{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_46766/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_46766","id":"gutenberg_46766","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46766","summary":null,"tags":["Category: French Literature","Category: Novels","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Romance","French fiction -- 20th century"],"text":"A NIGHT IN THE LUXEMBOURG\n\nBY\n\nREMY DE GOURMONT\n\nWITH PREFACE\n\nAND APPENDIX\n\nBY ARTHUR RANSOME\n\nJOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY\n\nBOSTON  MCMXII\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nTRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. By Arthur Ransome\n\nA Night in the Luxembourg. By Remy de Gourmont\n\nPreface\n\nA Night in the Luxembourg\n\nFinal Note\n\nAPPENDIX: REMY de GOURMONT. By Arthur Ransome\n\nAUTOGRAPHS--\n\nKOPH\n\nReduced facsimile of the last page of M. Rose's Manuscript\n\n\n\n\nTRANSLATOR'S PREFACE\n\n\nA general, but necessarily inadequate, account of the personality\nand works of one of the finest intellects of his generation will be\nfound in the Appendix. I am here concerned only with _Une Nuit au\nLuxembourg_, which, though it is widely read in almost every other\nEuropean language, is now for the first time translated into English.\n\nThis book, at once criticism and romance, is the best introduction\nto M. de Gourmont's very various works. It created a \"sensation\" in\nFrance. I think it may do as much in England, but I am anxious lest\nthis \"sensation\" should be of a kind honourable neither to us nor to\nthe author of a remarkable book. I do not wish a delicate and subtle\nartist, a very noble philosopher, noble even if smiling, nobler\nperhaps because he smiles, to be greeted with accusations of indecency\nand blasphemy. But I cannot help recognising that in England, as in\nmany other countries, these accusations are often brought against such\nphilosophers as discuss in a manner other than traditional the subjects\nof God and woman. These two subjects, with many others, are here the\nmotives of a book no less delightful than profound.\n\nThe duty of a translator is not comprised in mere fidelity. He must\nreproduce as nearly as he can the spirit and form of his original, and,\nsince in a work of art spirit and form are one, his first care must be\nto preserve as accurately as possible the contours and the shading of\nhis model. But he must remember (and beg his readers to remember) that\nthe intellectual background on which the work will appear in its new\nlanguage is different from that against which it was conceived. When\nthe new background is as different from the old as English from French,\nhe cannot but recognise that it disturbs the chiaroscuro of his work\nwith a quite incalculable light. It gives the contours a new quality\nand the shadows a new texture. His own accuracy may thus give his work\nan atmosphere not that which its original author designed.\n\nI have been placed in such a dilemma in translating this book. Certain\nphrases and descriptions were, in the French, no more than delightful\nsporting of the intellect with the flesh that is its master. In the\nEnglish, for us, less accustomed to plain-speaking, and far less\naccustomed to a playful attitude towards matters of which we never\nspeak unless with great solemnity, they became wilful parades of the\nindecent. It is important to remember that they were not so in the\nFrench, but were such things as might well be heard in a story told in\ngeneral conversation--if the talkers were Frenchmen of genius.\n\nThere is no ugliness in the frank acceptance of the flesh, that is a\nmotive, one among many, in this book, and perhaps more noticeable by us\nthan the author intended. No doubt it never occurred to M. de Gourmont\nthat he was writing for the English. We are only fortunate listeners\nto a monologue, and must not presume upon our position to ask him to\nremember we are there.\n\nThe character of that monologue is such, I think, as to justify me\nin tampering very little with its design. Not only is _Une Nuit au\nLuxembourg_ not a book for children or young persons--if it were,\nthe question would be altogether different--but it is not a book for\nfools, or even for quite ordinary people. I think that no reader who\ncan enjoy the philosophical discussion that is its greater part will\nquarrel with its Epicurean interludes. He will either forgive those\npassages of which I am speaking as the pardonable idiosyncrasy of a\ngreat man, or recognise that they are themselves illustrations of his\nphilosophy, essential to its exposition, and raised by that fact into\nan intellectual light that justifies their retention.\n\nThe prurient minds who might otherwise peer at these passages, and\nenjoy the caricatures that their own dark lanterns would throw on\nthe muddy wall of their comprehension, will, I think, be repelled by\nthe nobility of the book's philosophy. They will seek their truffles\nelsewhere, and find plenty.\n\nM. de Gourmont is perhaps more likely to be attacked for blasphemy, but\nonly by those who do not observe his piety towards the thing that he\nmost reverences, the purity and the clarity of thought. He worships in\na temple not easy to approach, a temple where the worshippers are few,\nand the worship difficult. It is impossible not to respect a mind that,\nin its consuming desire for liberty, strips away not fetters only but\nsupports. Fetters bind at first, but later it is hard to stand without\nthem.\n\nHis book is not a polemic against Christianity, in the same sense as\nNietzsche's _Anti-Christ_, though it does propose an ethic and an\nideal very different from those we have come to consider Christian.\nWhen he smiles at the Acts of the Apostles as at a fairy tale, he adds\na sentence of incomparable praise and profound criticism: \"These men\ntouch God with their hands.\" It may shock some people to find that the\nprincipal speaker in the book is a god who claims to have inspired,\nnot Christ alone, but Pythagoras, Epicurus, Lucretius, St. Paul and\nSpinoza with the most valuable of their doctrines. It will not, I\nthink, shock any student of comparative religion. He will find it no\nmore than a poet's statement of an idea that has long ceased to disturb\nthe devout, the idea that all religions are the same, or translations\nof the same religion. We recognise in the sayings of Confucius some\nof the loveliest of the sayings of Christ, and we find them again in\nMohammed. Why not admit that the same voice whispered in their ears,\nfor this, unless we think that the Devil can give advice as good as\nGod's, we cannot help but believe. And that other idea, that the gods\ndie, though their lives are long, should not shock those who know of\nOdin, notice the lessening Christian reverence for the Jewish Jehovah,\nand remember the story, so often and so sweetly told, of the voices\non the Grecian coast, with their cry, \"Great Pan is dead! Great Pan\nis dead!\" Turning from particular ideas to the rule of life that the\nbook proposes, we find a crystal-line Epicureanism. Virtue is, to be\nhappy; and sin is, where we put it. \"Human wisdom is to live as if one\nwere never to die, and to gather the present minute as if it were to\nbe eternal.\" This is no doctrine that is easy to follow. The god does\nnot offer it to the first comer, but to one who has schooled his mind\nto see hard things, and, having seen them, to rise above them. M. de\nGourmont will tell no lies that he can avoid, especially when speaking\nto himself, but, if he burn himself, Phoenix-like, in the ashes of a\nsentimental universe, he has at least the hope of rising from the pyre\nwith stronger wings and more triumphant flight. He will start with no\nmore than the assumption that the universe as we know it is the product\nof a series of accidents. He will not persuade himself that man is the\nclimax of a carefully planned mechanical process of evolution, nor will\nhe hide his origin in imagery like that of Genesis, or like that which\ncertain modern scientists are quite unable to avoid. He turns science\nagainst the scientists with the irrefutable remark that only a change\nin the temperature saved us from the dominion of ants. Instinct for him\nis arrested intellect, and he is ready to imagine man in the future\ndoing mechanically what now he does by intention. Such ideas would\ncrush a feeble brain or bind it with despair. They lead him to the\nEpicureanism that is the only philosophy that they do not overthrow.\nOur roses and our women make us the equals of the gods, and even envied\nby them.\n\nAll his criticism, not of one or two ideas alone, but of the history of\nphilosophy, the history of woman, the history of man and the history\nof religion, is made with a mastery so absolute as to dare to be\nplayful. The winter night was changed to a spring morning as the god\nwalked in the Luxembourg, and the wintry cold of nineteenth-century\nscience melts in the warmth of a spring-time no less magical. The book\nmight be grim. It is clear-eyed and sparkling with dew, like a sonnet\nby Ronsard.\n\n\"Comme on voit sur une branche au mois de mai la rose,\"\n\nso one sees the philosophy of M. de Gourmont, not quarried stone, but\na flower, so light, so delicate, as to make us forget the worlds that\nhave been overthrown in its manufacture.\n\nI remember near the end of _The Pilgrim's Progress_ there is a passage\nof dancing. Giant Despair has been killed, and Doubting Castle\ndemolished. The pilgrims were \"very jocund and merry.\" \"Now Christiana,\nif need was, could play upon the viol, and her daughter Mercy upon the\nlute; so, since they were so merry disposed, she played them a lesson,\nand Ready-to-halt would dance. So he took Despondency's daughter,\nMuch-afraid, by the hand, and to dancing they went in the road. True,\nhe could not dance without one crutch in his hand; but I promise you he\nfooted it well; also the girl was to be commended, for she answered the\nmusic handsomely.\" Just so, in this book, on a journey no less perilous\namong ideas, there is an atmosphere of genial entertainment, a delight\nin the things of the senses illumined by a delight in the things of the\nmind. And in this there is no irreverence. Only those who have ceased\nto believe have forgotten how to dance in the presence of their God.\n\nPerhaps the technician alone will observe the skill with which M.\nde Gourmont has handled the most difficult of literary forms. In\ntranslating a book one becomes fairly intimate with it, and not the\nleast pleasure of my intimacy with _Une Nuit au Luxembourg_ has been\nto notice the ease and the grace with which its author turns, always\nat the right moment, from ideas to images, from romance to thought.\n\"The exercise of thought is a game,\" he says, \"but this game must be\nfree and harmonious.\" And the outward impression given by this subtly\nconstructed book is that of an intellect playing harmoniously with\nitself in a state of joyful liberty. M. de Gourmont is a master of\nhis moods, knowing how to serve them; and no less admirable than the\nloftiest moment of the discussion, is the Callot-like grotesque of the\nthree goddesses, seen not as divinities but as sins, or the Virgilian\nbreakfast under the trees.\n\nIt is possible that _Une Nuit au Luxembourg_ may be for a few in\nour generation what _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ was for a few in the\ngeneration of Swinburne, a \"golden book of spirit and sense.\" Ideas are\ndangerous metal in which to mould romances, because from time to time\nthey tarnish. Voltaire has had his moments of being dull, and Gautier's\nideas do not excite us now. M. de Gourmont's may not move us to-morrow.\nLet us enjoy them to-day, and share the pleasure that the people of the\nday after to-morrow will certainly not refuse.\n\nARTHUR RANSOME.\n\n\n\n\nBY REMY DE GOURMONT\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThere appeared in _Le Temps_ of the 13th of February, 1906:--\n\n\"OBITUARY\n\n\"We have just learned of the sudden death of one of our confr\u00e8res on\nthe foreign press, M. James Sandy Rose, deceased yesterday, Sunday,\nin his rooms at 14 Rue de M\u00e9dicis. Notwithstanding this English name,\nhe was a Frenchman; born at Nantes in 1865, his true name was Louis\nDelacolombe. He was brought up in the United States, returned to France\nten years ago, and from that time till his death was the highly valued\ncorrespondent of the _Northern Atlantic Herald._\"\n\nOn the following day, the 14th of February, the same journal printed\nthis note among its miscellaneous news:--\n\n\"THE MYSTERY OF THE RUE DE MEDICIS\n\n\"We announced yesterday the sudden death of M. James Sandy Rose, our\nconfr\u00e8re on the foreign press. His death seems to have taken place\nunder suspicious circumstances. At present a woman of the Latin\nQuarter, Blanche B----, is strongly suspected of having been at least\nan accomplice to it. This woman is known for her habit of dressing in\nvery light colours, even in mid-winter, and it was this that made the\nconcierge notice her. She lives, moreover, behind the house of the\ncrime--assuming that there has been a crime--in the Rue de Vaugirard.\nThis is what is said to have happened:--\n\n\"Because M. J. S. Rose, who was of fairly regular habits, had not been\nseen for some days, his door was broken open, and he was discovered\ninanimate. He had been dead for a few hours only, a fact which does\nnot agree with the length of time during which he had remained\ninvisible, and still further complicates the question. It is supposed\nthat the woman B----, after passing the night with him, put him to\nsleep by means of a narcotic (from which the unhappy man did not\nawake), or strangled him at a moment when he was defenceless; then,\nher theft accomplished, she would seem to have fled precipitately. An\nextraordinary circumstance is that in her haste she forgot her dress,\nand must have gone out enveloped in a big cloak. At least there is no\nother explanation of the presence of an elegant white robe in the rooms\nof M. Rose, who lived alone....\"\n\nOn the next day again, there was a third echo:--\n\n\n\n\n\"THE MYSTERY OF THE RUE DE MEDICIS\n\n\n\"It appears that the young woman at first implicated in this affair\nhas been for a fortnight at Menton with M. Pap----, a deputy from the\nbanks of the Danube. They have both written from that place to mutual\nfriends. The inquiry makes no progress; on the contrary...\"\n\nOther papers, that I then had the curiosity to examine, had embroidered\nmy friend's death with still madder tales. As the police, with very\ngood reason, made no communications to the press, the journalists\npushed unreason to insanity; then, as their imaginations could go no\nfurther, they were silent.\n\nIn reality, the mixing up of Blanche B---- with the story was due\nsolely to the chatter of a young clerk, a neighbour of M. James Sandy\nRose, who had noticed a woman's dress of white material in the\nroom. I recount, at the end of the volume, the facts which disturbed\nthis pubescent imagination. Neither the police, who immediately lost\ninterest in the affair, nor justice, which had never taken any, would\nhave been able to implicate anybody in a \"mystery\" which, if it is\nreally a mystery, is not one of those that police or magistrates can\nresolve.\n\nFor some days following, _Le Temps_ left the Rue de M\u00e9dicis alone. At\nthe end of a fortnight, a very talkative young journalist, accompanied\nby an old gentleman who, like him, took notes in a pocketbook, but\nsaid nothing, came and rang at my door. He came with the intention of\nquestioning me. I was willing enough to reply that M. James S. Rose had\ndied of apoplexy, or, at least, suddenly; that I was his friend, and\nthat he had made me his heir; that the rumours of crime were absurd,\nand the rumours of \"mystery\" ridiculous.\n\n\"What is there,\" I said, \"more normal than death?