BOOK TEN: MERLIN ENCHANTS THE ALPS AND THE GARDEN OF ITALY

When can I flee the noise of hatreds, the spiteful echo of venomous reproaches, bloody words, the gnashing of teeth? I would climb to the grassy summit of Noirmont carpeted with fir-trees, or the jagged peak that looms up to close Lac Leman, and if my feet could take me there, I would envelop myself in the shadow trailing at the foot of the squat towers of Chillon.

Here,88 in an age of stone, my conversation is with the rocks massed above my head. Alone, forgotten, buried, I have made friends with them. I have learned to understand their language; they understand mine. When my heart is near to murmuring, I gaze upon their immutable face. Shame grips me then, at feeling so fragile.

When my soul is unsteady, they sustain me with their soul of stone; they let fall upon me their unalterable thought, which has resisted, on foundations of granite, all the tempests of the sky. In a thousand sonorous voices escaped from their lairs, they say to me: “You are in your place as we are in ours. Let’s stay where we are; be wary of looking for a better one.”

Where would I go among human beings? How could I bend my tongue to their subtle thoughts? How could I fashion my visage and my heart to all their denials? I feel weak just thinking about it.

Here, in this enclosure, crenellated all the way to the sky, I receive a good message winging from every point of the expanse. Here, the pink summits smile at me at daybreak; none of them thinks on insulting me. Here, I contemplate, from the earliest hour, the high places to which no servile thought ever rises. Here, I draw from the serenity of limpid days in the blue cup of Lac Leman, which opens to give the Rhône a triumphant entrance.

With the dawn, I’ve seen a white veil emerge from the depths of the waters; by its flags, I’ve recognized Merlin’s boat. While it advances slowly, the Dent du Midi raises before it a tripod of snow prepared for his evocations. Where will he land? Will the two banks compete with one another to attract him? Which will he prefer? To his right, the mountains of the Oche allow silver ribbons of snow to unroll all the way to their feet, but to the left you can see Montreux, always bathed in spring sunlight, and the black collar of forests that twines around the summit of Cubli, so neatly that the others are jealous.

To celebrate my hero, the four seasons are assembled at the same time around me: spring with its soft ever-changing eyes of periwinkle-blue, violet and jonquil in the sheltered bed of the Verraye; summer in the fiery light of the morning that emerges from the gorge of Valais as from the mouth of a furnace; autumn in the crimson clusters of rowan-berries that hang from the leafless trees; winter with its ice on the faces of the Noirmont, the Jaman and the Naye. At their feet is the village where I signal to Merlin to land.

“Here it is, Master; it’s here that you need to furl your sail forever. Come, prophet, under my roof, where I’ve prepared the morning meal for you. Bring us patience in the waiting, the victory of the just, the holy peace that follows it; also bring us the strength and health of oak trees.”

But my voice doesn’t reach him.

Standing in his boat, he contemplated the rocks of Meillerie sharpened into plowshares, Vevey, the nascent shadows of Clarens, the walls, then new and white, of Chillon, which served in those days as the palace of the Undines, the water-nymphs, as soon as dusk fell. At that sight, two streams of tears ran from his eyes; he would have liked to hide, for he was ashamed to weep in front of Turpin. Being unable to disguise it he said to him: “Have you never wept without knowing why, Turpin?”

“Never,” Turpin replied, delivering a robust stroke of the oars.

Jacques claimed that it had happened to him two or three times in his life.

“Well,” said Merlin, “I won’t hide it from you, friends! As I consider these sacred places, these harsh rocks, this blue lake, and even those virgin vines that make a girdle from Vevey to Clarens, an invincible sadness invades me heart. If it’s a weakness, excuse it. Why that painful melancholy? Don’t ask me that. It seems to me that I can hear a soul in mortal lamentation. Tell me, can’t you hear moans emerging from an oppressed breast? Oh, what if it were Viviane inhabiting the tower of Vevey where the ivy snakes? What if she had withdrawn to these unknown places? Can’t you hear, on the other shore, an insensible sound, like an amorous soul leaning over a torrent?”

“I can only hear the cries of the eagles over the chalet of Chamosal,” Turpin replied, “And the axes of woodcutters in the woods of Chillon. Do you want, Seigneur Merlin, to cast a spell over this part of the lake. For myself, thank God I can’t see any subject of melancholy here: in the distance, green vines that promise a joyful vintage; everywhere, a salubrious air that fills the lungs. What reason is there to be sad? I’ve never been more disposed to rejoice in my life. Come on, drink from this pitcher with me, and drown these phantoms.”

“I’d like to, my friend,” Merlin replied, “but whatever I do, they reappear. Yes, yes, from both sides of the lake I can hear an amorous plaint emerging from the waters. Listen. It’s Viviane who’s calling. Let’s hasten to where that voice is resounding.”

All three went ashore at the place where the rocks of Meillerie where whitening. The traveled with the greatest care to the Chablais, drank the fantastic water of Evian, where Merlin cast a fortunate spell, interrogated the smugglers of Amphion, picked grapes with them, forgot themselves around the press, made friends with the basket-carrying Savoyards, friends of good people, picked hazelnuts and chestnuts freely. But nowhere did they find what they were looking for.

“I told you so,” said Turpin.

“Was it a dream, then?” said Merlin, looking in turn at the water, the sky and the rocks.

“Believe me, Seigneur Merlin, give your brain a rest. The imaginations that pass through people’s heads are will-o’-the-wisps or daughters of Hell. Woe betide anyone who trusts them!”

