BOOK THREE: THE WORLD OF THE HAPPY;

MERLIN SEARCHES FOR HIS FATHER

What a joy it is to open the door to beloved guests a long time awaited!23 There is nothing sweeter beneath the vault of heaven. How the walls smile at the newcomers! How the angle of the roof reddens with a warm ray of sunlight! How the cricket on the hearth repeats its song, especially if an ingenuous, modest but beautiful young woman fills the old abandoned hall with her merry laughter! Even after the guests have gone, the echo of their footsteps still cheers up the shiny stone of the threshold.

Such were the sentiments that Merlin left everywhere he went. For himself, he experienced things quite differently. Experience had shown him that he was not born for the noise of cities. With his science, as he was little accustomed to society, nothing was easier for people than to make him suffer. He took everything they said seriously, often heart-broken by a word or a glance to which others would not have attached any importance. He dug too deeply into that which it was necessary to skim. That is the malady of the solitary.

At the same time, seeing that, in spite of his advice, the people were not following the right path, the prophet became sad. Tristis fit vates.24 A black misanthropy took possession of him; he would have liked to flee to the depths of the woods.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, several times a day, sighing. “Reality is too bitter. Scarcely have I touched it than it has wounded me mortally in the heart. Where are the solitudes populated with beings with which I wanted to fill the world?”

“I know where they exist,” Viviane replied.

“What? They’re not dreams?”

“When you see them, Merlin, perhaps you’ll believe your eyes. Let’s just leave this mocking habitation where you inflicted my first dolor. It’s stifling here. Let’s go breathe in my domains.”

Scarcely were they out of the town than the silence of the heaths and the spectacle of the work in the fields restored Merlin’s serenity of mind. On the seventh day they reached a forest that some believes to be that of the Ardennes, but which was really that of Dombes, where I spent the first half of my life in almost continual enchantment.

A few chimeras with shining eyes, which I rediscovered myself in the same place, under the tall ferns; here and there, unicorns tranquilly sharpening their horns, salamanders with golden abdomens, ibises, phoenixes, starlings with black and white patches, halcyons, pelicans, ichneumons, and especially blue birds, the color of time, welcomed our voyagers as they entered. Add to that numerous horses whose stirrups resonated noisily against the trunks of magical trees. There was Bayard, the horse of the four sons of Aymon;25 there was Roland’s Brigliadoro; there was Valentine, browsing the hornbeams while waiting for Charlemagne.26 They all whinnied as Merlin approached, as if they could already feel the spur of chivalry.

A storm that had threatened during the night had dispersed in the morning, growling. Mild, warm air and a pure blue sky, the first breath of spring in everything: it seemed that nature wanted to add her enchantment to the day.

Merlin’s curiosity was at its height. He darted long glances around him. He would have liked to divine, as always, the meaning of words before they had been pronounced.

Solemnly, Viviane said: “We’re getting close; let’s speak softly. The world, ever blind, has believed until now that poets find the radiant, aerial, charming winged creatures with which they populate the universe in the hollows of their fantasy. To hear them, they have only to draw upon the waves of their genius freely to donate an immortality to their visions that they would be only too glad to possess themselves. That is what they have persuaded people, so easily duped, to believe. You too, Merlin—yes you, the sage—have allowed yourself to be abused on that point. You too believe in errant phantoms that haunt the heads of poets.

“O injustice! Must it be, then, that the most beautiful, the most sublime, the most durable existences pass for the pure inventions of a few good talkers? Will the individuals that I know best and esteem the most be treated as phantoms for a long time yet? If that’s the case, what will we soon be ourselves? Won’t there be some poet vain enough to swear that he’s invented both of us in a moment of caprice? Believe me, Merlin, it’s time that these lies ceased and ephemera no longer contest life with immortals! Know this, then: the individuals reputed to be visions, creations and dreams of a few princes or artisans of speech with gilded tongues, live just as you and I do. They are all gathered in this very place, beneath this shade, merely waiting for the poet to come and call them by their names and bring them out of their obscurity.”

“Can that be?”

“Look!”

“Which way?”

“Listen! Listen!”

From the edge of the wood a refrain then emerged, the echo of fine days, muffled by the branches:

All is divine!

Love will commence!

Then comes decline:

Dolor immense!

Merlin, seeking to discover where those familiar voices were coming from, discovered, sitting on the new grass, in the shadow of oak trees as old as the earth, the same radiant groups of individuals that he had encountered in the first hour of his felicity. Foreheads circled with garlands of wild roses and narcissi, they seemed to be living in expectation of some great event.

The sunlight, veiled by the foliage, was playing at their feet in a thousand webs of shadow and light.

“Oh!” Merlin exclaimed. “Here, then, are those melodious people who disappeared too quickly for my liking! I’ve found them again. It seems to me that they neither hunger nor thirst, nor suffer any earthly cares. Yes, these are what I’m looking for, and by whom I’d like to be remembered.”

“You will be,” said Viviane. “They’re made to love forever. They’re the winged, harmonious people that the poets, artisans of lies, pretend to have invented, because they lend them a few garments to clothe them when they emerge from the forest.”