\"\n\nThe old gentleman acquiesced, while the young journalist murmured--\n\n\"And yet....\"\n\n\"The only thing of interest,\" I continued, \"in this banal story,\nsad, perhaps, for me alone, is that M. James Sandy Rose leaves an\nunpublished work which in his will he has charged me to bring out. I am\ngoing to do this....\"\n\nI threw a persuasive glance at the young journalist.\n\n\"It is one of the most curious books I have ever read, and, though the\nauthor was my familiar friend, it is a revelation to me....\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"It is indeed so. The public, without knowing what there is in the\nbook, await it with impatience.\"\n\n\"Ah!\"\n\n\"When you have read it, when you have merely seen it, you will agree\nwith me.\"\n\nThis innocent advertisement was duly inserted in _Le Temps_ and in _Le\nNouveau Courrier des Provinces_, to which the old gentleman had been\nasked to contribute. I gained some moments of amusement, nothing more.\n\nHere is the book, of course without commentaries. In accordance with\nthe imperative requirements of the will, I have not corrected its\nstyle, but revised it where that was necessary, for Louis Delacolombe,\neducated in English, had retained some traces of his school-years in\nhis language. I think that it was written as fast as the pen would\nmove, and with a feverish hand, in the space of a few days.\n\nI have summarised in a final note the results of my personal inquiry.\nThere is no need to read it, but I think, however, that it will\ninterest those whose curiosity is aroused by my friend's enigmatical\nnarrative.\n\n_P. S._--The drawing below, which is from the hand of M. Sandy\nRose, and which I have inserted at the place that he had indicated,\nmay have a meaning, but, if so, I have been unable to penetrate it. It\nseems to represent a Greek medal dedicated to the goddess Core. But\nKOPH means also young girl, and even doll. Besides, are such medals\nknown?\n\n\n[Illustration: Koph]\n\nA NIGHT IN THE LUXEMBOURG...\n\n\nI am certainly drunk, yet my lucidity is very great. Drunk with love,\ndrunk with pride, drunk with divinity, I see clearly things that I do\nnot very well understand, and these things I am about to narrate. My\nadventure unrolls before my eyes with perfect sharpness of outline; it\nis a piece of faery in which I am still taking part; I am still in the\nmidst of lights, of gestures, of voices.... She is there. I have only\nto turn my head to observe her; I have only to rise to go and touch her\nbody with my hands, and with my lips.... She is there. A privileged\nspectator, I have carried away with me the queen of the spectacle, a\nproof that the spectacle was one of the days of my actual life. That\nday was a night, but a night lit by a Spring sun, and, behold, it\ncontinues, night or day, I do not know.... The queen is there. But I\nmust write.\n\nThe abridged story of my adventure will appear to-morrow morning in\nthe _Northern Atlantic Herald_, and will soon make the circuit of the\nAmerican press, to return to us through the English agencies: but that\ndoes not satisfy me. I telegraphed, because it was my duty; I write,\nbecause it is my pleasure. Besides, experience has taught me that news\ngains rather in precision than in exactitude in its journeys from cable\nto cable, and I am anxious for exactitude.\n\nWith what happiness I am going to write! I feel in my head, in my\nfingers, an unheard-of facility....\n\nOn the first intelligence of the pious riots that transformed into\nfortresses our peaceful churches, peaceful after the manner of old\nhaunted castles, the newspaper that I have represented for ten years\nasked me, with a certain impatience, for details. As I live in the\nRue de M\u00e9dicis, having a long-standing passion for the Luxembourg,\nits trees, its women, its birds, I went down towards the Place\nSaint-Sulpice. The square was occupied by children, playing as they\nreturned from school; round it rolled great empty omnibuses; now and\nagain a tramcar widowed of a horse left with difficulty, while another\nstruggled up and turned round without grace. My prolonged stay in Paris\nhas made me an idler like every one else. Nothing astonishes me, and\neverything amuses me. Besides, I am by nature at once sceptical and\ninquisitive. That is why, when I lifted my eyes towards the church, my\nattention was vividly excited by the fact that the windows on the side\ntowards the Rue Palatine seemed lit by the rays of a brilliant sunset.\nBut the sun had not shone that day, and, even if the sky had been\nclear, no reflection could, at that late hour, light the south side of\nthe church of Saint-Sulpice. I thought of a fire, but no trace of one\nwas to be seen in the sky. Something unusual was certainly going on\ninside. I hurried towards the door in the Rue Palatine. As I advanced,\nwithout losing sight of the windows, I perceived that the light seemed\nto be coming down the length of the church, as if blazing torches were\nbeing carried about in this transept of the nave. At the moment when I\nwent in, the windows by the choir began to shine, while those nearer\nthe front of the church were now obscure.\n\nPushing open the door, I went towards the chapel of the Virgin, behind\nthe high altar. It seemed lit up as if for a feast-day, and yet I heard\nno chanting, no music, I perceived no noise. I advanced with steps that\nI thought precipitate, but which were, on the contrary, very slow, for,\nto my great shame, I felt myself trembling; in the deep silence of\nthis mournful basilica my heart, it seemed to me, beat like a bell. At\none moment the lights of the chapel shone with such brilliance that I\nhad to shut my eyes. When I reopened them, it was dark, and some lamps\nalone shed their vague, accustomed lights in the now complete obscurity.\n\nA man stood upright, his hand resting on the closed railings of the\nchapel. He seemed in every way ordinary. Nothing was remarkable but\nthe profound attention with which he was observing the statue of the\nVirgin. I wished to keep on my way, anxious to question some priest\nor sacristan, first on the luminous phenomenon, which puzzled me very\nmuch, and then, as was my duty, on the events which were doubtless\npreparing for the next day; I wished to keep on my way, I was in a\nhurry to finish my business, for I do not find churches, especially at\nevening, agreeable resting-places; I wished to go away, I wished to\nspeak, but I felt that I was fastened to the flag-stones, I trembled\nmore and more, and, finally, I could not prevent myself from observing\nthe unknown man. I saw him in profile. His hair, worn short, slightly\ncurled, seemed to me to be chestnut, like his beard, which was full,\nnot very thick on the cheeks, and of moderate length. His clothes\nwere much like my own; they were those of a gentleman, correct but\nunpretentious. I felt I was going mad, in my inability to explain the\ninterest that stopped me before so common a sight. I understood no\nbetter the attention with which the unknown stared at the Virgin.\n\nA connoisseur of art would have quickly passed on; a devotee would have\nknelt. I was beginning to lose my head, to think that I was ill, when\nthe man, so ordinary and yet so singular, turned his eyes towards me.\nThese eyes, extremely brilliant, completed my discomfiture. I lowered\nmy own, not before I had observed that the very pale face was one of\nthe gentlest and most understanding I had ever seen. I even thought\nthat I discerned on those delicate features a smile of infinitely\nbenevolent irony, like those I have seen in certain portraits of\nbeautiful Lombard women. This smile enchanted and intimidated me at the\nsame time. \"It would be a great happiness,\" I said to myself, my eyes\nstill lowered, \"if I could once again enjoy that smile,\" but I dared\nnot look at the unknown, who, I divined, was still observing me. I no\nlonger trembled, but felt myself in that state of happy confusion which\none experiences in the presence of a woman whom one loves and fears. I\nexpected nothing, and yet it seemed to me that something was going to\nhappen.\n\nWe were about three paces from each other. By stretching our arms we\nshould have been able to touch each other's hands.\n\n\"Come,\" said he.\n\nThis single word sufficed to put an end to all my disquietude. The\nvoice was very agreeable. It filled me with a gentle emotion. At the\nsame time I became as free and as content as in the presence of a very\nold and dearly loved friend. It seemed to me that I had known from all\ntime this unknown of a moment before. I found that I was familiar with\nhis face, his manner, his look, his voice, his mind, his very clothes.\nAn irresistible force moved me to answer him, and to answer him in\nthese words:--\n\n\"I follow you, my friend.\"\n\nAll my surprise had disappeared, and, although I was perfectly\nconscious that the adventure was singular, I was in such a state of\nmind that I did not feel its singularity.\n\nI went up to him. He took my arm, and the action seemed quite natural.\nWere we not old friends? Had I not known him since I was three or four\nyears old? Yes, and although he was certainly much older than I, he\nhad played with me in my cot. All this settled itself clearly in my\nhead. I repeat, from that moment until sunrise the next morning, that\nis to say, all the time I spent with him, I had not one moment of\nastonishment. What happened, what I heard, what I said, the unusual\nphenomena, everything seemed to me to be perfectly in place.\n\nSo I went up to him, and, when his arm was passed under mine, which I\nfolded very respectfully and with a lover's joy, a long and precious\nconversation began between us.\n\n\nHE\n\nIt is this that they call my mother! They are full of such good\nintentions. Admit, my friend, that they are good people.\n\nI\n\nVery good people. You do not think your mother well portrayed?\n\nHE\n\nI have had so many mothers that this image doubtless resembles one of\nthe women who have believed that they gave birth to me; it is their\ninnocence that makes me smile, their virginal conception of maternity,\nthe white robe, the blue scarf. And yet, this church, one of the\nugliest in the whole world, is one of the least puerile. The priests\nwho serve it have preserved some intellectual illusion. They have a\nscrupulous and argumentative piety. The miracles anciently described\nseem to them proved by their very antiquity. They know that I walked on\nthe waters, one tempestuous evening, but, if they had seen the windows\nof their church on fire with lights, would they have believed their\neyes? You saw, you believed, and you came, my friend. That light shone\nfor you alone.\n\nI\n\nOh, my friend!\n\nHE\n\nTo speak to mankind I need a man as intermediary, and I chose you, I\ngave you a sign. You were not obliged to respond. My power is not such\nas to compel men's wills. I can seduce; but I cannot command.\n\nI\n\nI was greatly surprised, I was frightened, but I walked as if to\nhappiness, as if towards a moment of love. But why did the light go\nout, at the moment when I came near you?\n\nHE\n\nBecause your curiosity had become desire. No longer could anything stop\nyou. The iron was on its way towards the magnet. Are you happy?\n\nI\n\nIt seems to me that my life is being fulfilled; it seems to me that my\npast days were only a preparation for the present hour.\n\nHE\n\nThen you are happy? You are going to be much more so. There are things\nof which mankind have always appeared to be ignorant. When you have\nheard them from my lips you will, in that moment, have received the\ncourage to repeat them, and that will win you an eternal glory, a\nglory that will last as long as the earth itself, perhaps as long as\nthe civilisation of which you are a part.\n\nI\n\nIs there not another eternity, a true eternity?\n\nMy master--for I now felt that this old friend was my master still more\nthan my friend--my master was kind enough to smile, looking at me with\ntender irony, but he did not answer my question.\n\n\"Let us go,\" he said, after a moment's silence, \"and walk in the\nLuxembourg.\"\n\nI\n\nNot really?\n\nThis time, he laughed indeed. He laughed softly.\n\nWe walked all round the sombre church, and left it by the Rue\nPalatine. I noticed that he took no holy water, and, even, as I\nstretched out my hand towards the stone shell, he murmured:\n\n\"Useless.\"\n\nIt was now night. We reached the Rue Servandoni in silence. The rare\npassengers met or passed us without emotion, without curiosity. A\nyoung woman, however, who was coming slowly down the street, observed\nmy companion with eyes that seemed on fire. Perhaps, if he had been\nalone, she would have been still bolder. An idea, madder than the young\nwoman's glance, crossed my mind.\n\n\"She looked at you,\" I said, \"as if she knew you.\"\n\nHE\n\nEverybody recognises me, when I wish it. That young woman does not know\nwho I am. She thinks me a man like other men, and yet, if I had been\nalone, her glance would have been much more lively, for she desires\nsoft words, she desires kisses. But what would be her destiny, if I\nyielded to her mute sympathy! The women whom I love lose all reasonable\nnotions of life, and I have no sooner touched their hands, caressed\ntheir hair, than all their flesh weeps with pleasure. If I insist, they\nmelt like figs in my sunlight. Sweet flavour and cruel! If I withdraw\nmyself from them they die of grief, and if I stay with them they die of\nlove.\n\nI\n\nThe mystics have said something of that.\n\nHE\n\nSomething of it they have shown, but wrapped in the withered herbs of\ntheir piety.\n\nI\n\nSaint Teresa ...\n\nHE\n\nShe believed that I loved her with passion. That fatuity made me leave\nher. Hers was the solidest woman's heart I have ever met, and with it\nwhat facility in self-deceit. She really thought she died in my arms:\nI was far away. However, in that supreme moment, I consoled her with\na thought, for she had earned it by her constancy. What she wrote\nherself is not without interest for mankind, but the priests, who set\nthemselves to excite her genius, inspired her with many follies, such\nas her vision of hell. I shall not tell you, my friend, who are the\nwomen I have most loved. Scarcely one of them has left a name among\nyou. A woman who is loved and loves does not pass her time, like the\nillustrious Teresa, in describing the stations of love. She lives and\nshe dies, and that is all.\n\nWhile I was considering these words, which a little troubled my\nunderstanding, we had arrived before the railing of the garden. There I\nstopped, observing the sombre drawing of the great naked trees. Heavy\nblack clouds were passing in the sky, that was very feebly lit by an\ninvisible crescent of moon.\n\n\"How gloomy,\" I said, \"is this park on a winter evening, and gloomier\nstill through these bars.\"\n\nBut the gate opened a little way, and we went in. I had seen so many\nstrange things, heard so many strange words, felt so many strange\nemotions, that this new miracle gave me but a mediocre surprise. We\nwere in the garden.\n\n\"Let us go,\" he said, \"towards the roses.\"\n\nI\n\nTowards the rose-trees.\n\nHE\n\nTowards the roses.\n\nA soft and clear daylight was born as we advanced. The trees, suddenly\nin leaf, the chestnuts blossoming in shafts of white and red, were\nfilled with the songs of birds. Blackbirds, on the topmost branches,\nlaunched their shrill calls. Bees were already murmuring by; a fly\nsettled on my hand.\n\nThe great flower-bed was in full bloom. A perfume enveloped me with a\nprecious sweetness. We disturbed a cat that was stalking two cooing\npigeons. My friend plucked a red rose, then a white, then a yellow. At\nthis moment it seemed to be five o'clock in the morning of a beautiful\nsummer day.\n\nI\n\nI am happy. I am happy.