BOOK FOUR: THE CONDUCTOR OF THE THREE LIVES

 

 

I

 

Beloved dead that I have known alive on earth, and who have disappeared so soon from the world, leaving us the tears!

Beautiful winged, matinal souls, who, borne away by too great a curiosity toward eternal things, have departed before the day and have left me in darkness!

Souls detached from the mud, you who know the roads I want to attempt, the mere thought of which would frighten me, if I did not have you for a cortege!

You who lives on the sheer peaks of the invisible, who one touch with your feet the immaculate essence of things!

If your memory is present to me at every hour; if in sadness and in joy I seek you as my light;

You who have been, who will be in the life eternal; Be my guides to that place where all paths traced by humans stop; conduct my eyes that I might see, through the darkness of the centuries, what no eye has seen, what no eye can see without you.

As at the foot of the Bernese mountains where the rock looms up, where the universe is closed, the guide conducts the pilgrim over snows contemporary with the first day, and prevents him from missing his way, in the same way, sustain me through the still-immaculate abyss where Merlin is taking me. For his greatest desire is to fray a path for humans through the unfrequented regions; and now he has resolved to visit the vast limbo into which no one has penetrated with him.51

Indecisive, formless noises, like the whimpering of the abyss, welcome him at the entrance to those places where the pale and unknown roots of all things intersect. It is not day and it is not night. There is neither sun nor moon nor stars in the sky, but only nebulae that powder and snake in the meanders of the Milky Way, without being able to give birth to the aurora. You might think that worlds were being formed in secret, and babbling in the somber workshop.

To begin with, in the densest part of the Alpine labyrinth, toward Glaris, there is a long avenue of pyramidal mountains, on pedestals of black marble, which touch the heavens; and as one advances, they become higher and prouder. At their feet, brown forests of maples extend, like the furry bearskin rugs, where cascades dance and leap to the sound of avalanches. Higher up, fir-trees rise, and the slope is already so steep that they seem to be rooted in one another’s crowns. After them the coarse grass, grazed by the chamois, and then the bald rock. There hang the low glaciers, like the udders of heifers trailing in the long grass. In the distance, beyond the black chaos, stands the bare, dented, dazzling skeleton of a snowy peak, the icy throne of death. There, by some mouth, the Linth precipitates, and its taurean roar is stifled in the gulf before rising in the meadows. Take away that anticipatory vision of the inferno of ice.

Pale clouds punctuated with black coil around the sharpest peak like a collar of down-feathers around the neck of a vulture, but the wind moves them on; then they envelop the great specter of stone and snow from head to toe; they are torn apart again, allowing a glimpse of the spike that emerges into an aerial gulf of dark azure.

It is there that the earth is cleft from Heaven to Hell. A cold, unknown breath rises from the horrible crevasse: the breath of subterranean worlds; with it, you feel vertigo. Between the two pale, damp, vertical walls, a bridge lost in the cloud, narrower than the edge of a razor, stands out against the black face of the sky. How can I pass over it without falling?

On the far side, the realm of Limbo commences, a vast, incorruptible, snow-white country, like an unwritten page, which contains the premises of all existence. That domain is ruled by a pastor. Armed with a crook, he commands the troop of beings awaiting life. From his point of view, he prevents the impatient worlds from hastening toward the light before their day has come.

Have you see a cowherd conduction his herd in May over the reddening Alp to the sound of nocturnal bells? Without a host, without a companion, he lives in the clouds. Such is the pastor of Limbo. Devoid of parents, of a spouse, of any posterity, separated from the living, he resides in the source of things.

At that moment, with his back to the rock, in front of a brushwood fire, he was murmuring a strange song, faint and ungraspable, and no one knew whether it was to awaken or send to sleep the worlds nascent in the cradle of Limbo. As he was utterly pensive, occupied with those cradle-songs, Merlin was able to approach him fearlessly, and he said to him: “You who retain in Limbo the creatures and forms promised to life, cease your song and show me the granaries of abundance where the eternally-renewed seeds of nascent worlds are buried, with the treasures of the hail and the autumnal rain, and those of celestial anger. Tell me also where the light resides.”

