I
O sweet serenity, patient virtue of ancient days, who can reanimate you among us? In those days, humans consumed the hours without counting them. The slightest odyssey lasted at least ten years. It never occurred to the crowd hanging on a story to say: “That’s enough.”
If I had lived in those days, what adventures might have been added to Merlin’s pilgrimage! Doubtless I would have followed his ship beyond the Hesperides as far as the lost land of Atlantis with the golden apples.
Today, however, a feverish impatience agitates the human mind. The thirst for gold prevents them from lending more than an hour of attention to the narratives of story-tellers. It is necessary for me to abandon the rich matter that offers itself to me.
Like the navigator who sets a new course in the open sea, if he is suddenly gripped by homesickness, or even more so by the threat of an imminent bankruptcy, and bids adieu to the tempest. I shall furl my sails here and head for port.
In any case, at the end of the last chapter, I recognized the Pillars of Hercules decked with the colors of the King of Spain. Here, already, is white Cadiz, which resembles a seagull perched on the waves; a little further on is Seville. I can hear the crackling sound of the castanets, which, throughout the kingdom, are saluting the return of Alifantina and the Enchanter Merlin.
The evening was one of the most beautiful that had ever been seen on the coast of Andalusia. It had rained that morning, and whether it as the effect of the iridescent clouds, dispersed westwards, or an anticipated revelation of the yet-unknown continents of America, it is certain that landscapes of gold, opal and carmine were bordering the entire Occidental horizon.
Shortly before arriving in Cadiz, Merlin invited King Alifantina to return to the open sea, and said to him: “Sire, look at those magical kingdoms sparkling in the distance. They are the empires that we enchanters have called thus far Atlantis or the Fortunate Isles, but which ought to change their name when you possess them; for I invest you with them. Yes, Sire, I give them to you, and I’ll gladly show you the way, on condition, however, that you promise me only to impose on those new peoples a yoke of flowers.”
Alifantina burst out laughing.
“My dear Merlin, the joy of returning has rendered you blind, I think. For the kingdoms that you’re showing me out there, heaped one atop another, are beautiful clouds that need no other pastor than the wind of Araby.”
“Do you believe that I am an enchanter?”
“Yes, of course.”
“If so,” Merlin went on, “I repeat to you that those clouds are beautiful and lush realms where rivers and forests, abound, with mines of gold and rubies, and, most of all, the solitudes that you prefer.”
“Indeed,” stammered Alifantina, after having considered the spectacle offered to his eyes, “it seems to me that I perceive out there on that opal plain a golden throne with the thousand topaz steps. I would willingly believe that my ancient kingdom is nothing by comparison with the one you’re showing me, provided that it’s real. Anyway, it’s a long way away; how can it be reached?”
“Whenever you wish, Sire, I shall be your pilot.”
“What heading should we set?”
“Due west.”
While he was speaking, Merlin threw into the water an oar, a scull, three clumps of nymphaeas that he had just uprooted, his old enchanter’s staff and a pilgrim’s gourd, and he blew on the face of the waters in the direction of the sunset.
“Now,” he added, “the route is marked; let the pilgrim come!”
As one trains pigeons nowadays that carry in an hour, from Paris to London or Holland, not merely winged love-letters but heavy banknotes, Merlin had, in those days, trained nestlings that came and went incessantly between the most advanced promontories of Atlantis and the shores of Europe. All the time, they carried on their wings the messages of unknown solitudes, but no one paid the slightest attention to them. One of those flocks had just flown overhead.
“There, Sire, are your ambassadors,” said Merlin.
The king was visibly shaken. It would not have taken much for him to give the order to follow the enchanter’s advice; but one of his counselors, who was afraid of seasickness, came to him and whispered in his ear: “Sire, are you going to listen to these visionaries, these poets, the plague of States? Do you want people to say one day: ‘The sage Alifantina left Spain to conquer a kingdom of vapor’?”
The king, who did not fear anything else in the world, was afraid of ridicule; the counselor’s observation convinced him to return to Cadiz, not without having ordered that no mention should be made of what I have just recorded should be made in the crown archives deposited at Seville; thus, the discovery of America was postponed for several centuries.
At least Merlin’s effort did not go entirely to waste; his oar, his scull, his pilgrim’s gourd, and especially his enchanter’s staff, continued to float and mark the route, Christopher Columbus would encounter them later, somewhat damaged and laden with moss, but still quite recognizable. Thanks to those floating sticks, he found America.
