V

 

When the Titan’s liberation was consummated, there was a long silence over the whole earth. Merlin was the first to break it, with these words: “Is there still, in the world of the living, any noble spirit enchained to matter?”

The sobs that emerged from the depths of valleys told him that there were still several of that number, which filled him with astonishment and indignation. He then started searching for those enchained spirits, and wherever he found them, he freed them one after another. He attached himself principally to those who, by virtue of excessive audacity, had irritated the ancient gods.

“Because,” he said, “they were my predecessors; I owe them my support.”

With that thought in mind, the first he encountered was Tantalus, whom he found crouched beside a fetid pool.

“Why, poor Tantalus,” he asked him, “do you persist in looking down at the mud swarming with reptiles and crabs, which flees from you and deceives you? Raise your eyes, for once, toward the spring on high; your thirst will be slaked.”

And without waiting for a reply, he poured on to Tantalus’ black and burning lips a few drops of water from the Holy Grail, the Gothic vase of which he was still carrying with him in his pilgrimages, in order to forearm himself against the frequent aridity of things, places and even humans.

As soon as Tantalus had felt the edge of the vessel taken from the noble Arthus’ table touch his lips, he felt revivified.

“Permit me to follow you, Merlin,” he exclaimed, “for I recognize in you the fount for which I was thirsty. I can finally slake my infinite thirst in the radiance of your eyes.”

“I’d like that, Tantalus,” Merlin said to him. “Follow me until you’ve drunk from the springs that never dry up.”

In the same way, he freed the others that he found enchained in the bonds of matter, and they all followed him as their liberator, including Phaeton, whom he raised up, broken by his fall from the Empyrean. How astonished they were no longer to be enclosed in the ancient prison of things! They felt free for the first time.

Only one despaired for a long time of following the liberator, for that one was plunged waist-deep in a maremma, and cried incessantly: “Wings! Wings!” without trying to emerge from the sticky pool and clinging weeds in which he was buried. By his face, Merlin could not tell whether he was a god or a demigod, so much had the mire disfigured his features. On coming closer, however, much of his uncertainty disappeared.

“He’s more than a man,” he said, “but not a god.”

“He’s asking for wings, Master,” Jacques replied. “Who could give them to him?”

“Me, if he’s really who I think he is, and his name is Icarus.”

“You’re right,” said the man at whom they were both looking pityingly. “I’m Icarus, and I’m weeping because I can’t cross the abyss of terrestrial things, and have to remain eternally on this muddy shore in which you see me plunged, with no hope of getting out except with your aid.”

“Worthy Icarus,” Merlin replied, “Your tears do you honor. It’s a noble pride that drives you, and the desire to cross the ancient abyss merited a better response from the ancient gods.”

“Wing! Wings! Give me wings Merlin!”

“I’ll give them to you but they won’t be made of wax, and the jealous ardor of the sun won’t be able to do anything against them. If you want to follow Merlin’s science, the wings will drive your soul. You’ll soar over things and the ocean of beings, without fear of falling into the gulf; you’ll defy its soiling.”

Instructed by dolor and his fall, the worthy Icarus understood those words. From that moment on he became Merlin’s assiduous disciple, accompanying him for as long as the prophet remained in the region, and wings drove him every day; they grew so large that before the rainy season he was able to take off and traverse the immeasurable gulf without difficulty. It was child’s play for him to soar over the quivering face of oceans and fly from the pillars of Hercules to Arthus’ flag-decked threshold.

O seeing him so radiant, traveling the Empyrean, Jacques could not help feeling somewhat envious—that was his greatest fault—and from then on he too cried, day and night: “Wings, Master! Give me wings!”

Merlin replied: “They will propel you too, be sure of that, for I’m taking care of it personally, all the time—but it’s not yet time. More modesty is appropriate today.” And he added: “How we miss the sage Turpin now! Where did we leave him? Where is he forgotten? His pen would give immortality to all that’s happened to us in recent days. You see, Jacques, how useful it is to know how to write nowadays! What beautiful stories you could eternalize, which risk falling into forgetfulness! Promise me, my friend, to learn the alphabet, as I’ve asked you to do so many times. For today, make a few notches in your hazel-branch, in order to remind you later, if not of everything, at least the principal circumstances of what you’ve seen of late.”

That day, Jacques promised solemnly to read and write; for the first time, he felt the necessity of doing so. But times changed and he forgot what he had promised.

Seeing that, Merlin sighed, and said: “How rare men are, Jacques—even rarer than gods.”

 

VI

 

“Shall I alone remain abandoned?”

