BOOK ONE: HOW MERLIN, BY LOVING, BECAME A GREAT ENCHANTER
PROLOGUE
I
And I too am searching for a man, a hero! Let him come, let him stand before me; I promise to march after him on the road of justice.
All that I ask is that he should be very real, and even a strong inclination toward the material would not be superfluous, so many people of our day being confused by ideal creatures. In attaching myself to a historic individual, I do not have to answer for his virtue of his vices.
Like the Florentine during the Black Death—and today the disease is no longer only afflicting the body but the immortal soul too—may I not also, in a circle of friends, in the shadow of an olive-tree, on the edge of a crystalline spring, my forehead circled by an oak-branch, my hands full of flowers, listen to hundreds of stories, until the burden of the burning day diminishes and night brings repose, if not forgetfulness, to my heart?3
Blue birds the color of time, chimeras with silken wings, vagabond unicorns, who never sleep, who help a man to get through the sterile hours, either because you amuse the waiting and appease the dolor, or because you sow a torch of glow-worms beneath the footsteps if the man whose route is tenebrous, can you not find me a hero?
On the other hand, I can invoke only you, the wisest, the best-loved, the most accredited, the most powerful of the Muses, O Routine, who render all enterprises facile: I shall consult only you. Come, guide me, on foot along the beaten track, by the side of which grow the vulgar flowers easiest to pick. Take me away from the summits that give one vertigo; I have lived there for too long in mist and storms. Put a brake on me if I forget myself to the point of straying from the banal highway, followed by the human herd. Open their hearts and ears for me! They yield proudly to your slightest desires.
The one I was seeking is found. Yes he is, Reader, and you’ll believe me if I swear to you that the choice has not been purely voluntary, but was imposed upon me by the hero himself. For you need to know that, since my early youth, the individual in question has never ceased to haunt my dreams, to obsess my wakefulness, as if he were depending on me to give him life for a second time. I repeat that he has been knocking relentlessly at my door, like a revenant to whom I have the power to return to the light of day; and in his plaints and moans, he begged me to recall him to the memory of forgetful earth, promising me that in return he would cause to pass before me, without overwhelming me, the slow cortege of evil days. He promised to diminish for me the cares of the present, if I would consent to reawaken for him the magic of the past in its glory.
I have obeyed.
His name, his parentage, his genealogy, whether it was noble or plebeian—that is what I ought to begin by telling you; I’m not unaware that that is the first rule. But a false shame retains me, for you are the great slave of words; I fear that, on the name alone, you might form a false idea of my enterprise, and go away without wanting to listen to me. On the other hand, when the sequence of events brings him on to the stage, the opportunity to argue will be gone; he will have become a fait accompli. You will accept him as such, with ordinary docility. That is what experience has taught me, although rhetoric denies it.
Now, without deliberation, help me to transport you from the very start to the threshold of the inferno, with which I assume you are familiar, and even into the heart of the abode of eternal dolor. Not that I belong to the satanic school—as you shall soon see—but because the truth commands me to set that first scene. History speaks; tradition commands; it is necessary to follow it.
I shall begin. Listen.
II
Have you ever seen a deliberative assembly divided into a host of parties, each of which is trying to defeat all the others? If you have witnessed that spectacle for a day, or a minute, you have not forgotten it. You know, then, that everyone sets a trap beneath everything he says. There, nothing is more perilous than a smile, because it is the messenger of fraud, and fraud drags death in its wake. Silence is also deceptive, but it is only momentary; it immediately gives way to immense sniggering, the echo of all the filthy, subterranean minds that moral darkness attracts as a funereal lantern attracts the swarm of night-flying moths.
If you have seen that spectacle, you can already picture the aspect of Hell at the moment this story begins. You can imagine the stupid bewilderment of the crowd, proud of being fooled majestically; the oratory precautions, gentle doves that are suddenly transformed into serpents; speeches in which every word stifles thought; intelligence no longer serving any other purpose than to hollow out, spiral after spiral, the ever-new creation of Falsehood.
Everyone was busy with that toil. Every mouth was giving birth to lies, and in the middle of an inextricable discussion, interrupted by the hissing of snakes, the Word of Hell was consummate. Every fraudulent word, as it emerged envenomed from a demon’s mouth, evoked a demonic creature that rose up as if to an abysmal summons.
All the petty powers were avidly disputing the floor at every moment, forgetful that they had eternity before them; it seemed to them that if they missed, for a single second, the opportunity to make their strident voices resound, it would secure the empire of evil forever.
In that chaos of voices, only one voice was silent, and that was the most powerful; it was hidden there, like a boa constrictor beneath a hive of buzzing bees. Coiled up and mute, it had almost been forgotten. More than one yapping tongue, deafening itself, was beginning to scorn that taciturn king, when, with a prodigious leap, it launched itself from its lair; unfurling its coils in the vast confines of the abyss, it raised one of its heads above every group.