The pastor of Limbo would have liked to hide the amassed treasure of future things and the promises of life confided to his protection, but his surprise was so great that he did not raise any objection. Having put his flute into his basket, he picked up his crook and pointed at his distant domains. Then he opened the first barrier, the joists of which were shaky, mingled with thorns, as in the Roman countryside.

While they both advanced, a colored vapor iridescent with a thousand gleams, surrounded them. It was lighter than the mist that rises from the meadow-grass.

“Whence comes that red mist, O shepherd? It is not the daughter of the rain and the dew.”

“No,” replied the pastor of Limbo. “That light vapor you see rising beneath your feet is the luminous dust of future worlds.”

“What! Every nascent universe is merely smoke? And am I the child of that vapor? Is that also what forms the gods with gilded faces?”

“Don’t worry about the gods! I’ll show you later where they’re born, for I’m their guardian too. Just be wary of dissipating a world with your breath without knowing it.”

At that response, Merlin, half-lost in that dawn of life, held back the words that were pressing upon his lips. However, he could not help saying: “I sense, O pastor of Limbo, that my heart is stronger than the myriads of nascent worlds. What! So weak! So wretched! So similar to nothingness! Where, then, can pride be born? Whence comes wisdom? Where is the commencement of love? And where is hope born?”

“I’ve already told you: in that radiant mist.”

And, having both become more pensive, they traversed the vestibule of Limbo in silence.

At the place where the way narrowed, in the middle of the steep path, there was an old man who was holding a book on his knees; bent over, he was writing relentlessly on the pages that were still blank, without seeming to take any notice of those who were approaching, nor of the abysms open to either side.

For some time Merlin considered him, in the hope of seeing him raise his head; but the stain beneath the scribe’s rapid pen grew, and it scratched without ever pausing.

“O eternal scribe,” the prophet asked him, “what are you writing with so much haste on those pages which you’re desperate to fill? I don’t see anyone dictating to you.”

The scribe replied: “Pass by without pausing, as they all do. I’m writing here the divine name of every being, and every thing, as they come to life, in order that their number can be counted, and no creature, however tiny it might be, can escape the science of the Eternal. Be wary of stealing even one from him, for I too know the count.” Then, angrily, looking at him askance, he added: “It’s wrong of the shepherd to have let you come so far. Another more powerful than me will reproach him for it.”

“You see, prophet,” murmured the shepherd, drawing Merlin away. “You see what I endure for you. At least keep my secret.”

 

 

 

II

 

Beyond the vestibule, on the threshold of Limbo, giants were lying who seemed to be guarding it, although they were asleep. Lying down randomly, here and there, they had left gaps between them and it was by that tortuous path that it was necessary to find a route.

The shepherd touched those who were sleeping thus before his fold with his scepter.

“They are,” he continued, “the future days waiting for the morning breeze to come and caress their hair—for that will be the signal that they have to get up. Then they’ll stand upright, their faces illuminated by the light of dawn, and they won’t remain eternally naked and hairless as you see them now. But some will dress themselves in a reddening dawn, others in cloud the color of ash, charged with thunder and lightning, which will hang down to their belts. Diadems dotted with stars will crown their heads. Until then, it’s necessary that they all remain equally drowsy with the sleep of Limbo. They can scarcely dream of their splendor to come.”

“And the females sleeping alongside them, who are they?”

“Their faithful companions the nights. Heads supported on their elbows, they wait, in a sterile vision, to be wedded to the future days.”

Vast reservoirs opened up at that point, the innumerable larders where the premises of things were gathered, sketches of plants and animals that no human eye has ever seen, and the substance of future worlds which are only a desire as yet.

