Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert

by Gustave Flaubert

  Antony keeps his eyes cast down; then all at once he repeats the creed of Jerusalem — as he recollects it — emitting, after each phrase, a long sigh:

  “‘I believe in one only God, the Father; — and in one only Lord, Jesus Christ, first-born son of God, who became incarnate and was made man; who was crucified and buried; who ascended into Heaven; who will come to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom will have no end; — and in one only Holy Ghost; — and in one only baptism of repentance; — and in one holy Catholic Church; — and in the resurrection of the flesh; — and in the life everlasting!’“

  Immediately the cross becomes larger, and, piercing the clouds, it casts a shadow over the heaven of the gods.

  They all grow dim. Olympus vanishes.

  Antony distinguishes near its base, half lost in the caverns, or supporting the stones on their shoulders, huge bodies chained. These are the Titans, the Giants, the Hecatonchires, and the Cyclops.

  A voice rises, indistinct and formidable, — like the murmur of the waves, like the sound heard in woods during a storm, like the roaring of the wind down a precipice:

  “We knew it, we of all others! The gods were doomed to die. Uranus was mutilated by Saturn, and Saturn by Jupiter. He will be himself annihilated. Each in its turn. It is destiny!”

  And, by degrees, they plunge into the mountain, and disappear.

  Meanwhile, the roof of the palace of gold flies away.

  Jupiter descends from his throne. The thunder at his feet smokes like a brand that is almost extinguished; and the eagle, stretching its neck, gathers with its beak its falling plumes.

  “So, then, I am no longer the master of things, all-good, all-powerful, god of the phratriæ and of the Greek peoples, ancestor of all the kings, the Agamemnon of Heaven!

  “Eagle of the apotheoses, what breath of Erebus has driven thee to me? or, flying from the Campus Martius, dost thou bring to me the soul of the last of the Emperors?

  “I no longer desire those of men! Let the earth guard them, and let them be moved on a level with its baseness. They now have hearts of slaves; they forget injuries, ancestors, oaths; and everywhere the folly of mobs, the mediocrity of the individual, and the hideousness of races reign supreme!”

  His respiration makes his sides swell even to bursting, and he writhes with his hands. Hebe in tears presents a cup to him. He seizes it:

  “No! no! As long as there will be, no matter where, a head enclosing thought which hates disorder and realises the idea of Law, the spirit of Jupiter will live!”

  But the cup is empty. He turns it around slowly on his finger-nail.

  “Not a drop! When ambrosia fails, there is an end of the Immortals!”

  It slips out of his hand, and he leans against a pillar, feeling that he is dying.

  Juno — ”There was no need of so many loves! Eagle, bull, swan, golden shower, cloud and flame, thou hast assumed every form, scattered thy light in every element, hidden thy head on every couch! This time the divorce is irrevocable — and our sway, our very existence, is dissolved!”

  She rushes away into the air!

  Minerva no longer has her spear; and the ravens, which nestled in the sculptures of the frieze, whirl round her, and bite at her helmet.

  “Let me see whether my vessels, cleaving the shining sea, have returned into my three ports, wherefore the fields are deserted, and what the daughters of Athens are now doing.

  “In the month of Hecatombæon, all my people came to me led by their magistrates and priests. Then, in white robes, with chitons of gold, the long files of virgins advanced, holding cups, baskets, and parasols; then, the three hundred oxen for the sacrifice, old men shaking green boughs, soldiers clashing their armour against each other, youths singing hymns, players on the flute and on the lyre, rhapsodists and dancing-girls — and finally, on the mast of a trireme, supported by coils of rope, my great veil embroidered by virgins, who, for the space of a year, had been nourished in a particular fashion; and, when it had been shown in every street, in every square, and before every temple, in the midst of a procession continually chanting, it ascended to the Acropolis, brushed passed the Propylæum, and entered the Parthenon.

  “But a difficulty faces me — me, the ingenious one! What! what! not a single idea! Here am I more terrified than a woman.”

  She perceives behind her a ruin, utters a cry, and, struck on the forehead, falls backward to the ground.

  Hercules has cast off his lion’s skin, and, resting on his feet, bending his back, and biting his lips, he makes desperate efforts to sustain Olympus, which is toppling down.