\n\nHE\n\nRoses, these roses, are enough to make me jealous of men. The rose of\nyour gardens, the woman of your civilisation, these are two creations\nthat make you the equals of the gods. And to think that you still\nregret the earthly paradise! Eve! Eve, my friend, was a milkmaid, the\npleasure of a bird-catcher or an early-rising oxherd. Eve, when you\nhave all these real young women to enchant your eyes and make desperate\nyour dreams!\n\nI\n\nShe was, however, a divine work. Your father ...\n\nBut I said no more, trembling with happiness. Three young women were\ncoming towards us. They were dressed in white. Delicate garlands of\nflowers adorned their corn-coloured hair. They walked slowly, holding\neach other's hands; their smiles made a light within the light. At\nthe sight of the new roses, they all cried out together like children,\nand stayed, stretching their arms towards the rose-trees, timorous and\ntroubled by desire.\n\nI watched, a prisoner of the spell, but my friend, with the ease of a\nking, made a few steps towards them, and offered them the roses he had\nplucked. They took them, blushing, and slipped them into their girdles.\nShe who was the tallest, who had the most beautiful hair, and the most\nbeautiful eyes, thanked him with a smile and a few words, and then\nadded:--\n\n\"We were looking for you.\"\n\nHE\n\nThey say that when one looks for me, he always finds me.\n\nThen there was charming laughter, laughter that made my heart laugh.\n\nSHE\n\nHow beautiful are the roses on this earth!\n\nOh! I love this big red one!\n\nHE\n\nTake it for your hair, my friend.\n\nSHE\n\nI am happy.\n\nI too dared to pluck a rose.\n\n\"The one which is red and yellow, the one with many thorns,\" said close\nto me the voice of another of the young women.\n\nShe had rightly divined that I was thinking of her.\n\nI\n\nThe one that makes the hands bleed, and the heart, perhaps.\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nDo not prick your fingers. I should be wretched.\n\nI\n\nAnd what if I pricked my heart?\n\nShe lowered her eyes without answering, took the rose and rejoined her\ncompanion. She was more feminine, more human. She who had my friend's\nfavour seemed of a higher nature, and her very childishnesses could not\nbut be divine.\n\nThe third young woman was not forgotten. She was small and frail,\ntimid, with a heaven of innocence in her eyes. She did not leave the\ntallest, whose sister or chosen friend she seemed to be. She was not\nforgotten; but she disdained the flower I meant for her, and, going\ninto the flower-bed, plucked herself a whole bouquet of roses. My\nfriend observed her with complacency.\n\nHE\n\nSpoilt child.\n\nTHE LITTLE ONE\n\nI have them of all colours. For me! For me! For me!\n\nAnd taking them one after another, she inhaled their scent with a\nselfish delight.\n\nMy friend walked on with two of the young women. I followed him with\nthe other, with her who seemed to have chosen me.\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nLook! Are you bleeding? I warned you.\n\nA drop of blood had been crushed on my finger. I looked at the young\nwoman without answering. She had not the ironic air of which I\nsuspected her. Reassured, I came up to her again; she laid her hand on\nmy arm.\n\nWhile these charming scenes were occurring, I was adapting myself to my\nsingular circumstances. The continuation of the adventure soon seemed\nmost natural. We were walking in the morning in a beautiful, solitary\nand flowery park. Such things happen in life as well as in dreams, and\nI was soon quite at my ease.\n\nWe were now walking in a wood of young chestnuts. Red stalks fell now\nand again at our feet. We went down steps and climbed others; we saw\nponds and pools, stone statues and orange-trees, a cyclop and the\nnakedness of a nymph, flowers of every colour, trees of all forms,\nbushes of all leaves, and pigeons which, with slanting flight, dropped\non the lawns amid the fluttering of startled sparrows.\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nMy name? What an idea! You will learn it if you are destined to know\nit. It is not mysterious. Call me friend; for this day, I will permit\nyou to do so.\n\nI\n\nAre we to have a whole day?\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nDoes a day seem long to you?\n\nI\n\nLong and short at the same time in your company.\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nYou will see that it will be short.\n\nI\n\nAlas!\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nWhere are they? I have lost sight of them. Ah. There they are. Yonder,\nunder the cherry-tree in bloom.\n\nI\n\nAnd she?\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nWhat do you mean?\n\nI\n\nHer name?\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nShe? She is SHE, she is life, she is youth, she is beauty, she is love.\nShe!\n\nI\n\nI ask nothing further. I am happy.\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nAlready?\n\nI\n\nI am happy, and I still desire, but without anxiety. I desire with\ndelight, with calm. I feel a divine peace, a peace full of present\npleasures and of pleasures to come.\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nWith him one is always happy, one becomes accustomed to one's\nhappiness, and yet one feels it continually increase. I said \"already.\"\nDo not interpret that word according to your ideas of yesterday.\n\nI\n\nNone the less, it gave me something to dream of.\n\nShe lowered her eyes, as she had lowered them before, without\nconfusion, with more than human coquetry. When her eyelids lifted,\nslowly, it seemed to me that I saw in her look a dawn of tenderness.\nShe took my hand and hurried me along.\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nCome quickly, they are waiting for us.\n\nUnder a green arbour, rustic chairs were arranged round a heavy table\nof axe-hewn wood. A bowl of milk, cups of flowers, brown bread,\nstrawberries; it was Virgilian. The little one spread the petals of a\nred rose on the milk into which she was dropping the strawberries.\n\nTHE LITTLE ONE\n\nThey are my lips. I give you my kisses.\n\nShe blushed deeply as she said it, and her big friend drew her into her\narms and kissed her eyes.\n\nWhen we had begun to take this matutinal repast, my friend, taking\nno further notice of the young women, renewed the conversation their\narrival had interrupted. We were seated facing each other, two of our\ncompanions together on one side, and on the other the little one, who\nwas busied in arranging according to their shades all kinds of flowers\nthat she had picked in the course of the walk.\n\nHE\n\nMy father ... You were speaking of my father. I am afraid you have\nan exaggerated idea of him. He was certainly very powerful, fairly\nintelligent, just, but, admit it, he was not good ...\n\nI\n\nYou speak as if he no longer existed.\n\nHE\n\nHe is not dead, but he is old. The gods end by growing old. He\nhas retired into the eternal silence of disabused intellects. He\nstill gives advice, he alone is capable of explaining certain human\nevolutions, but the indifference of age has dried up his heart. He has\nnever much loved mankind, and now has turned from them entirely. I, on\nthe other hand, love them....\n\nI\n\nLord....\n\nI rose, to fall on my knees. He calmed my emotion with a gesture.\n\nHE\n\nWhy \"Lord\"? I am not your lord. Listen to me, and reassure yourself.\nObserve these beautiful young women, their quiet, and their smiles.\nThey play with flowers, they watch you with amused eyes: are you afraid\nof them? And yet, would you not say that they were goddesses? Ah! How\nyour women are nearer than you men to nature, nearer to the divine! If\nyou had had a mistress, I should have asked you to go and fetch her:\nshe would have looked at me without timidity.\n\nThe young women began to laugh. All three were now on the same side of\nthe table, and, as they leaned over their scented harvest, murmuring\nlike bees, stirring like lilies where the wind passes, one did not know\nif they were listening to the words of the master or to the words of\nthe flowers.\n\nThis spectacle helped to reassure me, after my friend's sayings, which,\nhowever, I did not understand.\n\nHE\n\nThe religious conception of the world that you now have, the conception\nthat you call Christian, from the name that was given me on the\noccasion of one of my earthly visits, is one of the feeblest that\nhumanity has ever imagined. Practical intelligence has, in a certain\nsense, made progress since the Greek philosophers before Socrates,\nbut speculative intelligence has almost consistently gone backward.\nTo make a system that should have some distant relation to the truth,\nthe cinematic philosophy of Epicurus would have to be poured into the\nfables of pagan mythology. Take, if you like, if Latin thought is more\nfamiliar to you, the poem of Lucretius, and Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\";\nattempt an interpretation which should derive part from universal\ndeterminism, and part from divine caprice.... It is difficult? Why? Are\nnot men apt in appearance to initiative, though ruled, as you know, and\nvery narrowly, by fatal physical laws? You are free, when you think\nyourselves free. It is the same with the gods, but the liberty of the\ngods is exercised on a very much more extensive material, a material\nwhich, without being infinite (infinity does not exist), is immense.\nTheir power, superior though it is, is of the same order as human\npower. Greece touched the knot of the question, and, if she did not\nuntie it, it is that it is not to be untied: the creator of the world,\nthe regulator of the world, is Destiny. Fatality rules over the gods,\nas the gods rule over men, and under her hand, my friend, we are all\nequal, exactly as you are under death, genii, kings, and beggars alike.\n\nTo dissimulate the trouble into which these words threw me, I turned\ntowards the young women. There were but two of them.\n\nSHE\n\nThe little one has gone off to look for more flowers. Some of them fade\nso quickly. One would say that the warmth of the earth is enough to dry\nthem up.\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nHow many times love has been killed by kisses.\n\nI\n\nDo not say so, my friend; that was not love, but caprice.\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nCaprice and love hide under the same dress.\n\nI wanted to lay my hand on hers. She took it away, and I had but a\nfinger, but I pressed it unresisted.\n\nTHE LITTLE ONE\n\nHere are other flowers.\n\nTHE OTHER\n\nThey will fade too.\n\nHE\n\nNo, they will not fade.\n\nTHE LITTLE ONE\n\nThere, you see.\n\nI\n\nI have needed this diversion, my friend, to accustom myself to your\ndiscourse.\n\nHE\n\nYes, you are a man, and such you will remain. It is necessary that you\nshould remain a man.\n\nI\n\nShall I not become superior to other men, when I have heard, when I\nhave understood?\n\nHE\n\nYes, if you understand.\n\nI\n\nThe Christian phase, then, has been an error of humanity?\n\nHE\n\nHumanity has never lived but in error, and, besides, there is no\ntruth, since the world is perpetually changing. You have acquired the\nnotion of evolution, which, within certain limits, is correct, but\nyou have wished at the same time to preserve the notion of truth:\nthat is contradictory. If you were to succeed in constructing, in\nyour intellect, a true image of the world, it would be already untrue\nfor your grandchildren. For, if the world evolves, you likewise\nevolve, and man, from one generation to another, is not the same man.\nYou ceaselessly struggle to find the likeness of the old man in the\nportrait of the child. It is a game. After all, it is something for you\nto do.\n\nI\n\nYes, the search for truth is one of the great occupations of men. One\nis held happy when one has found it; and, if one is unable to find it\noneself, one shares in a neighbour's discovery. The neighbour never\nrefuses. This need of truth torments men about the time that their\ncarnal passions let them rest.\n\nHE\n\nNature was cruel in allowing her creatures to survive the period of\nphysical expansion. But of this very cruelty you have taken advantage,\nand I think that many old men among you are happier than many of the\nyoung. In Truth, at last, they find a faithful mistress.\n\nAs he said this, I could not prevent myself from glancing at the young\nwoman whom I have called \"The Other.\" She looked at me, too, but\nlowered her eyes, blushing.\n\nHE\n\nI cannot modify even for an instant the form of your human brain,\nthe habits of your understanding. That is why I enter into all your\nfantasies of language, and use even your abstract words. Do not let\nthat dupe you. It is not approval. Truth is an illusion, and illusion\nis a truth.\n\nI\n\nNone the less, your presence here, your words....\n\nHE\n\nYou will no longer believe in me when you no longer see me, and you\nwill never know if this night, this winter night, clear and warm as a\nsummer morning, if this night of happiness was a truth or an illusion.\n\nIt seemed to me, for the space of less than a second, that the whole\nspectacle before me went back into the nothingness of dreams, but my\neyes, that I had not closed, found the light again, and I was comforted.\n\nHE\n\nI shall, then, not tell you the truth, because no concordance is\npossible between your mind, served by your senses, and that which is\noutside your senses. There is a representation; it is inexact, because\nit is fragmentary and momentary. A few little cubes of mosaic have\nfallen from the vault; you put them in the palm of your hand, you set\ntheir tints side by side, and you believe you have reconstructed the\ndrama of the world. I shall not tell you the truth; I shall tell you\nwhat you wish to know. When you know it, you will know no more of it,\nbut you will be satisfied.\n\nI\n\nMaster of enigmas and of parables....\n\nHE\n\nThe gospels, my gospels! Poor and happy books! What a strange fate\nhad these pious dreams of some Jews disturbed by drunken prophets!\nImposture has made in them such na\u00efve arabesques with faith! Have you\nread the Acts of the Apostles? It is not as good as \"Aladdin and the\nMarvellous Lamp,\" but how moving it is! These men touch God with their\nhands. And it is pastoral and fairy tale at once. It is a pantheism of\ningenuous conjurors. Behold me a carpenter, a fisherman, a prophet,\na magician; I am hanged and buried; I am resuscitated and mount to\nheaven; thence I re-descend in the form of tongues of fire. I am one,\nI am two, I am three; I am a dove, I am a lamb, I am God, and all\nat once. And the nations understand; the doctors explain. Everybody\nbelieves. Truth reigns. Happiness is poured into pacified hearts.\n\nI\n\nIs not that what you intended?\n\nHE\n\nJesus, whom I inspired with some elementary ideas, made a mistake in\ntaking twelve disciples. He would have done wrong to take a single one.\nMy ideas, falling into these twelve heads, became twelve different\nkinds of folly. It was then that I interested myself in Paul. It was\ntoo late. Besides, I abandoned him almost at once. None the less, the\nChurch that he founded has become a curious institution.\n\nI\n\nMen have thought it divine.\n\nHE\n\nFor nearly twenty centuries I have watched with sorrow its ironical\ndevelopment. It has made me curse, it has made me scorn....\n\nI\n\nIt has also made you love.\n\nHE\n\nWith what love! Ah! my beautiful feast-days of Ephesus and Corinth!\n\nI\n\nWhat are you saying?\n\nHE\n\nYou hear in this moment the confession of a god. A moment unique in\nyour life, and rare in the life of humanity. Take the hand of your\nfriend, and carry it to your lips. You will listen to me more wisely\nif your heart is at peace. Call her Elise; she will answer your smile\nwith a smile.\n\nI obeyed with joy. Elise let me take her hand, and I tenderly kissed\nit. Her friend watched us with an air of kindly complicity. Delightful\nbetrothal!\n\nI\n\nI love you, Elise. Do you love me?\n\nELISE\n\nI love you, my friend. But give me my hand again, that I may arrange\nthese flowers for the feast-day of our hearts. Let us listen to our\nmaster and be wise.