by Edgar Quinet
THE ANGEL
He would recognize anywhere the bloodstain that you have not been able to wash off in Pilate’s ewer.
ROME
What if, in order to save myself, I go up into my tomb, which is my fortress; if I draw my bolt, you’ll never see me again.
THE ANGEL
The Eternal has a ladder, which he would lean on your wall; he would pluck out from your battlements like an eaglet of Terracina from its nest.
ROME
What if, in order to hide, I sit down on the ground in the shadow of my Coliseum; he might believe that I’m a beggar begging a horse-stabler for my barley-bread.
THE ANGEL
He would give you his bread of vengeance in your hand for your hunger.
ROME
What if I were to descend into one of the extinct volcanoes in my region; he might believe that I’m cooled lava, calcinated foam or a little ash vomited from its crater.
THE ANGEL
He would collect you in his apron like a laborer, to sow you in his field of wrath.
ROME
Are you sure, then, that all my centuries of life have passed already, one after another, through my triumphal gate, and that not one of my people remains behind, and not one of my stray years, which might arrive this evening to rescue me, and might still save me?
THE ANGEL
All your years have passed, all your peoples have reentered in their time, when their sun set. Now, go present the key to our postern to the master who lent it to you.
ROME
Tell me people, then, who are riding in marble along my imperial column, that they should turn the bridle on their triumphs, and that it is time to go down, with their habits of stone, to march ahead of me; tell my seven hills, half-effaced beneath my footsteps, my toppled walls, the circuses I rounded out with my trowel, and my rusty weapons that have drunk from my river for a thousand years, that they must come together to make me a vast breastplate against the wrath of my judge.
THE ANGEL
Come along, then. You shall have, to defend you, the crickets that sing in your thistles and the long reeds of the Tiber.
ROME
What! Not one hour more? Twice living, twice dead, and that’s all! What, not a single hour to drink once more the water jetting from my cornelian fountains, to comb the mane of my stallions after a race, to throw the spoils of the hunt to my dogs howling in the night? What, not a single hour to disinter with my spade half of the days buried beneath my steps, to take my herds of goats to pasture in the courtyards of my palaces, to light my lamp in the crypt of my popes, to draw the curtain over my virgins, whom I’m abandoning all alone, asleep at their weaving, to take my bread and salt from my guest-less table?
THE ANGEL
No, not one hour!
ROME
Oh well, my God, I’ll go! My towers are already far away. I can no longer see the cypresses of Monte Mario on my hills, nor the pines that served me as an awning, nor my oak of Saint Onuphrius, which extended its shadow over my bench. My sun, in setting, is braiding forever a crown of rushes and the mown grass of my countryside, like a guest who goes away carrying away the pomegranate flowers and roses that were lying on the tablecloth. My road is very hard. Who’s that down there on my path, traveling ahead of me? the black eagles of Abruzzi, the vultures of the Apennines with their bruised necks and the she-wolves of Calabria with their thirsty tongues? Go along my road, my black eagles, my vultures and my wolves, I no longer have anything to give you to drink. My streams have no more blood, my sword is no longer trenchant. Seek another companion for the voyage. Who’s that coming after me? the popes, the children that I nourished in my Church, my young virgins who are coming down from their canvases to see where I’m going? Go on, my popes; I have no more miters or censers to give you. My little children, retrace your steps; I have no more oranges, lemons or figs to give you. My beautiful virgins, return to your blessed canvases and go to sleep along my walls; my palette is exhausted, I can no longer paints your robes every day in Foligno vermilion. Let me go down alone to the utmost depths of the valley that leads to Jehosophat.
THE ANGEL, turning eastwards
Oh, how slow you are in Chaldea, in Arabia and the Orient! Must I saddle your mares and attach your water-skins to your camels?
BABYLON, to the Euphrates
Don’t murmur so loudly, my river. It’s you who woke me with a start. I was dreaming of banquets and fêtes in my valley.
THE RIVER
I wish to God that I was the one who spoke!
THE ANGEL
Are you ready, Babylon? Or must I come down to rap on your window?
BABYLON
My dream was so beautiful! My unicorn, my crowned lion and my sphinx, why are you speaking so loudly on my terrace?
THE SPHINX
It wasn’t me who spoke.
THE UNICORN
Me neither.
THE LION
Nor me.
BABYLON
What time is it?
THE ANGEL
The last hour of the world.
BABYLON
It you want me to believe you, come and sit by my bedside.
THE ANGEL
Here I am! Do you know me?
BABYLON, to the angel
Oh, yes, you’re so beautiful! You wings have bathed so often in my naphtha wells by night! How the sweat runs down your brow! Come, I’ll wipe you with my hand, and give you my wine in my Alexandrian cup. Leave your tiresome sword on my bed. You’re so young! Stay with me. I love you; I’ll lock my door; no one will see you; you shall have my bracelets and my phials of perfume. You shall have all my kisses; you shall drink the tears from my eyes, drop by drop, and I’ll draw my curtain over your sleep while the empty universe rolls around us, like a palm leaf in the desert wind.
