BOOK TWENTY-TWO: FELICITY! FELICITY!

As he took possession of his sepulcher, Merlin made his joyous reentry even into the remotest provinces of that subterranean realm. He imposed upon himself the task of commencing the day by visiting his mute companions, the dead; and he maintained them in a radiant serenity that might have excited the jealousy of the living.

They’re my guests, he thought. I’m their guardian; they’re confided to me. Who will take care of them, if not me?

And like a host anxious for the slightest concerns of those sleeping under his roof, who does not rely on his servants, Merlin maintained the dead in flourishing health, by excavating vast galleries over their heads through which the matinal air of eternal auroras was engulfed; he brought crystalline, bubbling waters near to them, which bathed them perpetually with the silvery eco of uncreated springs.

If one of them had an open wound, he cured it incontinently by means of a balm that he cultivated himself in his funereal garden; and the injury, even if it was in the heart, closed without the sleeper waking up.

By I don’t know what—the visage, the countenance, the attitude—he recognized those whose heads were still burdened by terrestrial cares; he raised them up in his own hands and replaced them, appeased on beds of moss.

To those who woke up exclaiming; “Where am I?” he replied: “Under my guard. You’ve woken up too soon. Great Arthus is still asleep.”

If one of the dead began, by chance, to doubt his immortality, our Enchanter scolded him roundly. To remind him of it, he set down next to him a cup full to the brim, which was never drained, along with a crown of carbuncles that shone in the darkness. And all of their faces took on a majestic peace that they had never known, and were also more beautiful, with a beauty more correct than that in the visible world.

At the same place in the sepulcher there were also entire nations prematurely buried, of which he took the greatest care. Each of them reposed on an elevated platform, paneled with gold and perfumed with the scents of his orchard. Sparkling diamonds expelled the darkness from those regions. Neither decline nor corruption approached Merlin’s guests. The worm of the sepulcher never entered into those dwellings.

Next to the buried peoples he had placed perfumed garments of linen and silk, some of them red, in accordance with habits, tastes and national costumes of each, in order that at the first signal they would be able to get dressed, and that none of them would be stopped by the fear of confronting the sun in the nudity of body and spirit.

There were even black horses in vast stables paved with mosaics, with smooth manes hanging down to their knees, all caparisoned in gold and scarlet, and chariots prepared in order that the nations, their leaders and their good servants could launch themselves forward more rapidly on the great day of awakening.

Sometimes, though, they mistook the dawn. In the utmost depths of their brazen sleep, can you see peoples getting up slowly and sadly, their eyes open and staring, charged with a leaden veil, like somnambulists? Look! There they go, emerging wanly from their couches. Can you see them putting on coats of mail, lacing spurs, setting baldric around their waists, brandishing swords, beating their shields, causing banners to flutter? Where are they now? Blades in hand in the darkness, they are going to mount up; they bump into one another. Their eyes are open and staring, but cannot see.

No cry emerges from their mouths; no clarion has sounded. The obscurity augments their fury. What subterranean combats they deliver, far from the daylight, blind, unknown, fratricidal, of which no poet has ever sung!

Visors lowered to augment the darkness, heart-sick, they do not hear the clash of their moist blades. Woe! Weep, my eyes, your cruelest tears. They slip in their vermilion blood; their eyes are open, but cannot see!

From no matter how far away he hears them, Merlin hastens. He has raised his hazel-branch. Immediately, breathless, they all return to their couches beneath their tombstones. Again, the night and the silence extend around them, and the truce of the dead is no longer broken by anyone. Weep, my eyes, your cruelest tears. Their eyelids are closed now.

In the labyrinth of the subterranean kingdom, can you hear a muffled groaning, like a man buried alive, whimpering? The man who lets that plaint escape is lying on his back; his breast rises and lowers alternately; with it trembles Mount Etna, which is crushing him and serves as his sepulchral stone.

As soon as the noise of Merlin’s footsteps reaches him, he holds his breath momentarily in order to listen more carefully; then, turning his head effortfully in the direction from which help is coming, he says in a cavernous voice:

“You who seem to be the master of these subterranean regions—so many roads are known to you—and who, doubtless, have never seen those whom the sun illuminates, tell me whether the name of Enceladus has ever reached your ears, or whether they have succeeded in burying it with me. See how I am crushed unjustly beneath this ardent mountain. Meanwhile, above my head, on the summit shaded by pines, among the torrents of cooled lava, the Cyclops of Sicily, in order to mock me, is making his song and his pipe resonate night and day, all the way to the depths of the sea.; and the bounding flocks, and the sonorous forests, agitate their tresses; the cities of men fill up with sound, without a care for my pain—me, who carries all of them in my panting breast!”

“Be patient, good Enceladus,” Merlin replied to him. “I recognize you by the mountain that is crushing you. I too carry in my breast mountains of dolor and forgetfulness. I have overturned them all by a great effort of my heart, so effectively that I’m free, as you see, in his subterranean empire, which is my heritage; it will be the same for you, if you maintain serene hope.”

At these words, the worthy Enceladus felt consoled. Viviane wiped his brow, streaming with the sweat of the dead. Twice, he shook his head, and it shook the hills, the blue-tinted promontories, and the cities seated on his knees. His entire face lit up with a somber gleam of joy, as in the morning of his combat against the great gods. At the same time, he made a signal with his eyes and eyebrows, to indicate in the distance one of his companions.

Without interrogating him, Merlin raised his lamp in that direction; he perceived, at the place where its radiance was reflected, as the darkness fled, a man standing up, immobile—except that his shoulders and head were curbed, like those of men unloading a ship in the port of Marseilles. Blood was gushing from his forehead under the burden that was crushing him, and that dew was falling like rain all around him. With more impatience than his companion, he started shouting in an oppressed voice: “Hurry, if you’re coming to relieve the shoulders of Atlas. I’m weary of carrying the world. It wouldn’t take much for me to let it fall at my feet, even if Nemesis were to lash me eternally with his whip.”

