I
Passing hour, pause! Let this day, this moment, never end!60
Why do you flee, rapid dawns, sunlight, fiery days? Who hurries you? Nocturnal perfumes, morning breezes, buzzing bees, where are you going? It’s here, it’s here, that lies the emerald frontier at which it’s necessary to stop.
You stop too, passing waves, vagabond stars! And you, my heart, don’t hope for a better hour!
Beautiful rosy dawn, don’t hasten toward noon; it will consume you. Splendid noon, don’t hasten toward the paling dusk; and you, constellated dusk, don’t rush toward the tenebrous night.
Giant shadows, don’t grow any more at the foot of the serene mountains! All you spirits, the soul of things, don’t go beyond this azure hour.
They had rediscovered the Eden of our first ancestors; they had brought back Paradise to earth. Their eyes were attached to one another; they drank an invisible philter, which descended from the clouds, for inexhaustible hours. They loved everything they saw, for everything, and every creature, was filled with their love. They must have thought that benevolent eternity had commenced for them.
Nothing informed them of the succession of the hours and the moments. Every instant seemed to be the first that they had ever encountered; at the same time they had the sentiment of always having loved one another. How could that have been the case? I only know that it was.
Forget that I compared their happiness to that of our first ancestors! My heroes were happier than the inhabitants of Eden. For Adam and Eve had a third party perpetually between them: a divine host that held them in a respect bordering on dread. Sometimes, too, the serpent coiled around the tree, hissing, suddenly chilled their gazes and their voices. Their love was more cosmogonic, more religious, than that of Merlin and Viviane, but it was assuredly less passionate.
Merlin and Viviane did not encounter any divine stroller, or archangel with golden wings, or serpent with a woman’s head. They only encountered, saw, heard and sought out one another—and perhaps, in that, they were egotists. No superhuman law stopped them at bends in the path when they were picking the fruits with which heir garden was filled. No apprehension, no threat, no flaming sword. They did not converse with the animals because they had no need to speak to them. A gesture of the hand or the eyes was sufficient for them to be obeyed.
They did not sing the morning hymn to the Elohim, but life there was a continuous hymn, addressed to one another. Doubtless they were not overly deified, especially the early morning hours when they were both dazzled by one another after the darkness. That was their fault. You shall see how they expiated it.
How many times our first ancestors must have been saddened by the desire of disobedience, the presentiment of the irrevocable fall! They desired what was forbidden to them; in their felicity there was already a commencement of dolor. It was not so with Merlin and Viviane. Either by virtue of blindness or ignorance, they had no notion of the fall.
What am I saying? They had an entirely contrary sentiment. After every caress they found one another embellished, and the world with them. In addition, they had no vain curiosity; they believed that they possessed everything as soon as their hands were interlaced. No muffled anxiety of mind and soul ever tormented the wise Merlin when his lips were glued to Viviane’s. He thought then that he knew everything. What did it matter to him if the storm made the thorny branches of the tree of knowledge quiver above his head?
Sometimes my hero extended love as far as superstition. Fragments of rock that ten men of our day could not have lifted were child’s play for him. He stood them on top of one another and formed an altar of them, an eternal monument to felicity. Oh, if he had known how perishable felicity was, he would have made edifices of clay, not granite. When the stones were standing he took Viviane in his arms and helped her to climb on top of them. Viviane leapt about like a wild mountain goat, and smiled at the Enchanter.
As for him, ever serious, he contemplated her silently, and adored her.
When you encounter one of those mysterious dolmens somewhere in the middle of a heath, say boldly: “The powerful Merlin moved these stones.” Love sees everything, knows everything, and explains everything.
Did they never quarrel? Were they the same all the time. Did they never pronounce a word they wished they had held back? If they did, I think that it was very rare, two or three times a year at the most, and then the caprice—for those rare misunderstandings don’t merit any other name—only lasted a moment. I would rather have said a second, if those moments had not been so many eternities.