As flocks of pigeons take off in the morning, when the laborer enters the field where he has left the plow standing the interrupted furrow, and fly around his head, so immense sketchy flying reptiles, still attached to the primitive mud, rose up and beat the air with their viscous wings at Merlin’s approach. There were lizards a hundred cubits long, with golden underbellies, which, mouths open, barred his way with a dull sound of scales and abandoned carapaces. Others, more gigantic, with serpent’s necks and teats from which their young were suspended, were sharpening their tusks on the trunks of colossal ferns. Mammoth was with them. But these innumerable creatures, gripped by fear, retreated in confusion into their stables; in their stead, others appeared, stranger still, half-formed, which fled in their turn. There was a hierarchy between them, for they arranged themselves obediently, the most imperfect before the best. Finally came Leviathan and Behemoth, but they did not flee before the face of the prophet; they dared to remain.

For a long time, Merlin contemplated that mystery of beings born without parents; he saw them emerge fully armed from the ample bosom of the earth. Then he exclaimed: “No, never, neither under the trees of the fays of Brittany, nor in the Sabbat swarming with salamanders and dragons, on the wooded heights of the Hartz, nor on the edges of ensorcelled springs in the forest of Ardennes, nor in the stony Crau of Provence or Bresse, has such a company been found in my path. Are they all enchanted? But by whom? What magician has evoked them? Is it you? Give me the secret word by means of which one makes them appear and disappear, in order that I too might augment my domain.”

“I, who am their shepherd, don’t know that magic word. That word comes from higher up. Don’t pause any longer.”

And they passed on.

 

III

 

As a fishing-bird glides through a storm at the surface of the sea, seeking with its eyes for its prey through the thickness of the waves, uttering raucous cries, so Merlin, on the surface of things, sought souls everywhere. To seize them, he would have plunged into the ocean of being.

That is why, after having visited the premises of things, ashamed of touching nothing but vain shadows, he stopped and said:

“O conductor of Limbo, it’s very little to have seen the treasures of the hail, the rain and the thunder; it’s very little to have visited, in the stables, the whimpering herd of beings as yet unformed, half-attached to the glebe of nothingness. Tell me now from where the souls of the beings that arrive on earth are taken. What do they do before seeing the light of day? In what hidden retreat do you keep them, assembled and veiled?”

“You’re the only one,” replied the pastor, “who has ever asked me that question. You shall be the only one for whom it will be answered.”

Then he led him to the most secret place in his domain. A wall of jagged rocks, cut into zigzags, sculpted by thunderbolts, like petrified lightning on the face of the Pennine Alps, separated that place from all the others.

It was there that the embryonic souls that had not yet lived encountered one another, on barely-traced paths. Those larvae were wandering hither and yon, driven by an infantile inquietude, for they had not yet had a cradle. They were all consumed by an immoderate desire to cross the portals of life for the first time. What would they not have given to enjoy the sunlight an hour sooner? What vain projects might they be nourishing?

They were waiting for the century, the year, and the moment to come for them to put on a body of clay, and for a great voice to command them to mingle in their turn with the choir of the living. Until then, a curiosity full of anguish held them in an eternal insomnia. The principal dolor of those who wander in limbo is that they have no names as yet; they seek themselves confusedly in the depths of nameless darkness, and they sense the oppression of nothingness day and night.

At that moment, some of them, prouder than the rest, were shaking the bronze doors that still separated them from the daylight, moaning.

“Why are you so pitiless?” said Merlin to the pastor. “Listen to them wailing, desirous of life. Why refuse to let them out a day sooner from the Limbo in which you keep them imprisoned? What does a day matter to you, who possess centuries?”

“I only possess vain shadows.” Saying these words, the pastor touched the bronze doors; they were the portals of life. “Go in,” he added. “You who know the language of Heaven, give each of them the name you wish, in order that they might be called by it; it will please them, coming from you.”

And he prepared to withdraw.

On seeing his guide move away, however, Merlin was afraid.

“Why are you abandoning me? I don’t know the way.”

“It’s up to you to find it.”

“At least Viviane led me by the hand.”

“No—whoever passes through these doors has only himself for a guide.”

