BOOK TWELVE: GODS CHANGED INTO DWARFS

 

 

I

 

A spark has sprung from the mountain through the bushy branches of an oak; the sun has risen—the sun of Greece. It dresses the columns of the temple with a golden tunic. In the distance, the pale mist amassed on the river-beds rises, snaking along the mountain-sides. A rain of flowers falls from the branches of the almond-tree that is shivering under Mount Ithome. A resin emerges from the split bark of pines, with an odor of incense.

Already the sea is bordered by a glittering line. An iridescent swarm of moths swirls in the valleys. The earth quivers like a tripod appealing to the god. The day has ignited. The eagle, the cicada, the torrent, the mountain, the plain, the forest, and the scarab with golden eyes, all demand the immortals in a fiery voice.

And I too, may I see once again with you the spring morning on the summit of Mount Lykaon on the threshold of the temple of Apollo the Smiling? I would like that first dawn to caress us both with its breath of jonquil, while the odor of wild thyme and virgin vines rises toward us from the wooded ravines of Phigalia.

May I also—if it’s permissible too add another wish—when the supreme moment comes, with my hand in yours, exhale my serene soul with you in the serene temples, under the azure vault, at the same time as he nightingale sings in the valley of Ampellone and the isle of Zante flowers in the sea blossoming at our feet.104

Less fortunate, and yet worthy of envy, my hero follows the same steep slope and the same hour; he hears nothing at first but the cry of jackals and the solemn hou-hou of the sacred owls. But scarcely has he set foot in the cella of the temple than a murmur of winged voices resonates in his ears. In that concert, he disentangles words still steeped in a residue of ambrosia: Andronte Theonte!

It was an Olympian hymn to the morning that was about to blossom overhead. At the same moment he discovered, seated on the stumps of the ruins a host of dwarfs who all conserved a singular majesty in their appearance—and such was their pride that they seemed at first not to notice him.

Merlin advanced into the middle of the sanctuary. After having considered them, he said: “Who are you?”

“Your twelve great gods,” replied the one who was nearest. What are mortals—for we assume by your appearance that you’re mortal—thinking? What are they doing? Where are they? In the centuries we’ve been holding council here, no one has climbed to our summits. Have you brought us any nourishment? Without the drop of dew contained in the leaves of holly and arbutus that the cold has shriveled, we’d be in danger of dying.”

Merlin’s only response was to command Jacques to take the provisions he had brought out of his haversack. He servant obeyed, taking out of the bag lady-apples, walnuts, a few figs and slices of bread that was excellent, although very hard.

When those divine provisions were spread out in the cella of the temple, each of the gods lay down on the flagstones starred with anemones, reached out his tiny hands, and grabbed whatever was within reach. When they had all calmed their hunger, the principal one among them turned to Merlin and said:

“We too have been enchanters, and even gods. Now we’re dwarfs! So changeable is the destiny that was thought to be immutable! But you, who, without being summoned, is mingling with our eternal council, tell us who you are.”

“I’m Merlin, and the man beside me is my servant.”

“Since you’re an enchanter,” the god with the ambrosial face continued, “Return our Olympus to us. Doubtless you’ve appeared in this place to restore our empire. Only let us enjoy the soft light of the morning, and we’ll promise to rule the world better. Nothing will be done, Merlin, without your advice. Evoke us, with a powerful, magic word; it’s high time that our reign recommenced.”

At this point a small shrill voice pierced the clouds: “I’m Diana of Sicily, Viviane’s godmother.”

Those words struck Merlin’s ears more violently than a thunderclap.

“Yes, my son, I’m your mother-in-law,” the old lady went on, curbed down to the ground, leaning on a silver bow. “Give me back my huntress’ arrows, lost at the foot of Mount Dicte, and I’ll give you a hind every day.”

Then she pointed to the light nets, like autumnal thread, that she had just extended over the meadows.

At this speech from Diana of Sicily, the gods started laughing; then they made the Enchanter similar promises.

“What! You’re Viviane’s godmother!” exclaimed Merlin, completely forgetting where he was. “You’ve carried her on your knees?”

“A hundred times.”

“Tell me where she is. Shall I see her again soon? It’s her that I seek in all things.”

“I too, my son, have been looking for you,” said the old huntress. “I have a message to give you. I do so in the presence of the gods. Let them bear witness, here, for my god-daughter and me, those who can read in the recesses of hearts.”