Afterwards, a sacred tear scarcely moistened the eyelid, and that tear produced the effect of dew in a burning landscape. No trace of it remained in the heart, which felt, on the contrary, renewed. Suspended momentarily, life resumed its precipitate flow. It was like an almost ungraspable dissonance that a skillful artist throws into the weave of his melodies in order to heighten their value. For we are such imperfect beings that good only pleases us on condition that it is mixed with a tiny flaw.
Furthermore, each of them conserved their own character even in those difficult moments. Viviane, more fickle, also recovered more rapidly. She was never seen so serene as when one of those clouds had just passed over her face. Merlin had a more even humor; by way of compensation, when he fell, it was more heavily and he had more difficulty getting up again. A more terrestrial pride chained him to his fault. But when he was able to vanquish himself, how he was able to humiliate himself! He begged for pardon passionately, as if he had committed a crime. It would, indeed, have been an unpardonable crime to spoil the greatest felicity that there will ever be on earth.
They did not only nourish themselves on the fruit of the trees, or slake their thirst uniquely with the water of the streams. A few faithful servants prepared modest but appropriate meals for them; dairy products, honey, eggs from their poultry-yard, saffroned cakes, a little game and a little claret wine from the nearby coast was sufficient.
Few people visited them. Everyone feared being importunate. A few old harpists were always welcome in Merlin and Viviane’s dwelling. As for them, they only sought the marvelous beings that we have encountered with them in the forest of Dombes. Those they visited regularly twice a week. The comparison they made between those purely ideal existences and their own, so replete, had a great deal to do with the pleasure they obtained in their company. “How happy I am to have received the entire gift of life!” exclaimed Merlin, every time they came back from one of those visits.
How did they pass their days? Nothing was more regular. In the mornings they read the magic book together. That was their principal occupation. Merlin, resting his head on Viviane’s shoulder and putting his arms around her, read the sacred words in a low voice. As they fell from his mouth, they spread happy fates far and wide over the blossoming worlds, for the rest of the day. Was there a cloud somewhere in the sky or on a darkening forehead? It disappeared immediately; a gently dewy light penetrated human hearts. Everything in the distance felt rejuvenated, without even knowing to whom they owed that breath of unexpected felicity.
After that, they sang, not great savant hymns or laborious canticles, but petty tunes that they had adapted to their two voices; and the nightingales, the siskins emerging from meadows, reed-beds, rose-bushes and clumps of gladioli came and competed with them, sometimes drowning out their songs.
At the fall of dusk, they were often seen riding on black horses through the narrow clearings or the flowering wheat-fields. They preferred to go on foot, however, because their hands could more easily intertwine like ivy.
What did they talk about? Their subjects of conversation were very various. First of all, themselves, and then themselves again; after that, the stars, the unknown worlds, Sirius, Saturn, the cornflower in the furrow, the music of the spheres; doubtless also sacred politics, ideal justice, the felicity of all future beings; the joy of the nations that would take them for guides, or only for counselors; liberty given without avarice to whoever wanted it; at other times, sleep and a few dreams with a little glory; then a hank of hair, a ribbon, a cobweb, the forgotten book of magic, open to the rain under a linden tree; then their little world again, the song of the cricket, their garden; all that punctuated by kisses and bursts of merriment, as if a playful spirit were laughing next to them in the grassy tufts of the meadow.
Every spring they sent messengers abroad, to search as far away as Libya for strange animals, which they amused themselves by taming with a mere glance. When those savage beasts had become gentler than lambs, they gave the smaller ones to their neighbors. They could not bear anything around them that reminded them of the cares and miseries of humans. Their poultry-yard was guarded by a beautiful bird that served as a shepherd. As for the buffalo, they introduced the first among us. Its black face frightened Viviane at first, and she refused to go near it. Merlin made her ashamed of hr fear. From that day on, she could get the monsters to follow her like a flock of ewes. Nothing was more charming than to see her playing with one of them while leading it by its horn the color of ebony.