“Atlas,” Merlin said to him, “I will take your burden on my shoulders, but only for an hour. In fact, you’re maintaining the equilibrium poorly. Too many tilting States are going to collapse, if I don’t come to your aid. See how you’re inclining to that side, and how unsteady your foot is. Poor colossus, get your breath back for a while, and slake your thirst from this cup; it was given to me by Arthus, and it’s full of the same wine that intoxicated Lancelot.”

The sad Titan who was carrying the old world smiled, and his eyes devoured the beverage in advance. After having held out his silver-plated cup to him, Merlin took the world from Atlas’ shoulders and placed it on his own. But he was not oppressed by it and would not consent to be bowed down. His head, especially, remained straight, raised toward the heavens, so that he resembled a joyful grape-gatherer who, after having filled his basket, is carrying his provision of grapes to the press. Even then he was a hundred times more carefree than grape-gatherers usually are.

“You see, friend,” he said to Atlas, who was still holding the cup to his lips, long after having emptied it, “it’s with the mind that I’m carrying the world, not with the body, so that my shoulders are not overburdened; neither the muscles nor the tendons of the arms are fatigued in any way, and the stance of the feet is controlled. Do the same in your turn, and the burden of the universe will certainly be lighter. But above all, debonair Titan, prevent from falling the peoples that you almost tipped over by holding them so low, faces to the ground. Here, imitate me, and stop whining.”

“I’ll try, Merlin,” Atlas replied, that brief moment’s respite having restored his strength—for he had sat down, his body curled up, on one of the boundary-markers of chaos, which chanced to be covered with moss in that place.

Having taken some nourishment and slaked his thirst, sufficiently rested, restored in his speech and relieved in his heart, with his head straighter and his feet steadier, his knees better braced, his arms tauter, his hands firmer and, above all, his mind clearer, his soul more determined, his hope renewed and his imagination enriched, he took the world once again on his broad shoulders; and you would have thought that he had never carried it for a single day, so fresh was his vigor.

In fact, the whole earth felt the Titan’s encouragement and pleasure. Those who had felt closest to the abyss were encouraged, without knowing why. Many of those who were on the brink fell irrevocably into the gulf, and equilibrium was thus restored.

For as long as Merlin was within sight of Atlas he turned round continually to inform and encourage him.

“Good, Atlas! Courage, my Titan! You’re leaning back a little too much. A little further forward, I tell you. Come on, then, old giant! Oh, now you’re falling back into your old error...”

Already, however, these objurgations were lost in the distance of the sepulcher. Atlas, left alone, could no longer hear them.

III

That is how Merlin consoled the disenchanted worlds from the depths of the tomb, with the result that the sepulcher, which had previously been the scarecrow of humans, became their support and their joy. So pilgrimages, whether of entire peoples or mere individuals, were only to be expected. It even happened, many a time, that the Enchanter was importuned by the indiscreet appeals of the living—for he was then snatched from a reverie into which his entire soul was plunged, or a stroll beneath the sacred shade, or his chess game, which he no longer had any scruple about winning, since Viviane’s brow had settled into eternal serenity.

He never preferred his pleasure to the repose of the living, however, and never made them wait when their voices appealed to him. As you can imagine, because of that, he never knew in his sepulcher the ennui or monotony that trail idleness after them. After having been interrupted by the petty passions, the common bonds, the malicious gossip and even by the sincere or exaggerated dolors of the living, he came back, with a new felicity, to the place where his beloved was waiting.

Theirs was not, therefore—understand this—an indolent existence. That is what it is necessary not to forget; otherwise, the entire moral of my story might be lost. Consoling worlds is not an unimportant occupation, and that was my hero’s employment. Only afterwards came the long relaxations on the banks of springs, the semi-slumbers, the amorous whispers—in sum, everything that Mohammed has falsely promised his believers and that Merlin alone has tasted thus far, because he alone has merited it.

From the height of his balcony, between the eighth and twelfth hour, he regularly proffered his prophecies to the Eagle. He had the feeling that he was doing good, but in secret, it must be said, he quietly enjoyed his superiority over the living. As for other beings, he did not see any who could command him. That solitary joy had turned to pride.

It was interrupted, but only for one day. This is how it happened.

Viviane was spinning at her window, and dropped her spindle, which it amused her to hold and move back and forth over the abyss. She was gazing, at that moment, at black shadows that were reflected in the ripples of deep waters. When she hauled in the thread, she no longer found the spindle. Who had taken it? She leaned further over, and thought she saw a being with extended wings gliding over the somber lake. Perhaps it was Merlin’s father passing by chance through that remote region in search of his son, tracing long circles, like a hawk in quest of its prey.

Imagine, if you can, Viviane’s amazement, alarm and terror. Until then she had believed that she was alone with Merlin in his immense tomb; she had never seen a winged angel, a seraph, or any of the inferior beings that populate the Christian heavens. She lowered her long veil over her head and withdrew from the balcony. Unsteady on her feet, she went to rejoin her companion, and I swear to you that the warbler that has just perceived a merlin with its wings spread, and hides in the hedge of an orchard, would give a very feeble idea of Viviane’s fear when she hid her face in Merlin’s bosom.

“What’s happened?” he exclaimed. “Who has been able to offend or threaten you, my better half? If you haven’t found immutable peace here, where can we go in search of it?”

Viviane told him what she had just discovered. Immediately, he thought of his father, and felt gripped by terror himself at the idea that the King of Hell had found a way into his retreat.

