BOOK NINETEEN: THE ENCHANTER DISENCHANTED

To you, who suddenly discover in your heart a pain that you thought still hidden—what person does not have secret of that sort?—who sense a thorn beneath your garland, this last part is dedicated.

Come, imitate me: follow Merlin blindly. Above all, don’t argue with him or criticize him; submit to him whatever judgment and reason you have left. That is the true means of profiting from his school. When sadness weighs upon me, I attach myself to his book, and hope revives in my heart. That is his greatest magic.

Let’s see, where did we leave him? He is like the truth; nothing is more difficult than to pick up its vestiges when they have been abandoned. How many bad days I have passed through since I lost his enchanted trail! How much deep water has accumulated over my head! Am I not submerged? The wisdom of Merlin—although I have not hesitated to make his errors known as well—was, for me, the thread in the labyrinth of days. Since I have let that thread break, I have gone astray in the night without a dawn.

Once again, if you have found my hero, tell me. What has become of him? Who has seen him? Which way did he go? It seems to me that at the moment when we took our leave of him, he had just enchanted the land skimmed by the setting sun. At that signal, a comet had shaken its golden hair; it precipitated from the heights of David’s Chariot, head first into the Ocean, while its starry, flamboyant robe was still trailing in the distance in the immense blue of the firmament. Do you remember?

At any rate, everything was serene in my heart and yours. We were young, you and I, or, at least, we passed for such. A circle of friends surrounded us, and not one of them denied us. Why has that changed? It was such a short time ago that things were like that.

The world is full, in the century in which we are living, of authors who want to steal the heroes that others have taken the trouble to disinter. I repeat to you—this is serious—that mine has been stolen. Who has taken him? Who has evoked him slyly while I was asleep? He was there, though, only a moment ago, also young, radiant with hope, standing on a summit in the Pyrenees, sowing joy and smiles all around. I arrive where I hid him myself.

O dolor! O treason! O ruin! I no longer find him there. To steal a hero confided to public good faith is a thousand times worse than stealing the treasure a man keeps in an old casket.

Believe me, the worst of evils is to be interrupted in an epic work like this one, which ought to have flowed out in one breath like a river swollen by melted snow. The grass grows over the footprints of your characters. The no longer know you and no longer respond to your voice. Everything has to be recommenced, as in a broken friendship; are those ever repaired?

If someone, alerted by my plaints, brings back my hero, or if I rediscover him in the melee of life, a hundred times more confused than the burning of Troy, where Aeneas lost old Creusa—assuming that he did not lose her voluntarily 131—yes, if I ever catch up with our Enchanter, I swear an oath here not to separate myself from him again until he has finished dictating his story to me, all the way to the last line.132

The sage Merlin had completed his pilgrimages. From the Spanish gate he reentered the immense kingdom of Arthus, which then included England, France, Italy and the majority of the neighboring lands, not to mention the kingdom of dreams, of which he was the almost absolute master.

Someone who had seen our Enchanter pass by would have found him very similar to what he had been before his voyages: the same grace, the same smile, only his complexion somewhat sun-tanned, as was natural after having visited so many different climates.

Beneath that celebratory air, however, you would also have been able, with more attention to discover a profound change. After so much research, Merlin had not been able to find Viviane; he was beginning to despair of ever seeing her again. Then doubt was combined with despair.

“Isn’t it a dream that I’m pursuing?” he said to himself, after having bid farewell to the donkey-drivers of Spain. “What journeys! What voyages! And what oblivion! Am I, then, more sage than all the other sages? Why be obstinate in this passion for a dream? I’ve been duped, alas! Is that a reason to continue to be forever?”

The most acute dolor had not annihilated Merlin’s gift of enchantment. On the contrary, it had retempered his power, as we have seen in the course of his pilgrimages. As soon as the dread of being duped insinuated itself into his mind, however, every day deprived him of a part of his gift. He even reached the point of weakness at which he had commenced—which is to say, the point at which it would have been difficult for him to bend a blade of grass by his will alone.

It is true that the world was as yet unaware of the impotence to which our Enchanter gradually found himself reduced, and he had the weakness of living on his former renown, without daring to tell anyone that he was no longer in a condition to sustain it. Doubtless he would have done better to say to the world and its people: “I’m no longer the man you knew; look for another enchanter.”

That would certainly have been more worthy, but he recoiled before that confession, which he thought both unnecessary and deadly. Thank God, his enchantments had been spread, without avarice, through the cradle of the nations. What need was there to begin again? Was it necessary, then, to tell the world that the charm had ceased? Where was the advantage? As for the inconvenience, that was sufficiently obvious. Would it not sadden earth and Heaven in vain?