II
Bull-running, boleros and fandangos—nothing was lacking in the fêtes that followed the king’s return. He had a large number of his people file past before Merlin. Our enchanter noticed that the population in question was mostly made up of donkey-drivers and muleteers, and that they were all singing ballads.
“What a lovely custom!” Merlin said, giving them a signal to stop in front of him. And he took the trouble to teach them the new ballads that he had learned in the Orient.
“Don’t be mistaken on their account,” Alifantina interjected. “I can’t, it’s true, offer you the same picturesque ruins as my brothers in Greece and the Orient; however, thanks to the poverty and nudity of my people, I believe I merit the honor of placing myself in the ranks of the worthy spirits of the ruins.”
Then, pointing at the donkey-drivers who were filing past with a sovereign majesty, he added: “They sing, it’s true—they have a superb range—but don’t let appearances deceive you. I can assure you that under their mantles, they’re almost as naked as the peoples assembled at Nemea. For sobriety, it’s the same, save for a clove of garlic, which I’ve recently authorized in my Estates.”
“Forgive me, Sire, but why does Your Majesty attribute it to his honor to be confused with the spirits of the ruins? Nature is opposed to it. What advantage do you find in imitating the decadence that is in them the work of fatality?”
“I’ll admit to you, Merlin, that you’re touching now on the most secret wound in my heart. In that desire to imitate the spirits of the ruins there might perhaps be some weakness. I want to be part of those venerable families that are enthroned in isolation on debris. That’s what I covet with pride. I would think myself debased if they excluded me from their relationship. That’s why, Merlin, I counterfeit as much as I can the decrepitude of the empires you’ve just visited. Not being able to equal them in the majesty of their cities in dust, I take my revenge, as you can see, on my peoples, whom I believe I have led to the shadowy slope.”
Merlin refrained from contradicting the king overtly. He replied nevertheless with the arguments most appropriate to cure the king of such a strange mania. He said, in substance, that the imitation was inferior to the model: that Alifantina had too much genius to need to counterfeit anyone, even the just Epistrophius. Then he cleverly went on to a rapid sketch of Arthus’ court, where the women, the knights, amorous talk, arms, bards, rendezvous and the outbursts of joy of nascent peoples filled the days so worthily.
“Confess, though, O sage,” Alifantina concluded, “that nothing measures up to the eternal silence of the court of Epistrophius—with the exception of one accursed cicada that can’t yet be made to shut up!”
“Sire, that thirsty cicada, which is still crying out, is justice!”
III
While traversing Seville, Merlin learned that a statue of the Commander had been erected in the cemetery, and he had the whim to visit it.126 As he approached, the statue raised its marble arm toward the heavens and said in a thunderous voice: “Go back, Merlin! There is no other enchanter than God.”
No one was less superstitious than our Enchanter, but the word “God” had never been pronounced without disturbing him; he took advantage of the circumstance-which was at least singular—to advise the king to found a church in commemoration of his fortunate voyage. The king consented, on the sole condition that Merlin built that ex-voto with his own hands, on the square in Cordova.
Our hero’s tastes had changed during his travels; instead of a cathedral he built, distractedly, a mosque. Had he, then, become a miscreant? Was that the fruit that he had brought back from his distant voyages? God preserve me from thinking so. Had he, then, entirely lost the faith engraved on his heart by his mother Séraphine on her emergence from the convent?
I’m not saying that. And yet, take it as read that he had, at that time, a considerable weakness for the Koran. He liked its dazzling simplicity. The curved scimitar of Allah seduced him, and he would have liked to sharpen its edge. And to conceal nothing—for whence come the hidden agendas of men, even the best?—who can tell whether the promises of houris had not shaken his ancient belief? From all that, it followed that he built the church of Cordova on the Muslim plan of the palm forests he had recently visited.
Alifantina, however, was dying of impatience to see his wives again in the Alhambra, which was, as yet, merely a humble building. So they took the shortest route through the heather-striped mountains of Alcala la Real, even though it was said to be the lair of the leading bandits in the province. Picture a long bare gorge, armed with rocky teeth, which open here and there on lakes of dust and sand. That gorge leads in three days to the Vega de Grenada. If ever you follow that road, reader, don’t forget provisions of food and drink, as I did.