At the sight of Viviane, the women stood up and welcomed her as their queen, but a vivid blush colored their faces when Merlin spoke to them. Their incomparable beauty increased to such a point that Viviane was almost jealous. Already she was repenting of having brought the Enchanter to this place.

“Who are you?” he asked, without seeking to hide his delight.

They replied one after another, in various tones:

“I’m Titania.”

“And I’m Angelica.”27

“And I’m Juliet of Verona.”

“And I’m Desdemona of Venice.”

“And I’m Ophelia.”

“And I’m Clorinda.”28

“And I’m Julie.”29

Merlin turned toward another group of women, each of whom, their eyes fixed, their lips parted and quivering, could have depicted the spirit of expectation. They said to him:

“I’m Chimène!”30

“And I’m Erminia!”31

“And I’m Clarissa!”32

“And I’m Virginie.”33

Yet others tried to speak; they were all so impatient to identify themselves that not all of them could find a opportunity to pronounce their names. Then they fell silent with a sigh.

“Why are you sighing?” said Merlin. “What do you want from me?”

“We’re waiting for the man who will give us liberty and speech. Is it you? Be our king!”

Titania recounted then how she had been chained by a sylph to a sprig of rosemary. She uttered faint moans; Merlin hastened to set her free. She immediately started running over the flowers without curbing them. Griselidis 34 and the Gioconda, who were standing in the shadow of a beautiful Italian pine, ran to join her in procession, an all of them, holding hands, began to dance around our Enchanter. You might have taken them for the matinal hours dancing around the Prince of Day at his awakening, or for beautiful grape-gatherers around the kind of the vintage—for they seemed intoxicated, not on grapes but on innocent hope. As they moved they wove a hat of flowers for Merlin, which they set on his head. The good Merlin wore it, smiling. Viviane took slight umbrage; she remained silent. Merlin was also mute, with admiration. He would have liked to ask: “Are they really my subjects?” but he did not dare.

A little further on, beyond a summit strewn with mossy stones, he discovered groups of men in vast clearings, without being able to discern whether the noise that he heard in that place was the murmur of a stream, the whisper of foliage or the conversation of those unknown individuals. In order to find out, he increased his pace.

Having reached them, he asked: “Who are you?”

They replied, one after another:

“I’m Roland.”

“And I’m Hamlet.”

“And I’m Tancred.”35

“And I’m Alceste.”36

“And I’m Lara.”37

“An I’m Don Quixote.”

“And I’m Othello.”

“And I’m Saint-Preux.”38

“And is it you who have come to open the door to the real world to us?”

“No,” said Merlin. “I’ve quarreled with that world. What else do you expect from me?”

“Give us strength and immortality.”

“Give us grace first!” cried the women, extending their hands toward him, having followed him so silently that he had not even heard the sound of their footfalls.

Merlin immediately lavished upon them, without bargaining, all the gifts of his art. He had never heaped anyone with such munificence. When the men saw what a great fuss Merlin was making of the ideal beauties that were so close to them, they began to look at them for the first time, and, far from disdaining them, as they had done until then, they began to be seriously smitten with them. Oberon became engaged to Titania that day, Medoro to Angelica, Romeo to Juliet, the Sire de Saluces to Griselidis; they were never apart thereafter.

If he could have, at that moment, Merlin would probably have taken them all across the invisible boundary that separated them from the real world, all the more so since the circle in question was only traced by an autumnal thread of spidersilk. He consoled them by telling them how cruel that world is, and how everything there is poisoned. They would not be able to take a step there without tearing themselves on the brambles of the path.

“Enjoy,” he said. “Enjoy the conditions that you have created in these retreats, in the embalmed shade of these magical trees. Don’t be too desirous of emerging. Later, poets will come, who will give you the publicity and the tumult, alas, that they call glory. Passion, wrath, hatred, jealousy—they can only lend you what they possess. Dread that you might then regret your original obscurity.”

At the same time, he delighted his eyes and his mind with the spectacle of an immaculate world in which everything was peace, beauty, bounty and harmony. All the people he met in that solitude were a hundred times more beautiful than the poets who later pretended to have imagined them had claimed.

“Charming daughters,” said Merlin, dazzled by so many marvels, “be your own society; believe me, it’s the only one worthy to receive you!”

But the enchantresses continued: “O good Merlin, take us into the cities, into the dwellings of men. It’s so sad to mirror oneself all alone in the springs of the forest! We shall only believe in our beauty if we see it reflected in the eyes of people.”

“You want that!” said Merlin. “Have you really thought about it? In emerging from your obscurity, you’ll lose at least half of your primal beauty?”

But they replied: “What’s the point of our beauty if no one sees it?”

