by Jean Cocteau
Enter the Cardinal, the Bishop, and the Syndic.
BISHOP. My lord Duke, here’s news for you!
DUKE. What has happened?
BISHOP. Your Bacchus has ridden into church on horseback.
LOTHAR. You gave him permission, my lord.
BISHOP. Not supposing that he would dare to take it.
The Duke signs to Lothar to leave.
SYNDIC. And that’s not all of it. He tore off his belt and used it to drive out the stallkeepers who sell their wares in the sacred precincts.
BISHOP. The stallkeepers have been granted proper licenses. The various guilds over which our Syndic presides have the right to sell their goods there.
SYNDIC. No one ever dreamed of complaining about it.
BISHOP. I demand justice.
CARDINAL. Play the game, my dear Bishop. This is a masquerade. We signed the protocol.
BISHOP. Your Eminence, your indulgence astounds me.
CARDINAL. We signed. I deplore this young man’s excesses, but he is not under our jurisdiction. The Holy Father would find it both comical and a little too naive if I were shocked by his doings.
BISHOP. A scandal like this!
CARDINAL, repeating the words used by the Bishop in Act One. “The Church is a hierarchical institution which didirects the conscience of men.” It is not for you to criticize my actions. May I point out that this young man has only followed a high example before which we must bow. He has chased moneychangers from the Temple.
BISHOP. Heaven forbid that I should criticize Your Eminence. But Our Lord Jesus Christ is Our Lord Jesus Christ.
CARDINAL. What would have been our attitude of mind had we been dignitaries of the Church in the Synagogue of Jerusalem?
BISHOP. I find it difficult, very difficult to follow you.
SYNDIC. The guilds don’t look at things that way at all.
CARDINAL. I have dropped in among you at the time of an unusual but recognized festival of which you are now experiencing the full implications. I might add that this masquerade enlightens us on many aspects of a question which I might otherwise never have noticed.
BISHOP, bitterly. I bow before your august wisdom.
SYNDIC. The fact remains that complaints are complaints and disorder’s disorder.
CARDINAL. Do not make a tragedy out of events which result from a farce. A little disorder may well have its place, Provost Marshal. It can even show up errors which habit concealed.
PROVOST MARSHAL. I am responsible for the maintenance of order, Your Eminence.
CARDINAL. So am I, Provost Marshal, yet I find myself in the midst of priests and peasants in revolt.
PROVOST MARSHAL. And what of this dead man?
CARDINAL. There are many dead men in this revolt.
Enter Hans at the back of the stage.
Hans is dressed as a nobleman. As he opens the door his bodyguard, consisting of fifteen archers, is seen standing on the steps. He closes the door behind him.
HANS. Low Masses don’t appeal to me.
CARDINAL. It is our duty to say Masses both high and low.
HANS. I have come to inform you, Sir Syndic, that I have forbidden the paying of petty tithes.
SYNDIC. Petty tithes?
HANS. Petty tithes. And if you look at me like that I shall forbid all tithes.
SYNDIC. Sir!
HANS. Call me “my lord.” That is my title, please use it.
SYNDIC. I will not put up with your insolence another minute.
He rushes to the door.
Guards!
CARDINAL. Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Calm yourselves! The guard whom you are calling belongs to Bacchus. I want to speak to him. Leave us alone!
SYNDIC. This is going beyond all limits.
CARDINAL. That is what I said to your Bishop. We have passed beyond all limits. You admitted that.
Turning to the Duke.
My lord Duke, forgive me for using your house as if it were my own.
DUKE. But I am no longer in my house. Your Eminence is in the house of the person to whom he wishes to speak.
CARDINAL. Where’s my head?
BISHOP. Anyone might lose his head …
CARDINAL. Come, come … my dear Bishop, don’t lose yours. I prize it and will probably be in great need of it.
The Bishop, the Duke, and the Syndic go toward the door. The Duke opens it and makes way for the Bishop to pass.
BISHOP. After you, my lord.
He moves back to make way.