And, like a miser surprised with his hidden treasure, the pastor of Limbo went away, sad and anxious. He went to count the sketchy shadows again, the vain things that were under his guard—for he feared, in his heart, that the prophet might have stolen the best of them from him.

 

IV

 

As soon as Merlin had entered, those who were nearest to the threshold fled. They seemed to dissipate permanently. But soon, their immoderate desire for the light brought them back to the threshold of the living.

“Who are you?” he demanded then, of the first he perceived—and he was already thinking of giving them a name.

At that question, they all turned their eyes inwards and seemed to be searching themselves, nonplussed and desolate. None was able to reply.

“Why are you hastening toward these closed doors? Merlin asked, again. “There must be more than one among you who will repent of being born.”

None of the souls whimpering in Limbo understood that language. Then he approached one of those that seemed most impatient to live.

“Why,” he asked, “are you running thus toward the terrestrial light, you who surpass the others by a foot? You will shed tears that will not be wiped away after ten centuries.”

As they all assembled around him, like a brood beneath the wing of a fowl, waiting for another word, he added: “The darkness does not know you yet, but the world will call you Charlemagne.”

 At that name, the first that had been produced in that region, astonishment and stupor passed over the pale lips of those who were listening.

The colossus replied, in a child-like voice: “Here I am!” For he believed that he had been evoked; full of haste to tread the morning dew, he murmured, in a language of limbo that was still awkward: “Come on! Come on, Barons! Oyez, Oliphant! Let’s go where day breaks! If I wait for dusk, I’ll be shamed!”

Those who were later to be his dozen peers and his barons were enveloped in steel; they repeated in their turn: “Come on! Come on!” And they went toward the spark that sprang from Durandal.

Merlin stopped them with these words: “Peace, Emperor and Barons! Your hour approaches; be patient! When it arrives, I’m the one who will invite you to the sword, even if I’m in my tomb. I’ll make your gilded helms and bucklers myself, and your broadswords of polished steel; you will only have to take them.”

The great Charles, seeing that his hope was still vain, became child-like again, and wept.

Several others, hands together, asked the prophet: “Is it nearly time for us to be born?”

He replied to them: “Sleep your larval slumber. Your hour is still distant.”

At these words, as if a verdant forest were shedding all its foliage, to the very last leaf, at the first blast of the cold November wind, the souls felt that their premature hopes and joys were being stripped away in an instant They went away, looking down at their feet; then they crouched down on the ground, saying: “We have not had a cradle; why have we had a sepulcher?”

One alone, the most superb, remained standing, and that one began to trample all the others pitilessly in order to reach the sun of the living first. The prophet blocked his way.

“Do you think you already reign, you who are still a larva? What are you pursuing with so much anger? All the others here seem to count for nothing in your eyes. Whence comes that pride? Tell me—what are you searching for? What do you want?”

“A name!” replied the proud soul, weakening, in a voice fainter that that of reeds.

“Only a name?” said the Enchanter. “It’s me who will give you yours. You can gorge yourself on it here in advance, at your leisure, so fully that all glory will seem faded by the time you taste it.”

And as, without hearing anything, the unknown continued to cleave through the crowd, colliding with the vague nascent shadows, the prophet went on: “Stop, Napoléon! Do you hope to defraud the Eternal in the count of your days? Your vain desires will not enable you to arrive one day sooner in the sunlight of the living. On the contrary, you will delay the rising of your star. Have you such a thirst to dominate and enslave that you cannot be patient during the call of the centuries? Does a day, a year, seem to you to be important? Go! Continue to sharpen your blade.”

Then the whimpering soul, which still lacked the power of speech, having raised its eyes, turned back, full of disdain, to face the void; it went a long way through the multitude to put on and lose itself in its swaddling-clothes again, which seemed a shroud. The sound of a blade being sharpened on a stone became audible in the distance, and the feet of armies passing far away, and bearing chains.