Before she had finished speaking, Diana of Sicily had handed our hero a packet of letters, the majority formed from the wings of butterflies joined together.

Merlin covered the letters with kisses; he would have liked to unfold them and read them, without losing a moment, but he contained himself out of respect for the gods, although his heart was secretly devoured with sadness.

“Before anything else,” Diana went on, “salute our king; commence with Jupiter.”

“I’d like that,” Merlin replied, “but show me Jupiter the Thunderer. Where is the powerful assembler of clouds about whom I’ve heard so much?”

At these words an elf a cubit high drew himself up to his full height and said: “Merlin, you’re looking for Jupiter. Look, here I am. I still have the same eyebrows that made the vast skies tremble. Barbarian gods, the impious and the rebellious have dethroned me! Humans, will you consent to their reign being prolonged?”

“If humans have ceased to believe in you, Seigneur,” Merlin said, “isn’t that your fault?”

“Our fault?” repeated the dwarf god. “Can legitimate gods be mistaken?” And he looked around for his thunderbolt; he only found a sprig of rosemary, which he uprooted and hurled at the world.

“What do these barbarian gods do that we didn’t?” added the assembler of clouds. “Do they also live in smoke?”

“They live primarily in people’s tears.”

Merlin then recounted the marvels of Arthus’ court, Perceval’s enchanted lance, the Lord’s vase always full of blood, the converted peoples, the destroyed temples, the embroidered cathedrals, the knights, the ladies, the bards, the amours, the adventures of the bard voyaging around the lake of bones, the Hell visited by Saint Patrick, the Paradise by Saint Brendan, Attila recoiling before the word of Saint Paul, the nations passing like waves at the feet of Simon Stylites—all things that threw the gods into the greatest astonishment.

Each of them murmured like dry leaves at the foot of a centenarian oak.

Jupiter said: “What are the clouds at the summit of Ida doing, deprived of their chief? Who assembles them? Who disperses them? Can the thunderbolts still resound over Ithome when I’m no longer there to launch them?”

And Phoebus Apollo with the golden hair: “How, O Merlin, do the horses of the day drink in the Ocean since I’ve dropped the reins?”

And Mars: “Is it true that blood still flows, in combats, from the breasts of peoples, since I remain idle, empty-handed, out of the melee?”

And Saturn: “From whence emerge the new auroras, O Merlin. From what spring to the news days flow? How does time march while Saturn reposes?”

And Venus Aphrodite: “Is it true, O Merlin, that love still burns in human hearts?”

“There’s no doubt about it,” Merlin replied. “As witness Lancelot, Tristan, myself and many others I could name.”

“How can that be?” asked the goddess with the gilded face. “Who, then, ignites hope in the hearts of young men today? Who causes virgins to pale and blush? Who parts rosy lips with the breath of insatiable desires? Who draws the bolts of doors and prevents the hinges from squeaking, at the moment when the young men once evoked me? Tell me, Merlin, if you know; for doubtless you can’t imagine that these things happen of their own accord.”

To that host of questions that overlapped and left no time for reflection, Merlin replied more often than not: “That’s the secret of the barbarian gods.”

“A little more time,” Jupiter went on, “and they’ll be finished; humans will miss us, Merlin.” And, seeing a sign of incredulity on our hero’s face, he went on: “Yes, Seigneur Merlin, just a little more time, and they’ll regret our Hellenic heaven. They’ll remember the lost security; for we were indulgent to humans. We made their lives light in an eternal azure. And for that, what did we ask? A little smoke. Was that too much to pay for our benefits? From all that we hear, they’re plunged today in rainy darkness. Living in darkness, they’ve come to like it; but by this scepter, they’ll emerge from it and climb toward Olympus again.”

“I thought so for some time,” Merlin replied. “Today, I no longer hope for that, because I see that they’re capable of making gods themselves. Resign yourselves, great gods, to a condition that, although modest, is all the more sure and tranquil. Enjoy what remains to you. You’ve been left immortality. Is that so little? Take pleasure in your obscurity; it is, believe me, the foremost of possessions. Forget that you ever reigned over that inconstant universe. Let it suffice for you to reign here, over this resounding choir of cicadas, sacred musicians. Instead of the immense skies, content yourself with more humble retreats.

“Perhaps you can be more useful here. Help slaves and servants in huts to milk cows, churn milk into butter by night, refresh the litter of superb horses, comb their floating manes in the tempest, maintain the fire under the ashes, cause the water to boil and sing in the bronze cauldron, ignite the errant torches of glow-worms to light the way for belated travelers far from their dwellings at midnight. Those are noble occupations, still almost divine. You, who have carried the thunder, would lose little in becoming benevolent follets.”