Then Merlin conversed with each of them individually. He tried, for a thousand excellent reasons, to prove to them all that they had to lose by emerging from that primal innocence, which was for them the innocence of Eden. He enabled Desdemona to glimpse from afar the sad pillow of Othello, Erminia the indigent hut of the shepherd, Clorinda the sword sated on her blood, Griselidis the dozen ordeals, Marguerite the pool into which she would plunge her child, Ophelia the pale garland of cornflowers that would deck her crazed head, Juliet the cruel agony in the tomb in Verona, Angelica her flight without respite or mercy, Veleda the sickle,39 Julie the sheer rock of Chillon, Virginie the wreck of the Saint-Géran, Clarissa infamy.

Only a few were moved by those words.

“Is it true,” said Desdemona to Othello, “that I shall suffer that cruel death at your hands? If you wish it, let it be so; I shan’t go back on my word.”

At those words, Othello made an effort to smile, as if it were a game; deep down, from that moment on, he felt a commencement of anguish; he begged the Enchanter to answer for him to his beloved.

“Is it true,” murmured Griselidis, in her turn, “that I shall suffer for you, my lord, everything the Enchanter says? No matter; if I had to endure a hundred times more, I would not take back my ring.”

With that, the Sire de Saluces implored Merlin to vouch for him, but the Enchanter refused.

Addressing himself once again to the women who formed his cortege, he said: “That is what is reserved for you, as soon as you let the burning thoughts that men nourish into your virgin souls. That is what they call the real world—as if yours were imaginary! Today, you live in eternal peace. Do you really want to exchange that for eternal anguish?”

“What is this peace?” replied the daughters of incorruptible amour. “This calm is death; we’re weary of our serenity.”

“Beware of summoning and unleashing tempests in your souls!”

“Well, yes, we summon them, we invoke them, the unknown tempests full of thunder and lightning. They weigh upon us less than this ancient repose in which you have found us. Are we flowers of the woods to vegetate like them? We’re weary, Merlin, of competing with the radiant stars in the long summer nights. This Eden without a serpent, without a tempter, is tedious.”

Erminia, Juliet and Ophelia addressed him intimately, in chorus: “Give us tempests, you who speak so well.” And they took his hands.

“You want that, insensate maidens!” said Merlin. “Well, it’s you who’ll have made your destiny. I shall soon awaken the bards who, with a thousand flattering words and cadences, will draw you to the thresholds of brilliant dwellings, where you’ll be lulled day and night by the rhythm of their songs; people will call them poets. They’ll teach you soft, honeyed words. But as soon as you entrust yourselves to them, they’ll bewitch you; you’ll no longer belong to yourselves; that will be your fall from Eden.”

“Let them come!” said crowd of accomplished beings who filled the forest.

“When they come,” Merlin said, “and it might not be long delayed, at least don’t forget my final advice. I’m lending you my power; your siren voices will speak everywhere; you’ll stir the hearts of peoples. As soon as your tongues are untied, spread wisdom over the earth. Publish the truth; sow justice; praise liberty. When you speak of love, let it be while blushing.”

Such were the supreme commandments that he gave to the people as he left them. He added very few laws to them, only a handful of extremely flexible, extremely broad regulations adapted to the genius of each of them. The first was beauty, which he did not permit to be neglected in any circumstances of life, under any pretext, neither in tears, nor in laughter; the second was pleasure, the third serenity. Almost anything was permissible against ennui, easy to recognize at a distance by its leaden wings. Nothing that resembled toil; an air of festival, or at least of ease; no contention, no hindrance or fatigue. No artifice, but much artistry; no make-up, and yet a lily-white complexion. Even in irons, it was necessary to seem free.

To these commandments, the women relied with ecstatic cries; the men bowed, hand on heart, and promised without objection what Merlin wished.

Then strange forms trailed at his feet, veritable monsters that could not raise themselves from the ground. Caliban was the first, Adamastor 40 the second, Morgant 41 the third; all of them were hairy, gigantic and hideous. Without speaking, their paws joined, they dared to cling on to the hem of his robe, asking him to enable them to enter real life.

Merlin considered them for some time, with a horror mingled with pity.

“What?” he said to them. “You also desire real existence? Have you never seen yourselves in the mirror of a spring? What good would more life do you? Made as you seem to be, deformed at pleasure, don’t aspire to more glory! Keep your posterity to yourselves. Who could love you?”

But the monsters stuck to his heels like beggars that no refusal can discourage. They growled dully, and could only reply: “Oh! Oh! Oh!” so persistently that in order to escape them, Merlin gave them a nod of the head that meant: “Hope anyway, then!”

Caliban rejoiced in his heart in thinking about his posterity. Adamastor stopped, stupidly expectant; he resembled a rugged rock overhanging a gulf.

Merlin was about to withdraw when a strong odor of tar reached him, mingled with dense smoke. He investigated. In a little inlet strewn with seaweed, two individuals, in the midst of numerous tools, such as hammers, nails, saws, ropes, axes, a few pints of fresh water and rum, were caulking the inverted hull of a boat with oakum and moss.

Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver were their names; both of them were busy, very discreet and even more modest; they dared not come closer. Merlin advanced cheerfully; he learned from their own mouths what an immoderate desire they had to sail for strange lands. They could hardly wait for the boat to be finished; they thought they might die of impatience.

