I
Truly, Reader, you’re right to complain about me; if it’s not too late, I’ll repair my fault right away. After all, what you want in an author is a slave, or at least a courtier who solicits your favor. Nothing is more legitimate. However, I haven’t followed your whims and caressed your sovereign caprices, as I should have. On the contrary, more often than not, I’ve taken you where you had to desire to go. I, and I alone, have frayed my path in accordance with my whim, without consulting you or worrying about putting you off permanently, so sweet has liberty been to me! I would not have exchanged it for the throne of the world.
It’s time to renounce overly lofty thoughts. I feel it, I confess, Reader. See my repentance; if it’s belated, it’s no less sincere. From this moment on, I’m shedding the old man; like you, I’ll change color, sentiment, ideas and flags, and defer in everything to the slightest of your desires. Experience has changed you, you say? Me too. You converted yesterday? Me too. You’re finally wise now? Me too. Do you want to change again? So be it. I conform in advance to each of your metamorphoses, even if they surpass those of Proteus. Fire, water, earth, I’ll follow you easily under those various masks. There’s only one thing that I beg you to spare me. It would be absolutely impossible for me to metamorphose into a reptile.
For all the rest, I give you now in a formal manner the government of my thought. Take it! Take the reins. Here’s the silver bit that I invite you to tighten, and if, as I don’t doubt, you want to make use of the whip, here are the new thongs. Be the Phaeton of this chariot, which is only half way through its course. Bring the overly ambitious four-in-hand back to the banal road. Choose the route, the subject, the characters. Speak! Command! Where would you like to go? Along the Milky Way? Or, as I suppose, through lower regions? It’s for you to order, me to obey.
To prove to you that these aren’t hypocritical words destined to lure you further, I shall enchain myself henceforth to the imitation of good models: Virgil, the fifth book of the Aeneid, and the epistle to the Pisos;112 there, I think, is a safe path and names that will inspire you to want to know how the story continues.
Since Merlin’s return, his somber sadness had not passed unnoticed by Epistrophius. The noble king of the ruins attempted to dissipate it; when he saw our Enchanter one day, his head bowed, more pensive than usual, he said to him: “You want to study the mores of the spirits of the ruins, Merlin. Bless your star; an incomparable opportunity is presenting itself to you. I’ve heard that the Nemean Games will be celebrated in a few days. None of the great kings of our family and their councilors would miss them. Our peoples will also be assembled there, like the dust one sweeps in the air. You can observe them entirely at you ease.”
“Games, Sire!” Merlin interjected, with a sigh. “They’re not made for me. I’d sadden them.”
“Not at all. Ulysses, in spite of his desire to see Penelope again, never failed to join in the cestus competition. Aeneas, in spite of his love for Dido, took pleasure in the games of Evander’s sons. Similarly, you...”
“Don’t go on, Sire,” Merlin said. “I’ll be there. It’s sufficient that you’ve ordered it.”
It was by the Arcadian Gate that they went out of superb Mavromati, in the same order and with the same equipment that I have described above. Beyond the marshes of Stenyclare, they began to climb one of the slopes of Lykaon by means of narrow paths that had been traces by fauns.
A storm surprised them. They went astray. Fortunately, a centaur was just passing, and he stopped to wipe away the rain that was dripping from his tufted beard. Then, without waiting to be interrogated, he showed them the path, his arm extended, with a whinny of savage joy to which the centauresses responded. At the noise of those whinnies, Palamedes arrived, crowned with brambles. That king conducted the travelers to the vast city of Lykosura.
There were still a few low fragments for which he apologized. It was not, he said, idleness or lack or zeal if the ground had not been better cleared, but the place was deserted, heavily wooded and the materials were rebellious. “After all, of the immense walls of which the ancestors speak to us, only the few blocks you see here remain. They serve as seats for my guests.”
Epistrophius embraced him, consoled him, and even praised him. He replied that, far from having any reproach to address to him, what he saw surpassed his hopes.