Just remember, I beg you, how many people, and the best, were living in peace on the strength of his word alone! Who could tell what confusion would have been produced if the news were made explicit: Merlin is disenchanted! It is certain, at least, that all the things and people who were living on their faith in our Enchanter would be incontinently sunk, not only in Arthus’ realm, but also the way to the confines of the habitable earth, and beyond.

Was that a circumstance for telling the truth without hesitation? Was not a little dissimulation preferable? One can live for a while on hope; and what was the great harm, I ask you? Hadn’t the world lived well enough before Merlin? In any case—and this is conclusive—he did not resolve without combat and remorse to content himself with the appearance, he who had previously been all truth. To relate how that came about by degrees would be a long story. With the big book open in front of me, I’ve chosen one page.

III

The first indiscretions came from Merlin’s own entourage. He was occupied in refreshing his soul with a profound sleep, and Jacques was fishing for frogs on the edge of the great pool of which legends speak. At that moment, follets appeared armed with phosphorescent torches, which mingled in their dances through the rushes near the bank, and this is the conversation that was established between them while they scarcely brushed the large floating water-lilies with their feet.

“My dear friends,” said a little shrill voice that seemed to emerge from the reeds, “believe Farfarel.133 Our master Merlin’s fortune is evidently diminishing; he no longer has, I can assure you, the slightest credit over the elements and the stars. We, his former servants, would do well to quit him before he’s entirely ruined. Personally, I’ve decided to disobey the first order he gives me tomorrow when he gets up. I’ll be dismissed and expelled, I know—well, so much the better. On my honor, that’s all I ask.”

“That Merlin’s declining,” said Stem-of-Golden-Herb, “is perfectly obvious. He’s a cracked ruin about to crumble. I’m going to look for another master.”

“Agreed!” added Serpentine, relighting his torch. “Let’s admit, though, that it’s shameful to abandon a prophet like that because fate is no longer on his side. We’d dishonor ourselves!”

“Fine talk for a follet!” the first voice resumed. “Let’s go, I tell you, and when he wakes up he won’t even find an obliging gnome to collect a simple for him in the woods. Ha ha ha! Ho ho ho! Oh, my dear friends, mad laughter takes hold of me when I think about poor Merlin’s face when he wakes up alone in the world! What chagrin! What anger! My God, though, he wasn’t a wicked enchanter.”

Shrill, whistling laughter, supported by jeers, ran around the desiccated pond; the voices recommenced:

“Let’s clean house for a start. Let’s take back, carry off and disperse all the enchantments that Merlin’s stupidly spread over the world.”

“That’s a good idea, Serpentine,” said Farfarel. “I’ll take care of burgling Arthus’ court personally, and the palaces and the cottages. Not a single love potion will remain in a single cup. No, no—I won’t leave a drop that could satisfy a butterfly.”

“And I’ll rust all the armor, Cousin!” exclaimed Verbena-Flower, already brandishing a wisp of straw charged with dew.

“I’ll erase all the sacred words in the hermits’ books.”

“I’ll lift the charms from old towers crowned with ivy. I’ll only leave the screech-owl there; he’s our friend. Oh, if we could disenchant the amorous stars of spring nights as well! Look, they’re smiling us and making fun of us. Be careful; they still have many dupes.”

“Well end up reaching them,” Farfarel replied, as he put out his lamp.

“Good! There’s one star less already. It would be useful to disenchant Hell too, Believe me, there’s more than one illusion left there.”

“Don’t worry, Serpentine,” said Farfarel, who seemed to be the king of the follets. “I’ll take responsibility for it, and remember what I say. To begin with, I’ll get rid of the midnight revenants. I’ll oblige them, with whiplashes, to go back honestly to their beds. I’ll put stones over them.”

With these words he went to stand in front of Jacques Bonhomme, and, prancing about, he added: “What about you, Jacques—are you coming with us?”

“Leave Seigneur Merlin!” replied the honest Jacques, who seemed to be familiar with the troupe of spirits. “What do you take me for?”

“Imbecile!” cried the host of follets. “Let’s go find another enchanter, if there are any left in the world, and let’s be the first to pay our court to him when he wakes up. Merlin’s time is finished!”

Then they dispersed, sniggering, over all of Merlin’s kingdoms, like the black clouds of locusts that settle on the oceans of wheat in Rumania and devour the ripe ears.

For a long time, Jacques followed the fugitives with his eyes. Nevertheless, he was not shaken that day. A few words of the spirits’ conversation, spoken by Farfarel and Stem-of-Golden-Herb, were overhead by peasants in Ripes returning home from the harvest. Those words, mostly fragmentary, began to circulate through the world, but no one paid the slightest attention to them.