  “I have vanquished the Cercopes, the Amazons, and the Centaurs. I have slain many kings, I have broken the horn of Achelous, a great river. I have cut through mountains; I have brought oceans together. I have liberated enslaved nations; I have peopled uninhabited countries. I have travelled over Gaul. I have traversed the desert where one feels thirst. I have defended the gods, and I have freed myself from Omphale. But Olympus is too heavy. My arms are growing feeble. I am dying!”

  He is crushed beneath the ruins.

  Pluto — ”It is thine own fault, Amphitrionades! Why didst thou descend into my realms? The vulture who devours the entrails of Tityus has raised its head; Tantalus has had his lips moistened; and Ixion’s wheel is stopped.

  “Meanwhile, the Keres stretch forth their nails to detain the souls; the Furies in despair twist the serpents in their locks; and Cerberus, fastened by thee with a chain, has a rattling in the throat, while he slavers from his three mouths.

  “Thou didst leave the gate ajar. Others have come. The light of human day has penetrated Tartarus!”

  He sinks into the darkness.

  Neptune — ”My trident no longer raises tempests. The monsters who caused terror have rotted at the bottom of the sea.

  “Amphitrite, whose white feet rushed over the foam; the green nereids, who could be seen on the horizon; the scaly sirens, who used to stop the ships to tell stories; and the old tritons, who used to blow into shells, all are dead! The gaiety of the sea has vanished!

  “I will not survive it! Let the vast ocean cover me.”

  He disappears into the azure.

  Diana, attired in black, among her dogs, who have become wolves —

  “The freedom of great woods intoxicated me with its odour of deer and exhalations of swamps. The women, over whose pregnancy I watched, bring dead children into the world. The moon trembles under the incantations of sorcerers. I am filled with violent and boundless desires. I long to drink poisons, to lose myself in vapours or in dreams! ...”

  And a passing cloud bears her away.

  Mars, bare-headed and blood-stained —

  “At first, I fought single-handed, provoking by insults an entire army, indifferent to countries, and for the pleasure of carnage. Then, I had companions. They marched to the sound of flutes, in good order, with even step, breathing upon their bucklers, with lofty plume and slanting spear. We flung ourselves into the battle with loud cries like those of eagles. War was as joyous as a feast. Three hundred men withstood all Asia.

  “But they returned, those barbarians! and in tens of thousands, nay, in millions! Since numbers, war-engines, and strategy are more powerful, it is better to make an end of it, like a brave man!”

  He kills himself.

  Vulcan, wiping the sweat from his limbs with a sponge —

  “The world is getting cold. It is necessary to heat the springs, the volcanoes, and the rivers, which run from metals under the earth! — Strike harder! with vigorous arm! with all your strength!”

  The Cabiri hurt themselves with their hammers, blind themselves with the sparks, and, groping their way along, are lost in the shadow.

  Ceres, standing in her chariot which is drawn by wheels having wings in their naves — ”Stop! Stop!

  “They had good reason to exclude the strangers, the atheists, the epicureans, and the Christians! The mystery of the basket is unveiled, the san
ctuary profaned — all is lost!”

  She descends with a rapid fall — bursting into exclamation of despair, and dragging back the horses.

  “Ah! falsehood! Daira is not given up to me. The brazen bell calls me to the dead. It is another kind of Tartarus. There is no returning from it. Horror!”

  The abyss swallows her up.

  Bacchus, laughing frantically:

  “What does it matter! The wife of Archontes is my spouse! Even the law goes down before drunkenness. For me the new song and the multiplied forms!

  “The fire which consumed my mother runs in my veins. Let it burn the stronger, even though I perish!

  “Male and female, good for both, I deliver myself to ye, Bacchantes! I deliver myself to ye, Bacchantes! and the vine will twist around the trunks of trees! Howl! dance! writhe! Unbind the tiger and the slave! bite the flesh with ferocious teeth!”

  And Pan, Silenus, the Satyrs, the Bacchantes, the Mimallones, and the Mænades, with their serpents, their torches, and their black masks, scatter flowers, then shake their dulcimers, strike their thyrsi, pelt each other with shells, crunch grapes, strangle a he-goat, and rend Bacchus.