They went to sleep beside a little fire of old stumps. Meanwhile, the daughters of the noble Palamedes rocked the infants they were holding over the fire, at the risk of blackening them with smoke, and in order to spread slumber they sang in low voices, alternating soft hymns, as one might imagine of spirits of ruins. To these hymns, the mewling of the jackals responded, dominated by the solemn appeals of the owls in the sonorous forests. Jacques found a teal nearby caught in a snare; he secretly made a meal of it for himself and his master.
As for the kind of food usual in that empire, they found, in addition to the handful of cress they had discovered in Messenia, a lettuce in Arcadia, five olives in the hollow of Lacedemon, a root in the flat country of the Tegeates, a water-chestnut in the home of the Mantineans, two onions in Megalopolis, a crab in Argoliode, three snails in Corinthia, not to mention a goat cheese forgotten by a Cyclops, probably Polyphemus, at the entrance to the vaults of Tyrinthe.
I shall not describe the rest of the journey. Know only that they tasted the same hospitality everywhere. But I shall not omit to say that in Sparta, they slept in the home of Hippolyte, Drunk of Crete, in a column carved into a drinking-trough; in Mantinea in the abode of Evander, Duke of Syria, in a marsh; and at Mycenae, on the threshold of a blazoned door, standing ajar, which led to the maremma.
From there it was no more than half a day’s journey to reach the gorges of Nemea, which they did at a leisurely pace, following a steam in which a host of flame-colored flowers was bathing, like so many fire-follets. The name of the stream and the flowers escapes me momentarily—see Strabo, Book IV, Oxford edition.113
They had just reached the top of the mountain. At their feet, they perceived the innumerable multitude of the spirits and genii of the ruins crowded into the vale of Nemea. Imagine the form of a stadium at one extremity of which four or five columns of a temple still surged forth. Our travelers recognized with regret that the games had already begun.
Epistrophius could not help showing a little resentment at the fact that they had not waited for him.
What do you expect?” he said to Merlin. “They don’t respect anything, even etiquette. But that fault is one of their qualities. Perhaps without it they’d be impotent.”
As they descended into the valley he recognized the majority of the kings, princes and sovereigns he called his brothers, and pointed to them.
“Forget your chagrins, Merlin; fortune favors you, for you can see here a number of princes who aren’t accustomed to come together. Look over there to my right. The one you can see sitting on a little mummy is Pandrasus, the King of Egypt, the most handsome and foremost of the genii of the ruins, a great slayer of peoples, robust in arms, famous for his probity—in a word, faultless, if he hadn’t allowed the plague of Sodom to envelop him. The other next to him who’s wearing the large miter sparkling with rubies and sapphires is Xerxes, king of the Itureans. His ancestors quarreled with ours, but time, which arranges everything, has extinguished our rancors. Consider that handsome old blind man with a rosary in his hand, whose signaling to me and has kept a place for me at his side. That’s the powerful Teucer, King of Phrygia...
“But what am I saying? From the most distant regions of the globe, kings, our relatives or allies, come to meet up at our games. Who would have expect to encounter here, pell-mell, Feravis, King of Gor, Garamon of Cappadocia, and, I think, Alifantina, King of Spain.114 The last is connected to us, no doubt, by the privilege of the poverty and nudity of his people. And yet, unless age has weakened my eyes. I recognize all three of them, over there by virtue of such signs as that the camels of the first two have started to graze the flowering grass in the cella of the temple. Am I mistaken?”
“Not at all, Sire,” replied the foremost of the courtiers. “I too recognized the King of Spain’s donkeys.”
“Who’s that one?” asked Merlin. “I could swear that I’ve met him before, without being able to say where.”
“Which one?”
“The one with the jaundiced complexion and the evasive eyes. How heavily he hastens! Puffed up as he is, he seems to be visibly swelling further...”