Silence abruptly fell, and this is what it said:
“Your discussions charm me, because they lead nowhere. You are the true kings of sophism. I listen delightedly to your speeches, which dry up thought in souls. Know that I would never have thought of interrupting you if necessity—the sole god that we recognize—had not demanded it of me. Thus far, you have counterfeited masterfully the creation on high. Beneath every heaven you have set an abyss, beneath every joy a dolor, and I congratulate you for it. But is the imitation complete? Have you demonstrated that Hell is as knowledgeable and as profound as Paradise? Have you copied the classical Heavens, without omitting anything that they contain? In sum, as the Heavens have unfurled, have you unfurled Hell?”
“Yes, certainly, we have done that,” replied the swarm of the subterranean worlds.
“My dear friends,” the king of Hell continued, “fatuity has blinded you. The most beautiful work of what they call Providence, you haven’t even tried to imitate.”
“What is that work?” cried the accursed.
“What!” their leader replied. “You don’t even suspect? The immaculate angel of the Annunciation has descended from Heaven to announce to the Virgin of Judea that Christ will be born of her womb. Have you attempted anything similar? You haven’t even thought of it; your imitative minds haven’t dared to risk that model. Believe me, you’re degenerating.”
“What shall I do to prove that I am still worthy of you?” roared the ancient abyss.
“An easy thing, if one dares to attempt it. Nothing simpler: you need an infernal Christ, born of a virgin.”
All of them shouted at the same time, in a thousand different tones: “That’s true! Narrow minds that we are! Why didn’t we think of it? Yes, like Heaven, we need a Christ born of a virgin.”
Then the king of Hell went on: “Who among you will go to earth to play the role of the angel in regard to Mary?”
At this point a universal roar replied; an inextinguishable desire for love rose up from the very hearts of those who had never loved.
With that, it continued: “You put too much passion into my cause. Truly, you’re emotional. That bears too much resemblance to life. It’s good taste here not to acclaim so loudly. Lukewarm, insipid, evasive words—that’s what I prefer. One could say ‘infernal’ without ceasing to be polite. I’ll go myself.4 In Hell, I alone am sufficiently advanced to counterfeit angelic power.”
III
In what era did this story take place? It’s impossible for me to reply to such a question. If you want a rigorous date, I can do no more than leave this page blank and abandon my narrative. However, I shall say, following the example of the ancients—what better authority is there?—that it was before the harvest. The ears of corn were still green; they gave off the odor of smut on the edge of the wood. I shall also say that the day was mild and temperate. It might have been a morning in the month of May, or perhaps June. A sparse warm rain had refreshed the stifling air of the meadows; it had almost dried up, except in the calices of the wild roses and the flesh leaves of the oak-trees. Only a few gilded clouds on the borders were carrying away, I know not where, in red tatters, some ancient belated and fugitive go—for all the pagan gods had not yet quit the earth. The cross was unsteady in the place where it was most firmly planted; the world, not knowing yet whether it belonged to Jupiter or Christ, adorned itself with its most beautiful radiance. Its breath resembled ambrosia, as if to say to ancient voluptuousness: “Don’t worry; whatever happens, I’ll remain faithful to you.”
A forest extends into the distance, from ravine to ravine, from mountain to mountain, where more than one city lies dormant beneath the moss. In the middle of the forest, on a vast lawn, on the bank of a torrent, what do you see? A monastery, doubtless the first to have been raised in this part of Gaul.
The wall is high, carpeted with ivy, higher than the hill that surrounds it on all sides. If you could climb to the top of the mountain, you would see at your feet the closed chapel, the open tomb, hollowed out in advance, the courtyard, the garden strewn with brambles and wild sorrel, a solitary stork walking along a path bordered with mallow.
What! Not a single human figure!
Is the monastery inhabited? The door has never been opened; no prayer has ever been heard therein, nor the sound of any bell; a saint has walled herself up in that holy place. She is the daughter of a king who was gripped by earthly ennui in her cradle. Her soft virginal breath purifies the world from afar. She has sworn never to have any husband than Jesus Christ. No oath was ever more sincere.
Today, a knight arrives, at the gallop of his black Saxon hack, a golden helmet on his head and a red cloak on his shoulders. He knocks on the monastery door.
“Open up,” he says. “I’m a wounded penitent; I bring news from Calvary, I’ve recently saluted Bethlehem and Nazareth. I shall perish, my sister, if you delay any longer. Remember the good Samaritan.” And he points to gaping wounds; he clutches a crucifix to his bosom.
The walled-up door is unsealed; the knight enters through the debris.
Night has fallen; a night of Erebus, dense and furrowed by lightning. The innocent, holy virgin throws herself down on her bed, whiter than hawthorn blossom, and goes to sleep, her head on her arm. Agitated and unquiet, however, she has forgotten to make the sign of the cross at the foot of the crucifix. Hell is alert and has seen it! It has said: “That’s good; she’s mine!”
Night has fallen. The young woman has remained saintly. There she is, asleep. But great God, what sleep, and what dreams! In the depths of the woods, what blazing sighs! In the clouds, what tears! In the heavens, what an inferno!
The night has passed. The day is fine and radiant. The saint awakes; her guest has gone. She falls to her knees, veils her face, and drowns in her tears. Oh saints, protect her from any gaze. Burning tears on the flagstones, prayers, vows, macerations, abstinences, cilices—what does it take, then, to efface a dream?