Night had fallen; the wind, after having blown violently, had died away; the constellation of Orion, proud of its dust of stars, was putting Dionea,134 who was producing gems, to shame. When Merlin, on returning from his pilgrimages, arrived at the frontier of France the praised, he thought he felt the earth tremble beneath his feet on seeing the places where he had once sown so many enchantments. His heart palpitating, he paused for a moment to listen to the breath of the people.

No sound reached his ears. He said to himself: “That’s all right. They’re sleeping well, and dreaming. Let’s go on. Tomorrow, at daybreak, I’ll hear them in all their glory.”

As it was midnight and the sunken road passed alongside a cemetery, he glimpsed a population of revenants on the level ground, escaped from the sepulcher, who were warming themselves up in the pale moonlight. Jacques saw them too, and wanted to flee as fast as his legs could carry him, but his master held him back and forced him to remain by his side, open-mouthed, in the company of the dead. “Stay!” he said to him. “No society is better for you.”

In the middle of them, he had no difficulty in recognizing, on top of a Gothic terrace, Hamlet’s father, who was reigning over the crowd that surrounded him, seemingly his courtiers. Among them was the knight who was still holding his fiancée Lenore on the rump of his sweating horse.135 They all moved away slightly as Merlin approached, but Hamlet’s father said: “What are you afraid of? It’s Merlin; he’s one of the family.” On that, the dead remained where they were, and Merlin soon found himself in a circle that had formed around him.

“What are you doing here,” he asked them, “gazing at these cold discolored rays? Speak to me of kings and peoples. What are the people of Arthus’ kingdom doing? I don’t know what’s happened there since I’ve been rejected from it, and everything that isn’t Arthus’ land is a place of exile for me. Tell me about the many kings, my friends, and the many nations that you’ve doubtless known.” He added, with the firm intention of softening their rigid faces: “It will be pleasant for me to learn from you what the living are doing, for the dead alone are not deceived.”

“Answer for us,” murmured the inconsolable population of specters, addressing Hamlet’s father—after which he slowly pronounced these words:

“For the last time, we’ve come to show ourselves on the face of the earth. Until now, we’ve taken pleasure in warming ourselves by that star as pale and mute as we are. But the earth has become so sad, that we’re renouncing visiting it forever. Our tombs are less icy than the hearts of men, our darkness less profound. A vain curiosity still attracts us toward the abode of the living. Always disappointed, that curiosity has wearied us. We’re quitting our dwellings for the last time. Yes, Merlin, know that he earth has become so ugly since your departure that we’ve sworn not to appear here again, even for the brief moments in which it was easy for us to lift the stones sealed over our heads.”

“What he says is true,” the crowd repeated. “Our nights are less sad than the daylight of the living.” Then, shaking heads: “Adieu, disenchanted earth! Ruins, solitary walls, you shall not see us again!”

“What are you telling me?” Merlin interjected, refusing at first to believe what he was hearing. “Don’t you know that I’ve enchanted the earth, especially this kingdom? I’ve put joy and smiles everywhere, personally. None of you will dare to deny it.”

“Yes,” replied Hamlet’s father, forcing himself to soften his expression. “You spread serenity over the world. But your enchantments, poor Merlin, only last a day. That’s what we’ve learned, now that you see us here face to face with eternal things. Everything you build in the morning crumbles in the evening. You build marvelous things, but they’re dreams. You give out crowns; they wither. You summon smiles; they change into tears. Woe betide anyone who confides himself to your gifts.”

Until that moment, Merlin had not seen any of the things that he had enchanted fall, so he had thought it certain that he was building for eternity. He had lived from day to day, without worrying about tomorrow. The idea that he had not created anything durable and that he would survive his works suddenly bit his heart for the first time. A blush rose to his face. He stammered at first, but then he replied:

“All of you who are murmuring,” he said, “tell me whether my enchantments have not followed you into death.”

“Another magician than you is necessary here now,” the crowd replied.

“Are those that I have made kings no more? Are those who have learned magic from me forgotten, then? At least the beauties carry away my love potions with them.”

“Your magic, poor Merlin, finishes here where death begins.”

“But I have life on my side.”

“There is only life in Heaven.”

“But I still have the earth!”

“No, not even, not even the earth. Enter and pass. You shall see everything that you’ve edified fall: Arthus’ kingdoms, the empire of knights, enchanted worlds, centuries of love, mystic towers. Beautiful soap bubbles! We’ve learned what Merlin’s work weighs. No one will ever see us again, by the light of the moon, applauding with our resounding hands his vocations of smoke.”