\n\nI let fall Elise's hand, after kissing it once more. A very sweet smile\nthanked me, and I saw, under the white robe, her bosom swell with love.\n\nThe little one, tired of running about, had sat down on a low chair,\nleaning her head against the knees of her comrade, who, absently, was\nplaying with her yellow hair. My master, his eyes on this charming\npicture, whose emotion he seemed to make his own, said nothing. After\nseveral moments of a silence that enriched my life, he spoke again:--\n\nHE\n\nIf I have sometimes come to visit men, it has been for love of their\nwomen. Not that, like the gods whose stories are written by the poets,\nI desire a multiplicity of embraces. I come less to love than to let\nmyself be loved. I belong to those who wish to make me theirs, and I\nmake myself for their hearts the ideal man whom earth refuses them.\n\nFor you have created woman, you men, and you have remained inferior to\nyour creation. You have not known how to acquire the gifts that would\nhave completed the miracle, and your loves are always lame. You take,\nand you do not give; you impoverish the fields that are fertilised by\nyour desire, and the women you have loved die of thirst as they look at\nthe dryness of your eyes.\n\nAll three were listening, very attentively. Elise, however, was good\nenough to take my fingers and press them, while her two friends rose,\nand were going to kiss the hand of the master. But he opened his arms,\nand they fell on his breast as fall two flowers plucked by the wind.\nElise and I watched with pleasure this charming episode, and I said to\nmyself, na\u00efvely: \"He welcomes these two women as he would have welcomed\nall women, and I understand that he can belong at the same time to all\nat once and to each one in particular.\" Elise's hand, meanwhile, began\nto grow restless in mine. She said in a whisper and unevenly, these\nenigmatic words:--\n\nELISE\n\nFriend, friend, are we not more beautiful than women?\n\nYes, Elise was more beautiful than a woman. I thought I was looking at\na divinity. I thought I was becoming a god. My mouth took possession\nof her mouth, and my left arm supported her head, while my right hand\nsought under the agitation of her bosom the beating of the heart that\nI desired. It became dark night except in my head and in my senses,\nand it seemed to me that Elise was mine, and that cries left our moist\nand trembling mouths. But perhaps it was only an illusion. And yet, I\nperfectly remember that, when the light came back, our eyes were full\nof gratitude and of understanding. Moreover, we were now so close to\none another that we seemed but a single body.\n\nInsensibly we recovered our former attitudes. The little one, when once\nmore we looked at the external world, was sleeping on her friend's\nknees, and our master was meditating, his head on his hand. What had\npassed before us, what mysterious accomplishment, I did not then think\nof asking myself, and now, if I were to ask, I should not know what to\nanswer. Illusion had doubtless buried us all alike in a rain of roses,\nand the magician had not escaped his own magic.\n\nThe great happiness I felt quickened my intelligence. When our master\nbegan to speak again, I felt that a soft beam of sunlight was falling\nupon me.\n\nHE\n\nI told you that the religion of the ancient Greeks was that which\ntranslated with least ugliness and least falsity the true state of\nthe world which is invisible to you. There are gods, that is to say, a\nrace of men as superior to other men as you are superior to the most\nintelligent or the best domesticated animals. You have conquered the\nearth; my ancestors conquered space, and colonised the greater number\nof the planets that gravitate round the sun. Our possible domain does\nnot extend beyond the solar system; our actual domain does not stretch\nbeyond Jupiter, where my father dwells, and its limit in the direction\nof the sun is this earth upon which we are. For a great number of\ncenturies I have chosen Mars as a resting-place, and this brought me\nnear you, and gave me certain humane inclinations. The other planets,\nby reason either of their distance from or of their nearness to the\nsun, are inaccessible to me, almost as much so as to yourselves. I do\nnot know what goes on in them. As for the infinite worlds which are\nspread beyond our sphere, they are for me as for you the unknown and\nthe unknowable.\n\nWhat I have just told you will not seem very new. Many of your\nphilosophers have had imaginations that at some point touched this\ntruth. Voltaire made Micromegas to tease you; but, submitting to the\nappearances of physical laws, he made an immoderate giant of him. Why\nso? Are not the ants, next to men, the most intelligent of terrestrial\nanimals? I think I remember that at a far-distant epoch, that your\ngeologists call, I believe, the coal age, the termites displayed on\nyour globe a sort of genius. These little beings, so fragile, were cut\nshort in their development by the lowering of the temperature. They no\nlonger live but with a slackened vitality, like other insects; their\nintelligence, no longer nourished by an abundant physical activity, has\ncongealed; they stopped at a point thenceforth impassable for them,\nand what they once accomplished by choice and will, they now no longer\ndo except mechanically. But let us leave Micromegas....\n\nI Micromegas has almost ceased to interest us. You have said, a little\nquickly for my intelligence, many things that would delight me if I\nbetter understood them. This slackened life ....\n\nHE\n\nTerrestrial life is precarious since it is at the mercy of\natmospherical circumstances. Animals that have not a very high\ntemperature are destined to expend their strength in a perpetual\nlabour of adaptation. If the original heat had increased instead of\ndiminishing, the termites and the ants would perhaps be two great\nnations, sharing between them the empire of the world, and man would\nbe one of their preys. But you discovered the art of fire and raised\nyourself above all other animals. Fire, in giving you a constant\nsummer, also gave you leisure. Thence your civilisations, proud\ndaughters of idleness, who deny their mother. It is from idleness that\neverything has been born among men. From the year in which one of\nyour ancestors was able to pass the winter beside his fire, date the\narts, the sciences, games, love, all delights. Leisure is indeed the\ngreatest and the most beautiful of man's conquests. But, though you\nhave known how to conquer, though you have known how to create, you\nhave scarcely ever known how to use your conquests or your creations.\nAfter conquering leisure, you disdained it, and slaves, ashamed of the\ninactivity of their domesticated hands, set themselves to preach among\nyou the sanctity of labour. Poor madmen! And are you not already on\nthe way to spoil woman? Have you not already succeeded in insinuating\ninto her heart the shameful principles of Jewish morality? Have you\nnot resolved, in your narrow masculine pride, to undo the work of your\nancestors and to reduce to the position of mean and lesser men these\ncreatures who used to dominate you with all their beauty and with\nall their tenderness? You educate them; you teach them the useless\nstupidities that make your own brains ugly; soon you will forbid them\nornament, you will forbid them love, you will forbid them to make you\nhappy! But I will take up this discourse later. It is a digression due\nto your curiosity. We were speaking of Micromegas. Well, I am, if you\nwill, Micromegas, reduced to our human proportions. No more than he\nhave I absolute power over men; I cannot even crush them, like that\nTitan, in absent-mindedness or in pleasure. I have scarcely any power\nover men: I can, when I strongly wish it, insinuate into them some\nfew of my ideas. It is this that men have called my incarnations. I\nhave never become incarnate. My own flesh, almost immortal, and almost\nincorruptible, suffices me.\n\nI\n\nAlmost....\n\nHE\n\nThe gods are born and die, so my father has told me. I have not seen\none die, I have not seen one born. But I was born, since I have a\nfather and a mother.\n\nI\n\nYour mother Mary....\n\nHE\n\nCredulous and inattentive child! What matter the successive names that\nare given us by men? The Greeks called my mother Latona; they knew\nme under the name of Apollo. Their religion was full of fables, but\nthey were not ignorant of the essence of things. I know nothing of how\nthe elementary truths were revealed to them. Perhaps my father, in\nprimitive ages.... I did not begin to busy myself with men until about\nthe time of Pythagoras. I inspired him with some happy ideas; he passed\nfor divine, and is one of the rare disciples for whom I have never had\nto blush. Pythagoras civilised the shores of the Mediterranean. His\nthought, sustained by me, hovered like a light white cloud over the\nblue waves of that maternal sea.\n\nBut Epicurus was perhaps still nearer to my heart. His natural and\nmore genial sensibility produced, under my breath, a more beautiful\nintellectual flower. He knew one part of wisdom, and was not the dupe\nof analogies. Intelligent, he did not go and suppose a universal\nintelligence, inventing systems, poems, and useful practices for the\nhappiness of man; he did not go and suppose a supreme creator. He\nunderstood that the temperaments of men are diverse, and did not advise\na uniform pleasure. He taught pleasure, that is to say the art of being\nhappy according to one's nature. I loved Epicurus. I showed myself to\nhim in the form of an older friend, a traveller who wandered over the\nworld in search of wisdom. Once or twice a year, he saw me arrive with\njoy, put his slaves at my orders, did not hide from me his wife, who\nfor a long time was pretty, and for whom I felt a tender friendship.\nShe was only jealous of her husband's tenderness, and never prevented\nhim from enjoying the caresses of a beautiful stranger. She herself was\ninsensible neither to Ionian nor to Asiatic beauty, and this pure and\ncharming couple often partook of pleasures that they did not give to\neach other. I accepted these voluptuous customs; the indulgent night\nmore than once heard our sighs mingle with those of the sea which came\nto break its perfumed waves at our feet.\n\nThese things occurred at the hour when the young slaves came, before\ngoing to sleep, to wash away on the beach the stains of the day's\nwork. They played, they laughed, and we loved to join them in the\nwater, still warm from the fires of the afternoon. Tired by a long\nphilosophical talk, we found a singular refreshment in the caresses\nof the waves, and a strength that we willingly abandoned in the arms\nof the young women. Then they came and sat beside us on the sand, and\nsang, while we dreamed of nature increate. These songs did not fail\nto attract an ardent youth; we knew it, and when we were rested and\nrefreshed, we went and stretched ourselves upon our mats, letting new\npleasures be born, new flowers, in place of those we had plucked.\n\nMy friend, the teachers who poison your sensibility and stifle your\nintelligence have made you believe for some centuries past that the\npleasure of Epicurus was a pleasure wholly spiritual. Epicurus had too\nmuch wisdom to disdain any kind of pleasure. He wished to know, and\nhe knew, all enjoyments that may become human enjoyments; he abused\nnothing but made use of everything in his harmonious life.\n\nIt was during the early hours of one of those happy evenings that we\nfound, a result of long meditations, of long discussions, the atomic\nsystem. It was a great intellectual achievement, the greatest that has\never been produced among you or outside your sphere. To conceive the\nworld as the product of a series of accidents, that is to say of a\nseries of facts rebounding to infinity one on another, is a conclusion\nat which the noblest minds of your time dare hardly stop, although it\nattracts them. Twenty centuries of Platonism have so deranged man's\nunderstanding that the simple truths no longer find a footing in it.\nAnd yet, all the systems that you have imagined can be disproved, and\nthat of Epicurus cannot. Would you like me to explain it to you, not as\nyour professors of philosophy have defaced it, but as we established it\nin our Ionian evenings?\n\nI\n\nWe scarcely know the system of Epicurus but by Lucretius' poem....\n\nHE\n\nThe most beautiful, perhaps, of the works of men.... Ah! if men had\nchosen for Bible that admirable book!\n\nI\n\nOught we to recognise in it a little of your thought?\n\nHE\n\nMuch, my friend, much. It was I who guided the young Lucretius towards\nZeno, from whose mouth he learnt to love and understand our Epicurus.\nI found again in this sombre Roman genius something of the voluptuous\nhabit of mind that ennobled Epicurus, a similar desire of knowledge,\nand at the same time a respect for the secret movements of life. His\nexistence would have been that of a dreamer, if the future had not\ntormented him with his passions. He was loved, and was persecuted by\njealousy, he, who asked nothing from his mistress but peace for his\nflesh and peace for his thought. He loved. Love made an observer of\nthe dreamer. He wished to learn the cause of love, and learnt that\nlove was life itself; he wished to learn the cause of life, and learnt\nthat life, that is to say eternal movement, was its own cause. The\ngreat adventures of ambition that he witnessed also did much to\ndetach him from social pleasures. The actions of animals, so simple,\nso precise, seemed to him more interesting than the bloody combats of\na few madmen who bought by a crime the certainty of dying by a crime.\nAt the time when he wrote his poem, I was almost his only guest at\nhis villa Lucretia, not far from Albanum. It was a farm rather than a\npleasure-house, and often, returning from a walk, we lent a hand in the\nharvest or the vintage. Memmius, if he was there, watched us or played\nwith the girls. Memmius was a mundane sage and rather libertine. In the\nevening we took up our talk again. I revealed to him in their entirety\nthe mysteries that Zeno, very jealous, had half hidden from him. On my\nnext visit he read me the last pages of the poem, and I recognised with\njoy in this language, less supple but more solid than the Greek, the\nideas and the genius of the noble Epicurus: \"Ancestress of the Romans,\nO joy of men and gods, noble Venus, it is thou who, under the vault of\nheaven where the stars revolve, dost people the ship-carrying sea and\nthe fruit-bearing earth; to thee all that has life owes its birth and\nits sight of the light of the sun....\n\nI\n\n\"At thy coming, O goddess, the winds take flight, and the clouds\nretire....\n\nHE\n\n\"For thee the earth scatters the scent of her flowers, for thee laugh\nthe waves of the deep....\"\n\nI\n\nLucretius is now but lightly valued among men. He is held immoral,\nhaving spoken of love without hypocrisy and of death without illusions.\n\nHE\n\nYes, he knew too many things wounding to your childish sensibility.\n\nI\n\nI remember a sentence of Bossuet, a sentence that implies a scorn of\nantiquity: \"As soon as the cross began to appear in this world, all\nthat men used to adore on the earth was buried in oblivion. The world\nopened its eyes and was astonished at its ignorance....\"\n\nHE\n\nAnd it is I! It is I! So many absurdities in my name!... But our young\nwomen have fallen asleep, their hair mingled with the flowers they were\narranging. Let them be. Take away these lilacs which would give them\nheadaches. O divine creatures, you know all, knowing love, and you have\nno need of our vain philosophies.\n\nHe rose, and, walking round the table, kissed all three upon the cheek.\nThen he sat down again beside me, and spoke:\n\nHE\n\nI shall not tell you what matter is; I do not know. Matter is that\nwhich is, that which has always been, that which will always be.