As the voyage neared its end, Euphrosine had fallen into the blackest depression. She confided that to Merlin.
“Alas,” she told him, “until now I’ve had the king’s heart almost to myself, but the moment has come when I shall have to share it with three hundred, perhaps three hundred and fifty other women. How, Lord, shall I not weep?”
Merlin replied: “Don’t see all misfortunes at once, Madame. Many things might happen that will turn your sadness into joy. Once can only be happy with the strength of reason.”
“You always fortify me, Merlin. At this moment, especially, I’d like to believe you.”
One thing filled Alifantina with astonishment as they drew close to Grenada; none of his mutes came to meet him. The mystery was explained when he went into the Alhambra. The most beautiful of his wives, Carmen, Lindaraja and a few others, had been abducted a few night before, and the abductors had had the impudence to leave silken ladders hanging from the balconies of the windows. Euphrosine shed tears of joy.
Alifantina ordered all the inhabitants to be sown into leather sacks and thrown in the Darro, newly swollen by the autumn rains. Merlin dissuaded him. “Why drown an entire people in sacks? Stick to those who weave silken ladders.” It was easy enough to prove that the best of them belonged to a young foreigner named Don Juan de Tenorio.127 Anyway, what did the man who possessed Euphrosine have to regret?
Alifantina, appeased, agreed to everything. “But I shall renounce long voyages henceforth,” he said. “It’s here, in this place, that I’ll spend my life.”
He commanded Merlin to build him a pleasure palace where he could console himself for human fragility.
Taking inspiration from the sentiments of the King of Spain, Merlin built an initial enclosure of warrior towers, which spread terror around them, so menacing and jealous did they seem. In the interior, however, he assembled everything that he could imagine of the most voluptuous: marble rooms, alabaster vaults, murmuring jets of water in porphyry trenches, enameled flowers blooming on walls of jasper.
When the edifice was finished he said to the king: “Here’s you palace, Sire. It’s up to you to resemble it: on the outside, pride, power, jealousy and even holy wrath; on the inside, peace, softness, the inalterable serenity of the just and the divine scent that accompanies its paces.”
Having thus lavished the resources of his art to enchant the place, Merlin abandoned himself entirely to its charm. He spent his days wandering from room to room, to the eternal sound of jets of water, as if he were already inhabiting the heaven of the houris. His soul was never in greater danger, and I don’t know whether he might not have ended up converting to Mohammedanism, but for an incident that snatched him from his van hopes to hurl him fully back into reality.
He was in the Court of Lions, gilding their manes, when the shadow of a cloud passed over his feet. That cloud came from the east, perhaps from France; doubtless it had passed over Viviane’s head. It required no more for him to decide to renew his correspondence, the sole positive monument that remains to us of those days of reverie and entire solitude.
Without these epistolary monuments, it would have been impossible for me, in spite of the most obstinate research, to recover the track of Merlin’s pilgrimages, much less his thoughts. By an extraordinary good fortune, however, when the materials of this history were all lacking simultaneously, my heroes themselves bore witness.
IV
Merlin to Viviane
Alhambra, Vermilion Tower.
At the Pillars of Hercules, no message from you, Viviane, not even the simple word for which I had begged you. In spite of that, in spite of you, my head is in the clouds. I have a strength of hope that you will never tame.
At this moment, I’m living in the vermilion towers of the Alhambra. It’s a palace that I’ve just constructed at the request of the king of the country. The truth is that I built it at my own whim for you and me, as if we were to be its sole inhabitants.
You know, Viviane, how soft the babble of the water is in the shade. I’ve placed jets of water in all the rooms, and I’ve ordered stone lions to pour embalmed springs from their mouths into silvery basins, night and day. I haven’t forgotten, of course, the cool indolent alcoves of marble, so favorable to dreams, of which you once gave me the idea. You can also imagine that I haven’t neglected the balconies and tocadors, from which you would be able to admire yourself at your ease in the torrential waters of the Darro. I’ve engraved the word felicity on all the walls in advance, in antique characters mingled with tulips and jasmines, because those are the flowers you like best. Judge by these preparations whether I only have ephemeral thoughts, as you have so often accused me.