“Pass by without looking again,” replied Epistrophius. “He’s a fine spirit of the ruins—a false enchanter who has sworn a terrible hatred against all true ones. He tried for a long time to remain a good man and make his way by his own merits, but, not being able to succeeded in anything by that path, he hastened to take his revenge with all the vices.”
“How chagrined he seems!”
“That’s true. In matters of conscience he still retains a hint of melancholy.”
While the king was speaking, the sage Merlin allowed his eyes to wander over the crowd assembled in the narrow valley. A single glance sufficed to convince our hero that all the dynasties pressing in front of him were of the family of Epistrophius and possessed a similar genius. There was the same nudity everywhere, not only of body but of spirit.
I knew full well, he said to himself, that the illustrious dynasties that fill the dark ages in which we live are not imaginary. It’s nevertheless very useful that I’ve encountered them all in this place, in order that I can bear witness one day in favor of their existence. Listening to the confused, discordant murmur that rose up from the floor of the valley, he added: And truly, after all, I can’t say that they’re not making as much noise as the monarchies and empires more accredited in human history.
Our travelers having entered the enclosure of the games, there was a momentary silence. Epistrophius was taken to a fragment of a broken capital that was to serve as his throne. He sat down with his servants around him. Immediately, the national hymn emerged from all mouths.
Merlin made superhuman efforts to seize the name of the god they were invoking. At first, it was impossible for him to succeed, because the language of the spirits of the ruins was too new to him. He could scarcely stammer a few words of it, which he pronounced very badly, to the point of being unable to help blushing as he spoke. Soon, however, being assured that what he heard in the crowd was a hymn to hypocrisy, he freely translated it, in prose more faithful than verse, in the following manner:
“Hypocrisy, goddess of the spirit of the ruins, with carmine-painted eyelids, you are the most beautiful, the most fecund and the most helpful of immortals. Who has ever seen you twice with the same face?
“Neither the bird that sheds its winter plumage, nor the serpent that changes its skin in the spiny nopal bush, nor the rainbow that envelops the tearful face of day with its iridescent sash, can equal it.
“You are not enclosed at Delos or Egina between a single temple built in the waves of the sea. Everywhere, in every temple, you make your dwelling.
“Doors closed, by night, you penetrate into the sacred interior with the nocturnal bird. You crouch down in the sanctuary, on the marble parvis, and when the dawn awakens, you have preceded the god. If he arrived, it’s too late; you expel him from his own temple.
“Your sighs, Hypocrisy, are heard further away than those of the wind in the devastated house of Aeolus.
“Your hymn in the loudest of all. It bursts forth like the ardent hammer on the anvils of the blacksmiths who wake the sleeping city.”
What Merlin discerned even more clearly was the eulogy to withered flowers and darnel, to insult the wheat. Imitation was similarly preferred to invention, savoir-faire to genius, winter to spring and death to life. But nothing astonished him more than the nasal tone of the hymn. He could not help remarking to his closest neighbor, who happened to be Aethion, Duke of Boeotia: “Why does everyone here sing canticles to the divinity through his nose?”
“A fine question! Don’t you know that that’s the Byzantine mode? Nothing is more religious.”
“But...”
“No, Aethion interrupted. “Don’t talk to me about your young, fresh, giddy voices, which would be an insult in the face of ruins. We’ve adopted and organized the nasal chant because it has a senility that’s perfectly suited to the decrepitude of our empires.”
“I should have understood that,” said Merlin
The dialogue was interrupted at the moment when a solemn offering of spider-webs was being made on the altar.
The hymn having finished, the games recommenced. There was no cestus, nor wrestling, nor the bow, nor running, not the discus, nor coarse pugilism, nor the smoking cart in the quarry. The first game consisted of tipping over a temple column. It had been previously raised by the rough hands of Good Faith.
Sertorius, king of Libya, was the first to present himself to compete for the prize. For a long time, one might have thought that the column was about to fall on him, and the faces of the spirits of the ruins were blossoming with pleasure. But his strength ran out; he withdrew, full of dolor, for he could hear a dull snigger that rose up in midst of the crowd.