  Apollo, lashing his coursers, whose glistening hairs fly off —

  “I have left behind me Delos the stony, so empty that everything there now seems dead; and I am striving to reach the Delphian oracle before its inspiring vapour should be completely lost. The mules browse on its laurel. The pythoness, gone astray, is found there no longer.

  “By a stronger concentration, I will have sublime poems, eternal monuments; and all matter will be penetrated with the vibrations of my cithara.”

  He fingers its chords. They break and snap against his face. He flings down the instrument, and driving his four-horse chariot furiously:

  “No! enough of forms! Farther still — to the very summit — to the world of pure thought!”

  But the horses, falling back, begin to prance so that the chariot is smashed; and, entangled in the fragments of the pole and the knottings of the horses, he falls head-foremost into the abyss.

  The sky is darkened. Venus, blue as a violet from the cold, shivers.

  “I covered with my girdle the entire horizon of Hellas. Its fields shone with the roses of my cheeks; its shores were cut according to the form of my lips; and its mountains, whiter than my doves, palpitated under the hands of the sculptors. My spirit showed itself in the order of festivities, the arrangements of head-dresses, the dialogues of philosophers, and the constitution of republics. But I have loved men too much. It is Love that has dishonoured me!”

  She falls back in tears.

  “The world is abominable. My bosom feels the lack of air.

  “O Mercury, inventor of the lyre, and conductor of souls, bear me away!”

  She places a finger upon her mouth, and, describing an immense parabola, topples over into the abyss.

  And now nothing can be seen. The darkness is complete.

  In the meantime two red arrows seem to escape from the pupils of Hilarion.

  Antony at length notices his high stature:

  “Many times already, while you were speaking, you appeared to me to be growing tall; and it was not an illusion. How is this? Explain it to me. Your appearance appals me!”

  Steps draw nigh.

  “What is this now?”

  Hilarion stretches forth his arms:

  “Look!”

  Then, under a pale ray of the moon, Antony distinguishes an interminable caravan which defiles over the crest of the rocks; and each passenger, one after another, falls from the cliff into the gulf.

  First, there are the three great gods of Samothrace — Axieros, Axiokeros, and Axiokersa — joined in a cluster, with purple masks, and their hands raised.

  Æsculapius advances with a melancholy air, without even seeing Samos and Telesphorus, who question him with anguish. Sosipolis, the Elean, with the form of a python, rolls out his rings towards the abyss. Doesp[oe]na, through vertigo, flings herself in there of her own accord. Britomartis, shrieking with fear, clasps the folds of her fillet. The Centaurs arrive with a great galloping, and dash, pell-mell, into the black hole.

  Limping behind them come the sad group of nymphs. Those of the meadows are covered with dust; those of the woods groan and bleed, wounded by the woodcutters’ axes.

  The Gelludæ, the Stryges, the Empusæ, all the infernal goddesses intermingling their hooks, their torches, and their snakes, form a pyramid; and at the summit, upon a vulture’s skin, Eurynomus, bluish like flesh-flies, devours his own arms.

  Then in a whirlwind disappears at the same time, Orthia the sanguinary, Hymnia of Orchomena, the Saphria of the Patræans, Aphia of Ægina, Bendis of Thrace, and Stymphalia with the leg of a bird. Triopas, in place of three eyeballs, has nothing more than three orbits. Erichthonius, with spindle-shanks, crawls like a cripple on his wrists.

  Hilarion — ”What happiness, is it not, to see all of them in a state of abjectness and agony? Mount with me on this stone, and you will be like Xerxes reviewing his army.

  “Yonder, at a great distance, in the midst of fogs, do you perceive that giant with yellow beard who lets fall a sword red with blood? He is the Scythian Zalmoxis between two planets — Artimpasa, Venus; and Orsiloche, the Moon.

  “Farther off, emerging out of the pale clouds, are the gods who are adored by the Cimmerians, beyond even Thule!

  “Their great halls were warm, and by the light of the naked swords that covered the vault they drank hydromel in horns of ivory. They ate the liver of the whale in copper plates forged by the demons, or else they listened to the captive sorcerers sweeping their hands across the harps of stone. They are weary! they are cold! The snow wears down their bearskins, and their feet are exposed through the rents in their sandals.

  “They mourn for the meadows where, upon hillocks of grass, they used to recover breath in the battle, the long ships whose prows cut through the mountains of ice, and the skates they used in order to follow the orbit of the poles while carrying on the extremities of their arms the firmament, which turned around with them.”