“Degenerate thus!” interjected the host of gods.

“It’s necessary! Nothing is worse than dragging after oneself the ostentation of a pompous existence when one is not longer in a condition to sustain it.”

Thus spoke Merlin; a great silence fell around him.

All those gods had a great deal of intelligence; the majority had genius. They understood immediately the common sense in the Enchanter’s speech: better to surrender gracefully an empire that they no longer had the strength to maintain. They abdicated solemnly in his hands, offering him one after the other the liege homage of their persons, on condition that he would protect them—an engagement he willingly made, and observed in good faith, as future time would render testimony.

But how hard that change of fortune was to bear, at first! It would have been intolerable without the infinite consolations that Merlin was able to find, in his generosity. Nothing in the world inspired more pity in him than a fallen god. If he could have, he would have rendered them their empire.

More than once, the ancient pride nearly revolted, especially in the great gods. “Has one ruled the universe to become no more than a sylph, an oft-counterfeited dwarf? After having filled the skies, how, I ask you, does one shut oneself up in the corolla of a rose…?”

I’m abridging their speech—they never shut up.

And would you like to know what the worst thing of all was? It was that, sensing that their sacred costumes had become infinitely too large for their new stature, they felt truly lost in their ancient draperies. Their clasped mantles, falling from their shoulders, drowned them in red; their belts were also much too large for their diminished stature, and it was necessary to tighten them, even for Venus, whose guest assisted her without being asked. Their enormous sandals no longer clung to their dainty feet; they lost them at every step they took. Another annoyance was that that their heads disappeared into the hollow of their helmets all the way to their shoulders. Their shields covered them like prisons of steel. As for their divine swords, it was pitiful to see that crippling burden trailing along the ground, all rusty; they seemed to be chained to it by the baldric. In order to be soothed, did they have to be disarmed? It was necessary, though: another cause of tears.

An admirable thing! Merlin softened those hearts embittered by adversity. To the most superb he proved that greatness and smallness are only words invented by human mediocrity. “The infinite,” he continued, “is entire within a dewdrop, as it is in the ample bosom of Homer’s Ocean.”

That put an end to the dethroned divinities’ jealousies, resentments and bitter words; and from that day on, each one made it his ambition to take up as little space as possible in the world. Nothing seemed more divine than to be imperceptible. Neptune, being the first to take Merlin’s words literally, wanted to reign over the tempests in a raindrop. Jupiter hollowed out his bronze sky in the cupel of an acorn. Venus Aphrodite hitched her chariot to two kites. Pallas Athena, the artisan with the glaucous eyes, made a buckler out of the umbel of a meadow daisy, and an aegis out of the shed armor of a cricket. She stole a bee’s sting and made a spearhead out of it, brandishing it at the tip of a hawthorn spike. Most of their chariots were made out of seashells. As for reins, they were silvered and fabricated from autumnal spider-webs—and were rather becoming.

The bodies were small but the minds remained infinite. It takes a great deal to adapt to such a great change of fortune. There were gods who became so small that no human eye could any longer perceive them; it was necessary to divine their presence—and those were the proudest of all.

That was a new ambition that Merlin was obliged to restrain. “It’s no bad thing, after all,” he said, “for a god to allow himself at least to be glimpsed in something. Truly, he can only gain from it.”

To win Jacques’ heart, even that was unnecessary. From the first encounter, the familiar tone of the cheerful little gods subjugated him without difficulty. In their majesty there was nothing that could frighten him; he had never seen anything so mischievous, much less anything so ingenious. Most of all, the goddesses with the faces of fays conquered his love as soon as he saw them. Having noticed that they were all bare-headed, exposed to the sirocco, he immediately went down to the valley to pick bouquets of anemones, orchids, potentillas the color of mat silver, fumitories, blue scabiouses marked with black dots, and pink crocuses, to which he joined a few new pine-needles. He wove little hats of flowers, which he fitted as neatly as could be to their heads. He was careful to begin with Diana of Sicily, whom he already regarded as a member of the family.

 In addition, he brought a blue bird, the color of time, in a wicker cage, which he had taken as a chick from the nest. He put it in the lap of the gods. Although still half-covered in down-feathers, the blue bird foraged the robes of Jupiter and Pallas Athena, whom he had soon consoled for the ingratitude of the voracious eagle and the myopic owl, both of which had casually abandoned them that same day.