While he went to hide his shame, Polictetes, Duke of Bythinia, climbed to the top of the column. Like a shepherd pursued by furious wolves emerged from the Hemus climbing from branch to branch to the top of a gnarled oak, from which he braves the gaping maws and bloody fangs of the pack, the Duke of Bythinia dominated the assembly. He began to demolish the edifice slowly, bit by bit; everyone admired or envied his good grace, while he detached the stones one after another. Soon, he had made the pride of the temple disappear. An immense applause went up everywhere. He received in recompense a crown of dead leaves and the mummy of an artistically-illuminated tortoise, which Pandrasus, king of Egypt, had brought from the banks of the Nile.
The emotion had scarcely calmed down when a herald asked the following question of the crowd: “What is the surest means of making a city or a State the abode of wolves and foxes?”
As soon as those words were pronounced, almost everyone got up precipitately to compete for the prize.
One often sees in autumn, in Burgundy or Bresse, a flock of crows, starlings or finches settle on the damp earth or bushes already stripped of berries; if one of them, perched apart, utters a cry, they all immediately depart in rapid flight, and the air is darkened by them. One alone, shrewder or more gluttonous, remains motionless and continues to gorge itself on nourishment.
In the same way, while everyone launched themselves forward inconsiderately, only Xerxes, the king of the Itureans, took the floor and said: “I know what leads the desert most rapidly into a city. It’s fire, as witness the burning of the temple of Persepolis.”
Having said that, he returned to silence.
With that, Sagremor, King of Byzantium, signaled that he knew the truth. Everyone fell silent to listen to him.
“It’s not fire,” he said, “but water that renders cities solitary and mute, as witness the deluge of Deucalion.”
The spirits were thus divided, when Merlin went to Epistrophius and spoke to him in these terms:
“What about you, great king of ruins, aren’t you going to speak? The shame would surely be great for you and our people if you allowed the prize to be stolen without a fight, pusillanimously.”
“Assuredly, I’d like to speak, Merlin,” Epistrophius replied, “but I don’t really know what to think, and I fear provoking laughter.”
The two of them conversed together for a few moments longer, after which Epistrophius, as if he had been carried away by a sudden inspiration, stood up on his remnant of a capital.
“King, monarchs, dynasties of ruins, all of you who can hear me, know that neither fire nor water, nor even iron, destroys cities. What makes them crumble is...”
“What?” interrupted the crowd, always to impatient.
“It’s taking away liberty and justice,” Epistrophius went on, calmly.
Merlin, who had whispered that reply, lowered his eyes. Everyone, or almost everyone, clapped their hands. The noise expanded all the way to the pine-woods of Derveni, which are five leagues away. Epistrophius was proclaimed king of the games. He was give the crown of parsley; he received, as an additional recompense, cracked urns still full of damp ashes—the last remains of the powerful people of the Itureans. Such were the games that took up the first day.
The next day, at daybreak, the ambition of the best was even more excited than the day before. They were due, during the morning hours, to contest the prize for sophism. It was a matter of proving that black is white, that yes is no, that it is night at noon—in brief, of playing with human consciousness and words as the excessively simple ancients played tennis, discus-throwing or knucklebones. The competitors were innumerable; it was the national industry.
Pericles, Duke of Athens, proved that it was night in broad daylight; Simonides, king of Pentapolis, that despotism is the father of liberty; Aschillius, King of Dacia, that evil is the author of all good; Helicanus, Lord of Tyre, that two and two make five; Hirtacius, King of Parthia, that to invade a country is to liberate it; Mustansar, king of the Africans, that to find the truth it is necessary to be stupid; Bocchus, King of the Medes, that God began with the Devil; Sangremor of Byzantium, that genius is a debauchery; Griffopoulos that Homer never existed, nor any other great man; Pandrasus the Pious that the height of human artistry is crawling; Ergoterion that the people of the ruins are never mistaken; Hocus-Pocus the Cunning that ideas make progress on their own without any person getting involved; and Tohu-Bohu, King of Assyria, that the truth is a lie.
