Melusine

by Maurice Magre

  Monsieur Spéluque started to laugh with a sincere pleasure, for it is an agreeable sensation to understand what others cannot.

  “No, we’re not entirely alone in knowing. I’ve acquired the proof of it. There are people who have come, some moved by a desire to know, others for unknown motives. Do you recall a certain Guillard, a bad man, who was cross-eyed and whose body, on decomposing, gave of a sweet odor, as the bodies of saints sometimes do?”

  Certainly I remembered. His house was not far from mine and I had gone there after his death.

  “He was one of those who knew. The few objects that had belonged to him were sold at auction yesterday. I went to the sale room in Boudouris and I was able to acquire for next to nothing the book that you’re about to see. But I was lucky. A man with a clean-shaven face, and who was also cross-eyed, appeared immediately afterwards. He had arrived late. He asked me in a low voice whether I was willing to cede the book to him. No matter what price, he told me. I refused, of course. But it’s him who acquired the green bottle containing a minuscule dorsal spine. I tried to compete, but I understood that my fortune was insufficient. He tripled the bid every time. The entire audience was stupefied that a bone in a bottle could be valued at such a high price. He got the dorsal spine, which is perhaps that of a gnome, but I got the book, the Agrippa, also known as the Egromus.

  Monsieur Spéluque had brought a key out of his waistcoat pocket, and he took out of a writing desk, as one takes a precious object, a book of rather poor appearance, the binding of which was shabby and which I would have been ashamed to have on show in the midst of mine.

  “It’s only a book of popular magic, an imitation of the Albertus Magnus with certain curious modifications. There’s an almost complete dissertation on poisons. The harmful qualities of certain plants are described there, and the means of using them. There’s a strange treatise on bird droppings and their properties. It’s all annotated, with comments. That Guillard was certainly a bad man. His copy of the Agrippa wouldn’t be of any interest if it hadn’t had an inscription inside the cover.”

  Monsieur Spéluque handed me the open book, pointing at the inscription, and I read: The entire region between a river called the Argens and the big rock overlooking Roquebrune, from the area that the sea covers to Mont Vinaigre, the top of Saint-Pilon and the grotto where came to pray...

  “It’s a very precise determination!” exclaimed Monsieur Spéluque, joyfully. “The same one at which I had arrived. A few centuries ago, the sea still covered a part of the land outside Fréjus. Note—which is significant—that the author of those lines didn’t dare write the name of Saint Honoratus And there’s another note at the bottom of the page.”

  There were, in fact, a few words in half-effaced characters: Decipher the things written on the carapaces of turtles that emerge from the Argens...

  “You see! Who could write on the carapaces of turtles except certain aquatic spirits?”

  I remained perplexed. “But what does this delimitation signify?”

  Monsieur Spéluque closed his book again, carefully. He made a resigned gesture.

  “Know first that the influence of the earth isn’t exercised everywhere in the same fashion There are effluvia—waves or radiations, if you wish, to use contemporary parlance—that act differently. And there are places that have a terrible privilege. The great natural laws are violated there. One can see an amaryllis emerge from the ground and develop in one night. The dead body of a wicked man can be embalmed. Perhaps the frequency of the vibrations is simply more rapid? In such a place, the evocation of the dead is easier, prayers have more chance of rising very high, because communication with the superior hierarchies operates more easily. And the power of evil is harnessed in the same proportion.

  “Such places have been sacred throughout the ages: Delphi, Montségur, Lourdes. A force passes through them that humans do not know, and utilize haphazardly, some for good and some for evil. It’s reported by the semi-historian Philostratus that Apollonius of Tyana hid talismans on these shores when he left the isles of Lérins, which were to serve for the spiritual development of future men. Apollonius would have belonged to those initiates of early times who had the future of the human race in view. They stored a spiritual force in certain magic stones that was to serve in the Dark Ages, when the spirit would be in danger, and they placed those receptacles of force in the most propitious places.