“It might be an angel gone astray, trying to find a way out.”

“What is an angel?” asked Viviane.

He told her. Again she exclaimed: “So we’re not alone, even in the sepulcher! Where can we flee?”

“Beyond death. I sense that I have the power.”

And, seeing Viviane’s fear increasing, he feigned a confidence that he did not feel. Doubtless the stranger had not perceived her, withdrawn into the shadows of the tomb. Why, then, be frightened? They would not take a single step outside the marble hall of the funereal tower. Who would dare to attack them in that redoubt? Not even the prince of terrors.

In spite of these words, and others of the same sort, anxiety had entered into their dwelling. A vague terror was mingled with their sweetest joys. At the slightest breath of wind that blew in the courtyards or the alabaster alcoves, Viviane turned round and shivered. She thought she heard a rustle of silken wings. But what they feared did not arrive, and they ceased to think about it; and forgetfulness restored their former serenity, so much improvidence is there among human beings, even among enchanters.

As soon as people had learned that it was possible to converse with Merlin through the tomb, adulations, venal promises, devious offerings, overt seductions, disguised gifts and smiles were all put to use to tempt and persuade him to return to the earth.

When the initial crowd had dissipated slightly he glimpsed, confusedly, a courtier named Gauvain,157 who had been delegated to approach him by all that still remained of the old world.

“Can you hear me, Master Merlin?” asked the knight, making his sours resonate at the base of the tower.

“Very clearly, Messire Gauvain.”

“And I can perceive your ceremonially embroidered mantle.”

“Men of the court, will you never see anything but appearances?”

“How, then, were you, the wisest of men, able to fall into this ambush?

“Because, Gauvain, I was foolish enough to love someone other than myself.”

“Is it necessary to despair of seeing you again in the vast halls of King Arthus?”

“I am retained here by a bond that I would not break even if I could.”

“What happiness can you have in that tomb?”

“My happiness, Gauvain, is greater than you think. It is that of struggling against injustice, of being submerged in Erebus and never crying: ‘Pity!’”

“But what will become of the knights, the barons and the people of the court without Merlin?”

“Let them sleep. I can do nothing for them.”

The knight Gauvain carried this response to the small number of barons who remained awake and standing in the tottering ruins of their castles.

As soon as the messenger was perceived in the distance the barons and courtiers called out from the height of the towers: “Is Merlin coming back?”

“He can’t come back,” the messenger replied.

All of them shed torrents of tears.

“We can clearly see,” they murmured, “that our hour has come. We should have understood that when the noble Arthus fell into his magical slumber.”

On which each of them withdrew; the courtyards became deserted, and even the ruins disappeared. All that remained anywhere was the occasional palace porter to say to passers-by: “Look! This is all that remains of noble Arthus. Everything finished thus when the powerful Merlin disappeared.”

The news that Merlin’s harp had resounded reached Jacques’ ears on the fairground performers’ stage. Although he was a trifle deaf, or at least hard of hearing, he distinctly heard the strings resonate himself at the moment when, after having buckled on his bread-porter’s sword, he went running in response to the screams of Sister Anne to assault Bluebeard.

The blood rose to his face again. Without telling anyone, he left his companions there; drawn by the desire to hear his master’s voice again, he hastened his steps to arrive at the foot of the funereal tower—but he dared not present himself until he was sure that the last courtiers had gone and that he would be alone, face to face, with the Interred.

Although he had not said anything yet, Merlin had already shivered at the approach of his servant, and, forgiving him for the thousandth time, magnanimous tears flooded his eyes, he had resolved in advance to keep quiet about Jacques final infidelity, fearing in his infinite bounty that the merited reproaches might be too bitter if they emerged from the tomb.

“Darn it! My master ensepulchered!” cried Jacques, sobbing.

“What, Messire Jacques,” replied Merlin, gently. “Are you still talking in patois?”

“Where are you, my dear Master?”

“Here.”

“I can’t see you.”

“Don’t try, my friend; content yourself with hearing me.”

“Speak louder,” Jacques replied, cupping his hand around his ear.

“Know, friend, that my sole displeasure in this place is having to abandon you to your own sagacity. Your education, which I had attempted, is scarcely begun. Mistrust false enchanters, Jacques; they will come in large number, my son, and seek to exploit your weaknesses. They will promise to nourish you better than I did, but it will only be a lure. If you often had a hard life and bitter bread with me, it was because the times were bad. But I loved you from the bottom of my heart, and with a little patience, you would have seen better days. Oh, how I tremble to see you delivered to your own resources. At least, my son, don’t fail to come to consult me here, every time your occupations permit. Don’t attempt anything in the world without seeking my advice. You’ll always find me as you’ve known me; the tomb, my dear friend, hasn’t changed me at all. Provided that you follow my advice exactly, point by point, there’s no need to despair of your self-sufficiency.”

“Master,” Jacques replied, “what kind of life can you lead in this tomb? Is it not too narrow for you?”

“Not at all. I’ve never been so free in all my life.”

“Are you not lying on a hard surface there?”

“Not at all; my bed is soft and better prepared than when you made it yourself.”

“Are you not suffering there from cold and ice?”

“No.”

“Or heat?”

“Even less.”

“And mosquitoes?”

“Not at all.”

“Do you endure thirst there?”

“None.”

“But hunger?”

“On the contrary; I’m fully sated. Don’t ever believe, my friends, that hunger and thirst are the principal occupations of the dead, as they are of the living. There will be too much risk of our never seeing one another again if you don’t keep a firmer hold on the information and, if I dare say so, the examples that I gave you in the kingdoms of Spain, not to mention elsewhere. You’ve often seen me nourish myself on nothing but mulberries and a few other berries, and I was happy. If I could do that when I was with you on earth, what can I not tolerate today? Don’t worry any more, my friend, about my nourishment; it would even content you.”