Everything that he could reasonably do to dissuade them from their project, Merlin did; he warned, he scolded, he begged, he implored.

What would they gain from this distant voyage? Were they so sure of avoiding shipwreck? Anyway, it was a very bad time; there was no talk of anything but disasters that year. Then again, after all, what would they see? Peoples scarcely born, already degenerate and disfigured. If curiosity was driving our two friends, what need was there to go so far? Could they not enter into themselves? They would find unknown abysses, tempests and even sandy deserts in the depths of their heart, as easily as beyond the Indian sea.

All that was said gently and sympathetically, not in the tone of a master.

Robinson and Gulliver did not give an inch, and Merlin did not persist. He wanted them to follow their whim, not his. After a few items of advice about climates, trade winds, monsoons, currents and tides he gave them two little compasses, the first that were ever used, and two maps, one of Lilliput for Gulliver and one of the desert island for Robinson. You would have seen therein not merely the general disposition of the land but also, distinctly marked, the landing-points, the creeks, the cliffs, the inlets—in brief, everything that might help avoid a shipwreck, or even render it profitable. After which he took his leave of our two adventurers, wishing them bon voyage.

Personally, he withdrew with a contented heart, his mind more satisfied with that day than any other. Nevertheless, he was careful to advise those who were following him not to try to cross the barrier.

Some of them disobeyed him, too impatient to enter the real world. Roland, Hamlet, Don Quixote and Manfred 42 hurried after him. What did they have to fear from the thread of spider-silk that served as a fence?

Scarcely had they touched it than they fell backwards. And from that day on they were inclined to vertigo. It was the first intrusion of grief into the world of the happy, but the sadness was only momentary.

It was then the month of May. Vigorous messengers, sent in all directions, published the news that the wedding of the nightingale and the rose, so long deferred, would be celebrated that year.43 Everyone was ordered to take part in the procession. The earth had already put on its bridal gown.

As chance would have it, the messengers encountered Merlin as he emerged from the forest.

“We were looking for you, Seigneur; come to where the fiancés are waiting for you. Without you, the celebration would be a wake. There will be kings, counts, barons, gentlemen, and especially poor people. Be the priest, the prince and the poet, at the same time.

“Don’t refuse them,” said Viviane. “They’re my godmother’s people.”

“Let’s go,” said Merlin, following them through the flowery groves.

At that moment he would have liked to lend his happiness to the whole word. He was therefore not sorry to put an end by means of legitimate marriage to the tearful sighs of the nightingale, which had often woken him with a start in the night and touched him with compassion for such a grand amour.

From the depths of the Orient many queens arrived; they all brought cassolettes full of incense. Poets from Persia also came, each of them having composed an epithalamium. Serenades, aubades and ballads filled the first half of May, well into the night. There was a truce between nations; no slaughter, only the occasional quarrel if one preferred the voice of the fiancé, the other the virginal silence of his beloved. In any case, everyone, delightedly relaxed, confessed that no wedding had ever attracted such a great cortege of princes and joyful peoples. All the glory of that reverted to Merlin.

He took the opportunity to invite to the fête all the couples who, without being aware of it, were made for one another: all those who had a secret relationship of heart, mind or taste, sometimes of facial appearance, whom nature had destined for one another.

What did he ask of them? Only one thing: sincerity. In return, he promised to remove the obstacles that might separate them: differences of condition or birth, misunderstandings, family prejudices, the stubbornness of parents or guardians, fortune on one side and lack of it on the other. Even quarrels, provided that they were only matters of vexation, ceded to Merlin.

Gathering them from all points of the earth, he asked them whether they accepted one another mutually as spouses—to which they replied: “Yes.”

Without further ado, he celebrated with equal magnificence the wedding of the nightingale and the rose and those of an innumerable host of couples, including the Sleeping Beauty and her knight, Madame de Vergy and the Sire de Coucy,44 Erec de Nantes and Enide, Perceval le Gallois and Blanchefleur, Antar the Negro and his cousin Ablla,45 Marko the Serb and Rosanda,46 emirs and almas, Aladdin and the Sultana, several fairies, as many princes, twenty shepherdesses and twenty kings. No one had any need to produce birth-certificates or other identity papers; everyone’s assets were assumed to be the same.

The musicians gathered for one marriage served for the others. To begin with, there were a thousand wrens, two thousand turtle-doves, three thousand reed-warblers and as many woodlarks. Seventy greenfinches and chaffinches, and as many siskins, uttered their mordant, piercing notes at intervals, after every sigh; the bass parts were sustained by fifty waxwings and fifty centenarian rooks.

The first betrothals of souls, marriages of minds, inexplicable sympathies, natural kinships, alliances, impulses, the consanguinity of two hearts that, without knowing one another, ran, flew and precipitated themselves toward one another; chains of flowers, or rather diamonds; voiceless conversations, the language of gazes, mute consents, interior smiles, the first gifts of the morning, invisible contracts, sealed by dew in the hands of the Enchanter, were initiated that day.