\nWith Epicurus, I conceived it as an infinity of atoms, or of points,\nmeeting at hazard, and forming groups here and there; it appears to me\nnow more like a tissue, but that comes to the same thing, since there\nmust always be space between the continuous elements of this tissue.\nOtherwise we should have a mass, immobile, and consequently inert. One\ncannot suppress space, whose reality, however, it is impossible to\nconceive; for if space is empty it is nothing, and yet without this\nnothingness nothing could exist.\n\nIn admitting matter in the form of a tissue, we suppose an infinity of\nlines cutting each other in all ways; but a line is made up of points.\nLet us return then to points; that is clearer, though not much so.\n\nYour chemistry believed that it reached the limits of analysis, in\ndiscovering the molecules that it counts and weighs. But it is evident\nthat a ponderable point can be cut into two points equally ponderable,\nand so on to infinity, and so on without limit of space or of time.\nThere would be, then, two infinites: one above us, since every number\ncan be increased; the other below us, since every number can be\ndiminished. However, since space must be considered as an absolute\nvoid, as a perfect nothingness, as nothing, it is possible that each of\nthese two infinites would abut sharply on this void, on this nothing.\nThe world is perhaps limited. This tissue is, perhaps, a sphere\nisolated in the midst of the nothingness. As one does not well see how\nsomething can come out of the nothingness, or how something can become\nnothingness, we shall conclude that the eternity of matter coincides\nwith the eternity of this nothingness. In this way we shall have being\nand not-being. But, as not-being is perfectly inconceivable though\nnecessary to the existence of being, we shall leave it aside; what else\nshould we do with it?\n\nI am aware that one of your learned men has lately been able to speak\nwith a certain logic of the final annulment of matter; I do not think\nthat this idea has a really perceptible meaning, either for men or\nfor gods. What is, is. Disintegration, moreover, does not signify\ndestruction, but change. The face of things has changed and will change\nagain, but the very essence of things is as eternal as chance. This\nuniverse is only one of the innumerable tricks of chance, one of the\nfortuitous moments in the eternal movement ... You find this tedious?\n\nI\n\nWhat is more interesting, next to our personal life, than the personal\nlife of the world?\n\nHE\n\nYou will die, and the world as you see it will die also. The movement\nthat created it by accident will destroy it by its own continuity.\nThe vulgar eternity that you conceive is only a moment. Have you seen\na top spinning? There is a moment, about the middle of its gyration,\nwhen the circles described by one of the points on its circumference\nare all described with a sensibly equal speed. The solar system, by\nits precision, should make us admit that the top of which we form some\nof the atoms is pretty nearly half way through its spin. Motion is not\nperpetual, as you know; so the gyration will go on with necessarily\nslackening speed, until the top lies down on its side and dies.\n\nI\n\nOh! our dreams of eternity!\n\nHE\n\nDo I touch them? A man dies, a man is born. A world dies, a world is\nborn.\n\nI\n\nRenewal is not eternity.\n\nHE\n\nIt is not of eternity you dream, but of immobility. The eternity you\nhave conceived is only a stoppage of movement. What should be conceived\nis the perpetuity of movement. Men, gods, and worlds; eternal movement\nwalks us for a moment among the infinities of chance.\n\nI\n\nAnd so all human effort, our philosophies, our sciences, the dolorous\nand superb edifice of our civilisations....\n\nHE\n\nDestiny is more beautiful than all civilisations.\n\nI\n\nBut, if they must perish, let their memory at least remain in the\nintelligence of the gods!\n\nHE\n\nCan the gods survive the world that gave them birth? We are your\nbrothers in mortality. Epicurus knew it. He never considered the gods\nas other than provisional immortals. Nor had he the singular idea of\na unique god, infinite, eternal, &c. That belief had already been\nimported from Asia into Greece, but the Greeks, not understanding it,\npresented their whole pantheon in a body with an ironic immortality.\nPlato and Aristotle took it up, and tried to make it reasonable, but\nonly succeeded in showing more clearly its philosophical inanity. I did\nnot let Epicurus, whom I loved, lose his way in this metaphysic. God is\na dream, charming or cruel, useful or dangerous according to the heads\nin which it reigns, but no more than a dream. Need I explain to you the\nimpossibility of God? God for men is a matter not of reasoning but of\nsentiment. Your better philosophers have understood him so well that\nafter denying him in their intellects they have hurried to affirm him\nin their hearts. That is what I should do, perhaps, if we had to remain\non the level of humanity; but I am come to raise you above men,--for an\ninstant, before letting you fall back again.\n\nI\n\nMaster, have I displeased you?\n\nHE\n\nAlmost all those whom I have raised above the earth have fallen again.\nThe happiest died, some moments before their perjury; the others\ndenied me. But listen. Have you ever reflected on the incontestable\nmathematical truths? In any case, you know that one is one, and that\nnothing in the world can make one two, or two one. In the human brain,\nevery impression, every sensation, every image, every idea, must find\nfor lodging a separate habitation. Who then has imagined a central cell\nto replace the soul? A useless imagination, since this cell could only\nbe a reduction of the brain, as the brain is a reduction of the world.\nA unique centre of knowledge is an absurd conception; this unique\ncentre is necessarily composed of as many receptive as there are\nknowable elements. In the same way, God cannot be conceived as a simple\nbeing. If he existed, he could exist only in complexity; he would be\nmuch like a man, he would be much like me, who am a superman. Multiply\nyourself to infinity and you have the only really conceivable Almighty.\nThe religions and modest philosophies that have imagined God in the\nform of a perfect man have at least remained within the limits of a\nreasonable analogy. I, the one of the gods whom men adore, I tell it\nyou in all divine humility: I am a man and God is a man. You will never\ntranscend this respectable conception without going into the absurd.\nWhat is the God of your metaphysicians? An abstraction whose reality is\nno more possible than that of heat, good, penetrability, truth, beauty,\nor weight.\n\nThe religion of the Greeks was charming, above all in later times;\nyour own has now and then given me some gratification. The Ancients\nknew the religion of beauty and pleasure, you know that of grace\nand tenderness. I scorn your philosophies, which are only adroit\nintellectual structures; I have never been able to scorn your legends\nand your superstitions, the traditional obeisance that your mind makes\nto your sensibility. But this is the field reserved for the exercises\nof the populace, children and timorous women. There are no noble human\ncreatures but those who are in love with themselves and study to\nextract from their natures all the vain happiness contained in them.\nVain but real, and only reality. To know that one has but one life, and\nthat it is limited! There is one hour and only one for gathering the\ngrapes from the vine; in the morning the grape is sour; in the evening\nit is too sweet. Lose your days neither in weeping for the past nor in\nweeping for the future. Live your hours, live your minutes. Joys are\nflowers that the rain will tarnish, or that will throw their petals to\nthe wind.\n\nI\n\nEpicurus! Epicurus!\n\nHE\n\nYes, I wish you to be a new Epicurus, and to teach the men of to-day\nwhat my friend taught long ago to the Athenians. Apostles have spoken\nin my name who have succeeded in spreading over the earth a doctrine\nof despair. They taught the scorn of all that is human, of all that\nis genial, of all that is luminous. Unfitted for natural pleasures,\nthey sought pleasure in their own misery and in the misery in which\nthey plunged their brothers. They called the earth a valley of tears,\nbut the tears were those whose abundant flow was caused by their\nown malignity. Baleful to themselves, they were baleful to the men\nwho became the slaves of their sombre dreams. After promising their\nfaithful an eternity of chimerical joys in return for the true and\nsimple joys they stole from them, they took even hope from the heart\nof man, they imagined hell. Sons of the ancient priests of Baal, they\nset up in my name the cruel idol of their fathers, and made of me the\nhideous and prescient creator of those whose destiny was damnation.\nThese monsters, however, did not discourage me, and I sustained by my\ninspiration every effort of natural wisdom that I saw among all these\nhorrors.\n\nAlas! They hold you yet, and those who combat them, different priests,\nare sometimes priests more baleful still. Your morality is to-day the\nlowest and the saddest that has ever reigned. The external hell, in\nwhich you now scarcely believe, has entered into your hearts, where it\ndevours all your joys.\n\nI\n\nYes, we are sad. In us, the fear of sin has survived the belief in\nsin. We dare not enjoy anything. We scorn the man who sits down in the\nsunlight to drink the first rays of the Spring, but while we scorn him\nwe envy him his baseness, for we call all unproductive leisure base.\nWhen we can no longer work, we go and watch those who are working.\n\nHE\n\nYour social state is an exhibition of madness. The Roman slaves had a\nlife less hard than that of many of your work-people. After the Semitic\nfashion, you make even the women work! Rich and poor, all alike, you\nknow nothing of the joys of leisure. You give to work all the hours of\nyour days, some to get bread, others to achieve a pleasure that fatigue\nprevents them from enjoying, and others again, the maddest of all, to\nincrease their wealth. You have reached that degree of imbecility in\nwhich labour is looked upon as not only honourable but sacred, when,\nactually, it is but a sad necessity. You have lifted this necessity\nto the rank of the virtues, when it is, without doubt, no more than\nthe vice of a perverted being for whom life, short as it is, is only a\nlengthy tedium.\n\nI\n\nAnd of this work, which at least allows us to breathe and to eat, there\nis not enough for all. Thousands of beings in the most civilised towns\ndie every day of hunger, and with a slow death. They are in agony for\nten, for twenty years ...\n\nHE\n\nIncrease and multiply. That is the work of my father. He was\nseized with a sort of jealous and mischievous love for the Jews, a\nsufficiently restless little people, and showed himself curious to\nencourage their natural pride so far as to make it immoderate. The\nresult was comic and sad. These ignorant Bedouins believed themselves\ndestined to dominate the world, and then disappeared as a nation at the\nvery moment when this domination was accomplished. A singular fate for\nthe Jews, to have given mankind a religion in which they do not believe\nthemselves!\n\nAlas! At the request of my ageing father, who began to find these\nprolific barbarians tedious, after having tried to enlighten Jesus,\nwho had too many disciples, I interested myself in Saint Paul. I\ncame to him as I have come to you; he was dazzled, and believed that\nthe vision had given him a divine mission. I followed him in his\njourneys. His energy amused me; but at Athens, I ranged myself with his\nopponents, whose laughter I excited. Later on, I let him die without\nconsolations; his pride sufficed him.\n\nI thought this man less mad than the other thaumaturgists who, like\nhim, amused the crowds, but the idea of God went to his head, and he\nbegan to believe in me, supposing me omnipotent. It was then that\nI ceased to visit him, for I do not care to make myself the facile\naccomplice of religious divagations. Left to himself, he went on\nhearing me; my voice sounded like a buzzing in his deaf ears. His\nfaith grew measureless, and he accepted martyrdom. How different from\nthe charming Epicurus, for whom our conversations were never more\nthan a lofty diversion! But this Paul, although hallucinated, was not\nincapable of a certain imposture, and it was assuredly to magnify\nhimself in the eyes of fools that he pretended to have been ravished to\nheaven. It is true that he believed in my resurrection. What tales! One\nwould say that men only give words a precise meaning in order to have\nthe pleasure of using them in an opposite sense. Your brain plays very\nsingular tricks. The dead are dead. The dead are not dead. The dead are\nliving. The dead alone are alive. What jugglers you are!\n\nI ceased to do anything but amuse myself with the developments of\nthe new religion. It produced very charming feminine souls. What a\npriceless creature was Saint Cecilia, what an ingenuous lover. Perhaps\nno other woman has known nights so delicious as those that Cecilia\npassed with the angel who came to visit her....\n\nI\n\nValerian found Cecilia praying in her bed with an angel.\n\nHE\n\nPoor Valerian! He never suspected the purity of his betrothed. He\nloved her too well to be disturbed even by the evidence. And so he\nwell deserved the eternal crown that the Church decreed him. If women\nwere better cognisant of the story of that excellent young man, with\nwhat favour would they not decorate his memory and his image! Cecilia\nnever ceased to love him. An enchantment enveloped these simple hearts.\nI completed their happiness by letting them die in ecstasy with the\ncertainty of finding beyond death their interrupted kisses, and of\nfinding them eternal.\n\nI learnt, my friend, to understand the peculiar beauty that the new\nreligion concealed within itself; it held more grace than the purest\npaganism, and I know not what of simplicity and tenderness that I had\nnot met before. Stoic insensibility became ridiculous; suffering was\nthe fashion; the crowns of roses were changed to crowns of thorns.\nThere were long centuries of stupor, and when the human soul awoke\nagain and wished to smile, its smile was half of melancholy. Perhaps\nmen will never recover from the wound that Christianity has given them.\nSometimes it has seemed to heal over; at the slightest shock, at the\nslightest fever, it opens again and bleeds. Happy are those who suffer!\nThat insensate saying still haunts your enfeebled hearts, and you fear\njoy, from vanity. You accepted the anathema hurled at the happiness\nof living by a few despairing Jews, and when you have laughed you ask\npardon from your brothers, because it is written: \"Happy are those who\nsuffer.\"\n\nMan, who is always making a pretence of revolt, is the most obedient of\ndomesticated animals. He has accepted the most infamous prescriptions\nof all the moralities in turn, and among you it has always been a\ntitle to honour to kneel before a decalogue and receive blows from a\nrope on the back. The great hypocrites have always been your chosen\nmasters, and one still hears you neigh at the idea of sacrifice. Your\nsensibility has flowered ill; your intelligence is inadequate. It has\nalways shown itself the dupe of the directors of conscience who have\nsucceeded each other on your shoulders. The preachers of virtue rarely\npractise it. You have always had to deal with thirsty throats whose\nonly care has been to make you believe that the fountain has been\npoisoned.\n\nThe moralist is the eternal old man who makes a terrible picture of\nlove to the young girl of whom he is amorous. Advice that fetters\nthe development of energy is always hypocritical, that is to say\ninterested, advice. There is also the na\u00efve imitation of hypocrisy;\nthere are the fools, the vain, the subaltern rogues: but these are the\nmasters whom it is necessary to unmask.