As he was speaking, Turpin and Prester John arrived; they knelt down, and Merlin saluted them with his hand; without interrupting himself, he recommended his servant to them tenderly: “There he is, friends; I bequeath him to you, for your share of the heritage. Sustain him. He’s so weak, in spite of his vigorous muscles. Above all, enlighten him. He’s so short-sighted that I fear that he might become completely blind.”

Both swore that they would do their best to assist Jacques, still orphaned.

“We can’t replace you, Merlin,” they said. “To hope so would be vanity. Don’t worry, though. We possess nothing that is not his, in the spiritual as well as the material sense. Adieu! And may peace be with you in your sepulcher!”

With these words, Prester John stood up in order to bless the immense tomb. Turpin, on both knees, said his prayers.

After that farewell, Jacques, his heart slightly less anguished, returned to take his place at Arthus’ bedside. What was his astonishment to see that the king had disappeared!

“Where has he gone?” he said. He reproached himself a thousand times over for not having appointed a watchman to guard him.

Doubtless, he thought, unless the wolves have devoured him, King Arthus has awakened; he’s asked for something to eat or drink and, not finding anyone to serve him, has got up. God knows where he’ll have gone in search of subsistence.

With that he set out to look for him the surrounding area, searching the meadows, the ravines, the vicinity of the ponds and marshes, and the ground, not neglecting woods, thickets, hedges, ditches, orchards, clearings and tree-stumps beating the bushes and peering into everything.

He eventually discovered the monarch, on the sacred isle of Avalon, more deeply asleep than before, at the entrance to a grotto from which a spring emerged, suddenly swollen my snow-melt. The king of kings had encountered that obstacle and had not been able to get over it.

It was there that Jacques resumed his long vigil. But of all those who went past that place on their way to work, there were few who did not turn round to mock him. They said to him: “What are you doing, poor Jacques? What are you waiting for there? Have you lost your mind, watching over a dead man?”

“He’s not dead,” the good man replied. “He’s going to wake up one day.”

The mockery of rustics and townspeople took away his courage to say any more; without knowing what to add, he began to weep. Those solitary tears, viewed from Heaven, redeemed his infidelities.

When the world had finished drawing away, Merlin started to reflect; and every day, in his tomb, he grew in wisdom. “Even in the bosom of love,” he said to himself, “A regular occupation is necessary; if not, the heart devours itself, and the flame is consumed by flame.” That was especially necessary at the times when Viviane crossed the threshold that he could not cross. What could he do during those mortal hours of isolation?

The idea occurred to him of writing in his sepulcher. And, in fact, it was thus that he became for the French what the sage Hermes had been for the Egyptians. For he composed in his tomb the sketch and the plan of all the famous books for which French authors would later attributed the merit to themselves. The walls of his tomb were marble and granite; he covered those vast walls with his writing, and if many authors have acquired an immortal glory, let us confess that their difficulty has not been great, since the best of them had only to copy the works of Merlin, silently engraved by him on the rock that served him as a tomb.

Let us also recognize, here, the character of our Enchanter. Although he could hardly imagine that any human eye would ever see those works buried with him, he nevertheless devoted the greatest care to them, as if they had been made for submission to the judgment of humans. The truth is that he worked for the satisfaction of his own conscience, not out of vanity.

In any case, finding great difficulty in contenting himself, when one of his works was finished, he took Viviane into the room in which he had written it, in beautiful cuneiform characters, somewhat similar to those at Persepolis, if not better molded. There he made her read it slowly, weighing every word, and every syllable, ever ready to defer to her advice.

Before she had spoken, he was the most modest and the most submissive of beings. Once Viviane had approved the work, nothing in the world could have led Merlin to change a single line.

“I don’t know,” he said, whether these works will ever be perceived by humans. I’ve written them for you by the light of the enchanted lamp, sand truly, I haven’t spared the oil. If they’ve amused Viviane for a single instant; if they’ve made her forget the abode of death, Merlin is abundantly recompensed.”

Then, the next day, if it rained or snowed—for that sometimes happened, but without any breath of wind—or if he were alone, he began again to engrave another work, so determinedly that all the columns of the vaults, the florid pinnacles, the door-panels and the plinths ended up being filed—and it was thus, and not otherwise, that all the works about which the French boast to other nations were composed, in an eternal serenity.

Good authors, full of submission to the enchanter, had only to copy and transcribe, on parchment or on paper, what Merlin had written on stone; and the only reproach that I have to address to them is that of having disguised the larceny more than is perhaps appropriate. In the end, though, the earth reveals its secrets.

Bad authors, on the contrary, carried away by a puerile pride, have wanted to do otherwise than the Enchanter, being men of noise and smoke, who would have thought themselves dishonored if they had only been my hero’s copyists. And although they have certainly had knowledge of his works—I don’t know how; perhaps by virtue of some infidelity on Jacques’ part—they have mixed so many inventions of their own heads into them that they have succeeded in spoiling the original, with the result that their vanity has doomed them.

At any rate, every time you find an immortal page, say boldly: “That’s pillaged from Merlin.” Every time you find a work that is affected, or ridiculous, or simply insipid, also say: “That’s what comes of wanting to correct the Enchanter.”

The first work that he attempted, as soon as his eyes had got used to the dazzling light of his lamp, was in verse. He filled three hundred and forty-five rooms with it, from the floor to the vault. It was a great poem in which he related, with a relaxed head, everything that he remembered about Arthus’ court and his knights. He wrote those poems in the morning, in a single breath, without crossing anything out. Viviane, who wanted to encourage him, refrained from telling him that they were a trifle overlong.