With these words, each of the revenants passed before him with a snigger that completed covering our Enchanter with confusion, for they pursued him with its echo all the way to their subterranean echoes:

“Adieu, Merlin, great king of dreams! We’re going to tell the earthworms what your magic is worth.”

And it is certain that from that day on, the specters ceased to appear in the greatest extent of the kingdoms traveled by our hero. If one of them failed in the formal resolution made by the great majority, he only did so by disguising himself and hiding beneath some ruined postern, and it was a disobedience that does not contradict what has just been related in the least.

To lose one’s illusions! The most stupid and impertinent of all the phrases of our century. All too often, it has aided cowards to cover their desertion.

By his final words, Brutus has made an entire accursed people into plagiarists who say, in amplifying the master’s testament: Love, poetry, magic, pearls of morning dew, virtue of evening breezes, you are only words.136 And with that, empty of regrets, freed from remorse, they make use of that rusty phrase, not to stab themselves—a voluntary punishment that at least expiates the denial—but in order to go, head bowed, among the army’s camp-followers, into the enemy camp.

It is entirely different when it is a matter of a disenchanted enchanter. That situation has not been depicted anywhere; and by virtue of its very novelty, how many almost-insurmountable difficulties it entails! No classic or model that I can take for a guide and a patron; an unknown, rocky road, full of potholes in which no human foot is revealed; on all sides, precipices that give vertigo.

If I had known in advance where my subject of predilection would lead me, I would surely have lacked the courage to begin it. But today it’s too late to go back on it. Eight hundred pages already filled—that’s no bagatelle! Let’s continue, then, on the path that we’re on, until we find an edit. With method, order and the art of dividing the subject into its various parts, and a sober style most of all—for nothing would be more perilous, above these abysms, than an intoxicated tongue—it’s necessary not to despair of attaining a fortunate denouement.

As soon as Merlin had reentered Arthus’ kingdom, his approach was announced by the sound of trumpets. The people scarcely recognized him, so forgotten as he, and very few voices murmured softly: “Merlin has come back!”

Meanwhile, it was near Caerleon that Arthus then had his court; before it flew, on the edge of a forest, anthropophagous vultures bearing a golden yoke.

“What’s that?” Jacques asked.

“A sign of death,” the prophet replied.

Indeed, two bowshots from there, he saw a large crowd emerging from the palace, from which sighs and lamentations were escaping. He soon recognized the same court that he had left so triumphant on his departure. But where was Arthus himself? No one dared talk about him.

His relatives, who had each formed a dynasty, had lost their crowns. Bare-headed, without diadems, they were weeping as they walked, beneath a rain mingled with snow and frost.

There you would have seen, lashed by the horrible tempest, King Lear, bald, having gone mad, taking for his staff of old age Ossian, the king of the mists; after them, good Uther with the dragon’s head, Arthus’ stepbrother; his uncle, the king of the Orkneys; his foster-father Anthor; Owain, still followed by an army of crows. Who shall I name next? You, Claudas, king of the desert, with the green shield with three argent gules; you, Ban de Benoix, who reign in the forest of Briogne; and then again Rodarch of Cambria, Ambroise Aurele, Erec de Nantes, the sage Ulsius, the wisest of counselors: all covered in ashes, tearing their clothing.137 The hermit Ogrin followed them, apart from the crowd, chanting: Miserere! Miserere!

As soon as he saw them from afar, Jacques cried: “Oh, God! What mourning, and what grief! Look at the kings weeping, and the queens in their mourning-dress.”

“Let’s go help them, if there’s still time,” Merlin replied, beginning to be gripped by anguish.

As soon as they had caught up the cortege, he stopped. The archbishop of Brice,138 spoke on behalf of the dynasties that were following him, groaning.

“Merlin, blessed be the Man-God whom you lead by the hand. If not, it’s all over for us and our kingdoms.”

“Arthus will aid you!”

“He’s dying.”

“And my round table?”139

“Broken.”

“By whom?”

“By the fault of all of us. Scarcely had you disappeared, Merlin, than Viviane said to the king: ‘Arthus, your renown was great; it is lost. Merlin has gone, and with him, your joy, your fortune and your hope.’

“Immediately, in fact, the crowns of the kings began to tremble on their heads, and the tables to totter on their bronze feet. The people that you left so good-humored, sitting at our sides, drinking from our cup, entered into fury; hungry, they began by stoning us with the fragments of the round table. And if we asked: ‘Why are you furious, stepsons?’ they replied: ‘Because Merlin no longer protects you.’ O mourning greater than the mourning of Camlan! But their anger inspired them badly, and now melancholy is corroding them.”

