The Ark

by André Arnyvelde

  I will not go, said Melidine to herself proudly, as she returned to her house.

  There was an isolated pavilion in the park, where the king sometimes received his intimates, sometimes had a snack on returning from a hunt, and above all, spent his beautiful nights of love.

  There was a room therein with flagstones of red marble, finished with large chairs and divans covered with animal skins. The light there descended softly from a crystal window framed at the top of a cupola. When the door was open, one could see the park outside, with a bright fountain surrounded by flower-beds. In the distance, the other parts of the palace appeared between the branches of trees. No noise reached it to trouble the lovers, except for the joyful splash of the nearby fountain.

  Statues, plants and soft fabrics ornamented the room, and among the statues, in a niche hollowed out in the wall, illuminated by a lamp that never went out, was the statue of the Virgin Mary. That was due to Monseigneur Gohain. Having no fear on her behalf of profane spectacles and speech, so far above all the games of humans was she, he wanted her there as a refuge ever open to the king.

  Behind that room was the bedroom.

  A soldier was placed every evening on sentry-duty at the door of the pavilion, whose orders were to patrol the surroundings, to drive away the malevolent, the indiscreet or furious husbands, and to run to take the king’s orders if the latter summoned him.

  The king and his lover remained alone, enclosed, as if separated from time and the rest of the world. The domestic charged with amorous offices, equipped with a key to the pavilion, waited wherever the king told him to for the person he was to escort there; then he withdrew, locked the door behind him, and only came back at dawn.

  Words spoken in the streets of Gyzir, on the day when the king gave a rendezvous to the beautiful Melidine.

  “Here’s your milk, Mother Minette. It’s very fresh and warm. Very fresh milk ought to be warm; seeming altogether as if it’s scarcely emerged from the pink nipple, still steaming, with the scent of the stable.”

  “Thank you, friend; here’s your money. Beautiful day. It will be a pleasure to wash this morning. The water in the bowl will be the color of the sky, and the soap will make golden streaks in the blue water.”

  “Ho! Who wants to buy my cabbages, my beets, my lettuces? Freshly picked, freshly cut, a charm for the eyes, a delight for the nose, and a feast for the belly!”

  “Bonjour, neighbor. What’s new?”

  “The morning’s scarcely begun. I’m still asleep. Life will be cheerful today, in the sunlight.”

  “It’s spring. How is your daughter?”

  “Still in bed.”

  “If she’d got up sooner she’d have seen the hunt go by. The king passed this way, followed by the princes.”

  “Bonjour, Father. Bonjour, neighbor. I saw the king’s cortege. The gallop of the horses woke me up. I went to the window. I saw the king. Then I went back to sleep.”

  “Couldn’t you stay up, get dressed, and get moving? Idler!”

  “I went back to sleep for a little while, in order that the king wouldn’t vanish...”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What a beautiful dream I had, Father!”

  “A drink, custodian of the Blessed Wine! A moment’s truce in toil. Serve quickly, and full. Where’s your daughter?”

  “Gone to fetch the wine.”

  “Bonjour, young woman! Come closer. Are you coming this evening?”

  “Shut up! Shut up! My father is watching. Have you enough of this wine?”

  “Another glass. Will you come this evening, to the meadow?”

  “I’ll let you know....”

  “Soldier! Hey, soldier of my heart, are your duties so urgent?”

  “I’m going back to barracks, taking an order to the captain.”

  “Kiss me.”

  “I’m chagrined.”

  “What’s the matter, my dear?”

  “I’m jealous.”

  “That’s stupid!”

  “Gillin’s boating that you love him!”

  “He’s not ugly.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Come and find me tonight; you’ll see which of the two of you I love.”

  “Tonight, you say?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Alas! Alas! Poor me! Tonight I’m on guard outside the king’s pavilion.”

  “Get someone to take your place.”

  “I’ll try, I’ll find someone...”

  “Find him, my love.”

  “If I can’t find anyone, swear to me that Gillin...”

  “Find him, my love.”

  “Comrade, will you stand guard this evening in my place outside the king’s pavilion? I’ll give you this piece of silver…these two coins…these three....”

  “I couldn’t do it for a hundred. The flower-seller Galanelle has promised herself to me this evening.”

  …

  Hey, Comrade, my good friend! Do you want to stand guard for me...”

  “Of course. When?”

  “This evening.”

  “This evening!”

  “I’ll give you three pieces of silver to send to your old father.”

  “Bad luck, Comrade. I have a rendezvous tonight with Menna, the chambermaid. Another time, if you like. Any time you like…except this one...”

  …

  “Captain?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Someone to replace me on guard duty outside the king’s pavilion.”

  “Are you ill?”

  “I’m jealous.”

  “All right. If one of your comrades...”

  “There isn’t any.”

  “Then what do you expect me to do? Stand your guard, my friend.”

  “But Captain…!”

  “Isn’t that Selice going by, over there, in her blue carriage? Cheer up, friend. Orders might come at any minute that will take me to Selice’s house...”

  “Alas, alas.”

  “Bonsoir, custodian of the Blessed Wine. Another glass before going home... Bonsoir, young woman…see you soon?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  …

  “Well, neighbor, what did I tell you? It’s spring. Is business good?”

