by Gustave Kahn
“Winged griffins reared up on the thresholds of temples; paved streets sank into a horizon of columns, and the neat faint light of the stars displayed infinite gray perspectives. Basins had been invaded by a thrusting vegetation; the air was warm, s at the moment before a storm, and perfumed, as if the incense of ancient cults were still burning in the depths of some temple, as if the empty city had remained an odorant offering to some primitive god, and sparse floating music were passing beneath the lunar light. Then a more vivacious perfume of roses reigned; or footsteps rang too loud in the silence, inviolate for so many years.
“The monuments were low and squat in their architecture. Their walls were ornamented with repeated emblems: weighing-scales, axes, eagles and lions were engraved in hard granite—and the stone was also imprinted with the vertigo of that noiseless place. The Moon, having initially trailed a light veil the color of steel over the city, which rendered the details of the immense hypogeum strangely clear, had allowed itself to be ringed by a large black cloud, and appeared in the sky like a captive, like a white princess palpitating amid the wings of evil angels who were carrying her away.
“A lightning-flash appeared, like a gigantic owl beating its wings, another fluttered in the sky like butterfly wings; they followed one another, their meanders combining, as if in a joyful race. They were javelins suddenly launched, one after another, from the depths of the invisible toward a single target, and the majestic cry of thunder resounded, the modulations of its howl broadening, like a monster growing enormous and tortuous hindquarters; the voice of eternal caverns covered the entire city with its bellowing, after the gaze of the lightning had shown everything to our eyes in the bosom of its flamboyant menace.
“The bright flashes hurtled down like the thrusts of the simoom. In that irradiation, large drops of rain fell like pearls, like long lines of diamond broken by the wind, like brilliant fatalities lavished uselessly upon the desert. The gentle forces that had previously seemed to envelop the city had fled beneath the empery of growling powers, and the stars had dispersed before the maws of gulfs. The lightning blinked its amethyst fire again; I saw something like an overturned cart go by and crash into oblivion, columns trembling and capitals tumbling.
“Four clouds of a mild and milky hue displayed themselves, seeming spirits of peace come to calm the musicians of terrible organs; an oscillation of the entire cloud-mass carried them away and the lightning triumphed in seven consecutive furrows of light, in the midst of which, in a pale halo, blazed something like an eye of violet fire.
“Suddenly, Dares cried: ‘Look! It’s her, it’s really her!’
“Personally, I saw nothing. ‘Look!’ he repeated, in a low voice, his face dull and the color of gold, the color of thirst-quenching fruits, the color of liberating metal, the color of the bright tunics worn by the Hours driving the chariots of destiny.
“‘Look!’ replied a voice, its hair undulating like the waves of the sea: the sea that builds the new foundations of future lands beneath its rhythmically mobile waves.
“‘Look!’ cried Dares, his red lips the color of scarlet mantles, the color of blood that spurts forth in battles, the color of large flowers at the turnings in the paths of bitterness. ‘There are her eyes, her eyes that smile in a mist, her eyes of sadness, her inexhaustible eyes, her incurable eyes, her pitying eyes, her angry eyes, her eyes reflecting the Heavens.’
“‘Her expectant eyes,’ the voice resumed, ‘for since the world scintillates before her, her eyes are unable to become either joyful or desperate; her eyes are hopeful, as her hair is an appeal, the sweet heroine of time.’
“Dares prostrated himself. ‘Mobed, Mobed, before I saw you I awaited your contemplation with all my prescience. Mobed, eternal goddess, cry of the dawn, adieu of the night, beacon of ships, repose of our fatigues, if I had seen your victorious face, how much lighter would my fatigue have been when I rowed upon the infinite seas, throughout a life that did not know that it would one day serve for anything else; how I would longed for sleep to see the dawn of your smile awaken beneath my closed eyelids, O Mobed with the eyes of hope. And now your face, in the nacreous light, becomes as white as the promise, as white as pure snow, in which the sufferer that I am will be able to write is new history, his new legend, his new hope. O Mobed of hope and clarity, so near and so far away!’