“Who knows?” said the prophet, sighing. And he went into the Valais by the gate of Scex, where he cured four goitrous tumors and a leper from the city of Aoste. He also cured souls merely by touching them with a glance.

Then, turning toward the Bernese mountains, the was the first to climb the virgin peaks, searching with his eyes, in the distance, for Viviane’s white dwelling, fraying paths everywhere to torpid nations, collecting simples everywhere for unhealthy peoples. He passed the Furca, went down the Reuss, through the gap of Urseren, jumped over the Devil’s Bridge, enchanted the Grutli, took the oath of three jurors in a meadow; from there he climbed the Righi, scaled the Titlis, drank from the cascades of the Hazli, wintered in the tower of Resti, went astray on an Alp of Linthal; and during those long days, not an hour as wasted, not a path along the edge of an abyss went untraccd, there was not a chalet where justice, concord or at least sage advice did not enter with him. Ever chamois hunter marched in his footsteps thereafter.

The least of his works, in an old canton in Uri, was the arbalest that he carved out of maple-wood. Four times he tried it, standing the feet in the snow on the summit of the Titlis. With the first arrow he struck a black bear at Morgarten, the second at Sempach, the third at Granson and the fourth at Morat, and ten times further beyond the vast peaks. Finally, finding the arbalest to his taste, strong and gnarled, fitting it with a brazen string, he made a gift of it to a child named Tell, whom he found guarding goats and singing a ranz des vaches on the narrow road between Altdorf and Glaris.

Sublime Alps with teeth of ice and coats of snow, if it’s true that I was born at the foot of the least and most humble of your steps—and it’s for that reason, no doubt, that my heart so easily takes flight toward everything inaccessible hereabouts—tell me what engrossed thought, what intoxicated hope, drove Merlin to traverse your summits, where and how, in order to descend into the garden of Italy.

For then, you were truly virgin, veiled since the morning of creation. No road had yet dishonored your summits, there was no hospice, no refuge and no Newfoundland dog bearing the salvation of travelers lost in the torment around their necks.

Eternally motionless, the spirits of the glaciers were the sole witnesses of Merlin’s passage. They made an effort to approach him, when he followed the track of the chamois, but they were unable to descend from their summits, so tightly were they bound by their chains of crystal and diamond, glittering in the sunlight. Huddled under their white mantles, they tried to rouse themselves, but sleep was more powerful than curiosity.

Only the avalanche, always on the lookout, which the slightest noise awakens, precipitated itself in their midst, howling: “Who are you, the first to attempt this path?”

“I’m Merlin!” shouted the Enchanter, loudly enough to dominate the torment.

The avalanche passed by and fell into the gulf. Nothing remained but a damp vapor, with an explosion that faded away into a vague rumor in the abyss. Turpin, who was very courageous, had no difficulty admitting that he had been very frightened. Jacques asked, without blinking, whether such things happened often.

“We’ve taken the most difficult step, my son,” Merlin said. “The rest is child’s play. We’re on the summits now.”

Undoubtedly, if Merlin had wanted to be transported at his ease over the plains that then extended before his eyes, he would only have needed to issue the command. Among so many ever-ready dragons, wings deployed, there would certainly have been no lack of those who might have responded, in large numbers, to the diviner’s slightest appeal; and, seated hindmost of three, on the bounding back of a winged bull, you would have seen him fly for some time over the garden of Lombardy, and then descend, slowly and majestically into the pines of a villa, where a crowd of people would have gathered to greet him—or, at least, a dogaressa, her neck laden with pearls, or the daughter of a podestat, since both of those dignitaries were already known on the other side of the mountains.

I will even say that he ought to have shown himself thus, in his pomp, inasmuch as people love to be struck by the marvelous; and even a little trickery in far from displeasing them at the start of things.

By depriving himself of those means of success, he exposed himself to being misunderstood even by the best. But if you have understood our hero, you will have seen that he much preferred simplicity, even though he has been greatly reproached for the contrary, and he had a particular horror of charlatanry. That is why, unlike the majority of men of his art, he only ever employed the marvelous and the supernatural as a last resort.

It was by the soul that he produced his prodigies. He laughed—it was wrong of him to do so—at enchanted wands, necromantic bonnets, magic cauldrons, broomsticks, and even Medea’s winged chariots, owls’ tongues, toads’ teeth, and the heritage of other enchanters: in a word, everything that was merely external appearance; masks, clothing, tricks of the trade and routine.

It was a capital error, the greatest of his life—which he realized, alas, when it was too late to correct it. What use was it then to know that it was in fact the mask that governs human beings?

It followed that Merlin preferred to all the monsters of the Apocalypse the most natural means and the simplest equipment. He descended from the Alps concisely. With Turpin’s bow and arrows, interlaced with a few willow and rhododendron branches the three travelers formed a crude hurdle. Merlin and Turpin sat down on it. Jacques Bonhomme placed himself in front of them with a stick in each hand. When the preparations were complete, all three launched themselves perpendicularly into the abyss.

As rapid as lightning, they shaved the edges of the precipice, but instead of being engulfed therein it was sufficient, to swerve, for Jacques to lean on one of the two sticks, and the gulf was avoided. They turned over two or three times. Immediately they dug their arms into the soft fresh snow all the way to the elbow, and held themselves in suspension; then they crawled back to the hurdle, not without exchanging ingenuous, radiant bursts of laughter, which only the divinities of Homer had previously known, when they too traversed space in the blink of an eye.