  A shower of hoar-frost pours down upon them. Antony lowers his glance to the opposite side, and he perceives — outlining themselves in black upon a red background — strange personages with chin-pieces and gauntlets, who throw balls at one another, leap one on top of the other, make grimaces, and dance frantically.

  Hilarion — ”These are the gods of Etruria, the innumerable Æsars. Here is Tages, the inventor of auguries. He attempts with one hand to increase the divisions of the heavens, while with the other he leans upon the earth. Let him come back to it!

  “Nortia is contemplating the wall into which she drove nails to mark the number of the years. Its surface is covered and its last period accomplished. Like two travellers driven about by a tempest, Kastur and Polutuk take shelter under the same mantle.”

  Antony, closes his eyes — ”Enough! Enough!”

  But now through the air with a great noise of wings pass all the Victories of the Capitol, hiding their foreheads in their hands, and losing the trophies suspended from their arms.

  Janus, master of the twilight, flies away upon a black ram, and of his two faces one is already putrefied, while the other is benumbed with fatigue.

  Summanus — god of the gloomy sky, who no longer has a head — presses against his heart an old cake in the form of a wheel.

  Vesta, under a ruined cupola, tries to rekindle her extinguished lamp.

  Bellona gashes her cheeks without causing the blood, which used to purify her devotees, to flow out.

  Antony — ”Pardon! They weary me!”

  Hilarion — ”Formerly they used to be entertaining!”

  And he points out to Antony, in a grove of beech-trees a woman perfectly naked — with four paws like a beast — bestridden by a black man holding in each hand a torch.

  “This is the goddess Aricia with the demon Virbius. Her priest, the monarch of the woods, happened to be an
assassin; and the fugitive slaves, the despoilers of corpses, the brigands of the Salarian road, the cripples of the Sublician bridge, all the vermin of the garrets of the Suburra, had not dearer devotion!

  “The patrician ladies of Mark Antony’s time preferred Libitina.”

  And he shows him under the cypresses and rose-trees another woman clothed in gauze. She smiles, though she is surrounded by pickaxes, litters, black hangings, and all the utensils of funerals. Her diamonds glitter from afar among cobwebs. The Larvæ, like skeletons, display their bones amid the branches, and the Lemures, who are phantoms, spread out their bats’ wings.

  On the side of a field the god Terma is bent down, torn asunder, and covered with filth.

  In the midst of a ridge the huge corpse of Vertumnus is being devoured by red dogs. The rustic gods depart weeping, Sartor, Sarrator, Vervactor, Eollina, Vallona, and Hostilenus — all covered with little hooded cloaks, and each bearing a mattock, a fork, a hurdle, and a boar-spear.

  Hilarion — ”It was their spirits that made the villa prosper with its dove-cotes, its park for dormice, its poultry-yards protected by snares, and its hot stables embalmed with cedar.

  “They protected all the wretched people who dragged the fetters with their legs over the pebbles of the Sabina, those who called the hogs with the sound of the trumpet, those who gathered the grapes on the tops of the elm-trees, those who drove through the by-roads the asses laden with dung. The husbandman, while he panted over the handle of his plough, prayed to them to strengthen his arms; and the cow-herds, in the shadow of the lime-trees, beside gourds of milk, chanted their eulogies by turns upon flutes of reeds.”

  Antony sighs.

  And in the middle of a chamber, upon a platform, a bed of ivory is revealed, surrounded by persons lifting up pine-torches.

  “Those are the gods of marriage. They are awaiting the bride.

  “Domiduca has to lead her in, Virgo to undo her girdle, Subigo to stretch her upon the bed, and Præma to keep back her arms, whispering sweet words in her ear.

  “But she will not come! and they dismiss the others — Nona and Decima, the nurses; the three Nixii, who are to deliver her; the two wet-nurses, Educa and Potina; and Carna, the cradle-rocker, whose bunch of hawthorns drives away bad dreams from the infant. Later, Ossipago will have strengthened its knees, Barbatus will have given the beard, Stimula the first desires, and Volupia the first enjoyment; Fabulinus will have taught it how to speak, Numera how to count, Cam[oe]na how to sing, and Consus how to think.”