They also liked to sow strange plants whose seeds were brought to them by bluebirds that they had trained for that purpose. As soon as the bird came back from its voyage it perched on Viviane’s shoulder, shaking its wings. Viviane kissed the beautiful messenger, which flew off again joyfully. Often, before it departed, she gave it a breadcrumb from her lips; after which, picking up the precious seeds, she went to sow it in the garden. Thus it was that jasmine, lilac and acacia, not to mention a host of climbing plants, all appropriate to forming amorous bowers, were eventually brought together from all the corners of the earth in Merlin’s garden; he never refused their seed to anyone who asked for it.
What else did they do? It has been said that they played chess. They soon gave up; Viviane did not like it when she lost. The wise Merlin was not always wise enough to let her win. Then again, they found that the game prevented them from dreaming about one another. They abandoned it for other dreams that they invented every day. There were often words that only had meaning for them, inconsequential murmurs, a human twittering or cooing, more melodious than the twittering of warblers and blue-tits in the branches of the willows.
How quickly days thus filled came to an end! And they did not prolong them artificially with the blinding light of lamps. They did not disturb the order marked by nature, but meekly followed the counsel of the skies. After having lived during the day like the woodland birds, they went to bed like them, or very nearly, an hour after the sun had disappeared. Long feverish late nights never paled their cheeks. Why should they refuse salutary sleep? They knew that the next day would rise for them more beautiful than the day before.
II
They loved one another and they were happy; I can assure you of that. The monuments of their felicity are innumerable; you cannot take a step without encountering them in our heather. What is wrong with people, if such testimony is not sufficient for them? What thoughts, what memories, what sentiments have ever left such imprints? The rocks themselves speak. We believe in the pyramids because they inform us of death; can we not believe in the dolmens because they inform us of the eternal happiness of two individuals? Come on, skeptics, doubters of everything, is it necessary to doubt what is written before our eyes in exclamation marks of granite twenty cubits high?
Yes, they were happy, as I said—but they ceased to be, and that is where the difficulty commences for me. It’s easy to write alongside one another words as discordant as paradise and hell. Experience enables you immediately to understand such opposed states, felicity in the morning, despair in the evening. That is seen, and will be seen. But to bring those things into accord on the same page, to pass harmoniously from an excess of good to a excess of evil, from smiles to tears, to explain everything, to smooth everything out, to reconcile everything—that is the most difficult part of my task.
Why demand, anyway, that a book written by a terrestrial hand should be more harmonious and better connected than the book of destiny? That one doesn’t give reasons for any changes; it doesn’t manage any transitions. Everything therein is abrupt and unexpected. Turn the page, and heaven and earth have changed their face. The most intoxicating passage finishes with a cry of pain. And the cause, the motive, where are they?
No condemnation weighed upon their heads, No archangel armed with a flaming sword expelled Merlin and Viviane shamefully from their Eden. If they had wanted to, they would have been able to remain in the paradise; perhaps they would still be there.
But no! They alone banished themselves from it; they alone forbade the return. They wanted it; no one else is responsible for what followed.
Were they weary of unalloyed happiness? They had never loved one another more. Was it the effort of a long reflection? Anyone who would have said to them “You will seek one another tomorrow and will not find one another” would have transpierced them with his words. Was it a caprice, a whim, a test, a moment of bad temper, a flash of pride that they were unable to vanquish, a dispute over a game of chess? Look, seek, examine yourself, or, rather, have the patience to wait. I can assure you in advance that the cause will be found proportional to the effect.
That day, Viviane, had put on her best clothes, as if for a solemn occasion. When Merlin came in he found her up, striding back and forth with her arms folded. Her immobile eyes were armed with a strange resolution—but the good Merlin did not notice that at first.
However, she stopped abruptly in the middle of the arbor and, without looking at him, in a voice that sprang forth like a torrent after which everything is dried up irredeemably, she uttered these precipitate words:
“Merlin, it’s necessary for us to separate.”
Merlin began to smile, and his lips remained petrified for some time. He conserved the impression of past felicity in the first grip of an infinite dolor, for his eyes had settled upon her and he had encountered one of those gazes of bronze that chill the words in the depths of the heart.