There was a great uncertainty in the assembly when it was necessary to give the prize. Everyone had merited it in certain regards and claimed it with the same violence. Routine prevailed. It was given to the King of Byzantium because he had won it four years before at the Isthmian games. He received the crown of poppies and three Eginitic coins that had been recently discovered on the island.
After that, the assembled kings and peoples compete for the poetry prize. It was a matter of assembling the greatest possible number of sonorous words, without allowing a single thought to slip into them. In addition, it was necessary to avoid, at all costs, the fortunate sequence of long and short syllables from which antique melody was born. They counted the number of syllables on their fingers, impartially, after the performance, nothing more.
Aethion the Beotian was the one who most closely approached perfection. He succeeded very well in depreciating the language, but in the rest he failed. He was seen to pick up a sort of guzla with three strings, over which he drew a little bow. At first he had the sincere intention only to assemble words, but whether because the place, the circumstance or some fatality weighed upon him, he allowed himself to be drawn into pronouncing twenty lines in which there were a few ingenuous, or even energetic, images of severed heads conversing with golden-winged hawks, the whole forming an ensemble simultaneously full of inspiration and savage grandeur.
“Stop!” cried Polictetes, devoured by envy. “Stop! I glimpsed a thought and a sentiment in your verse.”
Aethion defended himself indignantly. “I haven’t had the slightest idea, I swear,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
“If you haven’t done it,” retorted Polictetes, with even more bitterness, “you’ve at least let it be believed. It’s too late to take it back.”
“It was unintentional, then,” said Aethion.
Many others tried after him. None was any more fortunate. Sometimes their voices rose up like the plaint of the wind in a field of asphodels, sometimes a sigh emerged from their breast, without them even being aware of it. On other occasions the words they pronounced, smiling, awoke distant echoes regardless. In brief, no one could rise to the perfect ideal of emptiness, sonorousness and preciosity that they were pursuing with so much zeal. The words, in spite of them, had a meaning in their mouths. So the competitors, full of shame, were obliged to withdraw amid the jeers of the crowd.
The day, already well advanced, was concluded by a solemn lecture in which Helicanus, Lord of Tyre, read the great history that he had composed of the dynasties of the ruins. It was perhaps the first time since Herodotus that Greece had witnessed such a feast of speech. Everyone crowded around the historian. He sat down on the etiolated grass and holding his vast volume on his lap, begun thus;
“In those days the nettles and the brambles were beginning to grow naturally in the ground of the temples; the thistles expanded over the faces of kingdoms, and there was universal rejoicing.
“The next year there were many reeds in the empire of Micipsa, and that prosperity filled everyone’s heart with joy.
“The year that followed was more favorable still. The walls of cities crumbled with a harmonious sound.
“After that further progress, at which all good men rejoiced, instead of humans, foxes took up residence in Sparta. The Duke of Crete organized a great hunt in his citadel, which the old men still remember.
“Finally, civilization was brought to its peak. The vultures nested in Corinth and Sicyone. Sagremor, king of Byzantium, nourished hawks with golden wings in the rubble of the Parthenon, such as the men of our days can scarcely breed.”
To conclude, the historian approved to the execration of posterity a few spirits that he called by name, who had attempted to interrupt the sage progress of ruins. He demonstrated by high-flown philosophy, how short-sighted human wisdom is, how the accomplished fact is always admirable, and what a calamity it would have been for the world if, instead of brambles, people were seen flourishing in the repaired enclosures of cities. The course of things would have been interrupted, fatality contradicted, nature violated, the majesty of ruins outraged...
“Where would we be now?” he cried, in an impulse that lifted all hearts.