“And the voice replied: ‘It is She, of the first times. She descended among the tribes, and the heroes came to deposit their weapons at her white feet. With the daughters of the priests she traveled the pastures, and taught them the arts, and the tribe hat she visited flourished. On the day of misfortune, when the enemy roamed the plains where the great monsters menaced humans, her face reddened with wrath, and she led the men into combat. A reflection of the divinity, she is a goddess. She existed before the God of armies; she was the goddess of beauty and attraction; it is to reproduce her fleeting vision that the rude herdsmen attempted to engrave stone or wood. It was to summon her that the youths strung lyres and hollowed out flutes. She is the universal soul constructed from the desires of all of young humanity. She rides in lunar reflections, gilds herself with solar rays; it is her shadow that passes through the great woods. It is her tresses that hide the sky of cities, her movements that the great wild beasts imitate, and her smile that is copied by the summer. The halo of the lightning is the bistre of her pupils and the lightning-flash is her anger thundering through space. O warrior woman, O sage of olden times, O goddess who was beside the cradle of humankind, it is for a reflection of her indifferent beauty that men kill one another; it is to raise temples to her that they build cities. It is because of her long absences, because of the rarity of her apparitions, that dolor appeared.’
“And Dares went on: ‘Key to my enigma, center of my fibers, O my entire heart bursting with joy, reflection of hopeful dreams, source of paradise divined, Mobed, be generous and unveil yourself.’
“The violence of the tempest calmed down, with corners of the horizon still ablaze; the sky became blue and white again, and the black cloud was expelled earthwards. At the summit of the black cloud, ephemeral fires persisted, but already, at ground level, a white light tinted with blue was rising up, silvering the walls of the angry cloud; and in a livid region, in a wide band of bruised and weary color, the star reappeared.
“Bluish silver in hue, it slowly drew out of an archipelago of little clouds; enormous lizard-like forms accompanied it, and then a large white aureole, ornamented with greenish lances, surrounded it—and the storm was no more, in its diminished fires, than a quivering of white lights on the horizon.
“The prostrate Dares was still stammering his hymn, but the alternating voice was no longer replying. I was surprised that he had not perceived any of the scourging of the universe by the enormous squall, but no more than he was when I affirmed that I had not seen the apparition.
“‘But you heard the distant voice?’
“‘Yes, but as a echo of yours.’
“‘She was there before my eyes, tall and almost colossal, and her eyes bathed me.’
“‘Did you know that she existed, this goddess Mobed?’
“‘No, and yet I recognized her; a thousand signs dormant in my memory were revealed. On seeing her, I seemed to be moving through the garden of a palace forgotten since infancy, and I thought that statues came to life in order to say: we knew his distant ancestors; he came into our flower-beds; he was very small and played with garlands too heavy for his hands; he knew us well, but perhaps he has forgotten us.’
“Noises and footsteps became audible, so precise that I thought I would faint as the marvel approached; the voice awoke such profound echoes that the truth of the apparition was affirmed before my mind’s eye. It was a few of our companions, bearing torches, who had come into the ruins in spite of my prohibition.
“‘Sire King,’ said one of them, ‘troubling mysteries have drawn us out of the camp. We have seen the haughty face, the envoy of the gods, that stood up
before our sentinel. She gave us a sign to follow her toward these ruins, and we have seen an entire circus of colonnades light up, and a long line of multicolored fairies dancing with sidereal plumes on their foreheads. Music and light sprang forth from every stone, and the great veiled apparition presided. We stopped, surprised, delighted and afraid, and the dances continued; tall apparitions clad in scarlet mantles passed by lightly, not far away from us, but when we tried to take one step more, the entire vision disappeared as I a single hop, and resumed capering further away. It has just vanished, after guiding us here. Let us go back, Sire King, let us return to your kingdom, to the land of your fathers. Let us leave this land of illusions and marvels. Do you not fear the hatred of these forgotten temples, the wrath of their disdainful gods? Will not the sands be hostile to us tomorrow? Will not the demons of error deceive us in order to lure us into noxious swamps and the tombs of sand that will become our ossuaries? And having died so far from our own people, we shall be no more than a trace for some new conqueror of the unknown, the sign of an excursion that perhaps no one will ever see. Let us go back, Sire King, let us go back.’