Doubtless he should have thrown himself down at her feet, bathed them with tears, but his eyes were dry. Perhaps dolor had dried up his heart, ordinarily so open and so expansive; perhaps indignation had hardened it momentarily. Perhaps, too, pride, that serpent that delights in our ruin, reared up at that moment in his soul. Through the confused, disorderly words that pressed upon his lips, without being able to burst through, he had the misfortune to reply:
“Yes, I’ll go.”
He was wrong a thousand times over. But it was still no more than a childish game, an extravagance such as the best often commit, a word that he could have effaced immediately with another. It would only have required one tear, on convulsive clutch of the hand. But he was obstinate in that speech, solely because he had pronounced it and had not had the strength to hold it back while it was still half-formed on his lips.
Then, Viviane’s increasingly inflexible gaze completed his doom.
He throws himself on his dolor as a man throws himself on his sword and pierces his breast with it, without being able to draw it out again. The more resolution and coldness Viviane shows, the angrier Merlin gets. In the end, he almost storms out.
He goes down the steps that he will never climb again. Oh, why does he not come back? Why does he not fall beneath Viviane’s feet? Why, at least, does he not turn his head once toward the open window? Their voices might have been able to respond to one another, their eyes to meet. Soon, in a few moments, they will be lost to one another.
Has the wise Merlin gone insane, then? He draws away with long strides. So long as he thinks he is visible, I don’t know what blind anger sustains him. Doubtless some interior demon has just slipped into his. Without seeing, without hearing, an infernal force aids him to destroy himself. But as soon as he has passed a certain clump of trees and is certain that he cannot be observed, all that artificial strength abandons him immediately. His body collapses and trembles. A mortal sweat inundates his face; one more step and he lets himself fall by the side of the path, his eyes staring, his head slumped over his chest.
No one hears his sobs. They remain locked in his bosom.
O passer-by, look at the great Enchanter, who, scarcely a moment ago, lent his smile to everything. What remains of him? Is he a man or a child? Who would not pity him? But who could even recognize him?
Incapable at that moment of any reflection, Merlin nevertheless felt that a part of his power had been irreparably destroyed. But he did not seek to explain what had happened. In any case, no words would have been adequate to express what he was experiencing. A world crumbling, a void hollowed out all the way to the utmost depths of Hell, a chaos where there as a Heaven—all of that would only have given the slightest indication of what it was necessary to say. The most probable thing is that he had lost the gift of enchantment, but that was the thing he cared about least, for the moment.
What does it matter to him if the disillusioned world loses its magic, if a bleak gray veil extends over half the earth, if all the roses wither at the same time? In the egotism of dolor, he is only occupied with what he has lost himself. He seeks a gaze that he no longer encounters; he holds his breath to listen for light footsteps, the sound of which does not reach him. Above all, he feels his heart weighing in his breast like a stone, and he is silent.
But what my hero does not say, I must say in his stead, in the interest of those who seek the instruction in this story. They have seen in this chapter that there are exceedingly brief words, or rather syllables, whose consequences are irreparable. They will learn here to die a hundred times rather than pronounce them. A little further on they will see that a resentment, an unjust remark, a lovers’ quarrel, a rancor, a grain of darnel in the good wheat, can have the most disastrous consequences for the economy of the world.
If my heroes had only petty personal interests at stake, if their lives had not been mingled at all with universal life, I would not bother to report their disputes to the readers, who, I suppose, have their own troubles to occupy them.61
III
The stars were fading, and the sun was about to rise when Merlin opened his eyes. He perceived that he was in the enchanted forest, where he was accustomed to visit the ideal creatures whose king he was. His first impulse, on recognizing that location, was not without tenderness, for he believed momentarily that he was relieved of the crushing weight of real existence, and that he was about to be confused with those imaginary individuals and to float with them between reality and the void.
As glad as he had been before to be in entire possession of existence, he would then have been to be nothing but a specter, a larva. Already he was swearing to himself never to emerge again from the company of the airy individuals he had known in the depths of those forests. For a long time he searched, and called out, but in vain. All the celestial forms that had once come running to him of their own accord had disappeared. None responded to his voice. He heard in the distance, however, the sound of an ax in a clump of old mossy oaks. He ran in that direction.