Yes, I’ve constructed here, with my own hands, the palace of my felicity, in marble and granite; already I’m looking for you in that labyrinth of love. I call to you from hall to hall, from room to room, as if you were there to hear me. At the noise of my own footsteps I turn round and ask: “Is that you?”
The jasmines exhale an odor here that I’ve only smelled once before in my life. Where is the bouquet that you were holding in your hand when I encountered you in the heather, near the springs?
Let us therefore put all our power into not despairing of one another. Has our betrothal not lasted long enough? What’s holding you back? What do you think the world is saying? It’s astonished that our marriage has been so long deferred; if you listened to the gossip of the roses and the nightingales in your own gardens, here, under your windows, you wouldn’t hesitate any longer to give them the necessary lie…at this very moment I’ve been obliged to interrupt myself in order to impose silence on them.
O delight, enchantment, sacred voluptuousness! Vermilion towers, open your doors to receive my beloved! Here she comes; I can already sense the perfume of her lips. Jets of water, spread your pearls and rubies before her steps. Lions, shake your flowing manes after her. Jealous walls, lift your battlements into the clouds to hide our first embraces. Houris, prostrate yourselves at your sovereign’s feet. Stones of the threshold, paved with marble, alcoves of alabaster, cry out with one voice: “Felicity! Felicity!”
I swear to you, Viviane, that nowhere in the world is there a place better made than this to bear witness to our reconciliation, whether you only wish to celebrate our wedding here or whether, as I would prefer, to plan to make our eternal abode here. Reason, imagination, everything confirms what I say: pure air, salubrious nourishment, orange groves in open ground, but no simoom or sirocco; never a storm, at our feet a Vega in which the ballads of the Zegris resound;128 lower down the Xeril, lower still the Darro; facing us, the white and rounded peaks of the Alpuxaras, striped with blue, violet, orange and purple. In addition, a people always in celebration, provided that I repeat our name to them; women with long eyelids, darting sharp glances like the fletched arrow launched by the bowstring. You could not ask for any more beautiful to form your cortege. What can I tell you, in sum? Fortunate Araby, sparkling in the shadow of Arthus’ buckler.
I repeat to you that I have raised the walls of the Alhambra to make it your winter palace. I don’t think I’ve forgotten a single one of the things you prefer. If, by chance, I’ve omitted one, it will be easy to procure it. Every stone, every inscription, every colonnette, if you interrogate it, will tell you at any time in the language of flowers and gemstones that you know so well: “See, Viviane, whether he has remained faithful to you!”
Perhaps this is the first time that my art serves to console me instead of making me suffer. I am the dupe myself of these crenellated walls, that I elevate so easily to an imaginary felicity; when I heap stone upon stone, it seems to me that I am giving a solid foundation to my dreams. I am building on granite the dreams of my heart. I believe them to be invulnerable, because I surround them with a blind fortress.
V
Viviane to Merlin
Poor Merlin, you make me feel pity with your Alhambra. Is it with painted walls, with vermilion towers, hat you intend to dazzle me? Oh, why did I not find in your letter a single word—just one—in our language of old? You could have dispensed with raising to the clouds your marvelous towers, where I sense that I would lack air.
What has become of the time, Merlin, when you only had yourself? Your Alhambras, your giant towers, were in your heart then. How you would have laughed at the pretention of replacing a word, a smile, a silence, or a glance with a marble tower! Now you’re like all the rest, indigent of heart, rich in ostentation, and infatuated with your misery!
Keep your Alhambra; I wouldn’t like it. I’d dream about sultana, houris and Andalusians there, in our alabaster alcoves.
Just as I was about to set out for the Gulf of Bengal I suddenly changed my mind; that’s a world too old for us, Merlin, too laden with relics and, in any case, on the banal path of all memories. I’d like, if there still is one, an entirely new place, surrounded by an uncrossable ocean, where we alone could land.
I’m assured that El Dorado, which is one of the Fortunate Isles, fulfills these conditions. The Fortunate Isles! I’m ready to embark on the strength of the name. Anyway, I desire no longer to see the stars that have deceived me; and I’m told that in those unnamed places, other and better stars would rise over my head and pour better fates upon it.