Her guest has gone. Jets of red flame are attached to the four feet of the foaming horse. The grass of the valleys dries up in the distance; the forest is aglow with the reflection of a blaze.
IV
A few years have passed—five or six, at the most. The hero of this story has been born. He has been born, but for him there have been no tears, no screams, no sobs, no breast-feeding and no weaning. His mother dared not even offer him her breast in secret. She called him Merlin.
The day after the day he came into the world, she took him in her arms, sadly, and wept.
“Don’t weep, Mother,” the new-born said to her, in a man’s voice, opening his eyes.
Frightened and delighted by the prodigy, his mother lets him fall at her feet. He gets up safe and sound, smiling, and emerges from his swaddling-clothes.
“I’ll comfort you, Mother.”
“You’re my shame.”
“I’ll be your glory.”
“You’re scaring me, my child!”
With that, leaving his linen behind, he starts striding back and forth in front of her, an open book in his hand. His eyes are glued to it, pensively.
“Who taught you to read, Merlin?”
“I already knew before I was born.”
“Why, dear child, nail your eyes to that tome so soon? Wait, my son, until you become a man.”
“Become a man, dear Mother, like all the rest? Is it worth the trouble? My life to come, I assure you, will be more astonishing than my birth.”
Such was the first advertisement that the mother of my hero received of her son’s destiny. Nevertheless, wise and prudent, she feared being mistaken. How many times premature flashes of intelligence have been followed by imbecile darkness! How many times infant prodigies have been seen to become nonentities for the rest of their lives! I’ve known several myself, which I could cite without overmuch embarrassment.
That was the danger for Merlin, if her mother was deceiving herself. There were moments—as we shall see—when he gave the impression of being an infant god.
Nothing is truer—but what would it have taken to give birth to an opposite idea? A game of dice, of quoits, a kite, a drum, or a little bell, and the marvel of Heaven would be no more than a paltry homunculus.
To help nature in one direction, and fight it in another, was a great task for a young woman like Séraphine, almost always alone, devoid of advice, who scarcely dared bear the name of mother.
V
One day he was playing downstairs with knucklebones when his mother, gazing intently at the knight in the golden helmet, said to him: “Advise me, Seigneur. This child, I swear to you, was born without a father. He’s a prodigy, the son of a dream. Even if his education cost me eternal life, I wouldn’t want to spare anything. What plan should I follow? What direction?”
“You’re right,” said the knight, raising his red cloak over his face. “Let’s talk about it at leisure.”
During this dialogue, Merlin, while pretending to play, listened.
“First of all,” the mother continued, “I’d sacrifice all I possess to initiate him into Christianity. I’ve already vowed him to the Virgin Mary. That’s why he’s wearing a blue robe.”
“That’s good, Séraphine. If you’ll take my advice, though, you won’t neglect to instruct him in paganism. Its gods, believe me, aren’t as dead as people pretend. They have an infinite fondness for those who don’t deny them in times of ill-fortune.”
“But Merlin might be the foremost of monks,” replied the mother, timidly.
“It would be a hundred times better for him to be the last of the druids.”
“But truly, what can be set above the Christian Heaven?”
“Many things. Personally, for example, I prefer the pagan Elysium, without a doubt.”
“Isn’t it necessary to direct Merlin toward spiritual matters?”
“Believe me, don’t exalt him so soon; it’s necessary not to neglect the material too much.”
“Oh, Seigneur, if all my wishes came true, he’d find happiness in the contemplative life.”
“What are you saying? It’s the active life that will suit him: business, war, the foundation of all nobility, that’s at least one goal of existence.”
“O celestial ignorance! If only you could accompany him until his final day!”
“I hope, on the contrary, that he’ll bite into the fruit of science.”
During this dialogue, Merlin listened in anguish, torn between the two forces that were attracting him to the two opposed extremities of the world. His mother looked at him benevolently. The stranger fascinated him with a serpentine gaze. But neither was more astonished than the other when the child, interrogated as to what he wanted to become, replied in a voice as forceful as a giant’s, while stamping his foot: “I want to be an enchanter!”
VI
What was the cause of such an indiscreet response? Doubtless the difference of opinions, sentiments, beliefs and religion between the father and the mother; add to that the deadly habit, transmitted all the way to us, of talking in front of children as if they don’t understand us. While we imagine ourselves to be alone, those little intelligences drink deep draughts of the poison that pours from our lips. You think that they’re entirely occupied in chasing a fly, but we’re imprinting on their ingenuous souls the wrinkles of an anticipated old age, for which there is no longer any remedy.
No one in the world experienced more cruelly than my hero the consequences of that custom. After the fatal conversation between his mother and the knight, you would no longer have recognized him. Two spirits were incarnate in him, arguing over him. What’s astonishing about that? Incontestably, he bore a strong resemblance to his mother. It was from her that he got his beauty, his forehead, his eyes, his ingenuous mouth, his eyebrows like those of a Madonna, and, with regard to the internal, his piety, his desire for sanctity, his moral life—or, to put it better, his soul, almost in its entirety.
Nevertheless, he had a few distant traits of his father: for example, curiosity, an inexorable memory, impatience, and a horror of restraint.