“Is that you,” he cried, “happy spirits, who have not yet tasted the cruel beverage of real life? Come, surround me, hide me, don’t let me leave this blessed enclosure again!” On coming closer, he was astonished to encounter, instead of the accustomed residents, a half-dressed peasant, who had come early that morning to obtain his provision of firewood on the sly, for fear of foresters.
He was a serf from the hamlet of Ripes. Tall of stature—or, rather, gigantic—his unkempt hair falling over his shoulders, his face shaven, resembling a cyclops but nevertheless human, his blue eyes wide, his nose like a bird’s beak, a trifle thin, he walked heavily, because, apart from the fact that he was wearing clogs, the cold fever had gripped him all that year. He still had a somewhat swollen spleen.
“What’s your name?” Merlin asked him.
“Jacques Bonhomme Populus,”62 replied the rustic. “I know who you are—you’re the enchanter Merlin.”
Without paying any attention to that reply, Merlin continued: “Since you live in this forest, take me to the marvelous beings who make their dwelling here. Where are they? I can’t find them this morning.”
“Who are you talking about? No one other than me has ever lived in this forest.”
Merlin explained to Jacques that it was a matter of individuals clad in red and gold, who neither ate nor drank, and lived in constant expectation. Jacques Bonhomme, already shaken by those words—for no one in the world was more credulous than him—tried momentarily to remember whether he had ever encountered individuals similar to those Merlin described. In spite of his good will, he could not succeed in remembering a single one. All he had heard were whispers in the densest part of the forest at daybreak and dusk.
“That’s them,” said Merlin.
“Oh, as for their voices, I’ve heard them clearly,” Jacques went on. “It’s as if I’d seen them.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed Merlin.
Reciprocally encouraged by these remarks, they both set off again in search of the happy people, and as the wood was not very large, they had looked in every corner of it before dark, but they had not found the slightest trace of those they sought. With that, Merlin understood, not without bitterness, that he had lost the gift of seeing the invisible world, and that he had descended by at least one step from the emparadised realm in which he had lived before.
IV
The next day, the sun was very hot; toward midday they were sitting in the shade of a large beech-tree, waiting for the heat to die down. Merlin was almost exhausted, but Jacques’ ingenuousness did not displease him, and they felt irresistibly drawn to one another.
A long time before daybreak, Jacques had been mulling over a thought that he dared not express. He ended up voicing it anyway, on seeing the Merlin’s generosity and simplicity, which even despair had not been able to alter.
“Ah!” Jacques murmured, crossing his hands. “If Monseigneur Merlin would please tell my fortune...”
“I’d like that,” Merlin replied, and immediately took Jacques Bonhomme’s hand in his.
It was a broad, bony, red-tinted hand made for handling and bending iron. After having considered it attentively, the Enchanter obligingly spoke as follows:
“The first thing that appears to me in these lines, Jacques Bonhomme, is that you’ll have a numerous posterity.”
“Good!”
“More numerous than that of Abraham.”
“And the second thing?” asked Jacques.
“The second thing is that you’ll often be duped.”
“But not always?”
“Wait, my son! Not always, but often, and for a long time,” Merlin repeated, gravely emphasizing every syllable. “You’ll change masters frequently.”
“Will I sometimes be my own?”
“Rarely.”
Jacques Bonhomme’s broad face darkened.
“Don’t be discouraged, my son. There are better signs.”
“What are they?” asked the bewildered rustic.
In a kind of exaltation, which increased as he went on, Merlin continued: “To begin with, plagues, blood-sweats, tears, iron, jails and dungeons; a somber manor for the master, a little straw and dolor for you.”
“That’s a long list, Seigneur Merlin. Will it never end?”
“Yes, it will end. Your armies will cover the earth; they will carry justice with them; they will sow glory.”
“My armies! Do you think so, Monsieur? Where are they, my armies? I only have five goats and two cows.”
“The isles, I tell you, will be submissive to you, and the continents will roar beneath your feet.”
