by Edgar Quinet
AHASUERUS
What to do, or what not to do? I don’t know. Chaos is weighing upon my bosom.
MOB
A deplorable conclusion!
AHASUERUS
My entire heart is a wound. The slightest new pain awakes all of my past dolors. I can hardly stand up; wait, it’s a passing weakness.
MOB
Don’t hold it against me, at least. The truth, when it comes from a friend, will always produce that effect.
AHASUERUS
Look: my eyes are blinking; I can no longer see anything but darkness.
MOB
So much the better; night brings counsel. On that note, I’ll retire. Midnight’s chiming. It’s my usual hour. My duty is summoning me elsewhere. Your most humble servant, sir.
AHASUERUS
Listen to a prayer.
MOB
An order, you mean.
AHASUERUS
One more word.
MOB
Sorry to refuse; my moments are counted.
AHASUERUS
Just a second.
MOB
Impossible; my health would suffer.
XII.
MOB, alone
1.
Ha ha! Mob, if your crazy laughter gets hold of you, you’re lost, my dear, my favorite, my darling, bone of my bone. How dreary all these immortal spirits are! Is it conceivable? And yet, without them, how could one put a brave face on things? What a void! What tedium! What rigidity! What cold intimacy—with whom I ask you? Answer me! With less than nothing, with oneself…since you can’t do any better, at least let them distract you. Tears come to the eyes…tears, did I say? Thank God, it’s already too late to have any of them but the location.
2.
There, the comedy’s played; now for the tragedy. It’s getting late; what task before tomorrow. An empire’s standing; before daylight, it’s necessary that its head be bowed, that its limbs be splayed in accordance with my whim, one arm eastwards, another westwards, its heart in the sea. Let’s go, beautiful angel, it’s time. Spread your great black wings beneath your mantle. Put on your court clothes, your silken slippers, your long dress; your monogram embroidered on your sash would be very useful. Your blazon is indispensable too. There are grandeurs, you see, kings and kingdoms, that it’s necessary to dissect with dignity.
3.
My faithful wings are bearing me away…good…cities are trembling beneath my flight. Poor little ones, my shadow passing over is heavier than your walls, isn’t it? One more wing-beat, and I’ll be above the clouds. From here, believe me, the view is divine. The Ocean is like a whitening sea-shell, the land like a set of knucklebones. But the veritable viewpoint is higher still: the black sky, the horror of the void and a single drop of water, evaporating.
4.
At this distance, there’s joy in hearing the silence of the heavenly bodies. At closer range, the harmony of the spheres gets on my nerves. It’s more pleasing to listen to the lyre of infinity when its three strings are broken. Thought rises to the secret of the skies. Everything is counted by weight and measure. Everywhere, however, emptiness is superabundant. Zero is the sacred number. Everything rests on that. Its form is mysterious. It has neither beginning nor end. It grips without grasping. Without being, it appears; and the sphere of the worlds is a great zero that traces its emptiness in empty space.
5.
To makes something out of nothing is difficult, but everything comes from nothing; therein lies the true problem. From a memory take a shadow, from a shadow a thought, from a thought a dream, from a dream less than nothing, and in a nothing of which one is unaware, there lies life. Except that, thinking about it, the head splits. At that depth, ideas are clouded. Your reasoning turns to ashes, and I too would lose heart, if, fortunately, a false relic didn’t fill the place very well.
XIII.
RACHEL, singing
Don’t weep, God of the earth
If many siroccos
And many hurricanes
Whistle at you in anger.
BERTHE, Rachel’s friend
Where did you learn that song, Rachel? No one here knows it but you.
RACHEL
I’ve always known it, and I don’t recall where I learned it; from time to time, a few words of it come back to me, and I search for the others, but I can’t find them.
BERTHE
Yet another thing. So tell me, Rachel, has your fiancé asked for a lock of your hair?
RACHEL
Oh! Yes.
BERTHE
And have you given it to him?
RACHEL
A long time ago.
BERTHE
Then I’ll cut one too, for Albert—a long tress—and I’ll give him one with three strands, for I love him with all my heart, and would certainly give my life for him; but I wouldn’t want to act differently than everyone else.
RACHEL
That’s what you’ve always told me.
BERTHE
If you wanted, we could get married on the same day; yesterday, Albert was appointed professor of gymnastics. We’ve been waiting for that moment for five years, without expecting that it would ever arrive.
RACHEL
So you have nothing more to desire.