\n\nI\n\nWhat! Have there never been sincere great minds, true friends of\nmankind?\n\nHE\n\nWhat I have just said to you must not be taken tragically. The greatest\nhypocrites are never perfect hypocrites. There is in them always one\npart of sincerity. The exercise of sincerity is the most natural\nthing in man. It needs a strong will to create a fictitious character\nfor oneself; it also needs much talent, perhaps even genius. The\nhypocrite, in showing himself under a fictitious aspect, diminishes\nhis pleasure in living; he will recover it in its entirety only when\nhe has moulded to his pattern a great number of disciples; hence the\nproselytism of all the great creators of social lies. But hypocrisy\nceases when the new environment has been created, itself the creator\nof new characters. The early Protestants feigned a certain rigidity\nof manners in order to depreciate the Papists. This hypocrisy became\ntraditional, then hereditary, and it is with veritable good faith that\nthe Calvinists banish from life all that might make its beauty and\nits sweetness. The Catholics, for strategical purposes, have set, in\ntheir sermons at least, a still higher value on the scorn of pleasure,\nand it is in all na\u00efvet\u00e9 and good faith, like the Calvinists, that\nthey prescribe several virtues whose practice would fling humanity\nback beyond the state of savagery. The philosophers, moreover, do\nnot to-day hold views different from these, and they would be much\nastonished, from what they say, to see civilisation, with its delicious\ncomplications, fall into ruin, and make the earth like the fields where\nonce was Troy, and the deserts where rises still the phantom of Timgad.\n\nThe moral theories of humanity and the form that they give to its\ndaily life must be separately considered.\n\nI have spoken to you of the great hypocrites. There have also been\nmen of great simplicity. Neither have had on the general march of\nevents the influence you might suppose. The world of ideas and of\nwords is one world, and the world of facts and of action is another.\nThey doubtless react on each other, but so slightly, so gently, and\nwith so much delay, that their reciprocal influences are very hard to\nestablish. Hardly before the last fifty or sixty years have the social\nideas of Christianity seemed occasionally to take an active form, and\nthen with what timidity! Perhaps Christianity will one day be realised\nin practice, but it will then have long disappeared as religion,\nphilosophy, or system of ethics. And a new discord between thought and\nlife will be apparent.\n\nEven this much post-dated realisation of the great social doctrines\nis, perhaps, only an allusion. The field of thought and the parallel\nfield of action are finite; and so the same thoughts must return\nafter a turn of the wheel, and the same acts. Their coincidence, near\nor distant, is perhaps fortuitous. It is in vain that you think and\nspeak; action enrolls itself upon another plane, and the two planes are\nperhaps eternally incapable of intersection.\n\nAt most it is admissible that the vague spectacle of things inspires\nin man a chirruping like that which takes the birds at sunrise. But\nwould you say that it was this chirruping that made the sun rise? Your\nreasonings on the power of ideas, which would make them the creators of\naction, resemble that supposition. The ideas of man can never be other\nthan ideas after the fact. The future? Do you even know what sort of\nweather we shall have to-morrow? The future that you pretend to forsee\nis only a past arranged by your imagination and your sensibility. You\nbelieve that what you wish to happen will happen. Children!\n\nThe exercise of thought is a game, but this game must be free and\nharmonious. The more useless you conceive it, the more beautiful you\nshould wish it to be. Beauty; that is, perhaps, its only possible\nmerit. In any case you must not permit in it those little creeping\nideas that haunt corrupted brains, as wood-lice haunt rotten wood.\n\nI\n\nOur thoughts, then, are freer than our actions?\n\nHE\n\nOne can more easily retain in them the illusion of liberty. We are all\nof us, men and gods, in the power of destiny, and nothing happens that\nis not the logical and necessary consequence of previous movements\nof eternal matter. We are vessels fitfully carried by winds and\ncurrents towards an unknown end; but it is one thing to descend the\nunconquerable stream steering between the rocks, and another to spin\nrudderless and derelict. Thought is a rudder that must never be loosed\nnor entrusted to unworthy hands.\n\nBut these ideas are very general, and can scarcely, I think, bring\nyou much consolation. I am like the apocalyptic preachers who replace\nreasoning by personifications of abstract things. I have not come to\nyou to offer you models of eloquence or stimulating enigmas. If I make\nyet one more effort in favour of men, I wish it to be unambiguous\nand clear. But, alas! there are questions where the very gods lose\nthemselves like children in a forest. The reason of things escapes us\nas it escapes yourselves. We too are dust of infinity, a little more\nbrilliant, that is all.\n\nOur assemblies, however, consider some problems as solved. They trouble\nyou still. We have enslaved them, and our intelligence is their master.\nI will put their solutions in your hands, and then we will go for a\nwalk in this springtime that perhaps you will never see again....\n\nI\n\nNever? Never?\n\nHE\n\nSo beautiful, so tender, so limpid, so perfumed. I have no power over\nyour human destiny and do not know it. Before descending....\n\nI\n\nAnd how, master, did you descend among us?\n\nHE\n\nWhat a little girl's question! I come on earth as easily and as\nnaturally as you go to America. How? The knowledge would be very\nuseless to you, and could only tempt you to puerile and dangerous\nexperiments. But there is another question that you dare not ask me,\nand to which I shall reply, for it is in your head if not upon your\nlips. Dearest children, bring us more flowers, bring us fruits, give us\nyour smiles.\n\nThe three young women awoke, and came to present their brows to us. My\nfriend offered me her lips by mistake; I took advantage of this, which\nmade her blush. She fled, rejoining her companions.\n\nIt was clear and hot, though the sun was not visible. The light seemed\nto come from everywhere, and objects threw no shadows. This phenomenon,\ninstead of frightening me, increased my sensation of happiness. It\nseemed to me that I had reached at last a state of beatitude long\ndesired. Love sang in my heart. I observed with tenderness the folds\nof my friend's white dress, which floated behind her as she ran. Her\ngarland of flowers fell, and, as she stooped to pick it up, her candid\nbreasts showed at the edge of her corsage. I could not prevent myself\nfrom rushing towards her, in a frenzy, my mouth full of kisses and\ntroubled words.\n\nI\n\nYou have not hurt yourself?\n\nELISE\n\nBut I have not fallen.\n\nAnd she laughed, while she was fastening her hair. I had taken the\ngarland, meanwhile, and was inhaling it like a bouquet. That made her\nlaugh still more.\n\nI\n\nFlowers, Elise, have no longer their own odour when they have slept in\nyour hair or on your neck; it is as if they had become you. It is your\nfragrance that I breathe....\n\nELISE\n\nAs you like....\n\nElise also no longer knew very well what she was saying. Or was she,\nperhaps, reading my heart! Like my master, she had just replied to a\nprayer that I dared not formulate.\n\nI stretched out both arms to take with open hands the flower that I\ndesired, the flower that was being given me, but Elise was already in\nflight. I caught her up in the middle of a thicket of lilacs. It was\nthere that she gave me my happiness.\n\nHer dress, which was only a tunic, fell slowly, unveiling the\nloveliness of my divinity, who seemed to me to be Beauty herself. She\nwas so beautiful that my admiration, for an instant, was stronger than\nmy desire. My transport had carried me to the summit of a mountain so\nhigh that I became dizzy and my head spun. When I came to myself, it\nseemed to me that I had put on a new dignity, and that the resurrection\nthat had snatched me from a delicious death was my entry into a more\nprecious life.\n\nMy friend, once more dressed in her robe, her garland of flowers on her\nrefastened hair, was picking branches of lilac. I rose to help her, for\nan enormous sheaf was already filling her white arms; she gave it me,\nand then she made a harvest of pinks and roses, and we returned to my\nmaster.\n\nHe did not seem to have noticed our absence. He praised the flowers and\nbreathed their scents, thanking my friend, who was blushing a little,\nfor her graciousness. The two other young women came back with cherries\nand early peaches, less soft than their rosy cheeks. I followed the\nexample of my master, who kissed the hands of the young fruit-bearers,\nand congratulated them on being the picture of pleasure, of abundance,\nand of generosity.\n\nInstead of sitting down, they crouched at the feet of their master, and\noffered him the finest of the fruits, looking in his face for signs of\ncontent. There was a divine charm in this simple, pastoral picture,\nand, for a long time, I observed it with joy. These three beings seemed\nin such perfect communion that the sweetest aroma of peace surrounded\ntheir bodies. Satisfied, he touched their cheeks and their hair.\n\nHE\n\nChildren, I love you.\n\nThey took again their places round the table. My friend, who had leaned\nher head on my shoulder, sat up to welcome them. They spoke in a\nwhisper.\n\nHE\n\nI would tell you, my friend, in answer to your secret desire, that\nour life, up there, or rather yonder, is very different from the life\nof men. To begin with, the gods are very few in number, two or three\nthousand at most, men and women. I say, men and women, because that is\nall we are, with superior faculties. Raise by many powers the genius of\nyour geniuses, and you have the measure of those among us who dominate\nthe others. The lesser among us are also gods, that is to say that\ntheir sensibility, their intelligence, their force and their beauty\nattain a degree that you can with difficulty conceive. Your arts, your\nsciences, your noblest passions are instincts in us; indeed, we attach\nbut small importance to them. The length of our life has ended by\nteaching us the uselessness of all that is not pure sensation, and our\nprincipal care is the cultivation of our senses, which are, in fact,\nhighly developed. We deliver ourselves to every pleasure with a divine\nfrankness, and it would be difficult for those of us who have not\nassociated with men to understand the meanings you have given to the\nwords lust, gluttony, and idleness. On the other hand, the pleasures of\nrelativity are unknown to us, and we are ignorant of vanity, deceit,\nenvy, or anger. Our pride is only the consciousness of the force that\nwe feel is living in ourselves.\n\nOur women differ little from yours, that is to say that they bear the\nsame relation to us as yours to you. We do not consider them inferior\nbut different, and this difference makes our common happiness. They\nare admirable creatures of pleasure, but the pride that is natural to\nthem makes them selfish. My friend, even for a god, above all for a\ngod, perhaps, your women equal ours. They know how to forget themselves\nin love; they know how to find their happiness in the happiness\nthat they give. If their senses are less delicate, their flesh less\nodorous, their arts of pleasure more rudimentary, their hearts are more\nsensitive. Ah! to read in their eyes their gratitude for the pleasure\nthey have given.\n\nThe three young women, who had listened attentively, lowered their\nheads, smiling at each other out of the corners of their eyes. My\nfriend, however, dared to speak.\n\nELISE\n\nBut we are also grateful for the pleasure that is given us. Our\nsensibility is not only in our hearts.\n\nI\n\nWomen do seem to have no other pleasure than the pleasure they give.\n\nELISE\n\nI do not believe that.\n\nHE\n\nDear creature of pleasure, it is none the less true.\n\nELISE\n\nIt is true, since you say it, but these women are not true women.\n\nHE\n\nThey are different from you, my friend; that is all. But I agree with\nyou; true women both give and receive.\n\nELISE\n\nThat is true indeed!\n\nI\n\nDivine friend, how I love you!\n\nELISE\n\nAnd I, I detest you.\n\nI stretched out my arms to draw to me those lips that I desired, but\nshe took my hands in hers, and kissed them passionately.\n\nHE\n\nAnd you envy the gods!\n\nI\n\nI envy neither the gods nor any man, and I desire no other woman, since\nI have known Elise.\n\nHE\n\nMy coming upon earth, this time, will at least have given happiness to\none human being.\n\nELISE\n\nOr two.\n\nI\n\nWhat a dream! Do not awake us!\n\nHE\n\nYou shall not be awakened.\n\nThe two young women looked at me curiously. I even thought that I\ndiscerned some sort of pity in their eyes. My master divined my thought.\n\nHE\n\nYes, my friend, they are immortals. They came as I have come. Is it\nmore surprising to see goddesses on earth than to see a god?\n\nI turned towards Elise, paling with emotion.\n\nHE\n\nShe too. But do not be afraid, for she loves you, and love has given\nher a heart exactly like your man's heart. She has become a woman in\ngiving herself to you, and she will never leave you.\n\nELISE\n\nNever. Never so long as you live, my mortal lover. Never, and your\nmemory shall share my immortality.\n\nI\n\nNow I understand the superhuman happiness I found in your arms, O\nqueen! But is that possible? Have the times of mythology returned?\n\nHE\n\nYou see it. They have never been abolished, moreover, unless in your\nbeliefs, unless in what you believe that you believe. For is not\nChristianity, just like the religions it thought it destroyed, the\nstory of the relations between gods and men? Does the visit of a dove\nto the loveliest of the Jewish women differ so much from the visit of\nthe swan to the voluptuous Leda? The spirit in which you consider these\ndivine anecdotes, changes with the centuries, but the anecdotes are\nalways the same, because love is always the same. If your priests were\nto hear me, they would say that I blasphemed, I who was that swan, I\nwho was that dove. But when they say that I was the son of the dove,\nthey think they are stating a great truth, and perhaps they are right,\nsince that fable has changed the colour of heaven. But the colour of\nheaven will change again, and they will not perceive it.\n\nAll your science hitherto has consisted in giving different names to\ndifferent appearances. Some day, perhaps, you will learn that the\nsame thing happens always, that is to say nothing, and you will leave\nthe illegible romance of the infinite, and live your own lives. It is\nworth the trouble. Some day you will learn this, and you will be much\nastonished at having lost centuries upon centuries in vainly observing\nphenomena of which you perceive only the broken reflections in a sea\nthat is shaken by the storms of your imagination.\n\nThe life of the gods, my friend, differs from yours in this above\nall, that it is for them without finality. Our acts are sufficient to\nthemselves, and we do not look for their justification in immediate or\ndistant consequences. The wretchedness of your activity is, that it\nforesees repose. Our end is in the act; yours in the effects of the\nact. But, since happiness is in the act, you pass it by, and when you\nrest it is in weariness and boredom. For us, to live is to act, and\nto act is to be happy. Perhaps, rather than supermen, we are superior\nanimals: intuition serves us as instinct, and if sometimes we know\nregret we are always ignorant of remorse. Passion, which may mislead us\nfor a moment, leaves us satisfied, as soon as we have obeyed it, even\nif our desire has been unable to realise itself in its entirety, even\nif our curiosity has had to stop half-way. There remains to us then the\nhaving exercised against an obstacle our faculties of action; we bear\nno malice against the obstacle. We are like children who have lost in a\ngame, and are, all the same, very happy to have played.