“As I hesitated, a pale light appeared at the top of a stairway that had only a few steps. A tall old man in a linen robe called out to me: ‘Sire, if you have come as far as the deserted and forgotten city, it is because you needed to come. If you have passed through the zones of death, it is because you needed to know. It is to you that the ancient memories, and the labor of this soil and those who sleep within it, are to be revealed. You are the son in spirit of the old Mage-Kings who built here long ago, when the sun of virtue and knowledge shone vertically above this city. Come with me; come in, but come in alone.’”
THE PRIEST OF MOBED
“‘There are, Sire King,’ said the old man, ‘no inaccessible countries guarded by the ill-will of the gods, closed lands whose gates are guarded by angels with flaming swords, shores where monsters crawl before excessively thick forests—but there are lands that die, forgotten mantles with which the gods drape tombs, of desiccated trees and withered flowers. Humans are not masters of their own duration, but they are masters of their gods and the duration of their cults; of that they are the masters because of that they are the makers.
“‘The city in which you find this almost-empty palace was great and opulent when the cities you know were, like humble songbirds, fearful under all the threats and gods of hostile men. Its power commanded fleets and armies, its science created the fidelities and cults that were imposed by the fleets and the armies. You have not yet seen here that which you need to see. You have seen the storm and the thunderbolts that, in effect, manifest themselves; you have recognized them, for you know them. You have not seen the face to which the prayers of your slave rose up, for your over-complicated soul only sensed therein a play of shadows beneath the diffuse nocturnal light; you have not seen the celebrations and the dances that your cavaliers have perceived, because for you they were the fires of the lightning drawing away in space. You are no longer, Sire, one of those who believe; you are one of those who create faith, credence, legend—truth, since it is. Listen, therefore, to the counsel and the tradition of the priest of Mobed. I am the last of her priests.
“‘If the people of this land, like all other peoples in the same phase of their existence, adored gross idols as the principle of things, and then the mysterious sense of terrestrial terrors, and then the forces that tamed them, they soon came to a stronger conception of it, and they adored their means of struggle and salvation. On these walls you see weighing-scales, axes, eagles of lions. The scales symbolize the foresight that before action simultaneously weighed their strength and the dangers. The rapid axes are the evocation of their decision in council, which was, in their eyes, true wisdom. The eagles signify the respected sages who could scrutinize the solar rays with a calm eye, the idea of the force that enchains those of superstition and error. The lions are the men of action who defend the city.
“‘For a long time, thanks to their cult, which ensured the predominance of the age, these peoples progressed powerfully and without terror. Priests explained the verity of life to the young men, and the qualities of the man were those of the gods that one might assimilate by will-power. The processions of our festivals thus displayed, not idols but heroes, fair-minded judges and poets. For if the heroes fight and the sage decides in council, the poet is the organizer of festivals, which are the cult and the education of the city.
“‘The poet, in our ancient and legendary prosperity, sang in the public square on the threshold of the temple. His art was to occupy and rally minds to him, for voices come from the anxiety and poor advice of the empty hour. He grouped the choirs of young men and young women, and rendered ideas tangible by means of song, for it is through pleasure that knowledge must first acquire a soul. And if you do not see a special emblem on these walls that symbolizes the poet, it is because he must be able to be equal to anything, and contain the great aspects of real virtues, at least sufficiently to excite any adept. The groups of our young people who went forth to found a distant fatherland for the use of ours departed under their guidance.