THE ANGEL
What good are your bracelets to me? They’ve been rusted for more than a thousand years; your phials are cracked; they’ve lost their scent. It’s too late now; I’ve already found the madonna I love in a chapel in Perugia, and she’s more beautiful than you.
BABYLON
Are my sisters also coming to your fête? Shall I send a messenger to Bactra, my elder, to Nineveh, who’s sitting in her garden, to Thebes, who dwells in the desert, to Memphis, who’s betrothed beyond the mountain, and—to serve as our slave—Jerusalem, who can fill our hookahs with Arabian scents, who can lay our cushions on the ground to sit us down, and extend our canvas awning against the sun? I’ll send my sphinxes, my alabaster gryphons and my granite lions on ahead so that they can sweep the path along which we’ll pass. The gryphons will carry our skins of Idumean wine on their backs, the sphinxes our tents and the lions our crowns, which would weigh us down on the road.
THE ANGEL
Your table is already laid.
BABYLON
So we have nothing to carry but our gods?
THE ANGEL
They’re waiting for you.
BABYLON
Where?
THE ANGEL
There, in your shady valley.
BABYLON
And who is our host?
THE ANGEL
Prop yourself up and you’ll see him at your door. (He turns to the Occident.) And you too, city of the evening, hiding your head in the mist, hear me.
PARIS
Where now is my roof of wicker and holly, which Geneviève32 the shepherdess made for me against the arrows and darts, while spinning my regal swaddling-cloths, dressed in dawn and the dew on my abundant mountain? Not a woodcutter to show me the stone where I sat for so many centuries. It was there, on that bed of chalk. My passions have eaten it away, as the Red Sea has its dunes; my waves have deposited neither seashells nor algae there. Sometimes I find the bronze beak of my eagle, which drowned in my tempest, sometimes a soldier’s sword with a bronze hilt, sometimes a golden crown, sometimes a wedding-ring. Around me, I can only see, to help me, an enchanted bird the color of time, whic
h is bathing its wings before leaving, in the wave that I’ve dried up by washing the arches of my bridges, the cables of my boats and the shadow of my cathedral there, every day.
THE ENCHANTED BIRD
Tell me, poor city without walls, wasn’t it you who once built, in this arid vale, towers with battlements so high that the little magical birds of Normandy came to nest there without fear? Wasn’t it you who built here, in this leafy wood, triumphal arches and a bronze column, so that the starlings and wagtails could rest there when they were tired? Tel me, wasn’t it you who threw to the wind, in that field of hemp, flowers and mint, so much gilded wheat, so much dust of ruins and so many royal festivals, and shook your winnowing-basket so hard that the wheat flew away with the tares, to better nourish our broods around you?
PARIS
Yes, that was me.
THE ENCHANTED BIRD
Well then, have no fear; come with us to your judge.
PARIS
But I have swept his name away as well, and thrown it to your chicks.
THE ENCHANTED BIRD
It is not lost; we have picked it up and carried it beneath our wings to the woods of heaven.
PARIS
But the judge will remember.
THE ENCHANTED BIRD
Don’t be afraid; we’ll speak for you.
PARIS
In that case, land of France, let’s get up! The angel’s trumpet resembles the clarion of battles. All of you get up, my soldiers, with your worm-eaten clothes! I’ve only given you, to cover ourselves, the dust of battles, in order that your tomb might be lighter and the sleep of your eyelids easier to shake off. Hola! Pick up the remains of your halberds and you blunted arrows, serfs of Bouvines and Azincourt.33 Lace up your steel corset, which the rain has rusted, my maid of Orléans; pass your resuscitated archers before you, like your white flocks of Vaucouleurs.34 Cavaliers and infantrymen, dig up the stumps of your rifles and the blades of our broken swords; put your Marengo boots on your feet, and deploy, before the sun perishes, the flag that the spider has just oven for you. My emperor, who has come from Saint-Helena, is already mounted on his horse, and is running at a gallop. Death has not changed the sword by his side, nor soiled his spurs, not toppled the hat from his head. In his hand he carries the names of all our years, and he is the one who will arrange all our centuries in battle order on the hill. Let us go and see, with him, whether we were mistaken when we drank our blood like water, when we drove the wheels of our war-chariot, and when we stood for a thousand years as the sentinel on the edge of the high tower that the human race has built.
V.
DOCTOR ALBERTUS MAGNUS
(Locked in his laboratory, apparently emerging from a profound reverie during which he has not noticed the world ending. Open books and scientific instruments are heaped up before him pell-mell.)
1.