Those were the most precious gifts they had received for many centuries; they rewarded Merlin and his servant with an Olympian smile—the last, I think, that shone on earth. Jupiter said that if he could, without offense, steal him from Merlin, he would gladly make another Ganymede of Jacques.

How, indeed, could so many benefits be recompensed?

“Nothing is easier,” Merlin replied. “My servant likes fables; you know a great many. To listen to you, he’d follow you to the ends of the world. If, in repeating your tales, he alters them, if he puts your oracles into his patois, forgive him in advance.”

 

II

 

Only one of the sacred troupe remained apart and shook his blond curls angrily. It is difficult to say whether it was pride or envy that held sway over him, to the point of preventing him from taking any part in the mild intoxication of the others. His clenched hand wandered over an old lyre soaked by dew, the metallic sound he drew from it suddenly obliging all eyes to turn to him.

Diana of Sicily took advantage of that to propose that Merlin engage with Phoebus Apollo—for it was him—in a singing contest.

“Measure myself against the king of hymns?” exclaimed Merlin, who had not expected such a challenge. “I’ve lost my harp.”

Seeing, on these words that his modesty had gone to waste once again, however, and that an excessive pride was already reentering the hearts of the immortals, he signaled that he accepted the combat, not out of ambition for glory, but in order to please the omnipotent. Immediately, the gods and goddesses, arranged in a circle, sat down to judge the contest. The songs, alternating in the Olympian mode, commenced as follows:

Phoebus Apollo: “Io! Paean! Io! Io! Shall I sing the honeyed song of the sirens, or the one the muses sang on the day the universe was born?”

Merlin: “Shall I sing the song that cleaved the brazen heavens, or the song of paradise and that of the blue blade?”

Phoebus Apollo: “The serpent Python dared to raise its rampant head toward me; my arrow is steeped in its black venom. Io! Paean! Io! Io!”

Merlin: “More powerful than Python was the dragon of Kylburn in the heaths of Britain; my gaze alone crushed it, without my brows being soiled by its poison.”

Phoebus Apollo: “The past belongs to me; it resonates my glory like my quiver on my shoulder.”

Merlin: “The future worlds recount my actions, and the future runs from my lips.”

Phoebus Apollo: “Nothing is more beautiful than the flock of Admetus, when, at dusk, conducted by a god, it drinks in the silvery spring of Dirce.”

Merlin: “More beautiful are the herds of Arthus, when, under the guard of Merlin, they reply with their lowing to the green-tinted laughter of the Breton Sea.

Phoebus Apollo: “I love the blonde Delos cradled by the azure wave.”

Merlin: “And I the rock of Cambria, where the vulture sharpens its beak.”

Phoebus Apollo: “I am the father of smiling oracles.”

Merlin: “And I the source of sacred tears. Never has Merlin’s oracle lied.”

Phoebus Apollo: “What are you saying, audacious one? Do you remember Marsyas? Be careful that your hide does not join his. His tanned skin is suspended from the tree of Delphi.”

Merlin: “What can I have to fear? I have fought by night against my father, the father of eternal darkness; the grating of the gates of Hell has not shaken me.”

Phoebus Apollo: “Fear at least the glare of the blazing sun, and my fiery horses, which will feed on your flesh.”

Merlin: “Why should I, who am only eclipsed by the splendor of Christ, fear the fires of the blazing sun?”

Thus the songs continued, and neither of the combatants seemed vanquished. The gods had difficulty comprehending Merlin’s language; sometimes they took him, secretly, for a barbarian, but they dared not say so. The more Phoebus Apollo lost his serenity, the more Merlin felt his own increasing. That was the only sign that made his victory apparent.

“Cease the combat,” cried Diana of Sicily. “Both deserve the prize.” Secretly, however, she favored Merlin. Phoebus perceived that, and out of anger, was about to break his lyre when he was distracted by what was happened a short distance away.

In a ravelin shaded by chaste trees, carobs and arbutus, the domestic staff of the gods had assembled: fauns with twisted limbs, lamias and lemures emerged fearfully from tombs, along with gorgades, empusas armed with brazen bullroarers and tambours, tenebrions, Corycian spirits, Jupiter’s harpies and dogs, dryads, centaurs, telchines, gluttonous satyrs with the ears and horns of oxen, and an entire population of pygmies. They all formed a circle around Jacques Bonhomme. From the top of a mound, Pan, the piper, threw pine-cones at him. Argus, the most curious of all, stared at him with his hundred eyes.