“Our own daughters have expelled us into the rain and snow,” interjected King Lear. “Oh, how can they have hearts so hard, our daughters with the tender eyes of hinds? Merlin, little Merlin, help me, my friend. Don’t leave my old head to crack like these crumbling keeps.”

Merlin looked around. He only discovered, in fact, the ruins of keeps on the summits of hills. The towers that had not crumbled were all tottering; the best had at least lost their battlements.

The kings said: “Without you, Merlin, we’re perishing. God knows who will replace us!”

Then the chatelaines began to weep. “What have we done,” they said, “to be thus battered by the winds?”

Then the queens added: “What will it cost you to bring the people back to our feet? Less than a smile.”

“You must have disobeyed one of my commandments,” Merlin replied.

“Which?” retorted the crowd of kings, barons and chatelaines.

“I suspect that you have not loved one another, as I so often ordered you to do. But where are your peoples? And Arthus…?”

He was about to continue when a funeral knell resounded over the earth and froze the words on his lips.

To arrive at Arthus’ threshold it was necessary to traverse several nations that seemed moribund; they were extended or crouched in the sand like as many sphinxes at the gates of palaces, and each of them bore a mystery in its face. They were not weeping, nor sobbing, but they maintained a sepulchral silence. They were alive, however, to judge by the oppressed, panting respiration that elevated their breast. In every other respect, they seemed made of stone.

Yes, the bodies were alive, but the souls were dead, and each was wearing mourning for itself, sniggering.

No wound appeared on the surface of the bodies, but all the sores of Egypt would have counted for nothing by comparison with the invisible, tenacious ulcer that was devouring an entire world.

Don’t talk any more about the plagues recounted by Thucydides and Boccaccio. What were they by comparison with this truly black plague extended over all Arthus’ nations? A great evil, no doubt, but curable, since they was familiar; and besides, you could protect yourself from them by isolation—it was sufficient, to live in security, to refrain from touching bodies.

Here, by contrast, there is no shelter, no rampart, and no refuge. The venom is not only in the air, it is in a more subtle element, in the smile one encounters, in the speech one hears; it is in silence itself. From soul to soul it circulates without the contagion of bodies. It reaches you in the high places as well as the low. It flies with the gaze; songs and laughter carry it on their wings, tongues distil it, words dart it, phrases hawk it in a cloud, solitude nourishes it, the world entertains it, the void inflates it and exasperates it. Where can one flee? The bubo is in the heart?

And where is the remedy? Has Merlin brought the one simple that can heal the wound? No one knows, and no one cares to know.

They see the healer of souls pass by, and no one gets up to ask for assistance. They love their disease; it is, henceforth, their only love. Woe betide anyone who would like to cure it!

In the public squares, individuals and entire peoples were falling unconscious, but had no visible illness. They resembled fat specters sitting at an empty table. O Heaven, take that memory away from me! My heart fails just thinking about it.

As for decrepitude, it was taking possession of the youngest. They were those whose blood was the iciest. The children had the wrinkled faces and white hair of old men. The souls of young women had become as sordid as those of centenarians.

In the midst of them, some were dried out by a devouring thirst for what they called the future. They ran hither and yon, from one threshold to another, one temple to another, as if they were pricked by a sacred spur; then they fell exhausted on the sand that they had tainted with black blood, before having once slaked their hearts; for they were thirsty for the impossible, and were consuming themselves vainly in its pursuit. Others laughed on seeing their agony.

A strange thing: those people had forgotten the names of their ancestors, their relatives, their friends and their country. They did not remember the next day what they had done the day before, so indigent of heart that death could not take anything away from them.

More extraordinary still, they changed languages every day like clothes, and no one knew where they had learned those new, subtle, crawling, hissing languages, unless they had learned them from serpents with which they had contracted alliances in the dark.

Then again, you would have thought you were looking at peoples bitten in the heart, enveloped and stifled by a great reptile, like the sons of Laocoon, for they could not cry out. The soul of the reptile had passed into them and was snaking slowly through their livid veins. They had acquired its taciturnity, the oblique gait, the sticky and viscous face, everything except the sparkling gaze. If you touched their hearts, you felt cold. They could remain like that for a long time without beginning to be reborn and without completing their dying.

Their voices were as shrill as that of the wind in the desert; their breath poisoned the world.

Above them, in an open tower, there was a bell that sounded a knell night and day, and it was the knell of the world. But no one paid any heed to it, so accustomed were they to hearing it. Some took it for the ringing of the Angelus, at the hour when travelers seek shelter for the impending night.