Another soul knocked angrily at the portals of life; that one, without speaking, seemed to be saying: “I’ll break the hinges; I’ll get in by means of my own strength.”

Merlin turned toward it and said: “Your impatience too is veritably too great, Maximilien.52 Why are you hastening to the point of losing your breath? Do you know what’s waiting for you on the far side of that door? Do you know? A sea of blood, in which you’ll struggle in vain to avoid drowning, for your memory will remain plunged within it; it will do you no good to call yourself the incorruptible. The cry of men will be so opposed to you that every lie, even the vilest, will prevail against your word. See, now, whether you want to advance or retreat.”

On hearing these words, the soul that was to terrify the world hesitated, and began to tremble; it veiled its face with its hand and recoiled from the sun of the living. Then, with a gesture of pride, it appeared to say, as it drew away, looking back over its shoulder: “I shall have my day, though.”

Not far from there was a marshy, leaden shore where the north wind whistled eternally in the mist. In the midst of uprooted seaweed, a spirit was standing on a narrow dune, in spite of the storm that had curbed all those around it. No word had ever emerged from its lips since the beginning of things. Several had questioned it in order to discover its secret, but its tongue had not yet loosened. None in the innumerable multitude of larvae knew its thought.

The prophet approached it in order to tempt it.

“Tell me your secret and I will conduct you today toward the light of the world. What are you planning here? What are you preparing?”

The figure he had addressed put a finger to its lips and refused to speak.

“O fecund silence, which will give birth to a people!” said the prophet, in a whisper. “Rightly will the world call you Taciturn.53 How many nations lavish speech in vain, while you will create a world on the waters without pronouncing a word!”

He stopped and fell silent himself. He took pleasure in seeing a great design germinating in the depths of a free soul, in the silence of things.

At that moment, Merlin discovered, hidden in the densest part of the crowd, a soul that scarcely dared to raise its eyes to look at him, so naked did it feel, and yet it sheltered under his cloak.

Now that soul, Reader, was mine.

The Enchanter lowered his head toward it, looked at it kindly, and said to it:

“You who are hiding under my cloak, I shall not call by your name, but I will tell you where you will be born and what your life will be. Your cradle will be near the weeping women who veil themselves with marble around the great sepulcher of Brou.54 To say where your tomb will be is more difficult. I fear that it will not repose in the fatherland. O deserted valleys of the Ain, heaths, subterranean lakes, forests, solitary pools, humble heather of Certines—how many times your heart will hasten in that direction, and almost always in vain!

“You will adore justice; it will be refused to you. You will sense the truth on your lips, but—cruel circumstance!—you will be unable to publish it. Every day you will await liberty; it will not come for you, but you will retain the hope for others. You will want to begin the reign of eternity in time, of heaven on earth; in that enterprise, many will weary of marching with you. Why will you put so little honey in the cup that you present to others? Do you not know that flattery leads them? You know it, but you disdain to make use of the science.

“It is a rude task to swim upstream in a torrent, without paying court to the passing wave. But you won’t complain; on the contrary, you’ll be astonished that bread will not be lacking for a single day in the desert that you have chosen. Books, solitudes, reveries, the woods, the soft music of the speech of masters, those will be your principal joys. Love also will not quit your heart, even when mortal life is close to quitting it. But you will repent of every hour that you allow the wicked to sleep, when words changed into a blade might awaken them.

“In the end, the long exile will come, and your own people will no longer know you. You will leave behind you two tombs, you will go in search of a third. There will be a great silence around you; you will often mistake it for that of death. You will wake up in the night, believing that you have been nailed into your coffin while sleeping. However, you will go on to the end, your head held high, without knowing the yoke; that will make you love the proof.

“You will sense forgetfulness passing over your face, like a forerunner of the eternal night, but at the moment when the burden becomes too heavy for you to bear, a better soul than yours will come to your aid; it will stand next to you, like invincible hope; it will hide from you the abandonment of almost all the rest.”