Via his mother, he was tightly attached to Heaven; via his father, to Hell.
Via one, he soared in the future; via the other, he was the serf of the present, the slave of the past.
God or Satan, which would emerge victorious within him? A cruel question, which already made his life a torment, at an age that, for others, is golden.
Sometimes he thought he heard the extinct voices of all the pagan gods wandering on the heath, which said to him: “Merlin! Merlin! Remain faithful to us! Only build us a little house of heather; we will promise you happiness.”
As soon as he set to work, though, another voice rose up to his left, which said to him: “What are you doing, Marlin? It’s a cross that it’s necessary to plant! Look at the flowers! They have all converted this morning; now they are taking the form of the cross; look at the clover in your garden.”
Then Merlin picked a bouquet; he counted the clover leaves: one, two, three. He stopped, in amazement. His reason was half-vanquished; it only remained for his pride to submit. And, God be praised, he would have done it without reserve! But immediately, the pagan gods made one last effort, setting him a hot of ambushes.
They whispered in his ear: “Is it the time to abandon us, then, when no one any longer gives us honey-cakes? Merlin! Look at the ram crossing your path; he still wears the horns of Jupiter-Ammon on his head!”
Merlin was forcefully shaken again; he whispered to himself: “Since the ram still wears horns in imitation of Jupiter, how can one doubt that Jupiter leads the flock of the worlds?”
To this reasoning Merlin added his natural generosity. He would willingly have doomed himself for such modest gods.
And that is enough to understand how unhappy he was, torn between those two powers. He could no longer find any peace. At a time when the earth was full of calamities, there was, I dare say, no one who suffered more than Merlin. Thus, his early adolescence was spent in tears.
VII
As his melancholy increased and nothing could cure him of it—he had suffocations and palpitations of the heart that robbed him of sleep—his mother thought about sending him away to complete his education with the wisest man of the epoch. His name was Taliesin.
Whether he was a druid or a Christian no one knew exactly. Some affirmed that he was one or the other. He lived in a wood in which he had built himself a hut, near which herds of aurochs that he had domesticated ruminated in peace. Oak trees graying with age, covered in mistletoe, hid him with their shade. Picture a man seventy years of age, of tall stature, with a clear complexion and scarlet hair, under which shone two sky blue eyes and a physiognomy both robust and mystical in its entirety.
As soon as Merlin had confided the cause of his torments to him, Taliesin interrupted him, generously.
“Oh, my son,” he said to him, “You’ve doubtless been sent to be my heir. An entire world is perishing with me. If you’re the one who is to announce the new world, I’ll tell you who I am. You alone will have known me!”
With these words, he took Merlin by the hand and, having led him to the densest part of the forest; he sat him down beside him on the moss and continued in these terms:
“I haven’t always been a hermit in this forest. Old age hasn’t always weighed down my footsteps. At your age, my son, I was a commander of men, and even of the army of the stars, which have forgotten me and mock me now.”
“The army of the stars!” exclaimed Merlin, dazzled. “You’re an enchanter then, Father?”
“What! You doubt it too, my son?” the old man replied, bitterly. “Listen to me. Several faults doomed me; I want to forearm you against them. When young I was, like you, very modest. People took me at my word; because I was modest, they concluded that I had reason to be, and soon, I had lost half my authority in helping them. They left me to follow the prideful, who trampled them underfoot. Don’t do as I did!
“I had another setback. For a long time I thought that the truth, once expressed, would be resplendent of its own accord. I thought then that its light would pierce the darkness by itself. So, scarcely had I found one truth than I went in search of another. In that indefatigable race toward enlightenment, I thought that the world was following me breathlessly.
“Let my example be a lesson to you! It’s said that your generation is even harder of hearing than ours. When you’ve published a truth, repeat it; when you’re repeated it, say it again. You’ll learn in your turn how much more rebellious the human head is than the heart. It’s a hundred times easier for us—enchanters, that is—to change earth and Heaven in the blink of an eye than to get a new idea into those heads of stone.
“Of all the faiths that display right and justice, people reject the dazzling light as if it were a poisoned arrow. How many days, years, centuries does it take before their eyes adapt to the splendor of the truth? Then they bless what they cursed, and curse what they blessed—but it’s always too late.
“One more piece of advice, my son. People are convinced that a person can only do one thing. Personally, I’ve been a bard and an enchanter, and that’s what completed my damnation. Always do the same thing, my child, and they’ll believe that you do it well. Be careful at the outset; if you begin by smiling, they’ll demand that you keep you princely smile on your face to the tomb and beyond. If you begin weeping, they’ll demand tears until the end. Such as I have known them, they surely still are!”
“Can it be?” exclaimed Merlin.
“Yes, my son. I foresee that you’ll be hated, especially by the wicked.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you won’t be their dupe. They’re accustomed to regard honest men as their natural prey, and when, by chance, one refuses to be, the wicked experience an authentic indignation, for they believe themselves to defrauded of their most reliable and most legitimate property. Imagine the wolf, if a lamb denied its right to kill it.”
Merlin collected the enchanter’s words submissively, but he thought that old age had rendered him misanthropic. He opened his ears to the sage’s advice, but in secret, he closed his heart to it.
