries her away.)
Mars(unhelmed and covered with blood).
"At first I fought alone;—singlehanded I would provoke a whole army by my insults,—caring nothing for countries or nations, demanding battle for the pleasure of carnage alone.
"Afterward I had comrades. They marched to the sound of flutes, in good order, with equal step, respiring above their bucklers,with plumes loftily nodding, lances oblique. Then on rushed to battle with mighty eagle cries. War was joyous as a banquet. Three hundred men strove against all Asia.
"But the Barbarians are returning;—by myriads they come, by millions! Ah! since numbers, and engines, and cunning are stronger than valour, it were better that I die the death of the brave!"
(He kills himself.)
Vulcan(sponging the sweat from his limbs):
"The world is growing cold. The source of heat must be nourished, the volcanoes and rivers of flowing metal underground. Strike harder!—with full swing of the arms,—with might and main!"
(The Cabiri wound themselves with their hammers, blind themselves with sparks, and groping, lose themselves in the darkness.)
Ceres(standing in her chariot, impelled by wheels having wings at their hubs):
"Stop! Stop! Ah! it was with good reason that the exclusion of strangers, atheists, Epicureans, and Christians was commended!Now the mystery of the basket has been unveiled; the sanctuary profaned: all is lost!"
(She descends a precipitous slope—shrieking, despairing, tearing her hair.)
"Ah! lies, lies! Daira has not been restored to me. The voice of brass calls me to the dead. This is another Tartarus, whence there is no return! Horror!"
(The abyss engulfs her.)
Bacchus(with a frenzied laugh).
"What matters it? The Archon's wife is my spouse! The law itself reels in drunkenness! To me the new song, the multiplied forms!
"The fire by which my mother was devoured, flows in my veins! Let it burn yet more fiercely, even though I perish!
"Male and female, complaisant to all, I abandon myself to you, Bacchantes! I abandon myself to you, Bacchanalians!—and the vine shall twine herself about the tree-trunks! Howl! dance! writhe! Loosen the tiger and the slave!—rend flesh with ferocious bitings!"
(And Pan, Silenus, the Bacchantes, the Mimalonæides, and the Mænads,—with their serpents, torches, sable masks,—cast flowersat each other ... shake their tympanums, strike their thyrsi, pelt each other with shells, devour grapes, strangle a goat, and tear Bacchus asunder.)
Apollo(furiously whipping his coursers, while his blanching locks are falling from his head):
"I have left far behind me stony Delos, so pure that all now there seems dead; and I must strive to reach Delphi ere its inspiring vapour be wholly lost. The mules browse in its laurel groves. The Pythoness has wandered away, and cannot be found.
"By a stronger concentration of my power, I will obtain sublime hymns, eternal monuments; and all matter will be penetrated by the vibrations of my cithara!"
(He strikes the strings of the instrument. They burst, lashing his face with their broken ends. He flings the cithara away; and furiously whipping his quadriga, cries):
"No! enough of forms!—Further, higher!—to the very summit!—to the realm of pure thought!"
(But the horses back, rear, dash the chariot to pieces. Entangled by the harness, caughtby the fragments of the broken pole, he falls head foremost into the abyss.
... he falls head foremost into the abyss
... he falls head foremost into the abyss
... he falls head foremost into the abyss
The sky is darkened.)
Venus(blue with cold, shivering):
"Once with my girdle I made all the horizon of Hellas.
"Her fields glowed with the roses of my cheeks; her shores were outlined after the fashion of my lips; and her mountains, whiter than my doves, palpitated beneath the hands of the statuaries. My spirit's manifestation was found in the ordinances of the festivals, in the arrangement of coiffures, in the dialogues of philosophers, in the constitution of republics. But I have doted too much upon men! It is Love that has dishonoured me!"
(She casts herself back weeping):
"This world is abominable;—there is no air for me to breathe!
"O Mercury, inventor of the lyre, conductor of souls, take me away!"
(She places one finger upon her lips, and describing an immense parabola, falls into the abyss.
Nothing is now visible. The darkness is complete.
Only, that from the eyes of Hilarion escape two flashes, two rays of lurid light.)
Anthony(begins at last to notice his immense stature):
"Already several times, while thou wert speaking, it seemed to me thou wert growing taller; and it was no illusion! How? Explain to me ... Thy aspect terrifies me!"
(Footsteps are heard approaching.)
"What is that?"
Hilarion(extending his arm):
"Look!"