Such are, Merlin, the reasons that persuade me to summon you in the direction where the sun sets n the unknown sea. May they seem to you, as they do to me, unanswerable. If we find that fortunate island, let’s not leave it again. I want the shore to be so high and the abyss so deep that no creature of the old earth can come to spy on us with its jealous gaze. Oh, that I might hold you tightly then, that my arms might envelop in a gentle eternal chain! But perhaps there are similar enclosures around two amorous souls in the world of the living. Where is the death in which it is necessary to seek that sacred isle? That’s what we shall soon know, Merlin.
Think about it, I beg you. Don’t play any longer with Heaven and earth. Think also that this pilgrimage might be the last.
VI
Merlin to Viviane
Pillars of Hercules.
Listen, Viviane! I have a great secret to tell you. Thus I am using, to send you this letter, little birds that have not yet carried messages. They’re hummingbirds that I’ve just brought back from my excursion. They’re so small that they’ll easily escape curious eyes.
It was only a few months ago, on the beach at Cadiz, that I reread your last letter. I saw at my feet the smiling blue waves kissing and wearing away the Pillars of Hercules, rugged and cracked, kneaded by mollusks, so extensively that they’re all shaky, and won’t take long to crumble into the sea. It’s thus, Viviane, that by your deceptive words you caress my robust hopes and destroy them at the same time.
Uncertain, I was saying all that to myself, and at the same moment I was thinking about the Fortunate Isles that are exactly opposite, of which all the world speaks, where no one has landed, not even you, who invite me to look for you there. As my gaze wandered over the horizon, I heard the sight of an awakening world on the far side of the Ocean. It was only a sigh at first, then a whisper of the waves, then a scarcely-articulate voice, warm with the perfumes of the virginal immensity.
It said: “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I can hear you, but infinity separates me from you.”
“Come to me!” said the voice from the extremity of the universe, which I thought I recognized as yours.”
“Are you in the Fortunate Isles?”
“Further away!”
“In Atlantis?”
“Further away, in a new world. Come, Merlin; I’m calling to you.”
That conversation between two souls, across the Ocean, was only overheard by the abyss.
At the final word, I did not hesitate any longer to go and join you beyond all the known worlds. I made myself a small boat, poorly decked, furnished with two oars, speedy, on the model of the one we saw together in Gulliver’s construction yard. Do you remember? As soon as it was ready I departed, my heart intoxicated by joy and hope, pushed by a land breeze, inflated with the breath of orange groves, which rose at that moment from the coast of Andalusia.
The route is very easy; it’s sufficient to steer constantly westwards. Flocks of petrels, frigate-birds, ospreys, albatrosses and a few halcyons flying in front of me showed me the way, so well that it was impossible to make a mistake.
How many dreams, Viviane, assailed me during that solitary crossing? From time to time a whale appeared, like a reef, launching a column of water into the sky; sometimes, a little uprooted vegetation, or my floating staff, or a tree-trunk, announced land; then, again, the boundless immensity. Such is the spectacle that I had constantly before my eyes. Black waves swelled and rose up around me. I followed their profound valleys, breathing on the sea when the tempest was too strong, and the sea calmed down.
Meanwhile, I wondered why you weren’t there with me in that little boat, and where it was true that the Fortunate Isles existed. “Doubtless,” I shouted at myself, with a sigh, “it’s one of the thousand lies with which humans cradle their sad lives. What would become of them if they did not deceive themselves?”
Then, with few other thoughts, two months to the day after I had embarked, one Monday, at five o’clock in the afternoon, I sighted an unknown land, low-lying and lush, which forms an entire new continent in itself. What a moment, Viviane! The sail as furled and I had lowered the oar, but the rising tide drove me toward a smooth beach. The sun rose.
Imagine another universe emerging before my eyes from the depths of the abyss as I came closer. Your breath alone can give an idea of the embalmed breath of that nascent world.
Perhaps it was the first day there has ever been on that paradisal continent, for the first dew had not yet been wiped away from the tresses of the vast forests, in spite of the warm morning breeze that was beginning to rise. I took possession of that land while pronouncing your name. As I plunged into the woods—which no man, I know, had yet penetrated—I imagined that you were the queen of that place, and at first I searched for your virginal throne in the midst of the inextricable lianas.
Also sleeping there, the slumber of chaos, were great condors and hummingbirds, beside one another on the same branch, their heads tucked under their wings. I called out, but I had had some difficulty waking them up, so deeply were they plunged in a profound dream. It was the same with the flowers I encountered. I was obliged to open their calices myself, and the iridescent curtains of a thousand colors that veiled the new day from them. They thanked me with their first smile.