“What should I do, if I must be your successor?” he asked.
“Do you know the twenty-five thousand verses of the Triads?”5 the old man replied.
“No,” said Merlin. And he perceived then, for the first time, how ignorant he was, and that a few vague notions and general aspirations, to which his knowledge was reduced, were very little without a knowledge of facts. He made a vow to become as knowledgeable as Tailesin.
From that day onwards no one encountered him without seeing a book in his hand.
“Go and tell the world in what isolation I’m dying,” Taliesin said then. “The death of the smallest bird, or the smallest insect buzzing in the wood, makes more noise than mine. Watch and learn, my son.”
Then, becoming more excited as his end approached, already illuminated by the light of the tomb, he added, with an incomparable majesty:
“I was at God’s right hand when he created the world. I was walking in Eden at the moment when the word of malediction emerged from Satan’s mouth. I was the first bard, my son, and my first abode was the region of the stars. I was with my Lord in the highest sphere, when Lucifer fell into the infernal depths. I have carried my banner before Alexander. I knew the name of the stars of the North and the South. I have been to the throne of the All-Highest in the Milky Way; I was in Canaan when Absalom was killed. I have transported the Holy Spirit in the valley of Hebron. I was a master in the company of Elijah and Enoch I was present at the crucifixion of the son of God. I was the original architect of Nimrod’s tower. I am a marvel whose origin is unknown. I was in the Ark with Noah and Alpha. I have seen the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah. I was in Africa before the foundation of Rome, and I have taken shelter in what remains of Troy. I covered Moses with the waters of the Jordan. I was in the crib with my Lord. I have suffered hunger for the son of the Virgin. I have been a bard, a harpist on the white mountain. I have sat upon the white throne of the ecliptic. Now I am Taliesin.”6
With these words, the old man yielded his soul. Merlin buried him with his own hands beneath immense mossy stones, which a dozen men of our day would not be able to move.
I have often seen that tomb, when, in my youth, I too went to read enchanted books on enchanted days on the hill that is known today as the Corne d’Arthus,7 because of the debris of an old wall that crowns it. The immense forest has disappeared. At least the ax has respected the weeping fir-trees atop the sepulcher.
VIII
The twenty-five thousand verses of the Triads were only the start. Merlin, the son of his father in that respect, learned all of Virgil and the Sibyl by heart, to which he added the Church Fathers, a collection of whom he found in the home of his mother’s confessor, a hermit named Blasius;8 thus mingling with neither choice nor prudence, profane and sacred, pagan and Christian, dolmens and chapels, adoring everything, mistrusting everything, lies and truth alike.
One day, as he took his leave, Blasius said to him: “Take care, Merlin. The true God will punish you with chaos. Don’t compile the gospel of Hell, my child.”
It is evident from that how far his education had already gone astray. And who could blame him? He had no guide but his instinct, except for a little elementary white magic. He inflated himself with vain science; the poison did not take long to become manifest.
Drunk on so much new knowledge, Merlin sensed extraordinary thoughts rising within him. His heart beat with such violence that he seemed to be choking; his humor became chagrined; he torment all those surrounding him with his caprices.
It’s the spirit oppressing him, his mother thought.
He found nothing satisfactory in himself or in others. So much the better, Merlin said to himself. I can see that the enchantment is commencing. And he plunged back into his old books.
One day, his unhealthy soul was ready to burst. He was on the heath confining his residence. The pools let out an occasional sob. “The moment has come to exercise my power!” he shouted, enthusiastically. “The universe is silent, awaiting its prophet.”
And he assembled in his mind everything that science had taught him.
“To be sure, I sense in my heart the wherewithal to tilt a world. The moment is solemn. My soul commands the earth. Spirits of the skies, the woods, the waters, flowers and metals, do you recognize me as your master? Spirits who are stifling, imprisoned in the ardent veins of stones, sylphs who intoxicate yourselves on dew in the carved cups of acorns, fays with diaphanous wings steeped in the rainbow, elves who dance on cobwebs to the high-pitched song of the robin and the wren, undines who bathe in the foam of the eleventh wave, come salute your king! Today is his coronation!”
He only heard the echo of his own voice; that echo seemed to him to be mocking laughter. He went on: “What! I don’t have the power to curb a blade of grass to my intelligence?” And he looked angrily at a joyful meadow daisy, which was smiling although he was crushing it with his gaze.
An earthworm passed by, replete with mud. Merlin shouted at it: “Stop, slave, soul of clay!” It was in vain; the worm mocked the great Enchanter.
The disgust for books that gripped our hero then is easily imaginable. He threw them away. He lapsed into bleak contemplation, which, on the part of anyone else, would have been called idleness.
IX
On a beautiful spring morning, Merlin was wandering over the deserted hills. Whichever way he directed his footsteps, he always found himself in the middle of the same immense circle that a great magician traced and retraced around him, on the horizon, with heaths, rocks, woods meadows, yellowing wheat-fields and blue-tinted summits. Here and there, a slender fir-tree pierced the blue sky like the head of a spear, at the limit of vision, like a black eyelash on the edge of a huge eyelid. Melancholy, unknown desires, an aspiration toward the distant hills, drew a sigh from Merlin. Weary of pursuing the inaccessible horizon, he stopped beside a spring; his tears fell drop by drop into the water. Out of spite, he threw stones into it, and followed with his eyes, for hours on end, the ripples succeeding one another over the surface of the water.