After having offered a glimpse of the danger, he displayed salvation in the tutelary genius of Epistrophius and his principal counselors.
Thus spoke the historian. He had skillfully led the spirits from quietude to terror and from terror to security. An enthusiasm of which one would not have thought them capable had gripped the people of the ruins. Tears of pleasure were flowing from every eye. When the historian had finished, the transported assembly crowned him with parsley. More than one silent spirit stood aside, lost in profound contemplation—and it was not merely a base envy that agitated them, but rather a desire to attain a similar glory.
II
While the games caused the passing of the hours to be forgotten, Merlin nourished profound thoughts. He had expected that the lassitude of some, the resentment of others, and doubtless also the curiosity of all would produce a diversion in the spirits of which he could take advantage to raise the subject of his embassy. Epistrophius having signaled to him that the moment to speak had come, he said so in the following terms, not without having first invoked the unknown god whose name he had not been able to grasp.
“Powerful kings and magnificent lords, I have been sent by the king of kings, Arthus, to forge with each of you bonds of religion, politics, commerce and, above all, amity, for you cannot remain isolated in these deserts any longer.
“Regard me, if it suits your majesties, as the ambassador of the future; that title is the one that corresponds best to the instructions that I have received.
“No matter how spectacular your feasts are, you cannot be laboring under an entire illusion. There is among you a commencement of decadence, slight if you wish, imperceptible on the part of the majority, but which, nevertheless, shows through beneath the magnificence of your solemnities. Do not wait for the evil to get worse. We offer you an alliance with young, vivacious dynasties that no misfortune will ever curb.”
He concluded by proposing that the assembled kings pay a small tribute; fundamentally, he would be content, as a homage, with a pinch of dust.
All eyes in the assembly immediately went to Micipsa, king of Babylon. He was reputedly the wisest. They waited for him to reply on behalf of them all. He contented himself with saying: “There is assuredly no one among us unaware of the glory of the great Arthus. Only tell us whether he possesses many ruins.”
“He does not possess any,” Merlin replies, ingenuously.
“What!” said Micipsa, who could not hide his scorn. “And you dare to call him the king of kings!”
“It’s true that his cities are recently born. You will not find in his lands either crumbling buildings or rubble. It is an entirely new order, of which nothing can give any idea. Imagine a river enriched by a thousand streams. That is the image of his kingdom.”
“What you are saying,” murmured Micipsa, “inverts all known ideas. You are calling prosperity what everyone, thus far, has called desolation. But in the end, if Arthus is poor in ruins, at least I imagine that he has an abundance of the dust and ashes of ancient peoples?”
“No,” said Merlin. “Everything in his realm is growing and developing. Where there was only a hamlet, the next day you see a town. Where there was only a town, the day after you find an empire.”
“What a scandal! And that state of affairs is satisfactory! He tolerates it! There is no means of finding anything in common with such a kingdom! It ought be in fine disorder!”
“Posterity will judge that.”
“Posterity, you say? We shall prevent it from being born.”
As a sign of assent, the members of the crowd nodded their heads, and each was heard to say to his neighbor: “An empire without ruins!”
“Can you imagine that, pray?”
“But please, where is his strange monarch enthroned, then?”
Everything seemed to be broken with these words, and hearts were becoming increasingly acrimonious when the daughters of Epistrophius approached Merlin. Their names were Euphrosine, Theone and Thaïs. All three had shone in the dances that had served as intermediaries to the games. The eldest, Euphrosine, who was also the most serious, did not look as old as her eighteen years.115
“Before leaving us, Seigneur,” she said to Merlin, “tell us about the young men of Arthus’ court. Do they spend their time, like the sons of the spirits of the ruins, sleeping in the fields of heather? Are they as indifferent? Do they only have eyes and ears for the owls and the foxes that they do not even hunt? In sum, do they consume their days in the most sullen apathy, without loving anything except for the sterile dust raised by their indolent feet? For such are, among us, the habits of young princes and all the sons of the spirits of the ruins.”