  “What is the crucial point of the place where we are? The grotto of Saint Honoratus and Porcarius, the place where Saint Eleutherius lived with a crow and is presently known as the Parc Santa-Lucia, or the one where the Templars came to raise their headquarters between Saint-Raphael and the Valescure? Who can tell? The turtles that emerge from the Argens have hieroglyphs on their carapaces. Once a year, in December—that corresponds to an anniversary, no one knows of what—the tower of the Templars, which still subsists amid houses, is surrounded during the latter part of the night by a vague luminosity, to the extent that I’ve been able to perceive it from Fréjus.

  “You’ll be able to witness yourself, after the first hot day, a phenomenon that is produced very close you your house. Between that little house and the sea, about fifty meters away, alongside a small villa called ‘Lacerta,’ there’s an enormous blossoming of wild plants of all sorts. Larches, laburnums, myrtles, lentisks and rosemary spring forth in such abundance that they form a vivacious thicket, perfumed and inaccessible. It’s like a small-scale virgin forest.

  “At the first sign of summer, enormous swarms of fireflies emerge therefrom—winged glow-worms that make a bouquet of luminous radiance. Certainly, it’s not surprising to see fireflies illuminating the nights of hot countries, but this region is entirely deprived of them, except at that unique point. Everything that is marvelous is welcomed by denial or indifference. No one wants to see the light of the Templar tower or to be astonished by the presence of fireflies at Santa-Lucia.”

  Monsieur Spéluque stopped in order to meditate momentarily.

  “Perhaps it’s better thus. If there’s a saint or a hero to whom a task has devolved, he will be able to discover the propitious place and, without being importuned by the blind, he’ll come to wait where necessary for the descent of the divine force. That force is never lost, and expands so variously! It’s sufficient for an ordinary man, well-intentioned but ordinary”—as he said that, Monsieur Spéluque’s gaze was fixed on me in a wounding fashion—“to come to install himself where Eleutherius meditated, for him to understand what the animals around him are saying.”

  “Only for a few seconds.”

  “The time is irrelevant. The misfortune is that the force can serve any ends. The further we go, the more the number of those who aspire to elevate themselves spiritually decreases, and the wicked are increasingly numerous. Between the banks of the Argens to Saint-Pilon, I’m afraid there are a considerable number of them.”

  “I confess that I haven’t noticed anything thus far.”

  “Evil doesn’t allow itself to be known. It has a face like anyone else. When we talked about Monsieur de Lusignan, didn’t you tell me that he seemed at first to be simple and benevolent? But you also told me that he collected butterflies.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Believe me, it’s necessary to mistrust a man who sticks a pin through a delicate body into which the creative spirit has put his concern for beauty. Even his daughter…but that doesn’t concern me. The battle between good and evil takes place all over the world, but here it is exercised with more ardor. Where are the talismans of Apollonius? Will we ever know? The grotto of Saint Honoratus was one such place in the time when the saint lived there, and where his disciples came to listen to the murmur of his prayer in the rocks of the mountain. But every beneficent force has its counterpart. On looking in the direction of Roquebrune one night, I saw that the church formed a more obscure mass, like an accumulation of shadows. I sought the reason for that. I discovered that the church in question contains, in the part that
is underground, in its foundations, certain statues of demons that were once an object of adoration for a Ligurian tribe that had consecrated itself to the evil forces. Many men of our day practice that worship in another form, and there are many more of them that people think.”

  I thought about the monastery above Roquebrune, the monk that had disappeared and the tree trunk that had taken on his resemblance.

  Monsieur Spéluque had fallen silent and I got up to leave.

  “In sum,” I said, “if the laws of nature are overturned, if the waters of the Argens carry mysterious forces, if strange creatures live in our proximity, does the man who inclines to perfection in meditation and the study of the writings of masters have an advantage in pursuing that goal here rather than elsewhere?”

  “A great advantage!” exclaimed Monsieur Spéluque, while traversing his garden in order to accompany me. “The man of whom you speak could go backwards, even return to the rank of the animal he once was...”

  “Damn!”