As for the ceremony, Merlin wanted to put a certain solemnity into it. The most important thing was his speech to all the couples gathered before him. He completed it with these words:

“Go, be happy! I bless you. Under all titles—bard, diviner, prophet, king, enchanter—I say to you, there is no terrestrial felicity outside legitimate marriage, such as I have just celebrated by solemn rites. Outside of that, not one assured hour; pleasures ever frightened, for which it is necessary to blush repeatedly, the soul unquiet and tormented; and what joy, I ask you but the impious, fraudulent sharing of oneself?

“Avoid, then, those pretended espousals in which one vaguely takes the clouds as witnesses, a sure means of breaking your word. Take a serious witness, all of you, before God and men. Let the oak be taken as a witness by the reeds, the green woodpecker by the robin, the hooded crow by the swallow, the centenarian deer by the cicadas, the bard by humans, Merlin by the bards. Words of bronze are required to enchain ephemera.”

By way of conclusion, he added: “Nightingale, be faithful to the rose! And you who are listening to me, kings, shepherds, humans and homunculi, remember that Merlin has signed the contract.”

To these words he added considerable presents: robes of white wool for the priests, a hundred gold necklaces for the virgins, a hundred new pairs of trousers for the poor folk.

When the celebrations were over, Merlin sent the favored couples away, who went hither and yon, singing his praises, hoping that those he had united would never be divided by fate.

But how many of those diamond chains have been broken pitilessly! How many of those souls married legitimately by Merlin at the outset have been divorced by hazard, by birth, by prejudice, by avarice, by avidity for gold, by the cruelty of parents! Some of those spouses spend the rest of their lives searching for one another without ever finding one another; others encounter one another when it is no longer permissible for them to love one another, or, if they do, it is their damnation! Others, even more wretched, have forgotten that they were ever married and that the contract is still in the enchanter’s hands. Hence the ennui, the sadness, the insipidity of human things. Everything is forgotten there, even felicity, even despair.

At least the nightingale has never forgotten that he espoused the rose.

III

All the flowers of the fête had not yet all faded, and all the singers had not yet quenched their thirst, when the sound of trumpets and oliphants, mingled with the clash of blades and battleaxes, shook the doors of the hall—which were fortunately made of oak-wood armored with bronze.

“Hola!” cried Merlin. “The reckless! Who invited them? It wasn’t me. They’ve arrived early. I was expecting them, but not until winter.”

A valet named Gui de Nanteuil 47 enquired in the street as to the origin of the tumult. They learned from him of the imminent arrival of the barbarians. Wearied by the journey, poorly nourished and ill-clad, they were announcing themselves from afar, in advance, in the form of a few marauders, in order that people might have time to prepare a refuge.

At the moment when that news was reported to Merlin, he was sitting down, holding a silver goblet in his right hand filled with red wine, about to raise it to his lips. Suddenly, he changed his mind. He deposited the cup, still full, on the edge of the table, and radiantly, taking advice from his hospitable good humor, he stood up.

“Let’s go to meet them,” he said, “to compliment them on their coming, to feed them, to assist them, for I suspect that they’re hungry, in body and in mind.”

He had, in fact, heard much good said about barbarians, and he put his greatest hope in them, believing, perhaps a little inconsiderately, that they were coming at the right time to regenerate the people, who were, in truth, already somewhat worn out. He was counting on buying the amity of those people with some gift of his art, in addition to which he would not be sorry to step himself once again in the sacred waters of legend.

These reasons caused him to march at dawn until he reached the great waters, the Moselle or the Meuse, or, according to others, the Rhine.

There, a barbarian, a giant—the first he had seen with his eyes—was in the middle of the river. On his shoulders he was carrying a new-born child, and the child was holding a glob in his hand, and playing with it. The waves rose, and the giant stopped; the water came up to his knees. Bent over, panting under his burden, he uttered confused cries, which the rocks repeated: “Help me! Help! I’m carrying the world on my shoulders!”

At that cry of alarm, and anchorite, the sole inhabitant of the region, emerged from his hermitage, a torch in his hand. He recognized the child who was crushing the giant’s shoulders: it was Christ!

Shining like a beacon in the night, the new-born had leaned over; he had taken a little water in the palm of his hand, which he poured over the giant’s head to baptize him.48

Merlin saw everything from the bank, and was filled with an extraordinary emotion. Trembling, scarcely breathing, he fell to his knees when the giant deposited the child on the verdant bank.

That is what people called the conversion of Merlin; he had been moved, astonished, amazed, one might have thought that he was convinced; he ended up imagining that he was, permanently.

As the people arrived from the depths of their forests, one after another, all white with frost and bristling with icicles, Merlin imitated what he had just seen. He bent down and filled the palm of his hand with water, after which, he poured it over the heads of the nations, which looked at him with a savage expression, not knowing whether they wanted to smile at him or tear him to pieces. As for him, he was not afraid.

On the contrary, he covered their bare shoulders with a few bearskins that he had brought with him; he put his own socks, still new, on their feet; he refreshed them with a few cordials and a little beer. He put around their neck an amber necklace that Isaline had given him and even wanted to make them a few huts of leaves, so cold were the nights.