In the silence of all things I stopped and collected myself momentarily in order better to understand the secret of that nascent world. Proud of being alone in knowing of its existence, I was impatient to talk to it about you.
You and I, Viviane, are, at this moment, the only beings in the old world who know that a new one exists. Let us keep that great secret to ourselves. I believe it would soil it to let it be known prematurely to the men of our era. For that, they would need to be more worthy than they are today.
Let the two of us, then, enjoy that universe together. You alone are worthy of treading it underfoot, because it resembles you: as serene as you, as innocent as you as immaculate as you. And then, it is a great bond between us to be the sole possessors of the mystery of an unknown world.
Since I have witnessed the birth of that other universe, it is difficult for me, Viviane, to say how worn out, withered and decrepit the old one seems, if I dare make that confession. I haven’t able to help weaving here, in simple wicker, the cradles of numerous peoples, in the midst of numerous herds of buffaloes, vicunas, llamas, which watch me at work with an expression simultaneously confident and savage.
In this innocence of creation, I imagined that I was a new Adam, among the forests of another Eden. I set fire to vast savannahs, to prepare the abode of humans who might never know that I existed. I’ve given names to a host of animals, flowers and mountains. Already, the eagle and the ant know what the Chimborazo and Meschacebe are called.
The most difficult thing for me has been to understand the language of the flowers, which is very different from that of the flowers of our own lands. It’s an idiom formed entirely from honeyed, flavorsome vowels, without any nasal consonants, as in Brittany. One might think that it was invented by magnolias and acacias; you’ll learn it easily in one day. The tamarinds, the date-palms and the coconuts entwined with lianas were astonished, and murmured, on seeing an enchanter pass by their feet. They didn’t even know what an enchanter is, so new is everything to them. They confessed to me that boredom was gnawing away at them in a solitude so profound, in which they never saw anyone pass by. “They will come here, under your shade,” I told them, and they shivered with contentment at that, including their thick bark.
One singular thing: one does not encounter fays here, not spirits of any sort huddled in the hollows of old oaks. The solitude is all the more majestic for it. You know how beings of those sorts are often indiscreet and malevolent.
I’ve seen, it’s true, a quantity of volcanoes on the flanks of the Cordilleras, but those volcanoes, which burn night and day, don’t illuminate anyone. I’ve asked them who ignited them in the immense solitude where they are, but they weren’t able to answer. I fear that they might become ingloriously extinct, for want of a spark, if no one is here to maintain their vast magic cauldrons. We’ll be able to watch over them.
Here we shall be absolute masters of ourselves, a hundred times more so than in the old universe, full of jealousy, which only seeks to make us quarrel. If you fear the isolation, be reassured, I sense that I have love enough to fill the new immensity. Already I’ve regulated the employment of our days. We’ll wake up to the calls of hummingbirds, which I’ve taught to repeat in their piercing little voices: “Viviane! Viviane!” The early hours will be spent domesticating vicunas and llamas, which will be eating from your hand after a few days.
We’ll travel our domains. If we encounter a torrent, I’ll make a bridge of lianas and see you pass over arcades of flowers. As for rivers, you’ll traverse them in canoes made of cork-wood, which is, fortunately, abundant in these regions. Have no fear of wild beasts; the lions here have no manes and, if I can judge by appearances, you’ll tame them with a glance. If necessary, we’ll light a fire of aloe-wood.
To possess an entire world just for ourselves—and when I think about it, it’s not too great for our love—to encounter no one but one another, to live far away from the slanders of the old world, to rejuvenate ourselves every day with the youth of things, no longer to expect anything from passers-by, to leave the old abyss of old magicians, to drink from the source of unknown auroras, to find everywhere the liberty that I love almost as much as love itself, to hear the Niagara precipitating in eternal flight in eternal repose, to eavesdrop on the dialogues of pearl and diamonds on the shore of the Fortunate Isles, to collect, in sum, the premises of a new earth—tell me, Viviane, does that project not transport you with joy?
For myself, I was immediately so full of it, so obsessed, that I did not hesitate to recross the sea in my canoe, in order to tell you about it. My boat had been destroyed some time before on the coast, by a furious hurricane, the sole scourge to be feared in that climate.