  “But he could go very high, very rapidly, by virtue of a grace that comes to him from the trees, the earth, the clouds, perhaps simply by virtue of a grace.”

  “But how to anticipate, to know?”

  “There are annunciatory signs. The man who wants to see the signs only has to raise his head frequently, to look at the sky above him, especially at dusk. The nuances are more variable then, the vapors lighter. It’s the moment when the gods have the greatest convenience to instruct humans by means of little tableaux, designs made with the clouds and errant luminosities. People don’t think of seeking the signs; they can’t decipher them. It’s necessary to walk while looking at the sky.”

  THE EVENING OF PENTECOST

  I remembered the words: “Something always happens on the evening of Pentecost.”

  Now, it was the evening of Pentecost. A letter arrived from Roseline. It was a child who brought it, and there was no reply. The letter was more of a note, for it only had a few words:

  I shall wait for you this evening at nine o’clock under the large eucalyptus.

  The large eucalyptus was a tree whose majesty we had often admired together, which was situated behind the park of Monsieur de Lusignan’s property, not far from the little iron gate from which no one ever came out. The day was warm and fine; the evening promised to be admirable. How seductive and romantic that rendezvous was!

  I had seen Roseline two or three times since the dinner to which she had not come, and with a common accord we had not mentioned it. She had made allusion two or three times to the intense migraines by which she was sometimes abruptly gripped and which rendered her incapable even of writing a note. I had nodded my head without sympathizing with the special fashion of that affliction. We had resumed our relationship at the point where it was before the evening on the little beach.

  It is a great verity that any pleasure that is withdrawn from us becomes infinitely greater by virtue of the mirage of the imagination. Perhaps it is only satisfaction that can reckon with the attraction of an unknown pleasure.

  Under the large eucalyptus! That place might have been chosen because of the proximity of the park and the facility of going back if I were not at the rendezvous. But Roseline was quite sure that I would come. It might have been chosen because of the symbolic character that the eucalyptus had acquired in our conversations. We had said several times that the shade of the tree and its situation in the landscape were marvelously suited to an amorous rendezvous. We had accompanied those words with gazes and silly smiles that implied in sentimental symbolism that one would like to be invited to that rendezvous oneself.

  Then too, the relationship of two individuals forms a mysterious curve that one might trace as precisely as the trajectory that a river follows. The river makes detours; there are bridges thrown over it; it sometimes turns back and can sometimes have a subterranean course and no longer be visible. Now I sensed that the sea was, in this case, in the shade of the old eucalyptus, and that the river must flow into it there.

  I did not draw any vanity from it. I knew that the disappointment caused by young Grimaldi and the appetite for revenge were the principal causes of the rendezvous under the eucalyptus. But there is an entire category of events that are such that one does not want to know the causes, and does not linger over examining them.

  The arrival of the child bearing the note had not caused my any joy, and my first thought was not to go to the rendezvous, as was my second. It was with the approach of evening, when the wind caused a few pine-needles to fall and plucked petals from the rose-bushes surrounding the well that the third thought surged forth. I wonder whether it was not mingled with some hypocrisy.

  It said: If I don’t go to the rendezvous, I won’t know whether Roseline went to it herself. If neither of us is there, we’ll be in the same situation tomorrow. Whereas, if I go out at nine o’clock and make sure from distance whether she’s there, and then turn back without going any closer, I’ll be settled in my own mind. I’ll have seen the temptation and I’ll have vanquished it.

  For it was necessary to vanquish the temptation. Temptation never dies. One can triumph over it, but not suppress it. It remains crouching in a secret corner of the soul. An abrupt renunciation in the wake of a chagrin does not have the range that one accords it, because of that sort of immortality of desire. Perhaps there is a moment when the love of the spirit ends up triumphing definitively over the attraction of the form, but when does that moment arrive?