“My life,” he said to himself, “is more vain than those vain circles, which amuse me momentarily and disappear forever. What am I doing here? Alas, I’m only a shadow myself. I aspire to everything, but cannot grasp anything.”
Then, soon passing from humility to pride, he abandoned himself to the belief that this world was not worthy of him, that the Creator had made a mistake in casting him down on this indigent earth, because he was made for a better universe. But these surges of vanity did not last long. Fundamentally, Merlin was good, simple and devoid of pretention; his suffering was all the keener for it.
As he was floating in these cruel thoughts, he heard a concert of voices in the heart of the forest, and the singular idea occurred to him that those sweet and honeyed voices were emerging from flowers. Soon, reflection told him that flowers cannot talk, much less sing. He lay down in the fresh and odorous grass, and thought he could hear a chorus of cicadas, from which he disentangled, approximately, the following:
“All of you who live in the forests and make them resonate with your early-morning voices, disperse in the heather, in the sonorous stubble; go announce that Viviane is awake, and that the soft flash of her eyes has rejuvenated the earth.
“Vigilant sentinels, who nourish yourselves with dew, go, awaken the idle bees everywhere. Say, publish and announce that the grass has grown during the night, that the winter chill has fled, that the spring dawn has anticipated the skylark.
“Command everything that lives to put on its spring garments. Fly, publicize the new season. Climb the summits, hop down into the profound valleys; evoke with your strident hymn in the cavernous trunks of oaks, in the gaping fissures in the rocks, in the furrows of the earth, the deaf insects that roam in the middle of the night and the nightingale that has fallen silent on the branch.
“Disperse through the ravines of the impenetrable forests. With your feet and your wings, aid the first buds to blossom. Deploy the buds at the tips of branches greening the hawthorn and the precocious chestnut.
“For us, who have sung the last chorus on the steps of the temple of Sunium,9 we salute today the new spring in the heather of Gaul. None among us knows what is in preparation, but the earth truly has an odor of incense.
“We rise with a start in the night, and we wander over the sacred moss to collect the golden herb before dawn.
“Here, here is our radiant mistress who signals to us, imposing silence upon us. We must fall silent; now it is for the gods to speak.”
Merlin reflected once again that cicadas can neither speak nor sing. He even laughed at his credulity. What is it about this universe? he thought. What continual trap is extended for my senses? I won’t be so easily duped. That said, he lent his ears more attentively; no sound could any longer be heard.
Soon, Merlin burst into sobs. His heart overwhelmed by isolation, he shouted with all his might: “Am I alone in this immensity? You to whom I’m calling, where are you?”
A voice replied, quite distinctly: “Where are you?” as if it were emerging from a rock.
That breathless response troubled Merlin at first. Then he understood that his voice had struck the rock, and that it was nothing but the very vulgar phenomenon of an echo.
After a moment of ecstasy, that discovery covered him in confusion. “Deadly science!” he said. “So that’s what I owe you: disenchantment! If I had conserved my initial ignorance, I would believe that the stones were moved by my trouble. I would not die thinking that no other spirit had responded to mine.”
And he fell back into his desolate contemplation. Meanwhile, he raised his eyes to the crest of the mountain, which was covered in black fir-trees, and saw—or thought he saw—a woman sitting at the foot of a tree. She seemed to him to be radiant, plunged like him into an eternal reverie. Flocks of birds emerged from the wood, in order to come and feed from her hands. Her dress was the same shade of green as the forest; her forehead was white and polished, like the stone of summits washed by continual storms. Her eyes were the violet hue of the fields.
Why would wild birds come to feed from the hand of the daughter of a king? Had the forests been seen to give their mantle of verdure to anyone at all? It was nothing but poetic imagery confused with everyday life. Merlin concluded than ennui and isolation had rendered him visionary, that the women he perceived from afar was merely morning mist—and it must be admitted, in fact, that the country was heavily wooded thereabouts, and that the multitudinous exhalations of plants produced vaporous phantoms that might have deceived an intelligence less shrewd than his.
That evening, Merlin went home head bowed, very pensive. He knew that it was a matter of dreams and phantoms; he promised himself to give them no credit; and yet, in spite of himself, his mind was full of both delight and a vague fear. He resembled an Aeolian harp, one string of which has been brushed by a spirit. It resonates for a long time after the instrument has been plunged into its somber sheath, under lock and key.
Unable to sleep, he reflected for a long time on his fortune; two sketchy triads, a few vague prophecies and a multitude of dreams—were those his only possessions? He knew how highly the young women of the region prized wealth, not only in gold but in brilliance. And the parents were even worse. Who would want to give him their daughter? If he did not marry some fay or beauty of the woods, therefore, was he condemned in advance to the almost eternal celibacy of men of his art? That thought was heart-rending.
The night passed in those reflections. The day surprised him with them again: a sad, misty, gray day, but which might yet become radiant if a breath of air dispersed the mist, already traversed here and there by opal and crimson haloes.