“Are you the valet of some god?” they asked him.

By way of reply, Jacques talked to them about his village. He told them, in the patois of Bresse, about the Bogeyman, Puss-in-Boots and Little Poucet, the Wandering Jew and the fay Dentu—in which the people with goat’s legs took an incredible pleasure. The fauns, in particular, pricked up their hairy ears. Jacques taught them to dance the reel and the farandole. He even wanted to try Pan’s pipes, which they lent to him willingly, and he played the latest tunes from his hamlet on the instrument of the oldest of the gods.

Success emboldened him; he dared to leap on to the back of a centaur that had moved close to him in order to listen to him—but the centaur, with a whinny of surprise, picked him up in his arms and threw him down on the lush grass, panting. At that spectacle, loud laughter burst forth, the echoes of which drowned out the polite murmur of the gods, to the extent that Merlin was obliged to call his servant back.

“Excuse him, great gods; he doesn’t know you.”

“Excuse him, Merlin? But why? We too like ingenuous joy. Does laughter offend your new gods?”

 

III

 

These exchanges and others cut the day short, which gods and men alike thought too rapidly elapsed.

One point remained to be settled: nourishment, about which the gods displayed considerable anxiety. Merlin promised to alleviate that concern. Every morning, they would find, in an easily recognizable location that he would designate to them, a little honey, myrtle berries, three or four olives, and even, on feast days, a grain of incense. That was for the great gods. The petty ones would have exactly half. That was the necessary; the superfluous would come later.

In recompense, the Enchanter only asked one thing of the fallen gods: to know that they would, blindly submissive, at the first signal, descend toward him in the quality of dwarfs, gnomes, elves, genies and follets, of which the least enchanter always has legions in his service. He promised, though, only to evoke them rarely—hardly ever, so to speak. And what would they have to do? To take Viviane a word, a plaint, a sigh, a dream, sometimes even less.

Thus was concluded, with neither trouble nor tumult, the greatest evolution that ever took place in the world. All the gods became genii, all the goddesses fays; and that infinite change did not cost a single drop of blood, not even a tear, either on earth or in the heavens.

Having thus settled the worship, the liturgy, the occupations and the status of the ancient gods, Merlin got ready to leave them in order to go back down to the dwellings of humans. The immortals followed him in procession to the foot of the mountain, armed with resounding whips, with which they spurred on their little chariot-teams. More than one turned over by virtue of excessive haste. It was a spectacle from which our hero would have been able to obtain some vanity: so many divinities, still beautiful, not wrinkled, marching in his footsteps.

A beautiful sunset illuminated their steps. The nightingale in the wood, the butterfly on the myrtle, the cicada beside the path, everything was in its place, except for the sacred things. Only the gods had changed; unfortunately, they perceived that in the mirror of streams. An unknown timidity slid into their hearts. When they reached the plain, they stopped. Their faces covered with blushes similar to that of a mulberry stung by a bee, and they said with a common voice:

“We’d gladly enter the dusty plain with you, Merlin, but we might perhaps encounter men, and we fear their mockery. For gods, there’s nothing sadder than the fear of ridicule.”

“O Heavens! Ridicule! Is that made for you, then? You’re handsome, eloquent and ingenious. Your features, although diminished, are still worthy of marble. How, given that, can you fear irony?”

Then, turning in such a manner that Jacques could hear him, he continued: “Shame upon anyone who mocks the fallen gods! No, I don’t know anything more cowardly than crawling beneath Jupiter so long as he wielded the thunder and jeering him when he’s disarmed. Personally, I sometimes had occasion, in my youth, to provoke the gods. They were powerful gods, capable if they wished of striking me down with a glance, although sated with incense and flattery. But you who weep, poor immortals, when the entire earth is closed to you, still have a refuge in Merlin’s heart; believe me, if I desire to see the reign of justice while I still live, it’s in your interest alone.”

“We believe you,” Jupiter replied. “It’s certain that at the sight of some iniquities, if they endure, Jupiter will no longer be able to believe in himself.”

At these words, Merlin saluted the immortals one last time. He left them equally delighted with his politeness and his magnanimity, and while they went to hide under myrtle bushes, full of emotion, he took a narrow path bordered with planted trees, most often frequented by tortoises.

 

IV

 

“Is the good Prometheus still alive?” he shouted, turning back, confused by having been too late to address that question to the gods.