“It’s a rough draft,” Merlin said, adding. “I’ll develop it...”

“Others,” he resumed, perhaps with too much conceit, “will be praised more highly than me for detached pieces; their versification will be more applauded than mine. Yet others will carry off the prizes for songs and odes, although I too have occasionally knocked on the door of hymns, closed since the worthy Pindar, but they will find it difficult to refuse me the honor of having taken on great subjects, composed vast ensembles, followed the threads of immense labyrinths, borne the burden of bold inventions—in sum, attempted the paths that demanded not a momentary Pindaric flutter but an indefatigable wing, to travel without wearying the whole epic field. All that I fear, Viviane, on reflection, is that our French people have little taste for vast and noble compositions—in truth the most difficult aspect of our art—in which earth and heaven are mingled. Their windswept brains have difficulty embracing such vast horizons, and if my works are revealed to them some day, I foresee that these poems will be the ones they esteem the least, or even that they will let all the honor of them be stolen by other peoples, for whom, on my word, I have not intended them.”

And you will notice here that none of Merlin’s presentiments have been more fully confirmed, since the French, while possessing Merlin’s poems of chivalry in stone and in tablets of granite, have allowed the best of them to be stolen, under their noses, by Ariosto and Cervantes, an Italian and a Spaniard, without the slightest desire for reprisals.158

The thought that his best works would be misunderstood by his own people, by his nearest and dearest, almost saddened Merlin’s soul more than once. But he would have judged himself unworthy even of one of Viviane’s smiles if he had given access in his heart to sadness engendered by vanity.

“I’m not writing,” he whispered to himself in subterranean places, “to make a noise, or even for renown. Otherwise, I ask you, what would have prevented me from doing it before the light of the sun was taken away from me? I’m writing for the truth; it can see me in this gulf and judge me. Let’s continue, then, as if we had the applause of worlds in our favor.”

With that, Merlin, indefatigably, got back to work, smiling; and you can take it for granted that he quite forgot that he was buried.

When that work was finished, he started on two others that were to chase away the melancholy of his tomb forever. That day, the Enchanter was perfectly joyful. Everything succeeded as he wished. He wanted to call those two works Gargantua and Pantagruel.159

“Why those names?” Viviane asked.

“In memory of two good companions I left on the earth.”

Furthermore, those two individuals had grown prodigiously, as happened naturally to all the shadows that passed through his sepulcher. Their laughter resounded like that of a Cyclops in a cavern, or like the whinnying of a centaur drunk on wild grapes; and it is a fact that, during the composition of that work, the centaur guarding his herds came several time to ask: “What are you making there, Seigneur Merlin?” and that Merlin replied: “A book to rejoice the human heart,” on which the centaur said, with a plaintive whinny: “Put in a good word too for the centaurs and the poor monsters eaten away by melancholy in the depths of solitudes,” to which Merlin replied: “Don’t worry—I won’t forget anyone; just bring me a bunch of those ripe grapes reddening there on the vine.”

And I beg you to believe that in that lapidary work, in which all creation is gripped by mad laughter, there was then none of that monkish ordure that has been added subsequently, by the hand of the living, to Gargantua and Pantagruel. It was then the drunkenness of a sage purified by the sepulcher.

In any case, even if he had wanted it, Viviane would have been opposed to anything deceptive, begging for human applause by flattering their impurities and ignominies. “Imitate the ingenuity of the Cyclops by all means,” she said, “but don’t descend to the level of the gluttonous monk.” Then their naïve laughter resonated all the way to the center of the globe. Even Hell heard that laughter several times, without knowing where it was coming from.

On another occasion, it happened that an ant got into the tomb. Those creatures are curious. It was followed by a bee with a beautiful golden corsage, and the Enchanter heard them distinctly conversing between themselves.

“Isn’t it a great injustice that the age Merlin is only occupied with humans? Is there only wisdom among them?”

Such were their bitter comments. Those simple words caused Merlin to reflect at length. He profited from everything; he felt the spur. The tiniest insects, with ruby yes, instructed him in his art.

“They’re right,” he admitted, privately. “It’s high time to repair such injustice.”

That simple circumstance, which someone else would not even have noticed, caused him immediately to compose and write a first book of fables.

Never, it must be admitted, had his verses been more subtle or more natural, not to mention that they did not recoil before any stride. Sometimes they were grandiose, as if they spanned the whole world, and suddenly they were marching as if on the feet of ants or crane-flies, or launching themselves upwards and perching, as if on the membranous wings of cicadas. Sometimes there was a breath of spring, like that of the great forests in the month of May, sometimes a brief, impetuous note like that of a quavering blue-tit on the edge of its nest.

In brief, Merlin became the inventor of a fortunate mixture of great and small verses that dispelled monotony, marvelously imitating the harmonious confusion of all beings: the eternal dialogue of the elephant and the mite, the star and the pearl.

“What do I hear?” exclaimed Viviane, who arrived just as they reached the conclusion. “It’s for me, most amorous of sages, that these verses are made? Repeat them, friend. Murmur them again. Confess that you were thinking about me while engraving them around that colonnette.” And she kissed Merlin on the lips.

It must be admitted that Merlin, true poet as he was, had only been thinking about his subject. He was entirely penetrated by the honeyed scent of flowers, the sagacity of ants. That’s what he was celebrating at that moment—but he did not have the courage to disillusion Viviane, nor to lie overtly. Without replying, they looked at her with an expression that meant: All my thoughts are inclined toward you.