X
O Amour! Never—no, never—have I profaned your name. You know that. Never have I mocked your power. Never have I caused you to descend needlessly from your celestial abode, like a deus ex machina for unraveling a drama. I would have preferred not to summon you here, for no mouth is sufficiently divine to pronounce your name; to call you in a human voice is already to profane you. But it’s necessary that you spread over this moment at least one of your rays, pagan or Christian, since you are the only one of the ancient gods who is still alive, as in the primal days of Uranus and Saturn.
The next day, before dawn, Merlin was in the same place, beside the same rock. He had never yet been able to look at a mountain peak without shivering, especially if that summit was covered in sparse trees. Through the clusters of shadows, illuminated by distant splendors, he embraced I don’t know what apparition, which he called happiness—a vain superstition, from which a better-directed education would have protected him. But the harm was done; it was too late to cure him.
Merlin looked up at the mountain, and what was his amazement, his anguish, when he saw on the same mound, at the foot of the same pine tree, the same figure that he had seen the day before.
It was neither a mist nor a phantom, but a young woman who really existed, since she was holding a golden comb and tranquilly combing her long hair, which streamed down to her feet and enveloped her like the sparkling radiance of the morning.
When she had finished, she went to a spring and, looking at herself in its waters, picked up and braided her tresses around her head, with an ingenuous coquetry that redoubled her beauty. Then she came down the mountain in a straight line and advanced toward Merlin, whose astonishment rendered him motionless.
“You called to me yesterday,” she said, “but you didn’t wait. I’m here. What do you want?”
Merlin was too nonplussed to reply. He lowered his eyes. Then, raising them again, he encountered a long, immense, placid gaze, like the one I perceived one day when leaning over the source of a glacier, seeking the reflection of the Alpine sky.
If Merlin had dared to speak, he would have said: “I feel that I’m dying and being born simultaneously.” Then he would have added: “Who are you? Who are your parents? How do you come to be in this solitude? Where are you from?” For, at the same time as his heart was beating forcefully, a singular curiosity was oppressing him. But he dared not, or could not, say anything that was on the tip of his tongue. You would have thought that he had been changed into a stone statue.
“I’ll speak, since you want to be silent,” the young woman said. “My name is Viviane; my godmother is Diana of Sicily10—do you know her? I come here to collect the golden herb.”
These words rendered Merlin capable of speech. “You’re a child of the earth, like me, then?”
“Let’s simply talk,” Viviane replied. “Let’s go visit the flowers.”
“You haven’t descended from the clouds, then? You’re not a dream?”
Viviane put a finger to her lips, and said to him, severely: “Let’s leave dreams to the night; they’re cold and resemble death. Look, the sun’s rising! The cicadas are humping, the bees buzzing. It’s time to rejoice, with the bees, with the insects, with the sun that’s shining on our heads.”
As she spoke, she took Merlin’s hand and led him along paths that only she knew, through the dense woods. As they went along, she gave him accounts of the plants that they were treading underfoot.
Merlin picked flowers; he wanted to give them to her.
“What are you doing?” she said. “You’re hurting me. They’re my sisters. When you tear their stems, you’re wounding me.” And she showed him a drop of dark red blood shining on her cheek.
What a loving heart! Merlin thought. He would dearly have liked to wash away that drop of blood with his tears.
The brighter the daylight became, the more dazzling Viviane’s beauty became. The moment came when, beneath the splendor of the day, all the sounds of the earth died away. The birds fell silent; even the ephemera, normally so active, imitated that silence. Then Viviane began to sing in a spring-like voice, enthusiastic and yet rhythmic, a hymn like nothing that Merlin or any other man had ever heard.
The day passed in that enchantment.
As the shadows of the evening elongated at the feet of the mountains, Viviane’s ecstasy and inspiration diminished. She was gripped by a weakness, a mortal sadness. “What’s happening to me?” she said “I think that I’m going to die with the day. Why is that sinister silence massing over the earth? Already the sad night-bird in beginning to sing. Listen, listen—how it’s calling me with its lamentable voice! Will this be my final hour?” And her lips became chilly and pale, making it impossible for her to continue. “There’s one word that might save me,” she said, “but do you know that word?”
“Yes,” Merlin murmured. “I know it. I love you.”
“Ah! I defy the darkness!” said Viviane. “I’m sure of living at least until tomorrow.”
Reader, if you’re wondering who Viviane is, some maintain that she’s the last daughter of the waters, the last of the druidesses; others say that she’s simply a young woman more beautiful than your own beloved. Personally, I don’t know whether, in accordance with the formal rules, a historian should ever mingle his judgment with his story. I’ll continue.
XI
They walked together along the sea shore.11
Their soles scarcely left an imprint in the silvery sand; and while they talked, the curious waves coming from the open sea broke at their feet, covering them with sea-shells, and seeming to say: “Take me for your witness.”
“Who are you, then?” asked Merlin. “When we walk in the meadows, your gaze is softer than the lily-of-the-valley and the jonquil opening to the dew. Now, your gaze is deeper than the Ocean.”