More than the gods, however, Merlin and his companions had the sentiment of being human. As the moving abysses turned, hollowed out, were effaced and filled in before their eyes, all difficulty was forgotten in that serene intoxication. Merlin was obliged to admit that. He shared the joy of his companions and began to smile like them when they reached the bottom of the valley. That first mischievous smile of Merlin’s is preserved intact at the place where they stopped. It’s directly opposite the Lilliputian isles of Borromeo. Look at them! Everything smiles at you there with that whimsical joy, known only to the children of the gods, which Merlin rediscovered that day.

III

It happened that the gates of Italy were closed with iron bars, like a jail; the threshold was obstructed by an entire population of exiles who were forbidden to enter. A few were striking their heads against a bronze wall, others bending down to the opening of a ventilation shaft. In the crowd, thousands of voices were calling out, replying to one another, interrupting one another and overlapping, among which a few could be discerned.

“We’re exiles from the pleasant fatherland, toward which even those unfamiliar with it turn their gaze.”

“Like leaves torn from the lemon-trees and pines of Italy, which the tempest blows from place to place, we’re traveling without knowing where; but we always return to this adored threshold, which it is no longer permissible for us to cross.”

“Oh, how cruel the hour was when it was necessary for us to bid adieu to all that we loved! Today more than ever, it resounds with a funeral echo in our broken hearts!”

“Since that moment, not one joy has reached us. Strangers in a strange land, we have seen the days succeeding one another, and the feverish wait has consumed our souls. Now that everything has deceives us, we are still waiting.”

“You who pass along this road, it you are permitted to enter, don’t leave us moaning on the threshold.”

“While hope still sustains this fragile flesh, labored by so many dolors, open the desired doors to us, for pity’s sake! Perhaps we shall no longer be alive tomorrow; no one will find our bones, to carry them to the beloved soil that gave us birth.”

They fell silent. Merlin paused momentarily to listen to the crowd of men with tanned faces and dark, hollow eyes in which the source of tears seemed to have dried up.

“They’ve certainly been waiting long enough,” he said to his two companions. “It’s too long to weep and moan. You, Jacques, get rid of this bolt that obstructs me; you, Turpin, the horizontal bar that keeps the gate so firmly closed upon the wretches. Do you hear me? Let’s go, friends! Be bold! Be brave!”

And shaking the gate himself, he first made it screech on its age-old hinges; then he opened it wide to those who were moaning and dared not believe their eyes.

“Come home, good people!” he shouted.89

All of them immediately pressed upon his heels, and there was sufficient room for all of them. Having rediscovered their homeland, their fields, their enclosure, the stone stairways of their houses and their parents’ graves, they sat down under the olive-trees and wept. For from the Brenta to the Arno and the Tessin to the Tiber, the local people had difficulty recognizing them, so many years had they been away. Their faces had changed, their hair had turned white; many of their best friends had died in their absence; they searched for them everywhere with their eyes; no one could tell them where their tombs were.

Merlin took so much pleasure in the company of those just people that he forgot to drink and eat; he did not want to stop until he had reached Verona, where the worthy Romeo was waiting for him. One summer evening, as the Enchanter was entering the city through the French Gate, he found that the Teutonic emperor Max was entering triumphantly and emphatically through the German Gate. Max’s pompous entourage contrasted with Merlin’s modest one. On the one hand, there was nothing but men-at-arms with golden spears, prancing Mecklenburg horses richly harnessed with scarlet velvet saddle-cloths hanging down to the ground, strings of diamonds and amber around the necks of seneschals, undulating grouse feathers in Tyrolean hats; on the other hand you would only have seen simplicity, candor, a little embroidery on a short blue mantle.

The true royalty, however, was with Merlin; how could you doubt it? Scarcely had the emperor, who was about to take possession of Italy and have himself crowned in Rome, learned that my hero was in the suburbs of Verona than he sent him his golden orb, his sword, his baldric, his ax, his hand of justice and his leaden crown, with the instruction to have them enchanted and ensorcelled immediately, without delay. Such was the already-Gothic formula that the Teutonic lord was using.

Accustomed to seeing everyone bow down before him beyond the mountains, he did not doubt that our Enchanter would hasten to obey. Naturally, he attached a hundred times more importance to the popular consecration that answered to him for the love of the Italian people than to the ceremony in Rome.

Imagine, Readers, his fury and amazement when his messengers told him that Merlin had paid very little attention to them and their globe, and that he had obstinately refused to attach the slightest charm or the most wretched enchantment to the Teutonic crown.

At that news, the emperor felt shaken. Nevertheless, he put on a brave face, because of the Rhingraves surrounding him. Followed by the most important, he went on foot, bare-headed, unceremoniously, to the modest retreat where our Enchanter was staying. He found him eating figs. Although he was usually so polite, Merlin contented himself with greeting him with a curt nod of the head.

It was a terrible check for the pride of a sovereign habituated to having all of Italy under his feet. If he swallowed that insult, it was because he knew better than anyone everything that he had to gain or lose from Merlin’s complaisance.

Caressing his long pale brown beard with his fingertips, the emperor said: “Do you alone want to resist me, Merlin? If you had followed me, you would know that this land is mine. I have it from Julius Caesar, who bequeathed it to me from father to son.”

“Do you know Latin?” replied Merlin coldly.