Merlin had already passed by, but the soul to which he had addressed these words was still listening. It seemed to the latter, before having lived, that its life had already run its course; it became so pale that it could no longer distinguish the night, and searched by its side for the one who would console it.

“Is she the one who will survive?” it wanted to ask, but it lacked the strength to pronounce the words. Invisible tears blinded it before it could attempt to speak; increasingly troubled, it hid in the prophet’s shadow, and followed him silently, at an uneven pace, through the primal darkness.

 

V

 

Beyond the first labyrinth of limbo a plain extends, similar to the great desert of Arabia. In the middle of the desert, a figure was lying asleep under a tent. At the noise of the pilgrim’s footsteps, the sleeping soul awoke, but not sufficiently to walk toward the person who was coming to visit it.

“Why are you late waking up, voluptuous soul?” the Enchanted exclaimed, as soon as he perceived it. “You’re doing the opposite of others who would like to hasten the appointed hour. You’re forgetting here, in the midst of your dreams, that your time is approaching.”

At these words the soul shivered and came to a half-standing position at the entrance to the tent.

“Get up, Mohammed,” the Enchanter went on, “if you don’t want the century that is summoning you to pass. Gird your loins for the combat of life. You’ll also need your scimitar.”

The soul completed its awakening. It made the gesture of a man buckling a invisible sword to his waist. All made way for it silently as it advanced, envying its imminent appearance in the light of the world. It walked without sadness and without joy, as a matter of necessity, to the bronze doors, which opened noisily to let it pass.

Meanwhile, all the souls enclosed in Limbo looked at one another, murmuring. Those who were standing furthest apart said: “Why has that one been favored? He does not have the sign of Christ on his forehead; nor does he have the blood of Christ imprinted in his rare words. Since when are the enemies of the Eternal preferred? Will his disciples and his believers always be rejected before birth, into insurmountable oblivion?”

The one that seemed to be speaking at that moment for all the rest was clad from head to toe in the manner of a monk. Only its head emerged from the hood that was tipped back, and its neck was swollen with anger. The horror of what it had just seen passed like a shadow over its face.

The Enchanter said to it: “Save your anger, Luther, for other battles. You too ought to gird yourself in advance, but not with a scimitar. Truly, more than one century is yet required to polish the blade of intelligence. If you expend the divine fury here before its time, what will you do when it’s necessary to turn Rome upside down in its house of stone?”

“Rome!” replied the one that had difficulty in adjourning the vengeance of God, as an archer has difficulty retained an arrow in a taut bowstring. “Rome! What name are you pronouncing there? I’m hearing it for the first time, and already I want to annihilate it!”

“Be patient for a little longer. All indignation is fecund when it is amassed slowly in the depths of the heart. Then it bursts forth; it disperses profane altars; it librates the captive God of men. But if it is squandered inconsiderately, it only attracts the ridicule of the world. Retain your violence, then, until you encounter the violence of the earth. This is the sojourn of peace. No one will put your taurean Germanic head under the yoke here. Go, and don’t point your horns at those who pass before you again.”

At these severe words the anger of the superb soul faded away in a moment. It bowed a mystical face, which nevertheless radiated the laughter of the victorious, all the way to the ground. But no one saw it as it moved away into the distance, so simultaneously fearful was its triumphant step. It went to sit down alone and apart in some ruins, and opened a Bible with golden pages, which was resplendent in the pale twilight. Every time it turned a page in the book, the noise it made was audible across the abyss. All the souls shivered at the same time.

A little further on, the pilgrim arrived at the place where a vast sea extends, the motionless waves of which never rise up in any season, in any tempest, nor are they brushed by any breeze—to the extent that one might mistake that ocean for solid ground, if its bed were not blue-tinted. On the edge of the gulf, two souls were walking side by side, which seemed to belong to the same family and to speak the same language, so familiarly were they speaking to one another, and without mistrust. One was veiled, the other was speaking with its face uncovered. The first seemed to be seeking a passage that the second could not indicate to it; they looked alternately at the sky and the water; both made visible their sadness at feeling such a great desire within themselves, with such utter impotence.