“‘Those colonies did not stop at river deltas, estuaries or the nearest point of the land to the sea. In the depths of new regions, they had to create cities similar to this one, sufficiently guarded against foreign influence for all the virtues whose seeds they brought to have time to grow to an entire adult fruition, before a mixture with less pure cultures could compromise them.
“‘What became of the hundred cities whose founders departed from this soil? Scattered stones in the depths of forests doubtless astonish the pilgrims of the unknown in the most distant parts of the world; perhaps, in a few cities that attribute their angular stone to an uncertain hero, balances signify human pauses, axes the power that may punish, eagles and lions the monstrous footsteps of conquerors amid ruins and rubble. Fires of violence glow behind the insignia of all calm meditations.
“‘Even here the meaning of the law was obliterated, and instead of adoring the qualities of human being, people came to bow down before those who were scarcely clad therein, and the heroes, adoring themselves, obliged worship and obedience, whence came tyrannies and discords-and he city was no longer strong enough to defend itself against the peoples that its wealth attracted, and these walls saw the vanquishers.
“‘Now, it happened that the poets had refused to worship force, and even courage, or even virtue; among the human qualities they venerated beauty above all others, and exclusively the beauty of women who live according to the celestial rites of the Moon, whose eyes are the color of dawn or night, whose breasts fill with sap, as if nature were born therefrom. The qualities of human being, the sovereign virtues that are the gods, strive to adorn woman, as a sign that she is the reflection of the beyond that is merciful to us. In the hero’s action, the ardent poet saw nothing but the latent natural effort produced by the loins of woman, and by the accumulation of thoughts that might have remained silent, and more precisely, all the voices of nature and all the created harmonies circulating in her, some of them crystallizing out and a hero surging forth. If one takes care to render them stronger, will they not fight alongside combatants?
“‘And our wars proved the veracity of our poets’ words. Mobed was a woman, undoubtedly the most beautiful and strongest of all, who was able to pick up the weapons that men had dropped. She rebuilt the walls and the cult for a time, and for her recompense the people deified her memory.
“‘For a long time, in their difficult hours, they invested their hope in Mobed and appealed to her, but no one any longer spoke to the heroines who did not know it in the sacred language of old, and the people had to disappear, the time of brambles having arrived for the city—and so much admiration and prayer created the goddess you see here.’
“And the priest unveiled a large fresco.
“‘Such is the apparition that your companions have seen—and really seen, for she has lived in the m
emory of humans and she lives in their presentiments. The reflection of an immense belief, she can exteriorize herself; her form doubtless floats between Heaven and Earth when she wishes, when it is necessary for her to show once again her triumphant beauty and the stars of her eyes. Familiar with this image, I do not know whether I have never seen her outside this place or whether I see her everywhere.
“‘This fresco in which her features are traced you will take away, stone by stone; this faithful representation contains all her wisdom and all the intelligence of an ancient people, from whom you have certainly inherited a little of your blood, since your will has driven you to search in this dust.
“‘Go, leave me without saying any more to me.’
“And when I attempted to persuade him to follow me, he said: ‘Go; I must speak no more. Henceforth, I am a mute tomb.’”
As Dares, according to his custom, had crouched down on his sleeping-mats not far from King Balthazar and Joseph of Arimathea, the King said to him: “Dares, tell our guest one of your stories. He has never heard you speak at length, and perhaps, during the time I have been taking about you, he might have formed the desire.”
And when Joseph of Arimathea nodded approvingly, the old slave began.
THE MADMAN IN THE FOREST
There was once a great forest near the sea; it had as many leaves and as many birds’ nests as the sea has waves; it had as many lovely clearings, with beds of moss and carpets of grass, as the sea had cheerful isles; as many fawns bounded through it as gilded fishes lived in the marine expanse; as many springs filtered though it as little red and green stars were reflected in the mirror of the Ocean. It also possessed many agile lizards with ruby eyes and bodies of emerald, which slid between the stones and roots, and thousands of wings fluttering, and thousands of throats singing beneath the green domes of its trees; there was also a bird that talked and a pious hermit who listened to it.