“No, but I too am called Caesar.”90 Then, seeing that these words had no effect, the Emperor tried to win the Enchanter over with a little adulation, which caused him to add familiarly, in a low voice: “In spite of everything, just between us, I only believe that I’m half the emperor of this country while I lack the support of Merlin. A thrust of your hazel wand is worth more, in my eyes, than all the vain applause that welcomed me as I emerged from the Tyrol.”

“You’re right,” Merlin replied, having decided to set aside all false modesty that day. “You know the art of command too well to be unaware that no scepter can do without Merlin’s consecration.”

“I know that. Every kingdom is dust if Merlin does not attach his charm to it.”

“Don’t hope, then, for peace in this garden of Italy,” our Enchanter replied, proudly, “for know that as long as there’s a Merlin on earth, Sire Emperor, that he will refuse you that homage.”

“Render me my iron crown.”

“It’s mine; I’m the one who forged it.”

“Assure me of Verona.”

“Oh, no, fine sire! The worthy Romeo and Juliet have wept burning tears.”

“But Venice?”

“It’s me who nourished its marine lion; it only obeys me; I shall unleash it.”

At this statement, the emperor quivered from head to toe. All the Germanic lords hesitated as to whether to implore Merlin or tear him to pieces. A few Italians mingled in the cortege felt their courage reborn.

Merlin did not leave anyone time to interrupt. His words flowed freely, like an Engadine torrent.

“Yes, Sire Emperor, there will be no lack of false diviners who, begging under your foot, will take lead for gold. They, with their thirsty throats, will acclaim the wan sun of Germany; they will legitimate the false heritage, and call you Caesar. But in the midst of their raucous acclamations, your heart will not enjoy a moment’s repose, for Merlin, alone will be more powerful than all the false enchanters; he will ignite hatred even in the hearts of women, and they will give birth to justice. Don’t pick, good sire, a single flower along your road; poison will have been poured into it. Don’t sit down on the grass of the meadows; it will hide the Lombard viper. And certainly, there will be no treason, since I have warned you. How many battles will be fought in these plains? How many tears will be shed to give you a crown that will always tremble on your head? Neither peace nor truce; not one mouth will open other than to curse you.”

“If Merlin wished it, all would be changed to benedictions.”

“Me, bless you? Great God! That would be to curse myself.”

At that moment, he recognized in the emperor’s entourage several individuals whom he had met in the valley of the Rhine, including the King of Thule. He addressed him: “What are these white mantles doing here? This is not their land. They offend the gaze like a fir-tree covered with frost in an orange garden.”

Then descending to the most intimate details, he had the patience to show that the pretended testament of Caesar was false, and that the golden orb was bronze.

That convinced the courtiers that there was nothing they could do to obtain the complaisance of the Enchanter, and they turned in secret to Jacques, in the hope of winning him over. How many gifts they made him! Jacques had the indiscretion to accept them all, without thanking them. He was, for instance, given pebbles from the Rhine for emeralds, and some pieces of glassware that he took for the most precious jewels of India.

That tinsel dazzled him. Everything that shone in his eyes immediately blinded him. Already the reasoning of the Teutons seemed to him to be unanswerable, but Merlin fortunately perceived the maneuver in time; he interrupted the conversation with no regard for Teutonic etiquette—an abruptness that made him as many enemies as his refusal. Hagen the Mayencian disguised his hatred and his Germanic bile beneath a soft smile that allowed a glimpse of the gaps in his teeth.

From that moment on, Emperor Max felt the land of Italy trembling beneath his feet. He lost sleep over it and his sparse hair turned white. Everywhere, in the most secret things, he saw Merlin’s hand. While hating him, however, he esteemed an enchanter who had been able to resist intrepidly caresses even more forceful than threats. His principal followers were already occupied with means of taking their revenge. As for the Italian people whose garden Merlin had defended, they conceived for him that day as much love as they had had dread, and did not take long to prove their gratitude to him, as you shall see in the next chapter.

Without taking any notice of the Germans’ threats, or the traps that they might set for him, Merlin went further into Italy. The mere sight of the blue sky brought I don’t know what mad hope into his heart; the further he walked, the more he felt his heart softening. As he descended from the Apennines, respiring the odor of lemon-trees and myrtles, he murmured: “I recognize Viviane’s breath; surely she’s living somewhere in this country.”

And after those words, he formed a serious plan to search for her until he found her.

At that time, Leodegarius, the consul of Bologna,91 was the podestat and gonfaloniere of Florence the Superb. As soon as Merlin had arrived in the city, and as he rested under the arcade of the loggias, the gonfaloniere brought him the great register of the major and minor arts and asked him how he ought to be recorded therein, and under what title.

“Enchanter,” Merlin replied.

“I guessed as much!” exclaimed the gonfaloniere. “It’s the foremost of the major arts. Poetry comes next.”

Then he inscribed Merlin’s name in golden letters at the head of the Populani Grassi and the Popolo Minuto.

That ceremony completed, our hero asked the five priors, the high council and all the common people assembled whether they had seen Viviane pass through the valley of the Arno. “Because,” he took care to add, “there is hereabouts, in the most meager undergrowth, an embalmed scent that only her hair can exhale.”

Their curiosity piqued, the five priors, clad in long red robes, asked him what Viviane looked like.

“Viviane resembles everything that is most delightful upon the earth. Her floating hair is like the agitated foliage of a sacred forest, her eyes like two sapphires newly emerged from the hands of a Florentine lapidary.”

“You talk like a lover,” said the priors and Leodegarius, with one voice. “Could you not paint her for us?”