When the prophet passed them, the more anxious soul came toward him, and, as if it were continuing a conversation already begun, pointed to the ocean and said: “Will you show me the way?”

“What way?” asked the prophet. “Tel me what you’re looking for.”

“A world.”

Then, drawing nearer to the soul, and seeing that it was veiled, he said: “There’s darkness enough here, without adding that of the shroud folded over your face.”

With its right hand, the one to whom he was speaking drew aside the Genoese mantle that enveloped it and allowed its face to be seen.

Merlin said to it: “I know you now and I’ll show you the way. It’s you who will bear Christ on your shoulders across the Atlantic Ocean, and for that they will call you Christopher Columbus. Sharpen your mind’s eye here, in order that they might be keener than those of the hawk and the sea-eagle, for it will be necessary for you to discern a world through the breadth of the ocean.

“See this blue gulf here, circled by jagged mountains that rise into the clouds; such is the one where your cradle will float. But the port from which you will depart for the great voyage will be humbler, and without you, its name would remain unknown.

“When the great day comes and the sail is hoisted, steer your vessel when it emerges from the Pillars of Hercules toward the place where the stars set. Never change course, in spite of appearances. Don’t listen to the winds or to human murmurs. Only consult the migrating birds; they know the way. Refrain from attempting to find a better one.”

The one to which he was speaking remained as motionless as stone; it was fully occupied in engraving within itself the words that it had just heard. It learned them by rote, repeating them with its own lips. Then, bowing its head like a man who has received an order and is promising to obey, it said: “I’ll remember the way.” And it went down to the beach; it stayed there in a contemplation so profound that it seemed to be counting the number of the waves.

Then its companion, which had remained mute, seeing that it was alone with the prophet, was gripped by a divine terror; it tried to escape, its hair and beard bristling, over the precipices that opened beneath its feet.

But the Enchanter followed it closely, immediately crying: “Shy soul, why do you flee by these steep paths? Do you think that I don’t know how to walk across the abysses too? Is it thus that you flee inspiration when it swoops down upon you like a falcon? Or are you afraid of seeing the daylight too soon? Fear not, I bring you peace.”

Soothed by this language, the shy soul stopped. Merlin said to it: “There! I recognized you more rapidly than your companion, although you have veiled your face to me too. Why are you running away from me, you whom men will call Michelangelo?”

On hearing its name for the first time, the indomitable soul smiled, for that name pleased it; it took pleasure in repeating it.

“Are you too in a hurry to be born?” asked the Enchanter.

“No,” replied the sad and already terrible voice of the one who was meditating Moses.

“Take advantage of the days and centuries that are left to you to prepare at leisure the beautiful forms that you will show to the world. There is also clay in Limbo with which to knead beautiful bodies; there’ll be no lack of mud. Sketch your divine works in advance in this vast studio, in the depths of your thoughts, and prevent yourself from arriving in the daylight empty-handed—for human life on earth is shorter than you imagine. If you don’t begin your work here in Limbo, you won’t have time to finish it in the sunlight. You’ll have to leave your figures buried in the stone, for lack of another day. How you will regret then the time consumed in vain things before having lived!”

Vast Limbo exhaled a sigh.

The prophet continued: “Do you hear that groan? Don’t imitate it. Fill your memory with the images and faces that populate this abode. Look that way, at the gigantic night that lies dormant over the earth, its head on its elbow; owls and fireflies are fluttering around it. Wouldn’t you think it was made of stone, it’s so still? Contemplate, in this direction, the livid daylight, parent of years, ancestor of centuries not yet risen, and yet indignant at the darkness. Remember both of them when you’re on earth. The living will be afraid of the visions you bring from Limbo.

At these words, the one who had seemed so recalcitrant bowed majestically; as if time were already pressing, he bent down to the ground, humid with invisible tears. He picked up mud, with which he formed strange figures, images of colossal shadows passing in the night, while stammering with a superhuman smile: “These will form my cortege.”