For a long time Merlin contemplated the faces of those mute nations that had no desire to revive. A mortal cold seized him as he looked at them. He felt that if he stared any longer, the vertigo of death would afflict him, like a bird fascinated by a serpent’s eye.

Without trying to talk to them—for he saw by their hardening how futile that would be—weeping and frightened, he hastened his steps toward the vestibule of Arthus’ palace.

VII

It was a pale winter’s day. The form of everything seemed to fade and vanish in a shroud of mist. The mountains, truncated at their summits by thick clouds, only showed their brown feet under the curtain that enveloped them with its pleats; there was no sound except the rattle of hailstones on the hardened ground. The mute and icy world seemed resigned to death.

As soon as the dogs that were guarding Arthus’ threshold saw Merlin they got up and uttered long howls. Soon, they recognized him; lowering their heads they came to lick his hands and conduct him to their master’s threshold.

Altered by their barking, the two porters, Drem of the strong hand and Kenon, son of Kledno,140 got up in their turn from the bench on which they were sitting. Without speaking, both anguished and sighing, they opened the two battens of the oak door.

Arthus, the noble king of the future, was lying on his bed in the largest hall of his wooden palace, strewn with thin rushes. He was dying of the same disease as his peoples.

Queen Genièvre had just placed amulets on her husband’s forehead; she was lying nearby on the bearskin extended at the foot of the royal bed.

Whence came Arthus’ sickness?

Was it the satiety of wealth too easily acquired? Arthus admitted that he had not been sated by any cup, although he no longer had the same thirst for justice.

Was it old age? He had scarcely entered into mature age, but already felt all the chills of decrepitude.

Had he presumed too much of his time, and was he disgusted with life on seeing it so miserable? Had he been deceived by the generations that had promised to follow him, and which now denied him out of envy? Had that blow broken the strength and virtue of heroes within him?

Oh, how different it had been in the days, already distant, when, in the midst of a world intoxicated by joy, his head shaded by a plume, he had showed his smiling face to rejuvenated peoples who acclaimed hope in his person! Now he attached his gaze to his silver shield suspended above his head, but on seeing it tarnished as if by the breath of an impure century, he turned his eyes away and sighed.

When the year is about to die, the oak on the mountain murmurs as it sees its leaves fall one by one at its foot; it is envious of the sons of winter, the pine or the larch, which keep their green tresses entire, which no tempest can strip away. So Arthus, sensing that he was dying, gazed enviously at his companions, standing at the foot of his bed, who were retaining their green youth without withering.

It was at that moment that Merlin came in. When he drew close to the dying man he knelt down; then he took his hands, kissed them and said: “God save you, King Arthus! O father of all hopes, king of free souls, who has inflicted this wound on you?”

The king refused to answer that question, but he said: “Merlin, great healer of souls, it’s too late! See how I lack breath, and how hope has been taken away from me. That is the knell announcing Arthus’ funeral. May it please Heaven that it is not the knell of a world.”

Then Merlin bent down to look for wounds, but he saw nothing except the increasingly livid face of Arthur, who went on, with the snigger that the precursor of death: “You don’t see the wound, O wisest of men! It’s there nonetheless, in the heart. But who inflicted it, in what manner, on what day, I shall never tell. It’s gentler to die.”

Without daring to respond, Merlin tried all the balms that he had collected during his pilgrimage, and which he thought infallible. He had brought them back from Prometheus’ Caucasus, the isle of Philoctetes, the garden of Eden and the summit of Golgotha. After having steeped them in water that he had warmed up personally, he spread them over the monarch’s limbs. None of them—not even the Promethean herb—appeased Arthus’ pain.

At that moment, the nations that were lying down and torpid on the stone threshold made their snores heard, like the Eumenides lying on the paving stones of the temple of Delphi. That strange, muffled noise caused the king to shiver, whether with hope or dread it was impossible to tell; his tongue was already embarrassed; he was having difficulty speaking.

From the extremities of the limbs, the chill reached his heart. His eyes, rolling slowly in their bloody orbits, seemed to enclose all that remained to him of life. His clenched hands sought his sword. It was shown to him beside his bed; he made one more sign to indicate that it had been rusted by the poisoned breath of the wicked, and pressed it to his breast.

A few hours passed thus, alternating between stupor and disturbance. Finally, he wanted to get up one last time and die on his feet; his servants took him in their arms and sat him on his throne.

Having summoned the queen himself, he consoled her and forbade her to weep. Then he had his servants summoned; he thanked them for their loyal services and distributed to them the gifts that he had ordered to be prepared.

Then his crown was brought. He took it in his hands and said to Merlin: “I have no son. I don’t know who will succeed me. Merlin, I confide my crown to you; it is that of the future; keep it for the most worthy.”