“Gladly,” said Merlin.

He took two brushes and a palette that happened to be in a corner of the Palazzo Vecchio and, going to a white wall, he sketched with a few rapid strokes a divine face that excited a murmur of admiration from the gaping crowd a long time before the image was complete.

“How beautiful she is!” the crowd said. “We’ve never seen anything similar, and God knows that Florentine women are beautiful!”

The aged priors confessed that they would like to begin their lives over, simply to meet such a ravishing person. Leodegarius expressed himself in very similar terms.

“What would you say, then, if you had seen her in the flesh, and not this miserable sketch?” said Merlin.

And he went away, from place to place, painting the adored face, sometimes in a fresco, sometimes as a mosaic, but more often in simile pencil. I’ve seen one of those faces myself, as sketched by Merlin, in the church of San Miniato, to the right of the main altar at the back of the choir. When I think about it, a disturbance still grips me.

Although the people of our time would scarcely believe it, an entire people fell in love with the images painted by Merlin. There were no longer any men to be found but those who were gripped by passion for that unknown object, of whom the Enchanter had shown them, perhaps imprudently, the inferior portrait. There were thousands of painters who only breathed in order to reproduce some of Viviane’s features. In truth, they were reduced to copying the model that Merlin had provided, but each of them hoped to discover a beauty hidden in that unknown model.

Merlin often took his kindness so far as personally to guide the hand of the painter or sculptor who had most success. To some he said: “Those really are her vermilion lips, but where is her smile and her kiss?” and to others: “I recognize her medallion nose here; that’s almost the incorruptible line of her forehead and the slight arch of her eyebrow—but great God, how far that frail bust is from the truth!”

Merlin then corrected the faults of the imitation with his own hands. He added, he retrenched, he changed—but he left the glory to others.

The result was that Florence was soon covered with portraits of Viviane; churches, monasteries and palaces were all full of them. Even the hermits wanted to possess illuminated copies. The solitude of more than one shady Camaldolese retreat in the Apennine mountains was embellished by that image. It was the talk of the entire region. Everyone was interested in Merlin’s amour. What am I saying? Everyone shared in it. “But after all, where is she? Who is she? Where does she live?” the common people frequently cried, in the very midst of their dazzlement.

One day, a young painter named Thaddeo,92 none of whose attempts had been satisfactory, fell into discouragement. He began to hate his brushes. Full of bitterness and disgust, he went to find Merlin.

“Are you really sure that she exists, Master? Are you condemning us to pursue an imaginary, impossible resemblance? Look! I’ve squandered my days madly trying to paint her, without ever have seen her. Now I’m going to die. Oh, Merlin, you would be very guilty if you have deceived us!”

“Me, deceive you Thaddeo!” Merlin replied. “Oh, great God! If Viviane doesn’t exist, I exist even less. If she’s a dream, I’m no more than a shadow!”

At that moment the gonfaloniere announced that, having distributed Viviane’s portrait throughout Italy, the living model had finally been discovered in Venice. She was, it is true, only a simple boatwoman, but in that nation, everyone was noble.

“What does it matter?” Merlin cried. “Nobility is in the heart. Let’s go, Turpin.”

They left that same day.

Nothing remarkable happened on the way, except that as they emerged from the outskirts of Ferrara, our voyagers found a hippogriff ready-saddled in a meadow. The bridle was hanging down from its neck, but the bit was not in its mouth, which permitted it to graze. Its two great red and gold wings were furled over its sides. It allowed itself to be approached to a distance of six paces; then it began to flap its wings, as if it were expecting someone and inviting him to depart. Turpin, always in quest of great adventures, seized the bridle. He was about to apply the bit to the hippogriff and mount it when Merlin stopped him.

“No, Turpin! Leave the hippogriff to graze here until the expected rider comes from Ferrara—for that rider with diamond spurs will come, and he’ll look for his mount, and it will be a great misfortune if it’s been stolen from him. All the more so as you could easily fall out of the saddle and perish without honor; instead of which its legitimate master will steer it, not without peril, across the plains of the atmosphere, and there won’t be a point on earth or in the heavens that won’t smile on seeing him pass by on the mount with extended wings. For us, until we’ve found Viviane, it befits our ill fortune to go modestly on foot.”

Having received this reprimand, Turpin let go of the hippogriff’s bridle and went back to the path that would take him to Venice.93

When the Enchanter Merlin landed in Venice the Beautiful for the first time, neither its towers, nor its silver domes, nor its ducal palace, nor its golden-maned lion roaring in the bosom of the azure sea could yet be seen.

There were a hundred islets of arid sand, the dwelling of storm-birds, with a thatched cottage here and there, inhabited by poor folk; not a single keep and only a few boats moored on the beach by hempen cords.

The doge was a boatman. He lived in a fisherman’s cottage with his daughter Nella, on the produce of his nets, and I suspect, a little piracy.

Nella was seventeen years old, perhaps less, but not more. The down was still on her cheeks. Her eyes were already shining like a star still steeped in the Ocean’s tears.

A simple boatwoman! An ingenuous child, content with her lot, who sang joyful barcaroles on the shore!

She was not Viviane, but she resembled her, to the extent that anything earthly can resemble the celestial.

One evening, Merlin was sitting next to her on a wooden bench at the threshold of her hut. They were repairing the mesh of the same net together.

Twice Merlin looked up at Nella; twice he was astonished, in his heart, to find her so beautiful.