\n\nI\n\nTrue, man wishes to win, always to win, and, beaten, if he does not\nsuffer in his vanity, he suffers in his pride.\n\nHE\n\nWhich is not a genuine pride. Pride worthy of the name does not rebel\nagainst superior forces. It yields as quickly as possible and retires\ninto itself, proud of what it is and disdainful of what it is not. Your\nhuman pride is often no more than a blind folly. The pride of the gods\nis clear-sighted. But what need have you of knowing us, since you have\nno power over us? Your prayers move us, as the songs of the birds move\nyou, according to our mood; we find them painful or agreeable, and in\neither case pass on, thinking of serious matters, that is to say of the\nliving of our lives. The gods, my friend, are selfish, and, if they\nbusy themselves with men, it is from caprice, in order to vary their\npleasures. Your joys, to tell you the truth, touch us more nearly than\nyour sorrows, and, if we had the power, we would more willingly send\nnew happinesses to the happy than joys to the doleful. For we hold in\ngreat scorn intellectual disorder, and unbalanced sensibility: now\nunhappiness is produced by one of these two troubles, or by both. He\nwho is master of neither his nerves nor his thought does not seem to\nus very worthy of pity. Help, moreover, would be useless to him. Help\nwould be for him no more than the brief sunbeam that passes between\ntwo storm-clouds that the wind has separated for a moment. And then, we\nhave no power. Ruled, like you, by destiny, we contemplate the eternal\nmovement of things, with a more perspicacious eye, but as powerless to\nalter their course.\n\nNone the less, I am not pitiless. Physical evil breaks my heart, and\nit is precisely that which is altogether beyond my power, that which\nis without a remedy. Life eternally devours itself. Every organism is\na prey. The living is eaten alive. Every animal is a feast, and every\nanimal is a guest. The healthy state is to be a feast. The gods do not\nescape this dilemma; they are so organised as to be a durable feast,\nthat is all. They resist the attacks of the infinitely little, as a\nmountain resists a colony of ants. But let time pass, and century after\ncentury go by, and the ants will have got the better of the mountain,\nthough they are, nevertheless, destined themselves to perish under\ninvisible bites.\n\nWe shall see, as I have already told you, and it pains me to think\nof it, humanity disappear, and with it all the? animal species that\npeople the earth to-day. Other forms are elaborating in the mysteries\nof eternal matter. The water of the oceans ferments and swells with\nlife round the magnetic poles. That which is born rises tirelessly\nagainst that which has been born. The sorrow of living is the obscure\nconsciousness of feeling oneself dying.\n\nBut when I see humanity disappear, it is at first in the manner of the\nants and the bees, and of all the other animalities, once intelligent\nand creative, now reduced to mechanical existence. You will come to\nresemble marvellous clocks. Your mathematical complexity will be the\nadmiration of the intelligences which have succeeded your own.\n\nTheir multiple and contradictory activity will stop sometimes, struck\nby surprise, to observe the sureness of your movements, and you will\nstill be one of the terms, though no longer the same, in the disturbing\nproblem of intelligence and instinct.\n\nI have also sometimes thought that on your earth there would be a slow\nreturn towards primordial unity. Every organism would be re-absorbed\ninto that formless yet living jelly, which has been differentiated,\nlittle by little, in the course of time, into myriads of dissimilar\nbeings. The movement, after reaching its climax, would retrace its\nsteps. Evolution would continue in retrogression. The vertebrate would\nbecome once more the annelid, the annelid the nothing that creeps like\na spot of oil on the surface of water.\n\nAs for the destruction of our solar world by a cataclysm, it is a\ntheatrical idea, but though theatrical, not impossible. It is at\nonce dramatic and vulgar, within the reach of everybody, and without\nphilosophical or scientific interest. Anybody can conceive a shock, and\na bursting in pieces, as he conceives a fire, a wreck, or an explosion.\nIf it is the truth, it is without interest. The truth is a bridge that\nmust be crossed to gain the other side of the stream.\n\nHe rose. The young women, enchanted, shook their dresses, and arranged\nthe folds of them. Elise threw me a tender look and joined her\ncompanions, who were already moving away.\n\nHE\n\nJust so. Let us walk a little. Besides, my discourse is nearing its\nend. We have stirred up many ideas. In putting them in their places in\nyour head, you will consider them with care. Order is almost the whole\nof knowledge.\n\nCome. The morning is about to be born, the real morning, and I do not\nwish to disturb that to which men are accustomed. I have never done so.\nThe duty of the gods is to respect logic.\n\nWe took a long walk through the fresh, flowering paths. It seemed to\nme that the familiar garden became an immense and magical forest. The\nperspectives stretched out under tall trees to a stream that flowed\nslowly under the poplars that edged it. Then the stream disappeared;\nit was a glade where roebuck passed in troops. We went on and the\nappearances changed continually. At certain moments I found again the\ngarden of my summer mornings, with its lawns, its flower-beds, its\ntrees, from which doves kept falling, its paths, its seats; I seemed\nto hear the laughter of the children, the disputes of the players, the\nmurmur of the couples. All this went on in my head, accompanied by\nmy friend's words, and I was drunk, with love, with ideas, and with\nloveliness.\n\nHE\n\nWe have settled several great questions with the logical intrepidity of\nour minds....\n\nI\n\nAs for me, I hear and I believe.\n\nHE\n\nAn understanding auditor is half of the discourse. The solitary sinks\nand loses himself in the whirlwind of his reasonings. A word, even a\nlook, is enough to give him back his equilibrium.\n\nI was saying, then, that we have done like the philosophers. We\nhave solved the great questions of metaphysic, by attacking them at\nthe head, that is to say at the part that is unattackable. To their\naffirmation of an absolute and at the same time conscious god, we have\nopposed, as we have a right to do, a simple and categorical denial. We\ncould take up the attack at the other end, begin from ourselves, seek\nour cause, find God, seek the cause of God, and so on to infinity.\nHowever large a number one conceives, a larger is always possible. And\nso this terrible God recoils as one draws near him into the depths of\nthe abysses, and the tired intelligence, like a huntsman who yields to\nthe ruses of his quarry, turns round, goes home and thinks of supper,\nthat is to say of practical life.\n\nThese subtle games give the mind a juggler's skill. They are neither\nwithout attraction nor without utility, but they are games. Drunkenness\nis to be found in them, but not happiness. Now, happiness is the\nimportant matter. One must be happy. Let us, then, limit ourselves to\nthe affirmation that the world is not governed by an intelligence at\nonce infinite and conscious. For lack of another word, let us stop at\nthe idea of chance, as in the time of my dear Epicurus. Nothing has\nbeen found more beautiful, more clear, nothing that better satisfies\nthe mind of a man or the mind of a god. It comes to the same thing\nas saying: that which is, is. This simple proposition admits of no\nobjection; it defies every sophism and every artifice.\n\nThe idea of God is only the shadow of man projected in the infinite.\nMake use of this sentence as supreme refutation and you will find few\nminds capable of disentangling its meaning or even of relishing its\nirony.\n\nI do not speak to you of the gods of the nurses, of the little naughty\nchildren, and of the good labourers. People sometimes amuse themselves\nin narrating my appearance on earth, and I am to be seen, in these poor\ntales, drinking thin wine, gossiping with housekeepers, encouraging\nstrikes, singing the _internationale_, denouncing silk dresses, furs,\nand white gloves. I appear to the astonished populace as a half-tipsy\ndolt and a good fellow, and yet at sight of me civilised men fly for\ntheir lives and give place to the mob. The divine ideal of the priests\ndoes not much differ from this, and, after all, if I had to choose, I\nshould perhaps prefer the company of labourers to that of seminarists.\nBut I have never been accessible to such humble desires, and, moreover,\nI am not God, I am only a god. That is why I laugh at the confusion of\nthe catechisms, of the pious dreams and of the revolutionary dreams\nalike. I have no power, but I have never desired either the reign of\nequality or that of sanctity. I would rather breathe your flowers than\nyour souls, your women than your intellects. Your flowers! Shall I\ntell you? We have no flowers; we have only those that grow wild in our\nuncultivated fields, our pathless forests! The gods do not work....\n\nMy master plucked a magnificent pearly rose, a rose as lovely as a\nwoman's face, and remained for a long time silent. I understood that he\nwas meditating. He murmured--\n\n\"Work: this rose is a work....\"\n\nHe compared it in his mind to the frail graces of the eglantine.\n\nHE\n\nAll is contradiction. I would say no more. Those who created this\nrose are not those who enjoy it. No payment is the equivalent of the\npleasure I feel in breathing its scent; and I, I have done nothing\nbut pass by, and pluck it. Men rebel. How will you prevent them from\nrebellion? They are right....\n\nHe stopped, observing, but without seeing it, the delicious landscape\nthat surrounded us. The emotional silence was only disturbed by the\nmurmur of the bees, the shrill cries of the little birds, or the light\nfalling of the doves who dropped from the trees with a noise of silk\ndresses.\n\nI was chewing bits of grass, with an air, like his, of preoccupation,\nbut I was thinking of next to nothing.\n\nHE\n\nThey are right. And yet rebellion is useless. It is ugly. Happiness is\nnot in revolt. You should find a balance. You do not know how to rest.\nI did not scorn work just now, but praised idleness. Take these two\nideas and plait them harmoniously together. Your life, short as it is,\nwould be as good as ours, if you were to succeed in uniting these two\nalternatives. The same people should turn by turn rest and work. But,\nto make oneself worthy of leisure! Perhaps more intelligence is needed\nto know how to do nothing than to know how to work.\n\nThe present state of things cannot last. But can one ever tell? And if,\nby chance, it should last? Then, there would be formed two castes among\nmen. They exist already in sketch, they would come to exist in precise\ndrawings with violent contours. It would be almost impossible for a\nslave to become a master. But a master would always be able to become a\nslave. Your masters of the day are only slaves who, freed for a moment,\nwill necessarily fall back into the servitude that is their destiny.\n\nYou see, I am amusing myself with prophecy. None the less, what I\nknow of the order of things is what is apparent to the eyes of all.\nDo not take my words too seriously. On the whole, since men have had\nlaws, these laws have not varied. No doubt, from that moment, your\nevolution was complete. Perhaps you will never be able further to\nmodify yourselves, if not by external means. Hence the need of material\nprogress, which is only grandiose vanity. At the end of the swiftest\njourneys, the man and the woman meet face to face, seeking in each\nother's eyes the motive of living, that is to say happiness.\n\nEarth has become a narrow cage for you. However, birds that you are,\nit is your cage, and you are forbidden to leave it. You can paint\nit in the tenderest colours; it is a cage, and it is your cage. You\nwill no longer go to heaven, the stars have fallen. If this heaven of\nwhich the childhood of humanity dreamed is a paradise, all the seats\nin it are taken. We have no need of you, and are happy where we are;\nwe shall never give place to you. Besides, at what moment would you\nundertake the journey? At your death? When one is dead, it is a little\nlate for travelling. The immortality of the soul was without doubt\nthe masterpiece of the ecclesiastical imagination. With this truth in\nhis pocket, a man may wander through all countries, and always find\nservants. The woman who has lost her lover kisses the feet of the\nimpostor who promises her the renewal in the beyond of her temporal\nfelicities. The priest offers his slipper with indifference. They\nare the happiest of men, for they have ended by believing in a fable\nso productive. How should they deny the truth and beauty of this\nmarvellous tree whose fruits are gold and love together?\n\nThose who promise a terrestrial paradise are no less baleful to human\nenergy. They too teach sacrifice, the scorn of the present hour, and\nwalking and working with eyes fixed on the future. Priests of religion,\npriests of politics, all sell very dearly the tickets of a lottery\nthat will never be drawn. Do they know it? Tile merchants of perhaps\nare not necessarily merchants of lies. Some of them are the first to\nbe duped by the secrets they have inherited, and they make victims of\nthemselves for the vanity of leading a more numerous troop of victims\nto the sacrifice.\n\nA tradition encourages you to honour the martyr for his faith. The\nmartyr is only an obstinate man. He is in the wrong, since he is\nconquered. The death that menaces him should have enlightened his\nunderstanding.\n\nThe wise man has but one belief: himself; the wise man has but one\nfatherland: life.\n\nDo not imagine that I am teaching you the vulgar selfishness of the\ncomedies and the drinking songs. Oneself may cover a world. The brutes\nare the only solitaries. A man's sensibility is a surface whose extent\nhe alone is capable of measuring. One being often includes many\nbeings. If it does not include at least two, it is not human, perhaps\nnot animal; it is one of the stones in the road under the feet of other\nmen. True selfishness is a harmony.\n\nBut this harmony must be composed by oneself, and woven with one's own\nhands. To receive happiness ready-made would be offering one's neck\nto the rope. Christianity found a very beautiful formula:--to work\nout one's salvation. Now that is a personal work. If some one should\npropose a method to you, examine it. If you are being offered salvation\nalready prepared, turn away your head: the food is poisoned.\n\nAlso, I bring you no commandment. I submit a system to you: the\nliving of one's life. What do those movements of the world matter to\nyou that do not touch your sensibility? Keep your tears for your own\npains, and for those that scratch you like brambles as you pass.\nThere is no other ethic than this: the conquest of pain. If it wounds\nyou, be silent, and think of your revenge. Words are snares. Joint\nresponsibility? Have you felt the prick? No? Then you have no share\nin the responsibility. Do not judge by the intellect the affairs of\nsensibility, and, when your business is to understand, be insensible to\nall that is not reason.\n\nI\n\nBut how conquer pain?