BERTHE
No, nothing in the world. If you knew how everything pleases me in our house, because of him, and how I find him in everything! On the roof, a stork has built its nest around the chimney, and that brings happiness. I’m attached to the little garden, and the roses he’s planted there, as much as to living things. All of his old furniture seems to have something to tell me about him; when I’m alone, I talk to them about him, without saying anything. You know the beautiful engraving of Strasbourg Cathedral that he gave me; I’ve nailed it to the wall facing my sewing table; every time I look up, that’s what I see. My crucifix is on the other side, and my room now resembles a little chapel where my life is spent thinking about God and him. Below my window there’s a honeysuckle cradle in the form of a heart. My heart never goes far anymore; without getting up, I can see my entire universe through the window.
RACHEL
You deserve that happiness.
BERTHE
Oh, it’s so easy to be happy, Rachel. If you only knew! Going out of the city together, across the bridge, on a summer’s day, gazing at one another in the waters of the Rhine; collecting wild roses from the hedgerow, and then making garlands of them to hang on the bedroom wall; singing while sewing; listening to the organ in church and, in the evening, the watchman’s trumpet; spending entire hours without saying anything; seeing a swallow building its nest by your window; preparing everything in the house when a neighbor visits you; watching over everything there, doing every day what one did the day before: that’s happiness, and you could have it if you wanted to.
RACHEL
We don’t ask for anything more for ourselves.
BERTHE
When you spend so long together, you and your fiancé, what do you talk about?
RACHEL
He tells me about his travels. He tells me the names of islands he has visited, how sad his heart was there; the shores of lakes, forests, heaths, battles, storms at sea, nights in the desert. I hang on his words, as on enchanted wings; when he’s finished, it seems to me that the music of the angels has fallen silent; I can’t help weeping, and he wipes away my tears.
BERTHE
His sentiments seem very honest, and he only has good intentions, I believe; it’s astonishing, however, that he hasn’t talked about marrying you.
RACHEL
Since the day when he met me with you, I’ve known that nothing in the world can ever separate us. We’re more necessary to one another than the air we breathe. As soon as my eyes no longer behold him, I suffer, my heart becomes heavy, my head empty.
BERTHE
He ought, however, to act other than he does; a thousand rumors are running around the town on his account; he does noth
ing to deny them. That compromises him; if I were to believe Albert, I ought no longer to be going out in the street with you or him.
RACHEL
My dear Berthe, don’t avoid me completely. What was I without him, before him? Tell me. I looked at the sky without love, and the earth without desire. On hearing the sound of bells, I dreamed that I had fallen from I don’t know what abode, which I regretted without knowing it. When I passed by a stream, its water said to me: “Can you see, Rachel? I’m flowing, I’m flowing toward a land of love to which you shall never return.” If I raised my eyes, I always found a cloud that whispered to me: “Can you see, Rachel? I’m flying, I’m flying in the sky, higher than you’ll ever rise again.” If I went into a church, I forgot my prayers at the door. On the edge of my lips I murmured empty words, and my head became exhausted searching for names I could no longer find. Now, on the contrary, I pray with delight for him; there are moments, when the organ is playing, when it’s heaven that surrounds me.
BERTHE
You see? What I don’t like about him is that one never sees him in church. He’s reputed to be a great heretic.
RACHEL
But I’ve seen him hide his eyes in his hands and sob on the day when, by chance, we were walking toward the large crucifix at the entrance to the city. His pain was so great that he was obliged to lean on me, and he didn’t say another word to me that evening.
BERTHE
Also consider that his status is above yours. Often, these sons of princes amuse themselves with us, with fine words that make us cry; they’re playing, but for us it’s death.
RACHEL
He’s not playing, be sure of that. If you heard how he can put his entire life into a single sentence…my God! It seems to me that I’ve always known him; it’s so easy to distinguish the voices of a person who loves us and one who’s deceiving us. No, he’s not playing. When he’s with me, it seems that he, who has seen so much, only has eyes for me, in the entire world. An infant could not be more submissive, nor easier to please.
BERTHE
What an inconceivable man! Certainly, I believe that he loves you, but his love doesn’t resemble anyone else’s. When he speaks, there’s as much pain as joy in what he says. He’s too ardent, too violent and too passionate for everyday life. He doesn’t say anything or do anything like other people. There! I’m afraid that he won’t make you happy, and I can’t see anything good in your future.
XIV.
Rachel’s Room
AHASUERUS
Yes, my angel, my heaven is in this room. I don’t ask for any other.
RACHEL
Call me all the names you wish, but don’t call me your angel.
AHASUERUS
Everything to be seen here does me good. Everything in this humble retreat is enchanted to me. It’s here that I’d like to spend thousands of years. How many times you’ve sighed at that window in the evening! How many times, beneath these curtains as transparent as your soul, you’ve dreamed by night! There’s the lamp that illuminates your footsteps when you shelter its light from the wind with your hand. There’s your mandolin, which I heard before knowing the sound of your voice, while walking in the street. The acacia planted opposite has cast its flowers on the floor, and a perfume of spring is breathable in everything here. One might think that voices of enchantment were resonating in the air, and that the radiance of the stars might come in trembling with love to ask whether you’re awake.