DUKE. I beg of you, I am your host.
BISHOP. Where was my head?
DUKE. Where we all keep them.
He turns to Hans.
I thought I was at home. Force of habit.
The Duke, the Bishop, and the Syndic go out. The door shuts.
CARDINAL. And what about your head?
HANS. I wonder.
CARDINAL. Does all this amuse you?
HANS. It fills me with horror.
CARDINAL. Yet you are committing yourself, act after act, to very dangerous innovations for a man who covets popularity.
HANS. Popularity comes from the people alone.
CARDINAL. And what do the people say?
HANS. They listen to me….
CARDINAL. What do you tell them?
HANS. I shall tell them that they are the victims of strong underground forces that fight over them and of which they are the dupes.
CARDINAL. The Reformation? The feudal system? The banks?… The Church?
HANS. Exactly.
CARDINAL. You will drive them to revolution.
HANS. Christ was a revolutionary. He was killed as a revolutionary and a heretic. “He stirred the people.” So the crowd shrieked out to Pilate, according to Saint Luke. Jesus was a revolutionary and an anticlerical.
CARDINAL. You are not Christ.
HANS. I am his very humble disciple.
CARDINAL. I see…. You are one of those who hold up Christ’s example to Christ’s Church.
HANS. I am one of those who disagree with Martin Luther who treats the peasants like swine, saying they have no soul. The proof of that, says he, lies in the fact that a dead pig and a dead peasant are dead once and for all. I am one of those who disagree with Rome for bleeding us to pay for wars against Turks and to build basilicas. I refuse to bind myself to either of these frightful organizations. I try to stay pure.
CARDINAL. And what does purity mean to you?
HANS. Purity is expressed neither by actions nor by words. It proceeds from no law. It is the substance in which the soul has being. The devil is pure because he acts according to his being; he can only do evil.
CARDINAL. You are only a poor peasant. From whom does your wisdom come?
HANS. From my master whom you burned because of his wisdom.
CARDINAL. And what did your master teach you?
HANS, almost breathlessly. That human beings should be glad to be free of all dogmas. That the Kingdom of Heaven is not around us but within us. That miracles are what we do not yet understand. That nothing begins nor ends. That our limitations prevent us from admitting Eternity. That God could neither have been begotten nor have created. That time is not, but is only perspective. That every minute is eternal. That that of which nothing can be spoken broke into crumbs and that one of these crumbs is the earth which begot parasites — that’s us!
CARDINAL. With teachings of that kind, your Abbé Knopf must have burned like dry wood. But tell me, if something broke into crumbs, does this not imply time?
HANS. No, Your Eminence. Eternity is made up of contradictions which dovetail and are wedded together in such a way that it seems as if they followed each other one after another and that they either could be or not be. Christ said so.
CARDINAL. Said SO?
HANS. In two tiny sentences he gave humanity, even apart from the supreme gift of His Presence, two other gifts beyond price.
CARDINAL. I should like to hear these sentences from your lips.
&
nbsp; HANS. Here is the first: “Father, all things are possible unto Thee, take away this cup from me.” Which means: “Can you help me to avoid the inevitable?” After that who could not seek forgiveness for any moment of weakness?
CARDINAL. And the other?
HANS. The other was spoken on the Cross. “Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Which means: “Have you changed toward me?” After that who would not have an excuse for any doubt?
Enter the Captain of Archers at the back of the stage.
HANS. Karl! Do not disturb me.
CAPTAIN. My lord, the Syndic told me to find you at once.
HANS. Why?
CAPTAIN. One of the thieves whom you set free from prison has stolen a bolt of cloth from a stall in one of the chapels. The stallkeeper asks for justice and the Syndic wants to know what he’s to do.
CARDINAL. Not easy….
HANS. Who is the real thief? The man who steals from the merchant, or the man who steals from his customers, and in a Church to boot? The merchant is the real thief. Tell the Syndic to ordain in my name, that the thief should keep the cloth and the merchant sell the goods at half price.