“No, Merlin,” the barbaric nations said to him, with a grim expression. “First, let us shelter the God who brought us here.”

“That’s true,” said Merlin, confused to receive that great lesson from those semi-naked people.

Then, living in the clearings, only thinking about the greenwood, only drinking dew, he invented the ogival arch and, to please them, made a forest with stone foliage, populated by granite birds, sown with marble or porphyry flowers, sometimes emeralds, everywhere profound, immense and gloomy.

That pleased them all; everyone wanted to have a plan in his hand. Our hero’s strength was sufficient to that labor, so naturally great and generous was his heart when nothing got in his way. You would have seen him, singing and whistling, hammer in hand, until well into the night, transporting black mossy rocks, with which he embroidered cathedrals.

Architect, mason, carpenter, sculptor, decorator, he wrought iron, festooned stone, dentellate wood, illuminated the vermilion and ultramarine windows. As he did not embrace anything coldly, and everything in him was enthusiasm and passion, he was no longer occupied with anything but columns, colonnettes, naves, aisles, arches, imitating in granite the lacework of the veils of Queen Genièvre or Isaline. More than once, Viviane got into a bad mood, and hid his tools—but always in vain.

A host of animals followed him, breathlessly: green salamanders, black Kylburn dragons,49 wooden men, wyverns, gorgades with goatish bodies; he commanded them to crouch down in silence for eternity at the tops of capitals, which he made incontinently. Others received orders to sustain the coving of naves with their backs and their contracted feet. A few were even obliged to crawl, vertiginously, to the tips of steeples.

The trefoil flower in Marlin’s garden had been one of the reasons for his change of creed. That was enough to make him put stone trefoils everywhere in his constructions—after which he gave them, by means of a final effort, that he had given his previous works, the power of enchantment that captured human hearts unawares.

Unfortunately, Merlin was fickle; his faith was less profound than he thought, and that is why his grandiose architecture is nevertheless delicate and unsteady. Sometimes, it even happened that Merlin, before having completed a temple, had changed faith. How embarrassed was he then! I leave it to you to imagine. It was impossible for him to complete what he had begun, as witness Cologne cathedral, which Merlin had started full of faith, the day after encountering Christ, but which he left in the state in which one can see it today, with the crane hoisted over the wall. Twenty times, the worthy Merlin, who dreaded more than anything afflicting a soul, solicited by the Teutons, wanted to resume the interrupted work; twenty times he was obliged to renounce the task, which he had ceased to comprehend.

Have I mentioned that Merlin, with all his great qualities, was capricious? I make no excuses for that, but what earns him considerable pardon is that he was honest.

Explain this eccentricity if you can!

At the same time as he was building colossal churches—who would have thought it?—his secret desire, his supreme ambition, was to visit Hell. Personally, I think that an unhealthy curiosity, a feverish desire for contrasts, or rather, an unreflective filial instinct, was driving him in that direction. On his travels, he never encountered a cavern, a cleft in a rock or a rift in the ground without stopping and wondering whether it might not be the route to infernal worlds. More often than not, people looked at him in astonishment, but that did not discourage him.

“I don’t know,” he said, ingenuously, “what attracts me in spite of myself toward those desolate regions. Others before me have been driven to visit them by curiosity or by some poetic convenience or other. For myself, it seems that it’s a strict duty at least to make a brief pilgrimage to those places. If I dared, I’d confess that I feel a kind of homesickness every time I think about them.”

He was understating the case. Truthfully, he ought to have admitted that the thought, the desire, the dread and the vague hope of meeting his father again was at the bottom of all his aspirations toward the abyss.

Viviane did not know that secret. She helped Merlin to accomplish his desire, and even wanted to keep it as a surprise until the end—which she did with a great deal of skill, under the pretext of undertaking a pilgrimage to the sacred isle of Avalon. It only required a short journey to reach a port named the Bay of the Dead. From there, opportunities were frequent.

No delay; they embark. Can you see them, already far from the shore. Personally, I can see them distinctly, and the boat, of rather mediocre appearance, and the mast and the passengers, just where there is a wisp of foam. But what can it signify that there is neither a sail nor oars, nor a pennant nor a tiller?

The boatmen do not say a word.

“Are they mute?”

“They’re dead,” Viviane replies.

The sea becomes black, throwing her long sniggers into the distance.

The passengers are mute too, and although they are numerous the boat seems empty, so slightly does it skim the surface of the water, where it leaves no wake.

An osprey with an enormous wingspan hovers over the travelers as if over its fodder. The lightning is less prompt to precipitate from the clouds. Merlin ducks down and straightens up again. Frightened by having found a living being where it was seeking a dead one, the bird of prey brushes the Enchanter with its wing, utters a screech, loses a feather and disappears over the horizon. Everyone has remained motionless.

The crossing has lasted a day. No one has shouted: “Land!”