  The evening was increasingly warm and laden with the effluvia of spring. A precocious cicada had given a warning to the world, announcing that thousands of cicadas would soon be wandering in the pines. Then it had fallen silent, or cicadas need a great deal of sleep, like certain humans, and a rule of their species causes that sleep to begin at dusk. Certain perfumes, which had been jealousy kept in reserve by the flowers, were suddenly delivered, emerging from partly-opened blooms. But there was no absolute agreement. There are flowers, like certain convolvulus, of which I could see the rich colors open from my window, which close again as soon as darkness falls. Fortunately, faithful mirabilis were growing not far from the convolvulus, which reared up and opened as the convolvulus closed.

  Is there not an equilibrium in us, I thought, analogous to the one there is in that garden? As certain pleasures disappear, are they not replaced by others?

  And I darted a reassured glance at my books, which, attained by the final gleam of the setting sun, caused their gilt to shine.

  Antoinette had abruptly decreed that morning that it was necessary not to waste four bottles of champagne.

  “Monsieur will drink them all himself. That will fortify him.”

  And she had taken it upon herself to uncork one, in order to incite me to drink.

  The mystery of certain wines is that they give birth to joy in the soul of the person who drinks them. But it is necessary that there should be a predisposition to joy, a seed susceptible of development. If there is a seed of sorrow, that is what receives an aliment and develops. There was in me a seed of desire, and I felt its living force growing rapidly.

  “This wine is excellent,” I said aloud, as if I were taking the invisible guests of my house as witnesses.

  And I sensed at the same time that desire is accompanied by a craving for joy.

  I got up, made a circuit of the table two or three times, and sat down again.

  “Did they drink wine?” I said, again aloud, looking at my books.

  Why not? The Greeks entertained the highest intellectual speculations during banquets. Plato did not think of branding Alcibiades as a drunkard. But the sages of India were all ascetics. If the Christian mystics, at least those who were in monasteries, followed the rules of their Orders, they drank wine, for the majority of Orders authorized wine. Goethe, Swedenborg and many others participated in dinners in the houses of kings, and the wine must have been abundant and excellent.

  “Yes, they drank wine,” I said, once again aloud.

&nb
sp; A certain warmth expanded within me, obliging me to go out into the garden, and I said, but in a low voice: “It’s necessary to fear everything that diminishes the clarity of the mind.”

  Time passed. What should I do? The clarity of my mind was slightly diminished. It was simply necessary to go to the rendezvous. One attached too much importance to things. One reasoned too much. It was appropriate to take from day to day the pleasure that life brought you. And then if one believed in Providence, was it not an insult to refuse what it gave you?

  I went back inside to get my hat. But ought I to take my hat? No, I would go bare-headed. Did Pierre de Grimaldi wear a hat? Did Porcastre? I put the hat down with my right hand while my left hand felt the thickness of my hair, and I experienced a sentiment of surprise on observing how thin that thickness was. I thought of the ease with which I had caught colds for some years. I put the hat on my head and emptied the final glass of the bottle of champagne.

  As I closed the garden gate behind me a problem occurred to me. For how many years, exactly, had I had that facility for catching cold that I had not had before? For colds had once been an unknown malady for me. It was about five or six years that they had been putting in a regular appearance. Perhaps seven. That problem was absurd and futile. Why had it cropped up while I was walking along a road bordered to the right by rosemary and mimosas? But that problem drew others after it. There were holes in my jaw that corresponded to absent teeth. I got out of breath when I ran. Certain heartbeats caused me anxiety. And the vegetation in the nose and ears about which the doctor to whom I had manifested my astonishment had said: “It’s simply a sign of age.”

  He had said “age” in order not to say “old age.” But I could pronounce the phrase, especially in the solitude of the road where I could only be overheard by the trees. And I articulated, aloud, uniquely for the trees that were around me: “A sign of old age.”

  For the road was now bordered by trees of various species. I passed under a cedar, and then there were pines, cork-oaks and other trees whose names I did not know. And they were all old. And on considering them, at that moment, I perceived with certainty that they bore within them a great resignation on the subject of time. Incessantly occupied in extracting life from the earth, they were aware of the ineluctable advent of death, and doubtless they were delivering themselves to a mysterious labor of preparation, of which I knew nothing.