Merlin promised that he would do everything as the king ordered; that put an end to his great anguish.

With every passing moment, however, his weakness increased, and the terror of death passed back and forth over his face. A few incoherent words fell from his lips: “All is lost…the future is just a word!” Almost immediately, he perceived that his mind was beginning to wander, and he extended his hands toward his friends, as if to beg them to forget what he had just said.

Then commenced the gurgling of death, to which the nations responded, and it seemed at each breath that he would choke. The vast windows of the hall were opened, but the air of the woods that carried life could not penetrate into Arthus’ breast.

He asked to be replaced in his bed, and because his servants were too slow to arrive and he was in haste, he dragged himself there on his feet, leaning on their arms. There he had an instant’s repose, but almost immediately, his head—that powerful, noble head—slumped on to his bosom and remained sealed there, as if it had been pushed forward by an invisible hand, against which resistance was futile. His eyes remained fixed, astonished by the first approach of eternal darkness.

A shrill cry departed from the hall and filled the palace.

“Arthus, King Arthus, is dead!”

Meanwhile, night had fallen, and for as long as the darkness covered the earth, Queen Genièvre prevented her dolor from bursting forth; she remained as cold and mute as the shift of one of the marble pillars that supported the hall. As soon as the shadow disappeared, however, despair was unleashed in her soul and death appeared to her for the first time without a veil.

On seeing the dawn recommencing to whiten, and the gentle light reappearing, for everyone except Arthus, and that he alone would no longer enjoy the gifts brought by daylight to the smallest creature, a sob, and then a lugubrious wail, and then an imprecation, emerged from Madame Genièvre’s pious lips. That cry was repeated by her women, who were all sat around her on the floor, and the wooden palace was shaken by their hoarse lamentation.

“He has fallen, the king of the future, the one who brought hope to the earth!”

“The worm that crawls will see the light of day on emerging from the obscure mud, but Arthus will not see it again.”

“The brute stone will be warmed by the dawn, but he will only feel the cold of death.”

The grass of the fields will sense in advance the warm breath of spring and will rejoice beneath the snow, but Arthus, the sage, the good, the king of the just, will only respire the breath of the sepulcher.”

“O God, where is your justice?”

“O Heaven, where is your light?”

“O Providence, where is your glory?”

“Mystic Rose, where is your perfume?”

“Ivory Tower, where is your whiteness?”

“Morning Star, where is your radiance?”

Merlin, who was transpierced by these clamors, stood up like a man inspired. He had Arthus’ naked sword brought to him, and he put the blue-tinted blade to the king’s icy lips. The edge of the blade was covered by a pale mist, like that the breath of morning leaves on a transparent window.

“Arthur is still alive! He’s breathing! He’s asleep!”

That word flew, more rapidly than lightning, from mouth to mouth; it stopped the tears, suspended the plaints. Long moans were succeeded by a silence of stupor and hope.

VIII

“There are, Seigneurs, several kinds of slumber,” murmured Merlin’s low voice, while he closed the king’s eyes. “There is the slumber of ennui, which does not resemble this one at all; there is the slumber of death, which is much more similar; there is also the sacred slumber, populated by divine dreams. That is the one that the noble Arthus is experiencing at this moment. Let us make sure that nothing troubles his celestial dream.”

Then, addressing the courtiers, he added: “Speak quietly”—which they immediately did, and have continued to speak in that tone until the present day.

The crowd dispersed at a measured pace, more silently than shadows. Sobs became sighs, sighs murmurs, murmurs whispers. Finally, the earth fell silent.

One of Arthur’ counselors leaned toward Merlin’s ear and said: “Is it so easy for a world to die?”

Merlin’s only response was to place his finger over his lips.

All those who possessed a lute, a theorbo, a mandolin or even a bagpipe were enjoined to abstained from playing them if they would not rather break them. Even the bells were obliged to cease ringing. All of the living held their breath, for fear of troubling Arthus’ pleasant dreams.

The castles that had once resounded with love songs were abandoned. No one knew what had become of their inhabitants. It was as if, within the enclosure of the ruins, hardly a single sprig of heather or a wild pear was tolerated, or a migratory bird permitted to alight with fearful wings—and if it began to sing, Merlin, sitting on the grass, would get up and say to it in its winged language: “Silence, blue bird, whoever you are. Arthus is having a beautiful dream, which I shall interpret in due course.”