Do you not feel, as I do, the need to forget and be reborn? Let’s not hope to succeed in that here. So long as we’re in the old world, it will weigh upon us, crushing us with its eight. Let’s quit the land of ruins, then, Viviane, and leave the dead their tombs. It’s for old wrinkled genii to dwell in a wrinkled earth. The sight of ancient places reminds us too much of bad days. Souls as new as ours require a new universe.
Tell me, what are the isles of Alcina or Morgane, the palaces of Armida or Psyche,129 by comparison with the countries to which I’m inviting you? What the visions of fever are compared to the creations of nature. The longer I live, the more disgusted I become with chimeras, in order to attach myself to a reality always more beautiful than invention. I’m so weary of dreaming, of imagining. I’m so impatient finally to savor a new joy in a new world.
Don’t seek in me the Merlin who lived in vapors. The time of dreams is finished, Viviane. Let’s enjoy the universe as it is. It’s so beautiful!
The happiness that I demand today is a simple, idle, uniform happiness composed, above all, of common sense, and which is so easy to find: no more troubles; no tempests; an island or if you prefer, a shady continent, where one encounters none of the cares of the past; a vast pampas where we shall be masters and lords; a little boat on the Amazon; a few old books open in the virgin savannahs; a cabin in Peru, a pet snake; no gold mines, or, at the most, only one. All that must seem to you very miserable at the price of the ancient infinite domains of the enchanter you once knew.
What has become of the times when, for the least of our caprices, for a whim or for a frown, we were going to move heaven and earth? Today, I disdain the palaces of diamond with which, perhaps, we were once too prodigal. I’ve come back to the true, to nature. Accuse me, if you wish, of crawling in my turn. It’s true; I’ve learned to limit myself. But tell me, Viviane—who broke my wings?
If the very faithful description I’ve just given can finally convince you, let’s leave forever the courts, the barons, the paladins, the Gothic ruins and even the Alhambra. Let’s go far from human beings, whom we know too well, to bury our happiness under eternal lianas, at the foot of the Cordilleras. I’m sending you the seeds of coconuts, pineapples, vanilla plants, mangoes, sugar cane and maize. That last plant, cheerfully green, drawn over yellow, punctuated by nodes, with spearhead-like leaves, produces large ears covered in silky tufts, which blossom in orange or red plumes. Sow the seeds in the Crau, on the edge of dormant pools.
Don’t tell anyone, not even your godmother, where these new plants come from. That is the price of our secret. I tremble now that an indiscretion or a stray messenger might divulge the secret of our Eden prematurely.
I nearly forgot to tell you that while searching that world I ended up finding human footprints in the and. How I shivered! They were the footprints of young Indian girl with whom I caught up. She seemed to me, like everything I’ve seen here, freshly emerged from the cradle of things. Her name is Omeania. Her hair, still damp with the breath of chaos, extended in smooth sheets over her shoulders; they have the hue of a raven’s wing. Her figure is as supple as a liana; as for her eyes, you’ll easily form an idea of them by looking into those of gazelles. She just appeared one day, and already she knows how to dance the dance of the eagle, the movement of which around its aerie she imitates very well, as well as handling a small stone hatchet with admirable dexterity.
“Where have you come from?” I asked her,
She did not know how to reply.
“Your parents?”
Same silence.
“Were you born on earth?”
She pointed at the sky.
I’ve given her a few glass beads; for that she wanted to worship me. I begged her not to.
With that, she led me to her hut and offered to share it with me, which I couldn’t refuse, because the rainy season was approaching and is very redoubtable in that region. You’ll find in that Indian, according to your wishes, a companion or a slave. It wouldn’t be good for you to be entirely alone; I fear that you might be homesick.
On searching the continent further, at the other extremity, I discovered a man named Friday. I would have taken him into my service—for he appeared anxious to serve—if I had not already had Jacques Bonhomme to hand: a hard head who doesn’t get on with everyone, and has caused me a thousand difficulties.
In conclusion, I’ll add that I have the gravest reasons for avoiding the pursuits of my father. So widespread in the old world, he has not yet set foot in the veritably inviolate region that I have just discovered. In my eyes, that’s a decisive consideration for us to establish ourselves there, sheltered from his love, which is worse for me than his hatred.
May you, Viviane, never know either of them.