“Nella, Nella, how sad your lot is! Such a desert hearth! Such a small hut! Such a torn net! You’re made for a better fate. Tell me what you desire; you have the word of a enchanter that I’ll bring it about without delay.”

“What do I lack, Seigneur? I don’t know, in truth. My hut is small, but it’s large enough for my father and me. My net is torn, but the mesh can be repaired.”

“Nella, Nella, think about it more. Tell me, what do you want?”

“I’d like a light boat, Seigneur, with a steel prow to cut through the waves and the weeds of the lagoon.”

“A boat? Nothing more. You shall have it, Nella.”

The next day, Merlin attached to the threshold a gondola with a shining prow armed with a dozen teeth of polished steel, to bite the bristling mane of angry waves. On seeing it, the young woman smiled.

“Tell me, Nella, what else do you desire?”

“I’d like, Seigneur, a church with golden cupolas, in order to pray, and a tower a hundred feet high in order to see the hundred islands asleep at my feet.”

“You shall have the church to pray in, and the hundred-foot tower.”

And without adding anything, he built San Marco, with the campanile prostrate at the feet of the golden angel.

“Is that enough, Nella? Give me, in recompense, a smile.”

“No, not yet, Seigneur.”

“What! What else do you need, boatwoman?”

“I’d like an alabaster bridge, to walk over the profound sea.”

“You shall have an alabaster bridge.”

And immediately, groaning, he made the Bridge of Sighs.

“Well, Nella the boatwoman, are your wishes fulfilled?”

“Far from it,” she replied, her eyes full of tears. “Won’t you make me a fairy palace, embroidered with your hands, like Viviane’s?”

Merlin made that palace; it is the Doge’s palace.

“There you are; that’s everything. Now give me that sprig of orange-blossom in your hair.”

“Not yet,” she said. “I’d like, to carry me over the shoreless sea, a flag-decked vessel that can carry an entire people.”

“Oh boatwoman, how your desires have grown in so short a time! The vessel you shall have to cradle you on the shoreless sea.”

Without further ado he fashioned the Bucentaur, decorated with gold, silver and silken flags.

“O boatwoman, you can desire nothing more. But as for me, my heart is desiccated by a strange thirst. I have not yet kissed your pink cheek once.”

“One moment,” she said. “I’d like the roaring lion that runs over the sand at my feet.”

“Boatwoman, boatwoman, here’s the lion with the thick mane. It’s lying down at your feet. Already its roaring is causing Zante, Cerigo and Candia to tremble. Pay me now, with a kiss—yes, a long kiss from your lips.”

“Wait, Seigneur—just one more thing. It will be the last. I’d like your magic ring.”

“Take it,” he said.

And Merlin removed his magic ring from his finger and gave it to her.

Laughing, Nella threw it into the bottomless sea—and now the Enchanter remains alone, deprived, weeping on the deserted shore.

He gazes at the vast palaces mirrored in the depths of the dormant waters. The mocking reeds insult him, whistling.

VII

Wise as he was, therefore, our hero could pile one fault atop another. Harsh experience had shown him that well enough. That discovery might have taken away his ancient pride, if that had been his inclination. In his confusion, he also lost his harp on the edge of the Lido, which brought his distress to a peak.

If, at least, he might be able to redeem his fall be some heroic enterprise…but where would he find the opportunity, in such lean times? It would come of its own accord to offer itself to him freely—heaven grant that he would be able to seize it!

It was in the Apennines beyond Bologna; one summer night, without a breath of wind or a murmur, stifling and stormy, still full of the inextinguishable fires of the day. At the zenith, bloody Cassiopeia was leaning toward Orion. From time to time, there was a rapid lightning-flash; then the horizon quivered, opened and closed, like a divine eyelid. To render the road narrower, black basalt rocks loomed up in smooth, tapering columns; you might have taken them for the dwelling of beautiful Italian dreams, especially when heavy nocturnal moths collided blindly with the clouds of fireflies by which the darkness was illuminated.

Merlin and his two companions had just climbed silently to the harshest crest. Two leagues still separated them from the little town of Taglia-Pietra; it was there that they would find their shelter. Suddenly, to their left, half way up, blue, red and violet flames, flowers of fire enameled with gold, sprang from the meager mountainside. An immense sigh was heard, slowly exhaled by a crater.

“Merlin! Merlin!” cried a voice that emerged from that lair, and everything fell silent again.

Prey to a thousand presentiments, he ordered his two companions to go ahead to Taglia-Pietra. Alone, he strode toward the place where his name had resounded. He reached it. At a corner of the rock, his eyes were dazzled by the crazy flames than ran over ashy fissures. A strange form was there. A seated man—was it really a man?—got up with a start as he approached.

“Don’t deny your father,” said the incubus. “Yes, it’s really me—Satan, Belial, Beelzebub, whatever you care to call me; for I too am three in one, and I have three crowns. I reign in the night and I’d really like to initiate you in the increasing empire of darkness.” In a hoarse voice, he added: “I’m getting old you see. You’re now at an age to soothe me but it’s urgent that you make a decision. Enough follies, Merlin. It’s time to be wise.”

So saying, he dug his foot into the ground, from which a fire-follet emerged. His composed face passed from menace to a smile. With the firm intention of making Merlin feel the yoke of paternal authority, he was fearful of terrifying him, and conserved in consequence a kind of bonhomie a hundred times more hideous than the outbursts of his fury.