(Then, under a pale beam of moonlight, Anthony distinguishes an interminable caravan defiling over the summit of the rocks;—and each voyager, one after the other, falls from the cliff into the gulf below.
First comes the three great gods ofSamothrace,—Axieros,Axiokeros,Axiokersa,—united together as in a fascia, purple-masked, all with hands uplifted.
Æsculapius advances with a melancholy air, not even perceiving Samos and Telesphorus, who question him with gestures of anguish.Elean Sosipolis,of python-form, rolls his coils toward the abyss.Dosipoena,becomes dizzy, leaps in of her own accord.Britomartis,shrieking with fear, clutches fast the meshes of her net. The Centaurs come at a wild gallop, and roll pell-mell into the black gulf.
Behind them, all limping, advance the bands of the mourning Nymphs. Those of the meadows are covered with dust; those of the woods moan and bleed; wounded by the axes of the woodcutters.
The Gelludes, the Strygii, the Empusæ, all the infernal goddesses, form one pyramid of blended fangs, vipers, and torches;—and seated upon a vulture-skin at its summit, Eurynome, blue as the flies that corrupt meat, devours her own arms.
Then in one great whirl simultaneously disappear the bloody Orthia, Hymina of Orchomenus, the Laphria of the Patræns, Aphia of Agina, Bendis of Thrace, Stymphalia with thighs like a bird's. Triopas, in lieu of three eyes, has now but three empty orbits. Erichthonius, his legs paralysed, crawls upon his hands like a cripple.)
Hilarion. "What a pleasure, is it not!—to see them all in the abjection of their death-agony! Climb up here beside me, on thisrock; and thou shalt be even as Xerxes, reviewing his army.
"Beyond there, very far, dost thou behold that fair-bearded giant, who even now lets fall his sword crimsoned with blood?—that is the Scythian Zalmoxis between two planets,—Artimpasa, Venus, and Orsiloche, the Moon.
"Still further away, now emerging from pallid clouds, are the gods whom the Cimmerians adore, even beyond Thule.
"Their huge halls were warm, and by the gleam of swords that tapestried the vault, they drank their hydromel from horns of ivory. They ate the liver of the whale in dishes of brass wrought by the hammers of demons; or, betimes, they listened to captive sorcerers whose fingers played upon harps of stone.
"They are feeble! They are cold! The snow makes heavy their bearskins; and their feet show through the rents in their sandals.
"They weep for the vast fields upon whose grassy knolls they were wont to draw breath in pauses of battle; they weep for the long ships whose prows forced a way through the mountains of ice;—and the skates wherewiththey followed the orb of the poles, upbearing at the length of their mighty arms all the firmament that turned with them."
(A gust of frosty wind carries them off. Anthony turns his eyes another way. And he perceives—outlined in black against a red background—certain strange personages, with chinbands and gauntlets, who throw balls at one another, leap over each other's heads, make grimaces, dance a frenzied dance.)
Hilarion. "Those are the divinities of Etruria, the innumerable Æsars.
"There is Tages, by whom augury was invented. With one hand he seeks to augment the divisions of the sky; with the other he supports himself upon the earth: let him sink therein!
"Nortia gazes at the wall into which she drave nails to mark the number of the passing years. Its whole surface is now covered; and the period is accomplished.
"Like two travellers overtaken by a storm, Kastur and Pulutuk, trembling, seek to shelter themselves beneath the same mantle."
Anthony(closes his eyes):
"Enough! Enough!"
(But with a mighty noise of wings, all the Victories of the Capitol pass through the air,—hiding their faces with their hands, dropping the trophies hanging upon their arms.
Janus,—lord of crepuscules,—flees upon a black ram; and one of his two faces is already putrified; the other slumbers with fatigue.
Summanus, the headless god of the dark heavens, presses against his heart an odd cake shaped like a wheel.
Vesta, beneath a ruined cupola, tries to relight her extinguished lamp.
Bellona gashes her cheeks,—without being able to make that blood flow by which her devotees were purified.)
Anthony. "Mercy!—they weary me!"
Hilarion. "Before, they amused thee!"
(And he shows him in a grove of bean-trees,A Woman,naked ............. and a black man, holding in each hand a torch.[8])
"It is the goddess of Aricia, with the demon Virbius. Her sacerdote, the King ofthe grove, had to be an assassin;[9]and the fugitive slaves, the despoilers of corpses, the brigands of the Via Salaria, the cripples of the Pons Sublicius, all the human vermin of the Suburra worshipped no deities so fervently.