He never obtained more pleasure from anything than from those little works, which were born without difficulty and almost without reflection beneath his fingers. He had soon composed a hundred books of them. And there was an unprecedented joy, in almost all the worlds, when the beings who were the most unknown and the most ungraspable, by virtue of their smallness, and the most unnamed, learned by chance that they had their poet.

“We too shall finally have our immortality, then,” said the ephemera.

“Do you know,” said the butterflies, “that that glory, of a hundred colors and a thousand eyes, was really due to us?”

“I’d almost despaired, for having waited so long,” replied a gnat. “I’ve worn away one of my two wings.”

“I’ve almost lost my voice,” replied a melancholy bullfinch.

“Itys! Itys! Itys!” added the nightingales. “Something told us that winged genius would finally have its day. That’s why we never lost courage, even in the middle of the night, when no one was listening to us and the whole world seemed to be asleep.”

Thus, that work of Merlin’s received the applause of all the worlds, with the exception of a few serpents with necks swollen with envy, who insulted it with their hisses. Our La Fontaine had the intelligence to copy Merlin word for word and to cite him. I believe, however, that in the Enchanter’s work humans did not appear so frequently, and every creature had retained its native language more accurately. I believe it, I said—I wouldn’t swear to it.

The season having changed, Merlin invented a host of other works. When the thought of his father suddenly came back to him in dark and stormy days, he composed vast tragedies and declaimed them in a sinister voice that was further swelled by the echoes of the sepulcher. The French extracted a few tirades therefrom, but they left the greater and more pathetic part, the part in which death itself seemed to reveal its secrets; none of them dared follow Merlin into that abyss. And that was where they were greatly mistaken, for they only took, so to speak, half of Merlin into their tragedy. That is why it still seems lame among them, no matter what effort they once made to reconcile themselves on that point with the Enchanter, so true is it that wanting to correct him is the most imprudent of human vanities.

Perhaps because of the distance there was between him and the living, only any longer able to glimpse him through ostentatious deaths, he also exaggerated the truth in the tragic slightly. But he grasped the natural again in the comic, to the point of surpassing himself; not being able, either, to tolerate virtue being duped. While he loved humans, he saw better than anyone else in the world how perfectly ridiculous they are.

“Their ridiculousness,” he was accustomed to saying, “is so obvious, so blatant, that it’s impossible to forget it once one has caught a glimpse of them.”

He amused himself innocently, therefore, in counterfeiting the vices of the living, their grotesque ugliness, their intolerable hypocrisies, their vile avarice, their hatred, their comical inability to enjoy any possession, their risible self-importance and, most of all, their pretentions.

“My God!” he cried. “How glad we are only to be able to see all that now from the distance of the tomb!”

Playfully, he made, in that fashion, an almost complete representation of human life, at least such as he remembered it. Make no mistake; you would have thought you were witnessing the reality. He even wanted to have his works performed, and built for that purpose a little stage lit by artificial light. For his part, though, he did not want a mask.

Never were such masterpieces seen, with the sole reservation that the declamation left something to be desired; Merlin’s was a trifle muffled, and Viviane’s a little eccentric. One sensed that death alone could have divine and published thus all the mysteries of life; and no less astonishing, after having laughed at the vices of the living, one was more inclined to pity them than hate them.

All those plays were engraved in granite, with predilection, by Merlin’s own hand, which also drew large masks on the capstones ornamenting the pillars, in order to give a better idea of the characters. It was there that Molière rediscovered them, all speaking, and he did not take the trouble to change anything about them, save for a few names and costumes, in order better to disguise the larceny.

In any case, it required nothing less than our Enchanter’s experience to unveil the secrets that humans were most skilled in hiding. Anyone else would certainly have failed, and without the oil that he renewed more than three times in the marvelous lamp, it would probably have been impossible for him to read, in the depths of hearts, so naturally were they filled with shadow of duplicity.

Meanwhile, Merlin had become pensive. He was afraid of becoming too serious; he relaxed in lighter works, frivolous in tone, among which were fairy tales, and Zadig, which he once engraved on a cameo of Viviane. What, Zadig? Yes, Zadig! Have I not said that Merlin was the son of the Incubus? How could his genius not have retained something of the paternal blood? It’s here that his genealogy was betrayed, with evidence. It’s even said that he subsequently borrowed his father’s claw to write Candide.

Admire, in that regard, my hero’s modesty, which never sought its recompense other than in the eyes of his heart’s beloved. As we have said, he wrote all these works in the shadows, leaving the glory of them to others, without claiming his share. He was very different in that regard from Hermes, who also composed, single-handedly, the works of the Egyptians, but who collected all their fruits, since no one on the banks of the Nile would have dared to steal his renown by copying his works and attributing the honor to himself—in contrast to what is done among us routinely and with impunity. The most intrepid thieves and plagiarists—the Rabelais, the Poquelins,160 the Voltaires and many others who only love in the marrow and substance of Merlin—are the most honored among us. Something assuredly as punishable as it is scandalous! What have they done, those illustrious authors, who have brazenly transcribed the writing of Merlin, being careful never to name him or cite him? Nothing that we could not do ourselves, in our turn—and I certainly see no greater shame for our nation and nothing that better demonstrates, as others say, its vanity and frivolity.

Furthermore, I suspect that even in this century, among our contemporaries, that depredation of Merlin’s works is continuing, without encountering any obstacles. I’m ready to denounce our men of prey pitilessly, unless they confess the plagiarism in advance and disarm justice by means of a prompt and generous confession. Even you, my brother, who are repairing the old tapestry of the history of France, I will not spare, unless you declare that, in the dead of night, entering like a hawk into Merlin’s sepulcher, you have stolen his finest thoughts.161

Many names celebrated until now would perish. I know that, but what does it matter? Even I—yes, even I—have often been tempted to steal from my own hero. I declare it; I admit it. It would have been easy for me, so frequent were my opportunities. What didn’t I do it? Because I feared being discovered pillaging a tomb. In consequence, a little timidity, and doubtless more than one error, as you, dear reader, have been able to perceive. That’s my confession. Make your own, I beg you, in good faith.