Yes, in my palpitating bosom, the uncreated light is pumping life. I had a presentiment of it. It’s the hour when the truth will be revealed to me. The mystery of things is beginning to appear, and my eyes will see clearly to the very bottom of my abyss. The last day of science has arrived; my meditation will bear its fruit. Logic is ripe, and criticism too. Metaphysics has bestrode its diamond circle a priori, and has revealed itself in the enchanted forest of dogmatics, combing its golden hair. Everything is ready. Six thousand years for the preface of human science is not too many. On the elements the conclusion depends; a single broken step in the ladder the rises into the sky, and I would fail eternally in my eternal problem. Since yesterday, the method has been found; let’s begin.
2.
What am I? Body and soul? the whole together, or one without the other? Am I a dream? a soap-bubble? a word? or perhaps a God? or perhaps nothing at all? Fatal question! When you think you’re passing before it, barefoot, without waking up, it always starts howling in your ear, like Cerberus at the gate of Elysium, and it’s necessary to stop before its triple maw and stay there until evening in that desolate region. Come on! It’s done! There’s another day wasted. That’s certain; I shan’t do anything more this week.
3.
Whose fault is it? Entirely mine! The formula was clear. It’s in the heavens that it was necessary to begin. The letters there are wider and taller, spelling out the name of infinity, and in that equation of stars, the great unknown stands out more clearly. (He looks up at the sky.) Horror! Nothing! The sky is empty. An infinite zero is floating over my head. The worlds have died. While my genius got ready to follow them, they hastened the flutter of their wings, like frightened birds before a good fowler. I’ve arrived one day too late to know everything.
4.
Insensate! I was wrong just now; the first road was the better one; let’s go back to that one. Let the worlds go out; their real hearth is within me. The rationale of the universe is written in my soul, and in the sky of my heart the risen stars are not setting. A second Prometheus, if life succumbs, exhausting that in my bosom, which too much love stirs up day and night, I’ll reignite it. Let’s see; the thing is worth the trouble; without trembling, this time, let’s descend again further than my thought, by way of analysis.
5.
Here I am, touching the bottom. Already, in my darkness, I can feel a wound there, and another there, and there a source of tears that have not yet flowed. Hola! In that place, here once again, in fundo cogitationis, is a memory that bleeds. In faith, I’m like an old arsenal full of envenomed rags, swords broken on my threshold, armor dented on my paving-stones, weapons that wound when touched, and darts suspended from my wall that will kill anyone who disturbs them. Beneath its sobbing debris, beneath those moaning regrets, something’s shining. Yes. No. A God, perhaps? Certainly not. It’s another tear falling from my vault.
6.
At the noise which my thought makes marching through my ruin, a thousand images resuscitate, standing up in my soul. The slingshots of the pale, beneath their shroud, hurl a thousand half-dead, half-alive hopes, looming up in my heart. Go back to sleep, my hopes. Oh, all my desires, go back to sleep, for a long, long time. In the ashes that I’m raking, there’s no gold. All is dust, cooling down.
7.
There’s no doubt about it; I’ve begun badly. One human heart on its own is impotent to draw much from science. Too many well-sharpened darts have pierced it and holed it like a sieve. The truth passes through it, without stopping. Humankind would certainly be a better study.
8.
How to get a grip on it? Its racket is already effaced. In its book, the worm has eaten away its image, and the page that bore its name falls to dust under my cold breath. It’s too late now to decipher the names of its empires and peoples. My lamp’s running out; it’s growing pale. Oh, let it cast darkness over my science!
9.
World that is closing your eyelid over my soul without weeping, infinite void, black nothingness, tell me, at least, what you are. At the last moment, exhale a word of truth like a sigh. Before engulfing itself in the Ocean, a river looks back and yields up its secret to the sprig of oats whose thirst it slakes. Mysterious torrent, do you want to sink without even uttering your name to the reed you’re uprooting?
THE DOCTOR’S SERVANT
Doctor, a stranger who has come a long way is asking to speak to you.
THE DOCTOR
If it’s my respectable master of dogmatics, Dr. Thomas of Heidelberg, or my good friend Sylvio, show him in.35
(The angel of the last judgment enters.)
THE ANGEL
Throw your books and your renown at your feet and follow me.
THE DOCTOR
Leave me alone; I only need one more day to discover the secret of life.
THE ANGEL
Come and learn the secret of death.
THE DOCTOR
In an hour, before dusk, I’ll have found the final word of science.
THE ANGEL
There are no more hours, nor days. That’s the first word. Ask the question of the res
uscitated child.
VI.
THE POET, semi-resuscitated, in his coffin
1.
My heart alone is reanimated in my bones. It’s already beating in my breast, but my breast is still cold; my eyes can already see the one I adored, when I was something; but my wyes are still full of the earth of the cemetery. Why, my heart, have you come back to life so quickly, without even waiting for the light to reheat my place? Oh, what would you do now, if I were to take a step back into eternal death?