“After all, why shouldn’t I, too, be a chief of archers? Why shouldn’t I wear armor, like the others? Yes, I’ll wear it, word of an honest man; we won’t tolerate the strongest beating the weakest; you can take my word for it, Montjoie et Saint Denis!63 I can’t wait for the battle. The dust is already enveloping me and blinding me. Some advice, Monsieur Enchanter! Let’s suppose for a moment that that big oak is the enemy. My troops are with me, this is my iron-tipped baton. What do I do now? Where do I place myself to strike hardest? To the right or the left? Where shall I begin the attack? I’m already in the skirmish.”
Merlin let Jacques Bonhomme vent himself, as he was already in the grip of the excitement of battle. Then he reprimanded him gently, as follows:
“On seeing how the mere word war intoxicates you with a fine folly, I fear that you might drink far more than necessary from that cup. If you allow yourself to be dazzled so easily by the clash of swords, how will you ever get out of servitude? You resemble a bear that one leads by a sparkling iron ring passed through its nose, to the sound of a tambourine. To be sure, I have no anxiety about your courage in the killing-field that you’ll call fields of glory, but I don’t know whether you’ll show the same courage in matters of intellect.”
“The same!” Jacques put in.
“Know, Jacques Bonhomme,” Merlin went on, severely, “that it’s necessary never to interrupt enchanters when they’re speaking. If you do, unless they’re as clairvoyant as I’m fortunate to be, they lose the thread of their thought, and those who interrogate them impatiently remain forever lost in an inextricable tangle from which it’s impossible to escape. Realize the danger you’re running because of your own fault, and try to refrain another time.”
Jacques swallowed the words that were on the tip of his tongue.
“Now give me that hand,” Merlin continued, increasingly carried away by the wings of divination. “Rejoice, Jacques Bonhomme! I see you clearly here, marching to the conquest of the Lord’s tomb. What a cohort of peoples you’re drawing after you, my lad! Yes, it’s really you who’s carrying the banner. But by these three wrinkles I recognize that you’ll have great difficulties to endure in order to take Jerusalem: hunger, thirst, the desert, and numerous wounds.”
“Never mind that, Monsieur. Let’s go on—I’m with you. The city’s very strong, then?”
“Strong enough.”
“Surrounded by high walls?”
“Yes.”
“Can they be scaled?”
“With difficulty.”
“It’s necessary to use ambushes, then. How many souls are in the city?”
“Nearly a million.”
“So much the better; we’ll starve them out. After that, will I take the city?”
“Undoubtedly you’ll take it.”
“That’s good. I’ll stay there as the overlord of the land.”
“Don’t delude yourself, my poor Jacques. It will be necessary to leave.”
“What? I’ll leave? But in fact, what’s the point of staying there. Haven’t I taken the city in order to be able to say, when I come back to the village: I’ve been there. And everyone will look at me, amazed, and say: There’s Jacques! It’s really him; he’s come back from the holy tomb. He was the first to climb into the breach of Calvary. Let’s see, in truth, what more will I be able to I want when we receive here, under this tree, the key to the city on a silver platter? Continue, I beg you.”
“Listen, Jacques. Here I see your tall son; he will harness to the same yoke of law the rich and the poor. Wait—I can read his name. You’ll call him Marcel.”
“Yes, Seigneur, but you shall be his godfather.”
“Gladly,” said the Enchanter. After a momentary pause, he continued: “What do I see in the palm of this hand? A plain, yes, a village, a bare wood, and under the enchanted tree, a shepherdess. There she is, taking the banner and armor. She’s the one who will lead your army, Jacques Bonhomme; you’ll only have to follow her along the right path. Can you see her on that bridge, clad in iron, with a white plume, on her palfrey? Where is she going? The hand that led the flock is now guiding men of war. All of them kneel before her. Do you see her?”