  When the weather’s as nice as today, people come out of their houses. They stop at the stalls. I’ve sold a lot. The curfew! Bonsoir, neighbor...”

  “Bonsoir, neighbor. Goodnight to your daughter...”

  The Consequence of Monseigneur Gohain’s

  Pious Intentions

  When the last chimes of the Gyzir curfew, repeated by all the villages on Galade, had died away, the king went into the pavilion with his servant and asked him whether the bedroom had been prepared as he had prescribed.

  “Sire,” said the domestic, “it only remains for me to throw the incense on the red coals, and strew the flowers from this basket throughout the room.”

  “Go,” said Emmanuel, “and do it quickly, and then run to the palace gates.

  Having detached a lighted torch from the walls of the main room, the domestic went into the bedroom next door. He blew on the coals, threw odorant gum on to them, used his torch to light a little lamp suspended from the vault by a long chain, the light of which passed through silvery gauze, and smoothed the harmonious gaps in the wall-hangings and heavy curtains with a few strokes of his hand. Then, fixing his torch into a ring in the wall, he spread the flowers on the floor and all the furniture. After that, he went back to join the king, bent his knees before him, and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  “Good guard!” he said to the soldier on sentry duty.

  The latter responded with a vague gesture, sufficient to show that he had heard. The soldier was leaning his head on the two hands that held the shaft of a halberd. He seemed to be sleeping, thinking, or even weeping. If the domestic had had the time to look harder at the man, he would have seen, under the cloak that covered him, his torso and shoulders agitated by
involuntary jerky movements, like those of a man ready to run, who changes his mind, contains himself, then launches himself forward again, and changes his mind again.

  Left alone, the king knelt down in front of the statue of the Virgin, and said a short prayer, for he had acquired a certain piety from his father Georgis, and also considered himself as quits with Heaven for having thought about it sincerely before surrendering himself to profane joys.

  Then, lying down on a divan, he closed his eyes and allowed the image of Melidine to come to him. He evoked her proud smile and the suave contours of her body. He laughed at the little hand that had drawn away…and the suspicion crossed his mind, rapid and fluid, that perhaps Melidine might not come. Sure of himself, however, because of all his gallant victories, he laughed again and thought about the lovely combat in which he was soon about to engage.

  So the king was dreaming pleasantly, his eyes half-closed, on the amicable divan...

  A strange odor offended his nostrils. He sat up. He looked around, and saw nothing for a moment. Suddenly, he saw black smoke gliding between the wall and the pleats of the thick curtain that separated the bedroom from the main room.

  He ran to it.

  There was a fire.

  Because of the inattention or carelessness of the servant, foolish or criminal, the torch had sent fire to the wall-hangings.

  The king tried to go into the room but at the first step the smoke stopped him. It was, however, necessary to reach one of the items of furniture in order to get the key to the door...

  The soldier!

  He struck the main door with his fists, and called for the soldier on guard—but the latter did not come.

  He tried to unseal the lock; he seized it, shook the lock and the door with all his might…but it did not open.

  He was dazed. The idea of anger did not take possession of him at first. That soldier who had abandoned his post! That lover who was not yet here! And the fire extended into the room, having devoured the curtain between the two rooms, already licking gluttonously at the soft fabrics along the walls!

  The only action possible was to flee. The king hammered on the door with his fists, his feet and his shoulder. Grabbing chairs, he made use of them as battering rams—but the doors behind which kings shelter are made of resistant wood. There are no doors stronger, except in the houses of bankers

  The smoke, still relatively light, gradually filled the room. The king coughed; his eyes were pricked by little sharp points. Surprise and the instinct of survival had given way to anger: anger against the culpable servant; anger that he had not come back, against that proud Melidine, who, late in coming, was retaining the domestic at the palace gates; ferocious anger against the sentry who had deserted; bitter anger against himself, whom Melidine had disdained.

  But the anger soon gave way, in its turn, to horror. In sum, if no miracle occurred, if Melidine really was not coming, the king was going to be quite simply roasted. That baroque, abominable end, appeared around him in the grimacing swirls of the smoke, now becoming heavy, like the links of a chain was slowly tightening about his chest.

  It would give way, that door! It was not possible that it would remain firm! Was the smoke not going to escape through the interstices of the battens, was the heat not going to shatter the crystal of the cupola, in order to let the smoke and flame out and reveal the fire to the palace? But could the king, until then, resist the atrocious heat, the invasive vapor?

  “Help! Help me!” he cried, deliriously, stubbornly attacking the unbreakable door.

  “Dear God, have pity on me!” he said, suddenly staggering with a dolorous lassitude.

  Then he straightened up again. In that instant, he perceived, shining feebly through the smoke, the Virgin Mary’s lamp.

  He ran to the statue, threw himself on his knees, and clenched his hands on the stone robe overflowing the niche.

  “Virgin Mary! Our Lady of all succor! Get me out of this great peril! Save me from an ugly death! A miracle, Mother of men! Or let Melidine come...”