“Nothing is more true,” added Thaïs and Theone. “They no longer know either love or hatred.”
“It’s completely different among us,” Merlin replied. “The young men there are always full of love; they steep their gazes in the eyes of young women, as witness Tristan, Lancelot and a host of others, whose entire life is nothing but a caress.”
“Heavens! What a contrast with our fate,” Euphrosine went on. “What you tell us, Seigneur, redoubles the bleak ennui that gnaws away at us in this fine place! But also, what implacable solitude! And above all, what monotony! Our life is consumed in watching the desert, fortunate when we can glimpse from the height of a ruin some sun-bronzed irate on the azure sea.”
“You alone here have understood me, daughters of the desert. You are not without influence on the mind of your father Epistrophius. Help me to convince him there might be some good elsewhere than in the ruins.”
“It will be difficult, Seigneur, but we’ll try.”
They kept their word, and partly succeeded. The body of the ruined dynasties declared the next day, it is true, that it could not yield any of its sacred principles, the religion of rubble, faith in the worm of the sepulcher, the innate horror of flourishing cities, and that there was, therefore, no possibility of an alliance such as the king of the future and his ambassador proposed; nevertheless, the relations established with Arthus for the import and export of rust and dust would not cease for that, and if some hero or simple enchanter presented himself, he would be offered the same hospitality as Merlin.
III
Before the assembly dispersed, the marriage of Euphrosine, the cherished daughter of Epistrophius, was celebrated, to the extreme contentment of our hero. He desired nothing more than discovering everything related to love, betrothal and marriage among the spirits of the ruins.
I have said that Euphrosine was then eighteen, although she looked no older than fifteen, with her small face and narrow nose, which seemed chipped at the tip—the trace of an accident in childhood. Her motionless eyes were a trifle lacking in soul, but they would have been a perfect model in a painter’s studio. The slightly narrow head was admirably attached to a regal neck and a nascent bosom. She had an already-incredible pride, with a hint of dryness, and even harshness. At first glance, Merlin discovered her perfection through a bronzed complexion by which she was three-quarters buried. He pointed it out to others, and from then on, everyone exclaimed: “How beautiful she is! But then, she’s the daughter of Epistrophius!”
All the princes and sovereigns of the ruins were invited to display the numerous riches they possessed in a field of asphodels. They formed little heaps of ash and sepulchral dust, covered with a few flecks of gold. Alifantina’s heap was found to be the best-furnished, and it was Alifantina that Euphrosine chose for her spouse, without even looking at him. In fact, he was ugly of face, poor in heart and replete in years.
Merlin had no doubt that in that ceremony of the sepulchral ashes there was some ancient mystical religious meaning, which he counted on discovering by its sequel. He wanted most of all to know they story of the passion that had drawn the two fiancés irresistibly toward one another.
“How was this sacred love that has vanquished time born?” he asked them. “Where and when? Under some radiant star? Was it in the presence of the noble Epistrophius? What gaze, what speech or what silence first revealed you to one another? By what sign did you recognize the flame that is never extinguished?”
“This morning,” Alifantina replied, “We did not even know one another by sight.”
“There are examples of that impetuosity of two hearts that are precipitated toward one another,” said Merlin. “Lightning is less rapid; the blink of a eye encloses a thousand lives.”
“Let’s speak rationally, Merlin. I already have three hundred wives. Only the propriety of fortune has led me to take another.”
“It’s true,” Euphrosine added. “Propriety spoke; it is our sovereign, and doubtless yours too. Adieu, Merlin, keep your dreams; their time has passed for us.”
After these distracted words to cortege began to move off. It was preceded by a troupe of young women who caused sacks of old rusty coins to resonate in the ears of the couple to be married by way of music.