CAPTAIN. But —
HANS. There are no buts. And see to it that my orders are carried out.
Exit Captain.
CARDINAL. And by that action you have eliminated two of your supporters. The one will curse you and the other think you a fool. The thief will advise the other thieves to steal. The merchant will arouse the merchants’ corporations. The Syndic and the Provost Marshal will set the story to music….
HANS. I don’t care.
CARDINAL. It’s hard to be hard. But, alas, earth is a hard place.
HANS. It is for man to make it sweet.
CARDINAL. It was so, but no longer is, through his sin.
HANS. What sin?
CARDINAL. Original sin.
HANS. If man had committed a fault, a sin, it would have been God’s. He is responsible for our actions.
CARDINAL. And what of free will?
HANS. Free will is God’s alibi.
CARDINAL. Do you dare to say that God only pretends to give us freedom?
HANS. If God, who lives outside time and yet encompasses it, has created man for His damnation and ours, He must be a monster.
CARDINAL. Upon my word! So you even revile God!
HANS. I should only be following in the footsteps of the prophets, if I did so. Luther says, “What prophet has not reviled God?”
CARDINAL. That’s because, oddly enough, he thinks himself a prophet. But you do not go so far, do you?
HANS. No, Your Eminence. Although a mind which is slightly unhinged may at times prophesy without being aware of it.
CARDINAL. You admit yourself that God’s ideas and ours cannot be the same. His ways are inscrutable.
HANS. If they are inscrutable, it is possible that he may punish what you call good and reward what you call evil.
Pause.
CARDINAL. Are you not slightly drunk?
HANS. Bacchus is a god whom drunkards made in their own image. Does your Eminence know Dionysus? Do you know the Greek gods?
CARDINAL. I get them rather confused; there are so many!
HANS. There were many Greek gods, Your Eminence, and never an unbeliever. There is now one God and many unbelievers.
CARDINAL. And if I am not mistaken, you are one.
HANS. Me, my lord! My fellow countrymen fear the devil more than they believe in God. My crime is to believe in God more than in the devil. It’s very unfashionable.
CARDINAL. God leaves us free to choose.
HANS. Free? What do you say to the horrors the, priests hold up, high and low, right and left, to frighten us? Man walks amidst trials, rewards, and punishments. Man has made of God a judge, because he himself judges and condemns. But make no mistake. Brother Martin says that God is foolish but he would not say it of the devil. He would be afraid. The best people believe that wickedness shows intelligence and that goodness comes from foolishness. That is the tragedy.
CARDINAL. You say that “man has made of God a judge.” Your forget that God made man in His own image.
HANS. And man returned the compliment. If they had less fear of a cruel God, people would gain self-confidence, they would regain their dignity and responsibility as human beings. They would stop being trembling beasts. They would become “man.” They would put to God’s account those things which they now put to the devil’s and so justify Him. Heaven would be triumphant and Hell would lose its sway.
Let us imagine together an age in which neither good nor evil, neither beauty nor ugliness exists nor are they separated one from the other, being nothing but a pure whole, a perfect marriage without divorce one from the other, a kernel from which choice and therefore heresy are excluded. The whole is broken and man begins. God demands love for Himself and He therefore chooses beauty, beauty which is invisibility. Visible beauty becomes the devil, prince of this world, dowered with fabulous riches and splendors. Let the creatures of the earth choose. The devil is bedecked in jewels, God chooses the shadow. He will know henceforth who loves him and who lets himself be taken in. Do I shock you?
CARDINAL. Your version of Genesis interests me. It is most original.
HANS. Then comes Christ, King of hidden beauty. He makes the unseen seen. But the seen remains unseen for those who cannot see, and that is for the multitude. Then comes the Church. What does it do? It shows a fierce God, a God who condemns, who burns and who wreaks vengeance. This was the only way to give him back his power to put the devil’s beauty in check.
CARDINAL. God is good.
HANS. Let him prove it.
CARDINAL. You have just said that God must be loved without waiting for Him to give proof of His love. Didn’t you say that?