"In the time of Marcus Antonius the patrician women preferred Libitina."
(And he shows him under the shadow of cypresses and rose-trees,Another Woman,clad in gauze. Around her lie spades, litters, black hangings, all the paraphernalia of funerals. She smiles. Her diamonds shine afar off through spiders' webs. The Larvæ, like skeletons, show their bones through the branches; and the Lemures, who are phantoms, extend their bat-like wings.
At the end of a field lies the god Terminus, uprooted, and covered with ordures.
In the centre of a furrow, the great corpse of Vertumnus is being devoured by red dogs.
The rustic deities all depart, weeping:—Sartor, Sarrator, Vervactor, Collina, Vallona, Hostilinus—all wearing little hooded mantles, and carrying either a hoe, a pitchfork, a hurdle, or a boar-spear.)
Hilarion. "Their spirits made prosperous the villa,—with its dovecots, its parks of dormice, its poultry-yards protected by nets, its warm stables fragrant with odours of cedar.
"Also they protected all the wretched population who dragged the irons upon their legs over the flinty ways of the Sabine country,—those who called the swine together by sound of horn,—those who were wont to gather the bunches at the very summits of the elms,—those who drove the asses, laden with manure, over the winding bypaths. The panting labourer, leaning over the handle of his plough, prayed them to give strength to his arms; and under the shade of the lindens, beside calabashes filled with milk, the cow-herds were wont, in turn, to sound their praises upon flutes of reed."
Anthony(sighs.)
(And in the centre of a chamber, upon a lofty estrade, an ivory bed is visible, surroundedby persons bearing torches of pine.)
"Those are the deities of marriage. They await the coming of the bride.
"Domiduca should lead her in,—Virgo unfasten her girdle,—Subigo place her in the bed,—and Præma open her arms, and whisper sweet words into her ear.
"But she will not come!—and they dismiss the others:—Nona and Decima who watch by sick-beds; the three Nixii who preside over child-birth; the two nurses, Educa and Potina; and Carna, guardian of the cradle, whose bouquet of hawthorne keeps evil dreams from the child.
"Afterwards, Ossipago should strengthen his knees;—Barbatus give him his first beard; Stimula inspire his first desires; Volupia grant him his first enjoyment; Fabulimus should have taught him to speak, Numera to count, Camœna to sing, Consus to reflect."
(This chamber is empty; and there remains only the centenarian Nænia beside the bed,—muttering to herself the dirge she was wont to howl at the funerals of aged men.
But her voice is soon drowned by sharp cries. These are uttered by—
TheLares Domestici,crouching at the furtherend of the atrium, clad in dog-skins, with flowers wreathed about their bodies,—pressing their clenched hands against their cheeks, and weeping as loudly as they can.)
"Where is the portion of food we received at each repast, the kindly care of the maid-servant, the smile of the matron, the merriment of the little boys playing at knuckle-bones on the mosaic pavement of the court-yard? When grown up, they used to hang about our necks their bullæ of gold or leather!
"What happiness it was, when on the evening of a triumph, the master, entering, turned his humid eyes upon us! He would recount his combats; and the little house would be prouder than a palace; sacred as a temple!
"How sweet were the family repasts, above all on the morrow of the Feralia! Tenderness for the dead appeased all discords; all kissed each other, while drinking to the glories of the past, and the hopes of the future.
"But the ancestors, of painted wax, locked up behind us, are slowly becoming covered with mold. The new races, visiting their own deceptions upon us, have shattered our jaws;our wooden bodies are disappearing piece-meal under the teeth of rats."
(And the innumerable gods, watching over doors, kitchens, cellars, baths, disperse in every direction—under the form of enormous ants running over the pavement, or great butterflies soaring away.
Then a roll of thunder is heard.)
A Voice:
"I was the God of Armies, the Lord, the Lord God! I pitched the tents of Jacob on the hills; and in the midst of the sands I nourished my chosen people in their flight.
"It was I who consumed the city of Sodom with fire! It was I who overwhelmed the world with the waters of the Deluge! It was I that drowned Pharaoh, with all the princes, sons of Kings,—making the sea to swallow up his chariots of war, and his charioteers!
"I, the Jealous God, held all other gods in abomination. I brayed the impure in my anger; the mighty I cast down; and swiftly the desolation of my wrath ran to the right and to the left, like a dromedary loosened in a field of maize.