Why, anyway, be astonished that those works have easily delighted the world? A great marvel, in truth! First of all, they came from a professional enchanter. Consider that Merlin never had any lack of time; that meditation was much easier for him than for us; that he never worked for love of money or the need to make a living; that, in that regard, he had absolutely nothing to fear. So many favorable circumstances for weighing one’s ideas and one’s syllables at leisure! When will such favorable circumstances present themselves again? Probably never.

In addition, no need to flatter the taste, the depravity and the caprice of a reader—you, Reader, are the only exception—who might well never be encountered in such a remote place. He did not court generations who would, I dare say, seem somewhat ephemeral to him. He towered over his audience, or rather, never gave it a thought. Had he finished a work? No rest! He composed another, in an entirely different genre, glad a thousand times over of it had been able to disconcert Viviane, but maintaining her in perpetual surprise. And all that without effort, as a game. For what he feared most of all was the pedantic. Not to mention that so many magnificent or gracious works, which still nourish all the peoples today—an aliment that often replaces bread—have been put into the world in the midst of the most perfect serenity, like a gauntlet thrown down to the threat of the tomb.

Whoever you are, have no doubt that there still remains a great deal to pillage in that sepulcher. I can affirm it, having seen with my own eyes that quantity of works that I have been too conscientious to steal. But since the world gives me so little credit for that reserve, curse it! In future, I shall be less discreet—for age, it’s said, removes scruples—and I warn you now, honestly and solemnly, in order that, if necessary, you can post guards, spies, men-at-arms, bailiffs, policemen and halberdiers, if you still have any, to stand watch around the tomb.

If you so much as ask me irritating questions, I will even confess that the present work is entirely copied from one of Merlin’s columns, situated at the back of the peristyle, on the left as you enter the sanctuary. You’ll recognize it by the fact that it’s made of pure, flawless emerald. That confession, of course, shouldn’t be used against me. I’ve given an example here of a veracity that will, I fear, have far too few imitators.

Will plagiarists ever exhaust the profundities of that sepulcher? Will the day come when all the beauties it contains have been pillaged, to the very last line? I doubt it, having scanned at my ease the innumerable pages, stuck to one another in the most orderly fashion, like sheets of slate in the bosom of mountains. I estimate that all the scribes and pen-wielders in the land—they are, merciful God, more numerous nowadays than the grains of sand in the desert—working eighteen hours a day for twenty centuries would scarcely exhaust three quarters of the text, and that’s only the prose. “Is that credible?” you might say. I don’t know, but it’s a fact, and that’s enough for me. Do you see, then, what a single vision of love can accomplish in a tomb?

VII

Meanwhile, Turpin had retired to a bare mountain scattered with hyssop flowers, into the ruins of an old castle of rust-colored bricks, of which he had made a dwelling quite suitable for a man like him, accustomed, as I’ve said, to living amid foxes and eagles. He rarely went out of that refuge, and was beginning to feel a great pity for the world.

New generations passed rapidly at his feet, as dry and light and icy as winter leaves, about which he did not want to know anything. More often than not he did not even ask their names, or only did so in order to disfigure it at his whim when inscribing it in his illuminated book. So he hardly ever took the trouble to go down the spiral path to see their faces at close range. He knew that his master’s prophecies were being accomplished, slowly and irresistibly, and that was sufficient for him. As patient as before, but curbed by age, he wrote at distant intervals, in the same Gothic script, the little that he learned from the migratory birds, increasingly frightened by the collapse of peoples and things.

His ennui increasing and his hand trembling, he wrote entirely in abbreviations. For the death of a nation he put a cross, for that of an empire a dash, for that of a hero, such as the great Charles or Roland, a large dot. Often, he even erased that when people became too proud. Then nothing remain of an entire mutinous people but an ink-smudge.

Every day, at sunrise, Jacques brought him a bowl of milk, a little brown bread, and then chatted for a few minutes while searching the dew with the recluse.

“What news?” Turpin asked.

If Jacques had heard a leaf tremble or quiver in the wood, or the piping and tender voice of a goldfinch, iridescent on a black larch, he replied: “I’ve heard Arthus’ footsteps on a leaf. He’s going to wake up! He’ll come back tomorrow, accompanied by Merlin and Madame Viviane.”

When the next day arrived, Jacques reappeared with another item of news of the same kind.

Turpin refrained from dissuading him. “Let’s hope so,” he replied. “I know now that hope is more necessary to a man than bread.”

“And even more than ink,” added Jacques, putting water in the colossal inkwell.

“That’s true, my son. I’d never have believed it!”

In the meantime, the world became increasingly dull and morose.

VIII

In the same era, or shortly afterwards, Viviane gave birth to a child, who proved to be the most beautiful that had ever been seen, for he was more beautiful than the son of a summer dream. What should they call him? Twenty names were alternately proposed and defended: Formose, because of his beauty; Lazare, because of the sepulcher; and also the pet name of Almus, by which he had been saluted while still in his mother’s womb. It was the first quarrel in the sepulcher, neither of them wanting at first to give way to the other. Finally, they both yielded at the same time. They called him Merlin, after his father.

Then the nightingales that had nested in the tomb in order to hear Merlin’s harp at closer range began to sing next to the cradle, and these were the notes that they varied infinitely:

“Merlin’s child is born! Flowers and stars rejoice! He will be greater than his father!

“Leave him to grow in solitude; that is where his silvery voice will resound most clearly.