The bird fell silent immediately, and the entire world with it.141

Sometimes, a stone fell from the vault of the palace. As it was about to fall noisily, Jacques prepared a thick couch of leaves, which deadened the sound. By that means, the towers and the cracked walls fell gradually into ruin and were covered with vegetation without anyone hearing any din. Occasionally it happened that unwary people got up, barefoot, in the night, making a great racket, but the Enchanter only had to make them a sign. They all shut up immediately, like him, with a finger over the lips. Several generations passed thus without a sound, holding their breath, unshod, ears pricked, mute and choked, for fear of waking the sleeper.

Days also went by; nights succeeded days; and no notable change occurred. Jacques, standing watch, chased away the ants when they wandered over Arthus’ forehead. He did not even let the cicadas approach. To pass the time, he sometimes sang a village song, in a whisper, but he soon gave up because Arthus had uttered a sigh. Sitting beside a brushwood fire, staring into the blaze, he polished and repolished the sleeper’s sword; and every day it grew. Already the hilt was touching Scandinavia and the point the Pillars of Hercules.

Whenever Arthus woke up, he usually propped himself up on his elbow and asked for a drink. Immediately, Jacques Bonhomme informed Merlin, who hastened to arrive; he listened attentively to the account Arthus gave him of his dreams, and interpreted them immediately, almost always in the best light. When they contained a good augury, the world was informed without delay. On the contrary, when they announced bad times, plagues, famines, deaths, tyrannies and slaveries, Merlin kept the secret to himself, as much as he could, in order not afflict anyone. In either case, the king, appeased by the wisdom of the Enchanter, allowed his heavy head to fall back into the palm of his hand, and he went back to his long slumber.

Nearby, under the posterns, seven sleepers,142 taller than all the others, were dozing in their iron armor and seemed to be giants; one might have thought that several of them were women hidden within masculine suits of armor. The first was named Francus, the second Polonius, the third Albion, surnamed Britannia, the fourth Lara of Castille, the fifth Ottavien the Lombard, the sixth Redbeard the Teuton, otherwise known as Teutonia, the seventh Pandeme, born in Esclavonia. Like good companions who have nothing to fear from one another, they extended their limbs on the thick grass, their eyelids closed and heavy, without suspicion, not even on the alert, all sown into the breastplates, clad in coats of mail, coiffed in iron helmets—but their swords were at their sides, espoused to them, dormant themselves, watching in their stead. Meanwhile, their unmuzzled dogs, good harriers, were also sleeping at their feet, along with strong hunting falcons.

Over their heads, the night sowed stars. The wan moon emerged from the clouds to gaze at those great torpid bodies, and took them for brothers of Endymion, or the seven conductors of David’s Chariot. Many nocturnal moths played in their hair; many night-birds—barn owls, long-eared owls and ospreys—sheltered in their bosoms or their loose helmets. Then the daylight covered them with its incarnadine cloak, and dazzling sunlight was for them what darkness was.

Soon, nothing seemed so beautiful as to sleep the sacred slumber of the king. Everyone wanted to imitate him. The most beautiful women came to find Merlin; after Genièvre, there was Iseult of the white hands, Sigune, sister of Amfortes,143 Brunissende and Orbance the angelic;144 for fear of making too much noise, they had take care to remove their horses’ iron shoes.

“At least,” they said to him, “you’ll watch over us; if you give us our word, we truly won’t be afraid.”

“Sleep without fear,” Merlin replied to them.

And Floramie, the fiancée of Titurel, Amide, nicknamed Héliabelle and unparalleled Hélène with the mournful heart 145 said: “We trust you, Seigneur. When the moment comes, wake us up faultless; we’re very early risers.”

“Word of an Enchanter! I’ll wake you up at the propitious moment. Sleep your magic slumber.”

And all those who had been esteemed the most charming at Arthus’ court went to sleep under the stars, in caves, on the moss or on beds of leaves, in order to be ready more quickly when the morning call came. One had her hands clasped over her bosom, the other had them stuck to her body; this one had her head on a granite pillow that she molded at whim, that one preferred marble because of its virginal whiteness, another porphyry. All had taken thick scarlet shrouds because of the nocturnal wind, against which no roof protected them.

Thus, although Merlin had not done exactly what he wanted, he nevertheless conserved his worldly renown as an enchanter. “After all,” he said to himself, “are not dreams worth as much as life? I can’t, it’s true, in spite of my good will, preserve Arthus’ real empire, but I have given him the empire of dreams in its stead. Who knows whether that might not be the true one?”

Those reflections were only an artifice on the Enchanter’s part to conceal his impotence from himself. How far he was from the ingenuity of his early years! He was beginning to pay himself with empty words. For the first time, he failed to be honest with himself, instead of recognizing that he was no longer what he had been. What irreparable consequences that first failure has had, alas!