"I chose the humble to deliver Israel. Angels, flame-winged, spake to them from out the bushes.
"Perfumed with spikenard, with cinnamon and myrrh, clad in transparent robes, and shod with high-heeled sandals,—women of valiant heart went forth to slay captains. The passing wind carried my prophets with it.
"My law I graved upon tables of stone. Within that law my people were enclosed, as within a strong citadel. They were my people. I was their God! The land was mine; the men also belonged to me, together with their every thought, and all their works, and the tools they wrought with, and their prosperity.
"My ark reposed within a triple sanctuary,—surrounded by curtains of purple and lighted candelabra. I had a whole tribe to serve me as servants, swinging censers; and the high-priest, robed in robes of hyacinth, wore upon his breast precious stones disposed in symmetrical order.
"Woe! Woe! the Holy of Holies is open, the veil is rent, the perfumes of the holocaust are dissipated by all the winds ofheaven! The jackal whines in the sepulchres; my temple is destroyed; my people dispersed!
"The priests have been strangled with the girdles of their robes. The women languish in captivity; the holy vessels have all been melted!"
(The voice, becoming more distant):
"I was the God of Armies; the Lord, the Lord God!"
(An enormous silence follows,—and deepest night.)
Anthony. "All have passed away!"
Some One(replies):
"I remain!"
(And Hilarion stands before him—but transfigured wholly,—beautiful as an archangel, luminous as a sun, and so lofty that in order to behold his face—
Anthony
is compelled to throw back his head, to look up as though gazing as a star):
"Who art thou?"
Hilarion. "My kingdom is vast as the universe; and my desire knows no limits. I go on forever,—freeing minds, weighingworlds,—without hatred, without fear, without pity, without love, and without God. Men call meScience!"
Anthony(recoiling from him):
"Say, rather, that thou art ... the Devil!"
Hilarion(fixing his eyes upon him:)
"Wouldst thou behold him?"
Anthony(cannot detach his eyes from that mighty gaze:—the curiosity of the Devil comes upon him. His terror augments; yet his wish grows even to boundlessness):
"Yet if I should see him ... if I were to see him!"
(Then in a sudden spasm of wrath):
"The horror that I have of him will free me from his presence forever!... Yes!"
(A cloven foot appears. Anthony regrets his wish.
But the Devil flings him upon his horns and bears him away.)
[1]Matthew II: 10—T.
[1]Matthew II: 10—T.
[2]"Buddha, or more correctly, the Buddha, for Buddha is an appellative meaning Enlightened."—Max Müller (Chips, Vol. I., 206).
[2]"Buddha, or more correctly, the Buddha, for Buddha is an appellative meaning Enlightened."—Max Müller (Chips, Vol. I., 206).
[3]Luke II: 25-26.—T.
[3]Luke II: 25-26.—T.
[4]Ibid II: 46-47.—T.
[4]Ibid II: 46-47.—T.
[5]Or, Haoma, also Hom, the sacred plant, whose fermented juice occupied an important place in the practical rites of Iran. Supposed to be the same plant known in botany asSarcostemma viminalis.Deified in Iranian worship, like the sacred drinkSomain the Vedic hymns. TheSomawas the fermented extract of theAsclepias acidaorSarcostemma ritalis.See Marius Fontane, "L'Inde Védique," "Les Iraniens."—Trans.
[5]Or, Haoma, also Hom, the sacred plant, whose fermented juice occupied an important place in the practical rites of Iran. Supposed to be the same plant known in botany asSarcostemma viminalis.Deified in Iranian worship, like the sacred drinkSomain the Vedic hymns. TheSomawas the fermented extract of theAsclepias acidaorSarcostemma ritalis.See Marius Fontane, "L'Inde Védique," "Les Iraniens."—Trans.
[6]Apuleius says, "a silken mantle."—Trans.
[6]Apuleius says, "a silken mantle."—Trans.
[7]Apuleius says, "strung with knuckle-bones of sheep."—Trans.
[7]Apuleius says, "strung with knuckle-bones of sheep."—Trans.
[8]This scene, like certain paintings in the Naples museum, is all suited for public exhibition.—Trans.
[8]This scene, like certain paintings in the Naples museum, is all suited for public exhibition.—Trans.
[9]Readers will recollect the lines in Macaulay'sLays of Ancient Rome:"Beneath Aricia's trees,Those trees in whose dim shadowA ghastly priest doth reign,The priest who slew the slayer,And must himself be slain."