RACHEL
There’s no other enchantment here than your voice, when you speak.
AHASUERUS
Leave your tresses unbound, falling over your shoulders, my love, as it was when I came in. Into every curl, all the way to the ground, I have put a thought of my heart, a year of my life. It’s my soul that evaporates when you shake their perfume over your feet.
RACHEL
Often, before you, they served to wipe away my tears.
AHASUERUS
Now they envelop you like two wings closing.
RACHEL
My God, how good we are together, are we not? A single hour spent like this can cause all ills to be forgotten. I desire nothing else in the world. Do you?
AHASUERUS
Nor me, since your shadow refreshes my brow. My eyes are drowning in yours. All is silence, all is happiness. I should like to adore you here, without taking a single step, throughout eternity.
RACHEL
In the early days, I had a scruple about loving you as much as God. I’ve suffered from that combat for a long time. I wanted no longer to find any one in my heart but you, in church, here, everywhere. A thousand voices cried out to me during the day: You’ll doom yourself. Now, however, by contrast, I’m sure that my love is holy and that it has the blessing of heaven.
AHASUERUS
Don’t worry, dear heart. The true heaven is in you; it’s in your eyes, when they smile; it’s in your name, when you pronounce it. Above your head, there’s only the cloud that leans over; there’s only the abyss that opens its blue-tinted eyelid to look at you; there’s only the eternal Void that listens to you, in order to repeat indefinitely the words that it has heard from your mouth. You are everything, and everything that is not you is nothing. It’s from your lips that the wild roses have taken their perfume. It’s for you that the evening star rises. On a single thought palpitating in your bosom, the entire universe is suspended.
RACHEL
Once before, Joseph, you said the same thing to me, and I thought it impious. Today, I can see that it was me who didn’t understand well enough. Fundamentally, you have more religion than me, and you have a much greater idea of love.
AHASUERUS
You’ll see that your other doubts will also dissipate with time.
RACHEL
There’s one thing to which I’ll never become accustomed, and that’s the thought of your death.
AHASUERUS
Chase away that idea, my darling.
RACHEL
To die with you, here, at the same moment, I can understand—but for you to die alone, oh, who could imagine that?
AHASUERUS
If you cease to love me, that will be death, from that moment on; until then, in one of your glances, there will always be an eternity of life for me.
RACHEL
That idea comes back to me incessantly, tormenting me; tell me, at least, do you not believe that you will be resuscitated, and that we’ll live together forever in paradise?
AHASUERUS
Who can swear, dear heart, that death won’t chill his bosom after a thousand years, and that he won’t wipe the soil from his eyes only to see, beside him, the image that he adored? Who can swear that, so long a dream won’t numb his tongue, and that phantoms won’t amuse themselves in the tomb, after the moment of awakening? Life, death, oblivion, who knows the difference? And without the beating of our hearts, who can reply to the universe when it asks, breathlessly: “What time is it?” Yesterday, without you, there was death; today there’s life; in one breath of your bosom, centuries of centuries respire; in one tear from your eyes, in one sigh from your lips, in one incomplete word, in the footprints that the wind has raised, there is all of immortality. To feel anything other than you, not to desire you, not to attain you, not to see you coming, not to dream about you now and forever, not to think about you, not to live for you, that’s the horrible inferno full of burning vipers. Paradise is you, it’s the road where you have walked, the flower that you have touched, the blush that passes over your cheeks; it’s here, where you are.
RACHEL
Certainly, I’m happy with you, when I listen to you; but paradise must be something more perfect. There, I shall understand you in all things; here, it often happens that I don’t think like you; that troubles me, and my head spins.
AHASUERUS
Don’t stop at the words; always see into the depths of my heart, which speaks to you.
RACHEL
I’m only afraid of one thing; tha
t’s that you don’t love me sufficiently because of my soul.
AHASUERUS
Isn’t your soul, Rachel, you, in everything you are? Woe to the day when I could say: This is her, and these are her ashes. Do you think that there’s no invisible spirit in your hair, which makes it glisten in the sunlight? Do you believe that there isn’t one that is leaning toward your eyelid, at this very moment, to stop your tears in your lashes? Do you think that there is no divine breath that makes your lips tremble and bows your head beneath a burden of love? Do even you know whether you’re anything but a spirit for which my spirit is thirsty, a shadow to refresh a shadow, a thought to swallow my thought in a void punctuated by perfumes and sighs?
RACHEL
My God, my ears are ringing; my head is aching; everything around me is spinning…it seems to me, when you speak to me, that the crucifix around my neck is weeping. Look at it—is that blood?
AHASUERUS
No, no.