They land near St. Patrick’s cavern. Preceded by Viviane, Merlin advances toward the paternal domain, which opens there in a spiral. A momentary anguish grips him when he sets foot on the threshold.

“Are you with me?”

“Yes.”

And, sensing love stir within him, he enters Hell. He would like to confront it without delay.

Scarcely have they crossed the threshold than a man dressed in a toga, carrying a shepherd’s crook crowned with ears of wheat, places himself in the middle of the path.

“Are you, who advance without fear, the Florentine I’m waiting for?” he exclaims. “Is it you who will sing of the Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise? If so, tell me, that I may accompany you.”

“O good Virgil,” Merlin replies, the time of the one for whom you’re waiting has not yet come. I’m not the Florentine, but it would not be just to disdain me, for I too am an enchanter, like you. Make the journey to the inferno with us; it will be easier afterwards to show the way to the one whose guide you have to be.”

“If you’re not the Florentine, you must be the Enchanter Merlin?”

“You’re right, Virgil; I’m Merlin.”

Immediately, they both attempted to embrace one another, and, having not been able to do so, they looked at one another with an infinite tenderness. Then Virgil said: “Don’t hope, brother, to remain in eternal dolor long enough to bring peace to it. This isn’t your domain. Another will take possession of these regions. Do you understand that his formidable terza rimas have been forged here in advance, on the infernal anvil? Don’t try to steal them from him. You’re the prophet of happy days in future worlds. The regions that you need to visit, I don’t know.”

“Let me, please, contemplate eternal anguish once. As the price of that vision, I’ll rejuvenate your antique, Elysian verses, which only specters babble today.”

“What! My sweet language is only that of shades now?”

“I shall resuscitate it; it will resonate again on the lips of people in gentler, crimsoned words mingled with honey.”

Tempted by these caresses, Virgil smiled. “I’ll do what no one has commanded me to do. Pass more rapidly than the lightning.”

“Yes, more rapidly than hope in the hearts of the accursed.”

And as they advanced, they seemed to be migratory birds who knew they route, without ever having traveled it before. The wise Merlin explained everything they encountered without difficulty.

“The slightest shadows are better known to you than to me,” said Virgil. “Have you been this way before?”

“Never,” Merlin replied—and he continued to astonish his guide with his precise knowledge of the smallest abyss. How different his explanations were, moreover, from those that were given later! At every torture he encountered, he said: “I can imagine a greater torture.”

“What is it?”

“Seeking Viviane and not finding her.”

“Be careful, brother, of evoking your torment. Everyone here creates and forges his own.”

And as Merlin and Viviane took one another by the hand as they walked, their joy was so profound that Hell itself was moved and quivered. It could not annihilate their felicity. On the contrary, it was reflected around them. On seeing those happy souls pass by, the damned felt appeased; they said: “O blessed souls, what, then, is your felicity, since it expands around us? Here at last is a moment without pain. It’s the first since we’ve been resident in this abode!”

Merlin stopped, and said: “Whoever you may be, such great torments will come to an end.”

“What are you saying?” said the tortured souls. “How can there be an end to malediction? Never has anything similar been pronounced in this abyss. Do you believe what you say, or is it only to console us?”

“I believe it,” said Merlin, weeping.

“What! You’re weeping! There will be a time of forgiveness?”

“Yes, if you can still love something.”

There was such a great bounty in Merlin that even the souls of bronze were unable to resist him. It seemed that they were about to melt, like metal when it begins to liquefy under a greater heat.

That moment was an interval of hope that spread through all the regions of Hell. Even Astaroth, Asmodeus, Mephistopheles, Cagnazzo and Malacoda began to sob,50 and, approaching Merlin, said to him something that they had learned on earth: “Knight, let’s change the subject!”

Then, rejecting hope themselves, they made use of their most dangerous weapon, sniggering irony, to disconcert Merlin. They were all sure that by a false shame, a vain human respect, he would surrender himself.

But they did not know him! Merlin’s best quality, after bounty, was to defy mockery when following a conviction. Far from defeating him, the mockery of the demons only made him bolder. He continued to breathe hope everywhere.

However, anxiety began for him when he sought the king of Hell. At every step, he hoped and dreaded to perceive him.

Suddenly, at a bend in the path, he saw him in front of him, on his throne.

What a moment! Their eyes met...

Was it really the knight who had concerned himself with his infancy? There was no doubt about it: the same red cloak corroded at the edges; the same spurs of flame; the same golden helmet—except that he had taken it off momentarily in order to breathe more easily. He was allowing his blazing red hair to float free in the air.

At that sight, nature speaks; it screams; Merlin has recognized his father.

Dread and a certain horror, mingled with an ancient respect, shame, spite, the worm of anguish and the terrors of Hell oppress him simultaneously. He feels as if he is burning and freezing. He dare not advance nor recoil, nor speak, nor remain silent.

His father sees his disturbance, and hastens to take advantage of it.

“There you are, my dear son!” the master of Hell says to him, holding out a hand from which sparks are spurting. “Come here, into my arms, that I might hug you, my son, to my breast. Come, I tell you. Sit down beside me, on this old family seat. Get away, my faithful, make room, make room at the hearth! Today the prodigal son has returned! All my wealth is his—good fire, good shelter, and the rest.”