At this point, Jacques Bonhomme could not help bursting forth; as he had been asked a question, he thought that it was the moment to reply. He exclaimed: “A shepherdess, Seigneur, you say? Yes, I see her, in my mind’s eye. I’ll wager that she’s one of my sisters, Jeanne or Jacqueline. Which? I think it’s Jeanne. Oh, no man’s as good at her at putting two oxen under the yoke. Courageous, too, gentle, obedient, scornful of the young gallants. God knows that if she told me to go into the fire, I’d go, sure of not singeing a hair.”
Not listening, Merlin kept silent. At his final words, the oaks and pines of the forest had resonated and leaned toward one another, as if the soil of France were responding to them. Merlin sensed that he had not lost all of his powers of enchantment at a stroke. He rediscovered a little hope in his heart.
“Here’s something extraordinary, which has never happened before in my life as an enchanter. In this line, my poor Jacques, I lose sight of you. You become so small, so poor, that you disappear. A little while ago, I could only see you. You filled the cities and the kingdoms with your rumors. You resembled the sea swollen by the tempest. Now, only two or three men are disposed on the land, and you’ve disappeared. There you are, weaker, more wretched, more downcast than the scarab searching for its nourishment in filth. In the end, I can no longer see you at all. What a strange destiny yours is!”
“Doubtless, Monsieur, at that moment I’m asleep on the straw, or in a furrow, or under the table, which occasionally happens to me. But fear not: I’ll wake up; just look for me for a moment—there, for instance, where I move my little finger. You’ll find me again.”
“Indeed,” said the Enchanter, after a long examination. “I’ve found you; you’ve woken up. But, O horror, my friend! You have a dagger in your hand. Who is pursuing you crying: ‘Long live the masses!’? How you’ve changed! What are you doing with your pike? Good God, stop! Is that really you, murdering that honest man on a street corner, on Saint Bartholomew’s Day? Cover your face, Jacques Bonhomme, and weep!”
“Why should I veil myself, Monsieur? Assuredly, that isn’t me, or any Jacques. My family is well-known. Oh, if I’d done something like that, I wouldn’t want to raise my eyes from the ground again. In war, when the bugle has sounded and warned the enemy, that’s different. Yes, indeed! But at night, in a back street—get away! That’s not me, I swear. Look harder.”
The Enchanter went on: “How changed you are! That’s no longer Jacques Bonhomme—it’s Monsieur Jacques. It’s no longer a serf, barefoot in a smock. What! Lace, and a wig that hangs down to your waist; an arrogant and disdainful expression! Where have you made that fortune, Monsieur Jacques? Why are you looking down from so high at the world at your feet? Don’t you recognize your forefathers any longer?”
“Again, Monsieur, that’s not me. Someone’s disguised himself in my place. Me, disown my forefathers? I’m not proud—everyone knows that. It’s not my fault.”
“Indeed, Jacques, here you are again, small, humble. You’re crawling, Jacques Bonhomme; I recognize you in that. It’s really you! The master has whistled, the basset hound appears, ear to the ground. Go on, run! Flush out the game for the hunter. But no, that’s no longer you. You’ve changed again. Who are, you, then, Jacques Bonhomme? Merlin is weary. Merlin is exhausted from chasing you. You flee, you change your form, determination, face, heart and color as he tries to grasp you. I heft you humble and gentle; here you are, superb again, your head lost in the clouds! Why are you breaking what you have built? The sea, the winds, the reeds are models of constancy by comparison with you, Jacques Bonhomme. Just now, I saw you with my own eye building those keeps; why are you now rushing to demolish them? What are you doing to those towers and turrets? Oh, so much blood, poor Jacques! More blood! Look at your hands! How many times will you be reproached for that, even by your own? How will you wash them? You’ll be tracked by means of that blood. How will you bring justice out of that fiery source?”
“Justice will wash me, Monsieur. I’m Jacques Bonhomme, and haven’t done any of what I’m accused of doing.”
“You, so mild, so human, how are you able to be so pitiless?”
“It must be the case. Monsieur, that I was deceived that day, or driven to extremes. I’m not, believe me, a sea or a reed, but an honest man who only demands his due. Oh, perhaps I was driven to lose my temper. Perhaps someone made me false promises that day, refused me what was my right, or stole my cattle and my goats! For that’s true, Monsieur—for those animals, I’d no longer know myself.”