HANS. I said, that is to say …
CARDINAL. You don’t know what you say. You talk completely at random. What is more, like all freethinkers of your type, you are a pedant — Have you shown me the essence of your doctrine?
HANS. If I had a doctrine, I would not be talking at random. Jesus Christ contradicted himself. He said: “He who is not against you is for you.” But He said further: “He who is not with me is against me.” Passion and struggle lead to self-contradiction.
CARDINAL. Your doctrine, which is not one, is scarcely adapted for simple souls, although it is to them that you wish to speak.
HANS. The soul is that unique liquid which flows in all of us. It changes shape and color according to the bottle which holds it. Simple souls easily feel what touches them. They do so better than educated people who wish all bottles to be of their own shape and color.
CARDINAL. Do you presume to include the doctors of the Law in that category?
Violently.
Your impertinence always harks back to a point at which you turn the words of Christ against those who teach them.
HANS. Must I say nothing?
CARDINAL. Forgive me for being hasty. Our Italian masquerades are lighter in tone and in a masquerade each must play his own role. I was departing from mine. I confess I am not used to such conversation, although the affair of the navels in Rome gave me a slight foretaste of it.
HANS. The affair of the navels?
CARDINAL. Our painters intended to stop painting any trace of the umbilical cord on the abdomens of Adam and Eve, saying that they were not born of woman. That was the start of this little quarrel.
HANS. The quarrel is not without foundation.
CARDINAL. It is rather in your style. That is why I am telling you about it.
HANS. What was the end of it?
CARDINAL. The Holy Father cut it short.
HANS. What did he say?
CARDINAL. He countermanded the order. The effect was immediate.
HANS. They had to live.
CARDINAL. They had to live, and so have you. The Court of Rome shall know nothing of your extravagances. This is a confession. Take advantage of your position. You need n
ot fear me, little brother, but the walls of this town have ears.
HANS. What is worse the ears of this town have walls.
CARDINAL. Mine have none and they are open wide. What is your program?
HANS. To awaken the sleeping strength of love. To abolish fear. To be kind as others are unkind. To love as men kill. Kill hatred. Not look to any end.
CARDINAL. A magnificent program. But you are left with five days. It took seven days to create the world and it would take much longer to reform it. For seven years the Reformers have been busy.
Showing his outspread hand.
You are left with five days.
HANS. Unless people intend otherwise.
CARDINAL. You mean, unless they rise up and make a reality out of this farce.
HANS. Reality comes true in the end, even if it seems to fail. It took a long time for the straw of the manger to become the gold of your miters.
CARDINAL. And the blood of Christ to become our purple. I know these hackneyed phrases. Come, tell me. How would the humble treasure left to us by the poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ, how would it have been proved to the world, if its direct heirs had not shown its wealth?
HANS. This wealth comes from no one’s pocket. It belongs to the soul.
CARDINAL. Alas, men only believe what they see. It is necessary to make wealth visible in order to spread invisible wealth abroad. The people only respect pomp and that is costly. It has to be the root of our sacerdotal power. They must pay for being foolish and blind, pay for the painful necessity which they impose on us of sanctifying a trick and of using it. In this we only copy nature. Plants attract insects by their color and scent.
HANS. You know what prince it is who wears the jewels of the Father. Their rightful place is neither on your crosses nor your chasubles. Do not be astonished that they should give you His name.
CARDINAL. That Martin Luther should give us that name.
HANS. You lead him on.
CARDINAL. Your Luther is a peasant by birth, but now he has become a small tradesman and he wants a cheap Church. I repeat the people respect pomp and ceremony. Make no mistake. You owe your success to pomp and ceremonial costume.
HANS. You do not know our people.
CARDINAL. The people are the people. They will follow your bacchanalia. They will rejoice in the suspension of tithes and the lowering of prices. They will be amused by your subversive speeches. But wait until they wake up to find themselves with taxes doubled, higher prices, and with their donkey’s ears sticking between the shafts of a cart.