[9]Readers will recollect the lines in Macaulay'sLays of Ancient Rome:
"Beneath Aricia's trees,Those trees in whose dim shadowA ghastly priest doth reign,The priest who slew the slayer,And must himself be slain."
(He flies beneath him, outstretched like a swimmer; his vast-spreading wings, wholly concealing him, seem like one huge cloud.)
Anthony. "Whither do I go? But a little while ago I beheld in a glimpse the form of the Accurst. Nay!—'tis a cloud that upbears me! Perhaps I am dead, and am ascending to God....
"How freely I respire. The immaculate air seems to vivify my soul. No sense of weight!—no more suffering.
"Far below me the lightning breaks,—the horizon broadens, widens,—the rivers cross each other. That blond-bright spot is the desert; that pool of water the ocean!
"And other oceans appear!—vast regions of which I knew nothing! There are the countries of the blacks, which seem to smoke like brasiers!—then is the zone of snows always made dim by fog! Would I might beholdthose mountains where the sun, each evening, sinks to rest!"
The Devil. "The sun never sinks to rest; the sun never rests!"
(Anthony is not surprised at this voice. It seems to him an echo of his own thought—a response made by his own memory.
Meanwhile the earth gradually assumes the shape of a ball; and he beholds it in the midst of the azure, turning upon its poles, and revolving with the sun.)
The Devil. "So it does not form the centre of the universe! Pride of man! humiliate thyself!"
Anthony. "Now I can scarcely distinguish it. It mingles confusedly with other glowing worlds. The firmament itself is but one tissue of stars."
(And they still rise.)
"No sound!—not even the hoarse cry of eagles! Nothing? I listen for the harmony of the spheres."
The Devil. "Thou wilt not hear them! Nor wilt thou behold the antichtonus of Plato,—or the central furnace of Philolaüs,—or the spheres of Aristotle, or the seven heavens ofthe Jews, with the great waters above the vault of crystal!"
Anthony. "Yet from below the vault seemed solid as a wall!—on the contrary I penetrate it, I lose myself in it!"
(And he beholds the moon,—like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.)
The Devil. "Formerly it was the sojourn of souls! Even the good Pythagoras adorned it with magnificent flowers, populated it with birds!"
Anthony. "I can see only desolate plains there, with extinct craters yawning under a black sky!
"Let us go towards those milder-beaming stars, that we may contemplate the angels who uphold them at arms' length, like torches!"
The Devil(bears him into the midst of the stars):
"They attract at the same time that they repel each other. The action of each one results from that of others, and contributes thereunto,—without the aid of any auxiliary, by the force of a law, the virtue of order alone!"
Anthony. "Yes!... yes! My intelligence grasps the great truth! It is a joy greater than all tender pleasures! Breathless I find myself with astonishment at the enormity of God!"
The Devil. "Even as the firmament ever rises as thou dost ascend, so with the expansion of thy thought will He become greater to thee; and after this discovery of the universe thou wilt feel thy joy augment with the broadening and deepening of the infinite."
Anthony. "Ah! higher!—higher still!—- forever higher!"
(Then the stars multiply, scintillate. The Milky Way develops in the zenith like a monstrous belt, with holes at intervals; through these rents in its brightness stretches of prolonged darkness are visible. There are rains of stars, long trains of golden dust, luminous vapours that float and dissolve.
At times a comet suddenly passes by; then the tranquillity of innumerable lights recommences.
Anthony, with outstretched arms, supports himself upon the Devil's horns, and thus occupies all the space between them.
He remembers with disdain the ignorance of other days, the mediocrity of his dreams.And now those luminous globes he was wont to gaze upon from below, are close to him. He distinguishes the intercrossing of the lines of their orbits, the complexity of their courses. He beholds them coming from afar,—and, like stones suspended in a sling, describe their circles, form their hyperbolas.
He perceives, all within the field of his vision at once, the Southern Cross and the Great Bear, the Lynx and the Centaur, the nebula of Dorado, the six suns in the constellation of Orion, Jupiter with his four satellites, and the triple ring of the monstrous Saturn!—all the planets, all the stars that men will discover in the future. He fills his eyes with their light; he over-burthens his mind with calculation of their distances: then, bowing his head, he murmurs):
"What is the purpose of all that?"
The Devil. "There is no purpose. How could God have a purpose? What experience could have instructed him?—what reflection determined him?