As soon as he spoke, Merlin recognized the knight that he had so long honored as a father. There was no possible doubt. It really was the king of darkness, such as he had seen him during his descent into Hell: the same swarthy face; the same ash-colored eyes; the same brazen collar. Merlin shivered; he would have liked to flee all the way to beyond Limbo. A secret power tied his feet and his tongue. All that he could say in reply was: “I recognize you.” By virtue of a residue of infantile habit, he almost added: “Father.” Fortunately, the word died on his lips, along with his breath.

“What kind of life is this, Merlin, I ask you?” the incubus continued, shaking his head authoritatively. “Where is my instruction, my advice? Was it for this that I watched so carefully over your cradle? Ingrate, why give me the trouble of engendering you myself, of my own blood? What have you been doing while you’ve been breathing? You’ve become infatuated with humans and peoples, you’ve listened to their whining with all the seriousness in the world. They have two ways open to them. You’ve done your best to teach them the better one, and you’d like to keep them bound to it. You know very well, though, that it doesn’t lead anyone to me. You preach patience, mollify the violent, tempt the accursed with the bait of ridiculous virtues. Do you want, if you please, to ruin me, to dishonor me—me, your father?”

“Let me explain,” Merlin put in, timidly raising his eyes.

“Let me finish,” the incubus went on. “You can talk afterwards, at your ease, and above all, don’t look at me like that. Yes, this is what you do for humans every day: you protect them; from what can you defend them? When they stagger, you sustain them; when they fall, you pick them up; when they’re in rags, you clothe them; when they’re damned, you pretend to save them. What a noble employment for a son of Hell! You give them all a taste for light and common sense. Are you mad, Merlin? No, you’re just an unnatural son. It’s out of hatred for your parents that you oppose us in everything. You’re driving me to despair, and our plan, I can see, is to make me die of chagrin. Anyway, I’ve been disgusted with life for some time; this dirty trick you’ve played on me—you, my own flesh and blood, my everything—is truly too much. I can’t stand it anymore.”

Here the Devil burst into sobs, but it was impossible for him to weep. He hid his eyes with his clenched fists and put on a show of wiping away tears.

“You’re crying?” said Merlin.

“As you can see! You’ve extracted my final tear. Oh, how cruel it is for a father to be rejected by his favorite son! Doubtless, in the preceding life, I merited this punishment. I accept it to my detriment! But it’s more than I can take.”

Incredibly enough, Merlin was moved by the distress of the incubus, which had begun with feigned tears and ended up with choked cries, on the brink of howling. To see the king of Hell crying was such a novel spectacle that the good Merlin burst into tears in his turn. I don’t know what voice of blood still spoke within him, because he tried to console the monarch of the abyss, whom he saw then so tender and so humble.

Merlin’s ingenuousness was immediately exploited advantageously by the incubus.

“Oh, my little Merlin,” he continued, in a broken voice, “how I love you, how I love you still! For you’re the very image of your mother Séraphine. How many times, in Brittany and in Bresse, on the threshold of the door, did I bounce you on my knees? Do you remember, child? That day, for instance, when you were playing knucklebones and I taught you to cheat! How that amused you! And that you promised me then to equal your father? And that other day, further back, when I taught you to bite your nurse’s breast, laughing—do you remember that?”

“I have a vague memory of it,” Merlin murmured.

“Well, if that’s the case, my son, you won’t want to crucify your father. Look, my friend, I’m speaking to you softly, when I could roar. In good faith, into what confusion have you fallen? Is it fitting, for the legitimate king of the abyss, to find his own son wandering on foot in the company of a hermit and a clown? Such as I see you, however, I could still give you a place of honor at my side.”

“My destiny pleases me, because I’ve made it myself. I’m free—that’s the most important thing of all.”

“I advise you, my friend, not to boast about your destiny. What are these ridiculous prodigies, into which not the slightest devilry enters? What is this new pretention to give up wands and put the soul above matter? What are you trying to achieve in spreading the serenity of olden days around you? Silly, outmoded, threadbare ideas that no longer bring back what they cost. You live too much alone, you no longer comprehend your era; it surpasses you by a mile; it’s ahead of you, my dear. Here you are regretting the light, wretch! What rubbish! Go on, at least give yourself the possibility, damn it. You don’t know the new joys, the delights of the abysses newly discovered by me, nor the intoxication of those who nourish themselves on the latest fruits of darkness. You can’t imagine the voluptuousness of being rocked in the bosom of the immaculate night, our common mother, of rolling from surprise to surprise, in gulfs that lead to other gulfs, of embracing, hollowing out, amplifying and perfecting nothingness, for Hell is making progress. We’ve added a great deal to it—entire galleries that overhang one another to infinity, lakes and seas of anguish that have no shores. The worm of the sepulcher has grown too; you’d no longer recognize him; and even that’s only a beginning. But what am I saying? Admit that you now have a taste for the correct clarity. Just make me that confession.”

“I admit it. I try to see clearly, at least within myself.”

“Good! That extravagance is lacking in all the others. But what do you want, then, scatterbrain—to bring back Eden?”

“That’s one of my thousand desires.”

“Very good, Merlin! Bring back Eden! Oh look—the word alone has made my hair turn white. Dear son, fruit of my loins, by all that there is of the most powerful in the world, by your father’s club-foot, by the boiling cauldron, by the sulfur of Gomorrah, by the foremost of vices, of false oaths, of murders, listen to the paternal voice, which has never deceived you! Be positive at last; search for the solid in everything; your youth is passing, or has passed, while we’re talking. Leave illusions to defective minds. Say goodbye to stupid thoughts, and put on the virile robe of the strong. You lack worldliness, my dear; it’s a question of propriety and good taste. Can’t you be less bourgeois? A little flexibility—if not, you’ll doom yourself and us with you. Pay attention, too, to the devotion that I ask of you for your cousins and your nephews. It’s so easy to become a good man, a Roman, at the expense of one’s own family!”