These words escaped from a ruin that overlooked the shore; they were pronounced by a young woman who was obstinately searching for an object lost in the rubble of a palace. You might have thought that she was mad, so ardent and so vain as her search.

The beautiful searcher was naked, devoid of any veil.

Her beauty is her vestment,” Merlin said to Jacques. “Stay behind here, since your eyes, still coarse, won’t see the draperies that envelop her. I’ll go to her on my own; I alone shall brave the gaze of Psyche, for that’s certainly her, if I can trust my presentiments.

Psyche was standing on the mosaic paving of a crumbling stairway; she seemed to be listening, her head leaning forward, with a finger placed on her lips. Her other hand was still holding hr extinct lamp. Time had not diminished her beauty at all. There were still the same ingenuous eyes, the color of periwinkle, the same delicately-arched eyebrows, the same virginal cheeks tinted with their first down, the same vermilion lips, the same blonde wavy hair, falling loosely over the shoulders. Perhaps her face was a little paler; perhaps the blue veins of her temples were less swollen, les transparent; perhaps also, she was skimming the ground less slightly when she walked. In every other respect she seemed embellished; her bosom rose more frequently; longer sighs escaped her heart; a more vivid, more penetrating flame sprang from beneath her eyelids with ebony lashes. Her lips lightly parted, her mouth seemed ready to reveal a thousand secrets too long retained. You would have divined, above all, the yearning, the anguish and the melancholy engendered by hope too long disappointed and perennially reborn.

Around her, the Hours had paused at her beautiful hair, and were maintaining silence.

As he contemplated her thus, Merlin’s heart shivered in its entirety, and went out to her. His tongue stuck to his palate. The place where he stood disappeared from view; he no longer saw anything but Psyche. To stay with her in this desolate place, among this rubble, to take the place of everything that she had lost, to built her a cabin with his own hands that would replace the ancient palace that had been destroyed, to espouse her before the gods—those ideas and a thousand others even stranger crossed his mind; but wisdom held sway over that heartfelt surprise; he had recovered mastery of his face, at least, when he stood before her.

He had trod upon and crushed beneath his feet little sea-shells encrusted in the sand. That slight sound awoke Psyche from her dream. She turned to him and uttered an exclamation.

“Do you know the one I’m looking for?”

“As well as you do, Psyche.”

“Are you of his legion?”

“I’m its leader.”

“Have you seen him?”

“A thousand times.”

“With your eyes?”

“Yes, through my tears.”

“What was he doing?”

“Everything and nothing at the same time, a world in a sigh.”

“By that sign I recognize him. Is he still blind?”

“Still; and yet he sees what is impenetrable to all others.”

“Has he mentioned me?”

“He doesn’t dare.”

“What has he said?”

“He remains silent, pale and weeping.”

“Him, pale and weeping, without daring to say why! How he must have changed! Where is he, then?”

Here Merlin attempted to reply: “In me,” but his lips stammered; he was troubled. His eyes filled with tears. For some time, he remained confused between desire and dread. Finally, he exclaimed: “O Psyche! O faithful soul! If only I had come to you before the one who inflicted your wound? I would not have recompensed you for so many sighs and such amorous curiosity with abandonment and forgetfulness.”

“Only tell me where he is,” said Psyche.

“Far from here. He’s among the jousts and tourneys and the ambling palfreys in the resonant court of Arthus, with Tristan and Yseult, with King Mark, with Griselidis, with the worthy Lancelot, with the chatelaine de Vergy and the Sire de Coucy. They are the ones who, after me, know the most about love. Go find them, Psyche—they will tell you more. For myself, it’s wiser to shut up. Viviane might be listening to us. But those horses will shorten our journey.”

He had just perceived two unbridled horses grazing the weeds in the rubble, harnessed to a small chariot that had been forgotten in the desert.

Psyche ran to the ivory chariot and received, from Merlin’s hand, the silken rains and a whip armed with silver knots. She did not want to be separated from her lamp. He handed it to her by its chain, and she placed it at her feet.

The he threw his own azure mantle over Psyche’s bare, shivering shoulders.

How much, then, he wanted to sit down beside her and steer the team himself, all the more so because he feared a thousand dangers for her, and the uncertainty of the routes, often badly traced, in the new land she was about to traverse. But she did not give him time to change his mind. He remained motionless where he was, his arms extended, while Psyche, after having turned to look at him, was carried away toward the realm of Arthus, into the paradisal places where love was still alive.

He wanted to open his mouth, at last to say “Adieu!” but the word died on his lips. Then he searched with his eyes for the ruts of the chariot’s wheels in the sand—but everything had already vanished: Psyche, the chariot and the tracks of the sparkling wheels over the evening dew.