“That’s enough,” said the Enchanter. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Demand your due, my friend; nothing is more just—but try, as much as possible, not to employ violence, which is the means of the wicked rather than the good.”
“I’m damned then, Monsieur?” exclaimed Jacques, and began to weep.
Merlin immediately consoled him, saying: “Remember, my friend, that nothing is yet lost. Everything I’ve said only concerns the future, and not what has happened.”
“That’s true,” said Jacques, as if falling from the clouds.
“It’s up to you to belie the oracle, in everything injurious to your renown.”
“I intend to do that, Monsieur.”
“How will you go about it?”
“In truth, Monsieur, I’ll learn to read, and I’ll ask Monsieur the Enchanter to lend me one of his books, for it’s a great deal to have even one in the cottage and to look at it from time to time.”
“Nothing is more true,” said the Enchanter, “but be careful not to hurt your brain. For perfectly honest men who have read enchanted books, Jacques Bonhomme, have been known to become ensorcelled themselves, to the extent that they can no longer tell their right hand from the left.”
With those words, Merlin gave Jacques the book of his prophecies. “Here,” he said. “Nothing like that can happen to you.”
Jacques Bonhomme accepted the book, kissed it, and said: “How will it all end, Seigneur Merlin?”
“Well,” Merlin replied.
“I’m beginning to believe so.”
“There’s no doubt about it,” said Merlin.
And they continued to get excited. Increasingly carried away by the genius of divination, the Enchanter was no longer worrying at all about whether Jacques had understood him. Jacques did not make any effort to understand Merlin. Moving from one ecstasy to the next, they both found themselves at opposite poles of the intellectual world. They replied to one another without caring whether they understood one another. But what did it matter? Their tongues were disparate, but their hearts were in perfect accord.
“The dust of the ancestors will be renewed!” cried Merlin.
“Great God!” said Jacques. “There’ll be a fine feast!”
“The land will be flowing with rivers of milk!”
“Adieu, my goats and my cows!”
“The mountains of Gaul will distill the honey of Greece.”
“We’ll no longer have to labor to sow, to sow in order to harvest.”
“You’ll rise up with me into the Milky Way, at you’ll take your seat at the highest point of the ecliptic.”
“Yes, certainly; I’ll sit down beneath you at the helm of the cart, like a good servant.”
“No, not beneath me,” Merlin interjected, indulgently, “but in the midst of the shining radiance of justice.”
“Oh yes!” relied Jacques Bonhomme. “On the straight road that leads to Heaven.”
“The isles of Cambria and Cornwall will quiver with joy. The worlds will be as white as swans.”
“And the swallows will arrive at Christmas.”
“Arise, infinite hopes, immaculate auroras, sublime thoughts that draw the heavens as the horses draw the cart!”
“Get out of bed, idle servants, it’s broad daylight!”
“Universe, put on your joyful adornment!”
“Jacqueline, put on your wedding dress!”
“O incomprehensible abyss!”
“O Virgin Mary!”
“O infinity!”
“O Jesus.”
There the two voices stopped. The ecstasy was the same on either side. A long silence followed.
Delighted by an enthusiasm that he had never felt before, Jacques Bonhomme judged, soundly, that in order to accomplish his destiny, he could do no better than to attach himself to the Enchanter’s footsteps—with which the good Merlin agreed.
All Jacques asked was a day or two to inform his family and make his preparations. He found that easy because of the disappearance of his livestock, which had been stolen from him during his absence by a horde of long-haired Gaulish Franks. Jacques paid scarcely any attention to that occurrence, which would have overwhelmed him with despair at any other time. After having gathered up the few clothes he had left, he came back to the Enchanter, whom he found in the place where he had left him.
From that moment on, no one ever saw the sage Merlin without seeing Jacques Bonhomme close by, dazed by admiration—and thus this story is enriched by the character in question, at the very moment when his appearance might be most useful. Any sooner would have been premature; any later, and it would have been untimely. But everything has its place and its time in this story, as in nature itself.