“I’d be irresponsible.”

“What’s that? What is the human species if not irresponsible? Head in the clouds and feet in the mud; it soars like the hawk but it crawls even better than a slug; it has the eyes of a lynx to count shooting stars, but for the rest it’s as blind as a mole. Go on! All that there is of irresponsibility, of non-sense, shared between all beings, is found in its fullness in that masterpiece called humankind.”

“Your words hurt me.”

“And your actions crucify me. I no longer encounter anything here on the walls but mosaics and frescos, all representing a complete, albeit somewhat insipid, beauty. You know that nothing is more odious to me than beauty; even diabolical, it still seems to me to be a challenge and a reproach. And it’s you—yes, you—who has taught them to scribble those features on walls, the model of which they were incapable of inventing on their own. Do you want every expanse of wall to criticize me and blast me, then? Celestial, Edenic gazes, lighting up on wood, on stone, on bonze. Every one of them transpierces me; and the one who invented that torture for me, damn it, is my son!”

“If those features are divine, forgive me. I wasn’t thinking about making a torment for you.”

“What were you thinking about, torturer?”

“Viviane.”

“Your future, that is?”

“The most beautiful of beauties.”

“Yes, I understand—again some carpenter’s ideal. For doubtless, poor fool, you still believe in the ideal. Truly, I thought you were more intelligent.”

“All that I do, I do for love.”

“What’s that word you’re pronouncing, Merlin?”

“I said that I only act out of love.”

“Really?”

“Truly.”

“So you, Merlin, whom I carried in my arms, you believe in love?”

“More than in myself.”

“Very nice! Dare to repeat what you just said!”

“That’s my faith.”

“You believe in love! That word awakes all my hatred. Swear to me to hate what you love.”

“Never.”

“Come back to me. I’m the door of bronze that leads to everything. Even to enter into what is called good, it’s necessary to go via me.”

“You’ve always said that, but you’ve taught me that what one says ought always to be the opposite of what one thinks.”

“So you’re abusing my secret?”

“I’m taking advantage of it.”

“You’re using my weapons?”

“To defend myself.”

“You’re reasoning?”

“You were the one who taught me logic.”

“Obey.”

“One doesn’t learn obedience in your school.”

“You’re denying your father?”

“As you denied yours.”

“Treason! I’m the one who engendered it.”

“You’ve engendered your own scourge.”

“I disinherit you.”

“Please do.”

“I curse you.”

“Your curse is my salvation.”

“Marvelous, good man! At least I still have force.”

“No, poor subterranean incubus, who exploits weak flesh.”

“Enough. Inexorable powers of the gulf, black children of darkness! Kobolds, dwarfs armed with tridents, gnomes with sharp claws! Legion of the dead, spirits of the eternal night, with three eyelids and silken wings! Come, run, fly, seize the accursed, this parricidal child!”

“Spirits of the day with rosy hair! Amour that precedes the aurora! Mysterious god of the triads! You too, great king of Elves, immaculate Christ, protect me!”

“What a mixture you’re making there, Merlin! Your evocation is worthless, it won’t bring anyone. You’re a heretic, my dear. You’ll burn stupidly. But you’ll be in the proletariat of the damned, when you could have been by my side. Come, then, kobolds, hydras, crawling tenebrions! How slow you are in coming!”

“Powers of the forests! Souls of centenarian oaks! Spirits that march in threes, armed with sickles! And you, first and last of spirits, Jesus of Nazareth, make haste! Come! Surround me!”

“Once again, my friend, you’re confusing everything. You’re confounding Olympus and Paradise. You don’t know your Gospel. Come with me, and you’ll learn it in letters of fire.”

“Vade retro, Satanas!”

“What are you saying, my little Merlin? My child, my first-born son! Anything you wish, my Benjamin—but don’t take that tone with me!”

“Vade retro, Satanas!”

“I beg you, don’t talk Latin to me. I can’t bear that language. It has the same effect on me as the clangor of bells. It drives away my ideas. Insult me—I don’t mind that, provided that it’s in French. In that language, I can bear anything.”

“Vade retro, Satanas!”

“That’s too much! I give in—but I curse you again! Merlin! It’s you who are crucifying your father!”

With these words, the incubus plunged into the gulf. He disappeared, and the errant flames recommenced their magical dances, which are still going on. I saw them myself one starry night, in the same place, in testimony of what I’ve just related.

At the moment of Merlin’s invocation, the jagged summits of the Apennines seemed to descend and hollow out into a funnel, like the circles of bronze in the plaintive city. The two seas that they separated, at Ravenna and Caprara, moved and whitened with foam. Thus, on a Sabbat night, two cauldrons, full to the brim with ensorcelled herbs boil in the witch’s hearth.

Merlin had just sustained a struggle a hundred times worse than that between Jacob and the angel. Breathless, he went down the mountain and rejoined his two companions in Taglia-Pietra, whom anxiety had prevented from sleeping. Although they saw by his distressed expression that the night had not been tranquil for anyone, neither of them dared interrogate him. As for him, he did not reveal until a long time afterwards what had just happened to him.