They heard him, however; the echo replied: “Still alive.”

Merlin learned not only that the Titan was alive, but that his torture had only become worse, to the point that no one could foresee its end.

“Certainly,” he thought, “I won’t leave this place without having put an end to such a great evil.”

And like a traveler who perceives too late that he has forgotten to pay his hosts their due, he retraced his steps in great haste and made the immortals blush at their rancor. Half-pleading and half-threatening, he extracted a pardon for Prometheus from Jupiter.

He did more than that; he filled Jupiter with the desire to free the Titan without delay, whom he depicted as one of the greatest doers of good, as well as a mortal enemy of pagans. Jacques equipped himself with a pair of files, pincers and a hammer, which his master let him bring, although he did not think that there would be any need. Thus armed, they both went from valley to valley toward Prometheus’s rock, in the company of a hairy faun who served as their guide and knew the shortest route.

One evening, before climbing the accursed mountain, they heard roaring emerging from a marine cave.

“That’s the sirens,” said Merlin to his servant. “I expected to encounter them, but only a little further on. Be careful, friend, of allowing yourself to be seduced by their enacting voices. Imitate me and block your ears. This is the most perilous part of our enterprise.”

Jacques obeyed—but from the corner of his eye he gazed at the entrance to the marine cave. He saw long oily bodies with bald heads emerge therefrom, dragging themselves on their bellies, which threw themselves one after another into the waves.

“Those aren’t sirens, Master, but good fat sea-cows, by such indications as they have, like others, long stiff bristles on their muzzles.”

“They’re sirens, I tell you, and you’re allowing yourself to be led astray by their trickery. Doubtless time, which corroded everything, has altered their divine features, and the bristles of which you speak are the proof of it, but be sure that their voices haven’t changed; if they strike your ears again, I might not be able to protect you from all fascination, for I haven’t yet tested my power against those enchantresses once. Be prudent, my son, and pass by without listening to their songs.

On the morning of the tenth day, they climbed Prometheus’ calvary in silence. They often paused to see whether they could catch a glimpse of the Titan. More than once Jacques thought he could see him in the shape of a rockslide. But the mountain-side was fuming as the sun rose like the flanks of a horse steaming with sweat, and deceived their gaze.

Finally, they perceived him on the edge of a jutting rock—and how astonished and confused Merlin was on seeing that Prometheus was standing up, liberated, in front of two archangels armored with gold and diamond, who had just broken his irons, just as has been recounted more amply elsewhere.105

Merlin hastened his steps toward the Titan, and as soon as he was within voice range, he said, breathlessly: “See, O Prometheus, how everyone is hastening to your aid from all directions. I also pressed my pace in order to free you more quickly. I would certainly have liked that glory to belong to me; there is none that I’d have liked more. But since, thanks to their archangelic wings, these have been more prompt than me, I won’t torment myself over it.”

“Do you know them, you who arrive so late?” Prometheus replied, pointing at the two archangels, who had were just breaking the last iron ring.

“They’re not of my legion,” Merlin said, “but you can go without fear wherever they’re in haste to take you. We’re all working toward the same goal.”

At these words the Titan drew away with long strides, following the two archangels over the summits; as they roe up, the latter deployed their wings, as if preparing to take off. Then from the height of the heavens, voices were heard singing Gloria in excelsis. At the same time, the sound of flapping wings agitated the air, as when a flock of cranes seeks a place to rest at dusk. Scarcely had they skimmed the ground than they departed tumultuously.

Doctors of law and saints crowned with aureoles, riding on clouds, leaned over to see the liberation of the Titan. They strewed celestial flowers, which fell like rain over the summated silvered by snow. A monastery bell could be heard, its ringing mingled with the Ave regina coelorum and the Alleluia. The Titan replied in a formidable voice with an Orphean hymn that made the sacred woods tremble.

Merlin, standing on the spot where the rock had been worn away by Prometheus’ hips, replied in his turn to the cry of the earth and the heavens, with a druidic triad.

Meanwhile, at the sight of the archangels, Jacques had fallen face down on the ground. In a choked voice he repeated: “Jesus! Jesus!”

As soon as he dared to get up again, he saw Prometheus’ eagle nearby, dragging its wing. He finished it off by throwing a stone at it, and, having torn out its bloody liver, he rubbed his limbs with it, which acquired an invincible strength by virtue of that charm. If only the same vigor had been communicated to his mind and heart! But that was not to be the case.