“Good God!” cried Merlin. “What sordid harmony! Where are you going? Is this the way you marry one another, without disturbance, without joy, without passion, with neither preference nor love? Stop! What can emerge from this double avarice? What an impure generation I see born of these impure espousals! You’re dooming in advance the future of the great people of the ruins. O profanation of the nuptial bed! The flesh revolts as well as the spirit. Never in my life did I suspect that this was possible.”
“It is, however,” Epistrophius put in, having overheard, “the immemorial custom established among all the spirits of the ruins that you have been able to visit.”
“Can it be?” the good Merlin continued. “Such lightness combined with such covetousness! Among you, then, marriage is a calculation, an opportunity coldly grasped, an arrangement of fortunes?”
“Precisely; it’s the most constant of our customs.”
“What are you telling me, king of the ruins? I have forgiven you many things. I’ve accustomed myself to your royalties of ash. But a life without love—who can imagine that?”
“You’re young and romantic, Merlin,” Epistrophius replied, visibly piqued. “You’ve lived among us, but you don’t understand us.”
Merlin would have liked to reply: “I’m glorified by that,” but restrained himself out of respect, and, placing himself behind Euphrosine in the cortege, he whispered in her ear: “Stop! There’s still time. Surrender your near-divine charms for that pinch of dust? What are those displayed riches worth, compared to a single glance from you?”
The nuptial pomp paused momentarily in order that withered flowers could be strewn in front of the couple. He continued: “Do you know, then, what felicity would be reserved for you in a union chosen by the heart? Do you remember, Euphrosine, your winged dreams when you gazed at the clouds? I propose to realize them all.”
The cortege resumed moving. Merlin went on: “Only wait, Euphrosine. On my word as an enchanter, I promise to discover the man that you ought to love: handsome, young, well-built, similar in all respects to you. What will it cost you to wait? Only yesterday, you were taking about love, and you spoke about it so well!”
“To speak in one sense and act in another is the first sign of a good education among us,” Euphrosine replied, turning round with a touch of ill-humor. “Besides which, I feel that I’m getting old. I’m already eighteen!”
“Poetry is nothing to you but a kind of make-up, then? For me, it is life itself. How can we understand one another? However, if anyone ever weeps for you, it will be me.”
At this point Merlin perceived that no one was listening any longer, and he resigned himself to keeping silent. The troupe of young women struck old pieces of silver found in the ruins against one another, in the guise of cymbals. The two spouses coldly exchanged fragile glass rings, and then crossed the threshold of the nuptial chamber with an excess of ennui that did not escape anyone’s eyes. Everyone uttered the long, dry, forced snigger particular to the spirits of the ruins; it was confused with the noise of the dead leaves raised by the wind around the broken columns of the temple.
That vision of a world without love was so new and so extraordinary for Merlin that it completed his consternation, for he felt that he would never have any power over that singular people. They’re slaves, he thought, bitterly, incapable of love; only free people are capable of it.
From that moment on, he found in everything in the kingdom of Epistrophius an insipid odor of catacombs that no perfume could dissimulate; he sought a pretext to distance himself from the court; the lassitude produced by the games offered itself of its own accord.
At the same time, the assembly of the spirits of the ruins broke up. Each king returned to his kingdom, but fortune did not favor them all equally. Polictetes, Duke of Bythinia, on the very day that he returned to his Estates, was pillaged by a horde that stole his crown of gorse. Pandrasus, after having been shipwrecked on Andros, wandered for ten years over the waves and found his realm occupied by a serpent and a lion. He succeeded nevertheless is regaining possession of his empire—but not without having received a thrust of a claw that was thought for a long time to be mortal and which never completely healed. As for the other dynasties, they regained their lands without incident, where they only had to clear away a little brushwood.
Such are the facts that I have been able to steal from the oblivion of history regarding the history of dynasties thought until now to be imaginary. It would be better if the facts had not been so sparse! At least I have applied a rigorous method to them, and if that method, the honor of our time, has not failed in my hands, I can commend myself for having raised a monument that will withstand the bites of an envious science.