Immediately, the vast boilers fill up as if in readiness for an infernal festival. The dormant brands in the hearth reignite. The subterranean forests crackle, releasing burning rivers of coal and there is not a black Kobold on the blood-colored banks, armed with a fang in the guise of an oar, who does not raise a cheer to Merlin, as to the favorite son of the house.

Then his father, approaching Viviane, says: “Plague, Merlin—a pretty girl! She’s doubtless my daughter-in-law. What eyes! What a mouth, my darling! What pink lips! What a figure! She won’t disdain the paternal house? Dear friends, your wedding will take place here this very evening, for it seems to me, Merlin, that you’ve put it off too long. I mean by that that you’re giving purchase to the criticism of society.”

In the meantime, Merlin had fallen into a dull stupor. He seemed insensible. It was the first time that his relationship with Hell had been solemnly published, and the abysm taken as witnesses. Until then, he had had a vague, confused presentiment, but the secret had not yet emerged from any mortal mouth. So, obstinate in doubt, he murmured: “You, my father? Me, your son? You’re mistaken, Seigneur...”

“Don’t stifle nature, my child! She speaks to you more clearly than I do myself.”

“But still, what are the signs?”

“Do you know this hank of hair?”

“It might be false.”

“Gently, strong mind! And this bracelet, on which is engraved your monogram with that of Séraphine?”

“I’d like other signs.”

“I put them in your cradle.”

“What happened to them?”

“You’ve kept them all.”

“Where?”

“There, in your heart. Look into the depths, and you’ll see me yourself.”

“I’m not, like you, Seigneur, of royal blood.”

“Don’t be so modest. You resemble me, my son, feature for feature. Here is my face, my attitude, my stature, such as I was at your age—and it’s even better within; it’s there that you keep the imprints of my lineage and my blazon. The same vagabond whimsy, the same curiosity, the same impossibility of remaining serious, the same spurs of the flesh, just as sharp…you know them, eh? Those intimate resemblances don’t deceive me, my dear; I got them directly from our forefathers.”

“But one thing distinguishes me from you and your family.”

“What’s that, pray, my son?”

“Hope.”

“Oh yes! Wait until tomorrow. You’ll lose it as I lost it; it falls out for us like hair. There will remain to you, as to us, the bald opportunity that you won’t be able to grasp, for century after century—so give in!”

“I can’t submit so quickly.”

“You can’t submit? Precisely: I was, I am and always will be the same.”

“I don’t know what I ought to fear or desire.”

“Like me! Come on, prodigal son, let’s embrace!”

“Not yet.”

“Believe me, then.”

“I can’t believe.”

“That’s it! Like me, I tell you, like all of us here. Trust in the evidence.”

“I still doubt.”

“Exactly. That’s my family’s trait, doubt! But open your eyes.”

“I see nothing but darkness.”

“Well said! There, my son, finally, is that great sign, darkness; recognize your father by that.”

“If that’s the way it is, Father, convert.”

“It’s too soon, my son.”

“Look at him, Viviane—you’ll vanquish him with your gaze.”

As he pronounced these words, Merlin felt his entrails stir for such a great sinner. He was about to put his hand in the one that was offered to him, and that would doubtless have done for our hero, when Viviane saved him.

“Let’s flee,” she said. “His wickedness holds sway over my power.”

With those words, she drew the prophet away. He followed her, but not without dolor; more than once, he looked back.

The evils that he had seen accompanied him, and still weighed upon him. The anguish tearing him increased when he heard his father cry out, in an almost extinct voice: “Son of Hell, you’re betraying Hell! How have you been bought? Do you intend, then, to be the Judas of Satan?”

And the echo of the abysms, beneath the accursed vaults, repeated: “Your old father is too fond of you, Merlin; it’s us who’ll pay for his weakness.”

At those roars Merlin stopped; eternal dolor tempted him. What if he were to retrace his steps? Why not? He would see his father again, beg him, hug him in his arms. Why had he left him so quickly, with no word of farewell? He could carry him on his shoulders, as Aenes did Anchises, out of the eternal blaze of the city of lamentation...

Already, he had turned round, and he was meditating plunging back into the accursed regions, when his two companions blocked the way to him.

“Leave the past, which you can’t remake, prophet,” said Viviane. “The future alone is yours. Listen to the wailing of the new worlds that are calling to you. Do you want to disappoint their infantile expectation?”

Virgil showed him the radiant carved doors of Paradise.

“No, not yet, good Virgil,” said Merlin. “What would I do in the accomplished dwelling of the just? They’re happy, what need to they have of me? Let’s see instead, as this one advises, the wellspring of things, the commencement of beings and all those awaiting life in the cradle of future worlds, for that’s where my domain is.”

With those words, the two enchanters parted, weeping.

The wise Merlin had been the first to bring a ray of hope and pity into Hell. It was, to be sure, only momentary, but the tortured would never forget it.