“He will be greater than his father. But we, faithful troupe, will always remember Merlin the Enchanter.”

He was the first infant born in a tomb, so I shall leave you to imagine how his parents made a fuss of him, in such a manner as to spare him all the bad impressions that a sepulchral environment might impart. Certainly, there was never so much joy under the open sky as appeared then in that subterranean place, the mere thought of which makes people shiver.

The good Merlin was radiant, and I have no need to say that he forgot his books and his harp in order only to occupy himself with the new-born. He took him on his knees, kissed him and said to him aloud, while rocking him: “Since I’ve been so easily able to accustom myself to the light of the tomb, I who saw the sun in all its glory, what will this child born in the sepulcher do? Assuredly, he’ll never regret what he has never seen.”

And it was an admirable thing to see that child growing older in the midst of the shadows of death, not even suspecting that there might be another world and another light.

At the first cry he uttered, humans were greatly astonished to hear an infant’s wails coming from underground. They gathered together and, summoning Merlin with the blast of a trumpet, said to him: “Seigneur Merlin, since when has the tomb given birth?”

Merlin replied: “Since I’ve been living in it.” Picking up his nursling, he carried him on to his balcony, from which he showed him to the people.

They could not see him, but they could hear his whimpering, similar to that of a fox-cub emerging from his den for the first time by night, and going to seek nourishment in a dovecot. They did not know whether to smile or be afraid.

Merlin, waving the rattle with which he appeased the new-born’s tears, reassured the timid. “Come on, good people, rejoice and have no fear! Can’t you hear the rattle? Since the child, who is barely two days old, can laugh and amuse himself in the tomb, must the place not be a hundred times more pleasant than you think?”

“It must be,” the replied, and sounded their bagpipes, their buffalo-horns and their sambucas. They struck their shields and rang all the bells. The noise of the corybants at the birth of Jupiter in the cavern in Crete was merely a cicada’s song by comparison.

Soon, Turpin came down from his mountain. “Is it true that the tomb has given birth?”

“Nothing is truer,” Merlin replied, for a second time. “See for yourself.”

“Have you baptized him?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Where?”

“In the river Ocean, which emerges from the earth before my threshold.”

In the meantime, Jacques had gone to fetch a few small birds that he nourished in a cage: blue-tits, linnets, yellowhammers, greenfinches, bullfinches and chaffinches. He offered them to the new-born and introduced them easily through a crack in the sepulcher. Merlin took them gently by the two wings and placed them at the child’s feet, who smiled his first smile at those bewildered creatures, unknown in the world where he was; and take my word for it that not a single day passed without there being a celebration in Merlin’s tomb.

If my hero’s education had been mixed, I dare say that his son’s was accomplished, but circumstances contributed to that. Is not education in the tomb the best of systems? No deadly examples to keep away, no imprudent speech or coarse language on the part of a crowd that cannot always be avoided; a silence that commands respect; hours that are slightly monotonous but nevertheless well filled. Perhaps a little too much curiosity with regard to invisible things; that’s the only inconvenience.

And it was a spectacle that would have delighted you, to see Viviane sitting on the ground, suckling that son of the tomb, hanging on to her teats. The good Merlin, standing next to her, looked at both of them with an infinite ecstasy. “That one, at least,” he said, “will escape the false enchanters. He won’t be stopped by the obstacles that have shackled me at every step, and which I’ve only half-vanquished. If my paternal instinct hasn’t blinded me strangely, he’ll go further than me, and without much difficulty; for after all, even though my career hasn’t been all that it promised to be, my works can’t fail to be useful to one who must bear my name. It’s always useful to have a father who has cleared a path for you. The future is infinitely easier.”

On hearing these words, Viviane could not help smiling, and that smile illuminated everything around her.

Veritably, Merlin would have liked his son never to hear mention of humans, or at least to delay it as long as possible. But how could that painful subject be avoided? When he conversed with the living, he could not entirely hide it from the child, who once asked him: “Father, who are you talking to?”

“With humans.”

“And what are humans?”

“Nasty shadows that pass by the foot of the wall and whisper for a moment, before disappearing.”

Another time, the child heard Viviane mention the sun. “What’s the sun?” he asked.

His father explained to him, awkwardly, that it was a small lamp that remained suspended for a few moments over the heads of humans.

“What! Their lamp doesn’t light them all the time, like ours?”

“No, my son. Half the time, it hides.”

“Oh Father, how sad that world must be!”

“That’s truer than you can imagine, my son.”

By means of that conversation and a few others of the same sort, he had no difficulty in giving Formose the saddest idea of the world of the living. Formose could scarcely imagine humans in any other way than by analogy with the bats that he had occasionally glimpsed fluttering and swooping around the enchanted lamp.

How profitable it would have been for you to listen to all the instruction that chills received from his parents! Soon, Merlin was able to wander with him in the forest. He had the centaur go with them, and the two of them taught the child to draw a bow and play the lyre, in which he succeeded marvelously. Then Viviane appeared unexpectedly, she taught him to collect the simples that cure wounds.

“What wounds?” asked the child.

“The wounds that cause death, my dear son.”

“Death! What’s that?”

“Immediately, Viviane and Merlin perceived that they had retained the language of the old world. They composed another, richer and more sonorous, and especially more winged. But often, whatever they did, they fell back into the old one, whose purest accent they had preserved. And thus they gave their beloved son a few vague obsolete ideas that they would have done better to hide from him forever.”

Meanwhile, the nightingales sang, in the silence of the sepulcher:

“Merlin’s child is born. Flowers and stars rejoice.

“Precious stones, sparkle in the necklace of the night.

“The child will be greater than his father; but we, faithful troupe, will always remember Merlin the Enchanter.”