“Have I asked you who you are? Viviane replied, shivering. “Oh, Merlin, you’re making me suffer. It’s not sufficient, then, to know that I love you? Your thoughts aren’t all enclosed, like mine, in the moment where we are? For me, this moment is eternity. Oh, if you only knew how to love!”
Then she added: “Who am I? I’ve forgotten. Why remind myself? Ask, if you want, the reeds and the eagles. Perhaps they know. For myself, I can’t say.”
Two tears ran from her eyelids; at the same time, the last star shining on the sky suddenly went out, like an overturned candle; the flowers bent over and buckled. A long moan was audible in the forest, which rolled over the waves.
How Merlin repented of what he had said! He accused himself internally of having afflicted with an indiscreet question the person for whom he would have died, Doubtless she was the daughter of a queen who had forgotten her throne for him. Was it necessary to make her remember? Perhaps their conditions would separate them forever. Perhaps she was engaged to some king, or some knight at Arthus’ court? What could the silver ring be that she wore on her finger, if not an engagement ring?
All those ideas, and a thousand others as cruel, traversed Merlin’s heart and mind momentarily; like her, he began to weep silently.
Scarcely had she perceived those tears than she conceived a hectic joy, not of malevolence, but of delight. And, passing from one extreme to the other, she showed Merlin that she was the most frolicsome person in the world, the most cheerful that had ever been seen. Everything immediately began to smile with her.
“You command the universe, then?” said Merlin.
“Of course! What’s astonishing about that? I love. With that word, everything is easy.”
“But I love too,” Merlin replied, going pale. “I love, and not a single blade of grass obeys me!”
“You’re mistaken. Since we’ve wept together, you have the same power as me. Just try. Here’s my ring. What would you like?”
“That your name be written in the vault of heaven!” said Merlin, taking the silver ring.
“Well, look!”
At those words, the sky opened like a book; written there in letters of gold by seven stars, was: VIVIANE.
Thus Merlin, who felt that he was loved, and by loving, became an Enchanter. From that moment on, everything that his eyes encountered was ensorcelled. Beneath his feet, the dew changed into diamonds; he only needed to touch something for it to become immortal. From every object, as from a lyre, emerged a sacred hymn that intoxicated him. As soon as Merlin and Viviane appeared in the woods, in a marvelous cadence, ladies immediately appeared, and demoiselles and red-clad heroes, accompanying them and holding them by the hand. Some danced, others sang, and their voices were so sweet that they might have believed that they were listening to angels. The refrain went:
All is divine!
Love will commence!
Then comes decline:
Dolor immense!
Flowers were born at their feet, which bloomed in the breath of the melody; they had as many iridescent leaves around their calices as there were lines in the chorus of the song.
Arbors of clematis extended over Merlin’s head in places where there had only been bare and brutal rock before. Viviane’s relatives and the neighboring populations were astonished to encounter that company, to hear that music in things. They recounted what they had seen, exaggerating it, in the most distant cantons.
From mouth to mouth, from kingdom to kingdom, the rumor soon spread all over the world that a great Enchanter had just appeared on earth.
XII
Where is the place in which that first enchantment of Merlin by Viviane occurred? Bretons, it was in Brittany, in the bushy wood of Broceliande; Welshmen, it was in Cornwall; Provençals, in the Crau of Provence. Reader, if you care to believe me, you will think, as I do, that the place that still retains today the trace of those enchantments is the one where I have spent a good part, if not the best part, of my life. Picture impenetrable forests, filled with dormant pools, that I could just as well call lakes, whose banks are reddened by the first and last rays of daylight. Less than a league away, at sunrise, is a curtain of mountains, still humble, it’s true, but behind which are the Alps, sacred virgins, taking shelter to put on their mantles of ice; between the forest and the mountain, a plain of pebbles, worn away at the edges by Merlin when he played quoits ion the grass with his companions, which the villagers still call the Crau today. All is peace, silence, gentleness and mystery there. How many times have I heard Merlin and Vivian conversing in low voices, in the month of May, in the clumps of sweet-brier or flowering gorse or wild gillyflowers? I could show you a thousand paths traces by their footsteps, and which, abandoned and neglected, covered with fern-leaves, no longer lead anywhere but deserted heaths.
It might be objected that Merlin and Viviane were walking on the sea shore, and that there is no trace of it in that region, but that objection has no force, since it is easy to reply that the sea has withdrawn, that the plain has risen, that the mountain has lowered, that the pools are the remnants of vanished oceans.
If you pass that way—may heaven preserve you, first of all, from the fever and magical dreams that tremble beneath the willows at the water’s edge, but only after midsummer!—look at those places, so ingenuous and so solitary, at those fields of thatched cottages, those placid horizons, which I filled with my winged visions by myself. Whisper my name to them; they have not forgotten it!
I can, if you wish, indicate to you the place, the very place, where Merlin and Viviane were sitting when the prodigy occurred. It’s the place where you find a heap of stones on an eminence in the meadowland, the remains of a dwelling for which you would search in vain for any other vestige. Knock on the foot of the debris of that threshold hidden beneath the nettles and the hazelnut bushes; voices will emerge more melodious than those of the stones of Memnon the Egyptian.
And that’s too much on that subject. Let’s get on.