  He stopped. Terror did not prevent him from hearing himself ask the exceedingly pure Virgin that she save him by making herself, so to speak, the accomplice of a consequence, in sum, of his profane amours. Was it not, on the contrary, her, the Saintly One, who wanted to punish him here?

  “Mother! Mother! Before your sacred image, I’ve committed numerous sins. I’ve given, before you, too great a part to the delights of the earth. Monseigneur Gohain predicted it. Am I going to die burned, Eternal Mother? Is there no possible redemption? What do you want of your son full of terror, Blessed Virgin? A cathedral with a golden dome? A thousand perpetual candles, and before their tremulous light, relentless masses, so long as I live? Alas, don’t you see that my garments are already catching fire? If I must expiate, is it necessary for me to renounce my dearest joys...hunts, feasts, rides through the forest, excursions in the city, inconstant amours? Is it my death, in sum, that you want? Alas, in what state will my soul present itself before you? Immaculate! Still full of Melidine, and all those who come here…I understand! And this is my greatest fault! You wanted this amour to punish me for my amours...you have charged that proud woman...”

  He collapsed. His eyes closed.

  …

  And when he awoke, the door was open. The air was coming into the wrecked room in delicious waves. The domestic was sobbing at his feet. His ministers and his courtiers—the entire court—were waiting for his first sigh.

  “The soldier?” asked the king.

  “Caught with a mistress,” someone replied, “arrested, perhaps punished already.”

  “And you?” he said, turning toward the distressed servant.

  “Alas,” the latter relied, “an execrable haste on my part must have caused the disaster!”

  “And why that haste, curse you?”

  “A girl I love…whom I was to meet as soon as my task was over…as soon as I had conducted to Your Majesty the…”

  “Shut up,” said the king. A laceration occurred in his mind. Amorous, the felonious soldier; amorous, the valet; and himself...

  He got up painfully. He went to hide his face in the robe of the Virgin, which the fire had only partially spared. And he said: “The miracle occurred, O Savioress! My soul is enlightened in my breast, into which, thanks to you, the air of life still penetrates! You have uncovered for me the perilous path in which I was marching blindly, dragging the entire country with me. In gratitude for your tutelary aid, I shall make a vow to renounce…”

  “What, my son?” asked Monseigneur Gohain, who had approached the king and received that confession at the same time as the Virgin, by the right conferred upon him by his pontifical dignity.

  “Amour, Father,” said the king.

  “Oh! Stop!” said the bishop. “You’re young, my son. The ways of nature are almost as mysterious as those of the Most Holy Virgin. I declare to you that making a vow to renounce it for the present year is sufficient. Such a vow will be, for the Virgin, a sufficiently intense mark of your profound devotion.”

  “For the entirety of the present year, O most Glorious,” said the king. “I will not love any woman carnally.”

  And it was at that moment, breathless, disheveled, her strength exhausted, that Melidine came into the room and saw the king. “He’s alive” she said, and fell down in a faint.

  The king, having concluded his prayers, still shining with fervor, returned to the divan where he had miraculously awakened from death, and there he perceived Melidine. She opened her eyes.

  She got up slowly, and approached the kind, murmuring: “Forgive me!” and extending her lips to him, offering herself to him as if the crowd were not there.

  The king, seeing those red lips extended toward him, swollen with fever and passion, that beautiful body quivering with remorse and hope, leaned instinctively toward Melidine, but then straightened up and said, gravely: “I forgive you, Melidine; go in peace.”

  And, leaving her stupefied a
nd distressed, he drew away, his eyes filled with an interior light.

  THE SECRET OF THE ANAIDE GROTTO

  The Land of Ennui

  Avenues of Gyzir, where the populace rushed to see royal escorts pass by, woods of Galade where sleek foxes, unquiet wolves and great svelte deer with stupid eyes, grazed the moss, broke the branches, crushed the mauve flower-heads and decapitated the heather, songs, clash of weapons, outbursts of perpetual delight in the staircases of the palace, rustles of silks brushing past one another in the corridors, clanking of vast cooking-pots in the ardent kitchen, concerts of mingled music escaping at dusk from boats undulating on the pond, pathways of the park where the laughter of ladies climbed the rays of sunlight descending between the branches of the elms, and fusing with them—what is usurping you, enveloping you, rendering you furtive, muffling you, paralyzing you, extinguishing you?

  The King of Galade is suffering from ennui.

  At first, no one perceived that the king was no longer the same. He has hunted boar and foxes; he has given fêtes, and the inhabitants of Gyzir have danced under the illuminated windows through which passed, as if in gushing drops, the music of the royal salons; he has maintained his high place at table during the usual feasts; he has shown himself the most agile and the strongest in all the tourneys in Galade... But one day, he summoned Monseigneur Gohain, the archbishop, and threw himself at his knees, crying:

  “Save me, Father, for I no longer know the joy of living since I must not make love to any woman! Father, their conquest was the involuntary goal of all my movements. The beasts killed while hunting, with great difficulty and great audacity, the victories of the spear and the dagger, chariot races and horse races, my cheerful voice, my limpid laughter, was for them, had for its impulse and its goal women, the pretty, laughing, nonchalant ladies...