\n\nHE\n\nPhysical pain is the business of your doctors.... The remedy for moral\npain is confidence in oneself. To yield to pain is to accept the worst\nof humiliations. To suffer because of a woman is to make oneself the\nslave of a woman. But there are moments when it must be pleasant not to\ndeny one's pain. One makes a pleasure of it.\n\n\n\n1\n\n\nI have known such moments.\n\nHE\n\nThere are unconquerable evils. Then the idea that life has an end will\nhelp to support the weight of it. Finally, my friend, there is the\nsupreme act that your resigned morality blames, the act the vision of\nwhich gave so much energy to the careless life of the ancients: there\nis suicide.\n\nSuicide is a monster that one would have to train oneself to observe\nwith calm. Compared to certain physical evils, to certain pains, to\ncertain forfeitures, it would soon appear as a friend, very ugly,\nbut cordial. Does it not deserve the gentlest names? Is it not the\nconsoler? Is it not deliverance?\n\nBut one must not play with suicide. Amorous children have made of it\na gesture as puerile as their souls. This supreme refuge from great\npains should not be the remedy for little deceptions. If your morality\nhad chosen, instead of the teasing r\u00f4le of a jealous old maid, that\nof an amiable and prudent friend, it would have taught you the art of\nwrestling with Destiny, and, when her grip is invincible and cruel, the\nsupreme feint, which is to vanish in smoke. To have made a cowardice of\nsuicide is a singular idea. It is explicable in the order of religious\nbeliefs; it is mad for the man who believes neither in the survival of\nthe soul nor, above all, in future compensations.\n\nSince, whether you will or no, my friend, death is your destiny, at\nleast live. Do not always look at your feet, but do not look too far\nbefore you. To be born, to appear, to disappear: forget the last term.\nHuman wisdom is to live as if one were never to die, and to gather the\npresent minute as if it were to be eternal.\n\nI\n\nIf the present minute could but last for ever!\n\nHE\n\nWhy not? How long have you spent with me? Do you know? Two hours or an\neternity?\n\nI\n\nIt seems to me that I have always known you, always seen you, always\nheard you.\n\nHE\n\nVery well! That is how to live.\n\nI\n\nDo you, who deny blessed eternity to men, give it them by your presence\nand your words? Who are you then?\n\nHE\n\nHave I not told you? See, he doubts already.\n\nI\n\nIt is that I am too happy.\n\nHE\n\nPoor men, divine sensations are too strong for the fragility of\nyour nerves. What would you do with an eternity? You would spend it\nin trembling lest you should lose it. Happiness, for you, is not\npossession but desire. When you no longer have anything to desire,\nboredom comes, sits down on your knees, and slowly crushes you. You\nfind the woman who has made you drunk heavier than a mountain when the\ndrunkenness passes away, and you groan if the head that is still wet\nwith your kisses leans too lovingly on your arm or on your shoulder.\n\nYou find happiness only in closing your eyes; on opening them again\nyou find boredom. Since you do not know how to live, dream, believe.\nYou would be glad, would you not, if you were able to doubt my words?\nWell! I give you leave. Do like so many other men. Accept the practice\nof a belief that makes you laugh, and of an ethic that you scorn ...\n\nI\n\nNo, no, I am free! You have loosed my hands, you have taught me to\nbreathe.\n\nHE\n\nAh! So the method I propose to you is not so bad! I believe, indeed,\nthat, of all those that can rule the life of a wise man, it is the most\nvoluptuous. If doubt has no longer a place in your intelligence, put it\ninto your actions. Knowing the vanity of everything, of religions, of\nphilosophies and of ethics, submit outwardly to customs, to prejudices,\nand to tradition. Time your step to the rhythm of the popular mind.\n\nI\n\nWhat! Submission?\n\nHE\n\nDo you prefer revolt?\n\nI\n\nI am not a slave.\n\nHE\n\nVery true. But liberty is an internal joy. One is the more free the\nless one seeks to appear so. A woman is less beautiful when she has\ndivulged her beauty. A man is less free when he makes a parade of his\nliberty. One must hide one's good fortunes.\n\nMy friend, I have shown you the philosophy of the gods. Accept its\nmethod if you feel yourself strong enough to follow it without despair.\nWe are, and that suffices us. Can you say as much? you who cannot take\na step towards happiness without taking one towards death? Hope, if\nyou have need of hope. Drink, if you are thirsty. Do you think that I\nam jeering, and that, after having treated you as a god, I am treating\nyou first as a man and then as a child? No. The truth is that every\nquestion immediately receives in my mind all the different and even\ncontradictory solutions that can answer it. I see, would you believe\nit, the six sides of the cube at one glance. I know that the least\nreasonable of things is reason; I know that nothing is more cruel than\nsentiment. There is not one of your systems of which I cannot make a\ncircuit in two or three thoughts. They are curious ruins; some of them\nstill attract such a concourse of people that one forgets that they are\nruins. Travel, and make pilgrimages. I have favoured the materialism of\nEpicurus, Saint Paul's Christianity, Spinoza's pantheism. Have I spoken\nto you of Spinoza? I loved him much also. We used to drink milk while\nwe were discovering the identity of reality and perfection. He was one\nof the two completely happy men I have known; the other was Epicurus.\nSpinoza found happiness in asceticism; Epicurus, in pleasure. They both\nlived smiling. I regretted them equally. There are two masters for\nmankind, and nearer to mankind than myself.\n\nI remember one of Spinoza's propositions: \"Each man necessarily desires\nor repulses, according to the laws of his nature, what he considers\ngood or bad.\" That means: every one naturally desires to be happy.\nGreat commonplace, and great truth: there is no other philosophy, there\nis no other method. Virtue is, to be happy.\n\nThey are, then, very wicked, those among you, who, keeping power, that\nis to say force, in their own hands, use it to forbid men access to the\nroad that displeases themselves. What! I should have used my power to\nundeceive Cecilia, whose innocent kisses were prayers, whose life was\na happy walk towards martyrdom and heaven! What infatuation, to believe\noneself in possession of the truth, and, then, what childishness, to\nbelieve that the truth is necessarily useful! My friend, what is true\nis true, and what is beautiful is beautiful, and between these terms,\nand between all that could be inserted, there is no necessary relation.\nI smile at human illusions, but I would not make them one in a single\nand compulsory illusion.\n\nYou love Elise; obey your desires even if they seem absurd to you. She\nwill do the same for you, and you will both taste great joys.\n\nWe had returned, little by little, to our starting point. The young\nwomen joined us near the rose-garden. A different light had replaced\nthe springtime brilliance that surrounded us. The real morning had just\nbeen born, a clear, cold winter morning. I wished to pluck a rose,\nbut they disappeared as I stretched out my hand. Elise took my arm and\npressed close to me.\n\nELISE\n\nI am cold.\n\nI doubted her divinity, I doubted myself, and the enchanted, luminous\nnight I had just lived. My master's last words were disturbing the\ncertainty that he had at first established in my mind. I, who had\nbelieved myself a god, became again a man.\n\nHE\n\nThat is the effect of doubt. Then you no longer believe in me?\n\nI\n\nI believe in you.\n\nInstantly, things recovered their magical appearance, and I was\nhappy again. I gently pressed Elise's arm, and she looked at me with\ntenderness.\n\nMeanwhile, the two young friends, who were walking before us, had\ncome upon the steps of the Museum. We followed them. They examined in\nsilence the cold nudity of all those women of stone, but sometimes I\nheard them laugh.\n\nELISE\n\nAnd so these are your women.\n\nI\n\nThey are not our women. These figures represent our ideal of the\ngoddesses.\n\nELISE\n\nTruly, this one is like me.\n\nI\n\nThere are women as beautiful as that among us, but one does not know\nthem. Each one of us thinks he has held in his arms the most beautiful\nwoman in the world; when he reflects, he is no longer very sure of\nit, for, in the depths of his desire, an image ceaselessly forms, and\nceaselessly vanishes, whose beauty no created thing could equal.\n\nELISE\n\nSo reality always deceives you. How do you manage to be happy?\n\nI\n\nWe have desire.\n\nI had spoken like a man, and not like one whose mistress is an\nimmortal. Elise seemed indifferent to the obscure sorrow that darkened\nmy words.\n\nMy nature now was double. When I thought of my master, of Elise, of the\nhours passed in the garden, I felt that I was caressed and upheld by\nwarm waves of joy; when I considered the things of earth, I was cold,\nand I was sorrowful.\n\nElise left me once more to go and join her companions. My master called\nme. He was seated at the entrance to the hall, and was looking at\nnothing.\n\nHE\n\nI have still a few words to say to you, and these are the most\nimportant. You must forget our conversation.\n\nI\n\nMaster, it is impossible. It is part of myself, it has entered into my\nflesh, into my blood, into my bones.\n\nHE\n\nAh, well, you shall know then that I could have told you the exact\nopposite, and that that also would have been the truth. Another god may\ndescend and speak to you and give you other teaching. In which will\nyou put your trust?\n\nI\n\nMaster, you disturb me. Can such a miracle be repeated?\n\nHE\n\nWhen one believes in a miracle, it may become a daily occurrence. You\nsee, you would do better to forget.\n\nI\n\nI shall not forget.\n\nHE\n\nAnd what if I were to prove to you that I do not exist, that I am only\na part of yourself, that responds to another part of yourself?\n\nI\n\nMaster, I believe in you, and not in myself.\n\nHE\n\nBehold man with a true Christian nature, man after the fall! You will\nnever wash away sin, or, rather, you will never wash away penitence.\nWhy do you not hold your own against me? What a domestic animal has man\nbecome! Have you not at the bottom of your heart a secret desire? Does\nthe god that I appear to you satisfy fully your need of worship and\nhumiliation? Speak, my friend, I am what you desire that I should be.\nChoose. The phantasmagorias are at your command.\n\nI\n\nWell, yes, I should have wished you to be He, to perfect in my eyes\nthe legends of my childhood.... But you have spoken, and I no longer\nbelieve but in you, in you alone.\n\nHE\n\nChoose. There is yet time. Choose.\n\nI\n\nI have chosen.\n\nAt that very instant, all pleasure vanished, and I felt ill, with that\noverwhelming illness that follows nights of debauch. Nothing, however,\nhad changed around me, and I was standing among the same marbles,\nthough they were frozen and made me almost ashamed and almost afraid.\nI heard the laughter of the young women in the neighbouring hall, but\nit seemed to me to come from a bevy of hoydens. My master, still seated\nthere, was looking at me, but with eyes in which I thought I saw I\nknow not what cruel mockery, I know not what mournful reproaches. I\nwas seized with anguish, I breathed with difficulty, I was cold, the\nmemory of my nocturnal lusts disgusted my heart. I was about to faint,\nperhaps, when my master spoke.\n\nHE\n\nSo you have chosen. It is well. Good-bye.\n\nI\n\nOh! No! Not yet!\n\nHE\n\nWould you care to salute those charming young women? Here they are.\n\nI saw them advancing towards me, naked, and smiling from head to foot,\nwith a docile smile. They held each other by their necks, their arms\nentwined, like the three graces, but their hips swayed to an evil\nrhythm.\n\nI\n\nHow ugly they are! Sorceresses!\n\nHE\n\nThey are your sins.\n\nI\n\nI detest them.\n\nThey turned and fled. Their buttocks, joined like three curious faces,\nmade an obscene and singular diagram.\n\nHE\n\nWomen belong to metaphysics.\n\nI was too disturbed to understand this saying. I was thinking of Elise,\nwhom I had loved so passionately, and I wept at seeing her thus. I wept\nalso over myself and my lust.\n\nHE\n\nWomen are creations of sensibility, of intelligence, or of faith;\nthat depends on the moment, it depends on the man. The difference\nbetween the goddess and the girl of the public harem is made by the\nidea of sin. As a sinner, you see courtesans where, as a god, I see\ndivinities. The world is what you make it, creator without knowing it.\nSince you have chosen, good-bye, good-bye!\n\nI\n\nElise.\n\nShe whom I had loved, she whom I loved still, ran towards me, in the\nform of the young woman who had so moved my heart. She offered me her\nhands and her lips, as if she had returned from a journey, and she\npressed me passionately in her arms.\n\nHE\n\nThen you have not chosen?\n\nI\n\nI cannot separate from her I love.\n\nELISE\n\nI remain among men.\n\nI\n\nFor ever?\n\nELISE\n\nI remain.\n\nHE\n\nI will come back for you. Good-bye then, my friend, and this time\nreally good-bye. You sought truth and you have found love. Good-bye.\n\nElise drew me along. By the door, I turned. My master had disappeared.\n\nThis separation, which I was expecting, caused me but a brief sorrow. I\nwas holding Elise by the hand, I was holding a certainty.\n\nWe were now going silently along the deserted street. The joy that\nfilled my heart lit up the sky, the trees, the houses and everything\nelse.\n\nSoon, like any other couple after a morning walk, we went home. Elise\nhad not at any moment the air of a stranger.\n\nOur day was short, that of two lovers mindful of living. My friend\ncomplied with all our customs. But for the memory of the night of magic\nthat had placed her in my arms, I should not have distinguished her\ndivine grace from that of a Parisian.\n\nWe made with profound joy the discovery of our souls and of our bodies.\nIt seemed to us that we had known each other always, and always\nbelonged to each other; it seemed also, at every kiss, that we touched\neach other for the first time: these feelings, no more contradictory\nthan delightful, increased our intoxication, our heads turned, we could\nno longer find words for our ideas, and we said a great many childish\nthings.\n\nI did not, however, so far lose my reason as to forget that, alone\namong all men, without doubt, I held in my arms an immortal. Much\npride was mingled with my love, and also much curiosity.\n\nMy goddess much resembles Giorgione's Venus. While I write this, she\nis sleeping in the same pose, her right arm folded under her head.\nThe body is tapering, the breasts are two upturned cups; the face, of\na pure oval, has great charm, with its very red mouth, and its large\nlowered eyelids that hide from me beautiful eyes of a glaucous and\nchangeful blue. From head to foot she has the complexion of a blonde,\nbut this whiteness is as if melted in gilded rose, because she is\naccustomed to wear only light and almost transparent veils. Her hair is\nof that rare chestnut colour, a colour which we scarcely know but by\nits name; but her eyelashes are much darker, of a very sombre brown.\n\nI have kissed with piety the miracle of her feet, fresh as a spring,\nand with nails that shone like drops of dew under my lamp.\n\nShe accepts homage like caresses, and caresses as a flower accepts the\nevening rain. She is more feminine than the most sensitive of women,\nmore trembling than the tenderest violins. The kiss that her mouth\ngives has first passed like a wave of harmony along her whole body, and\nthe kiss that she receives makes her melt voluptuously like snow that\nhas lingered in the sunlight.\n\nO snow with the odour of violets, O flesh with the taste of figs!\n\n1 have eaten and I have drunken, and now I write the praise of my\ndelight, among some metaphysical memories. Of the life that goes on\nup there, or yonder, she has told me something more than my master.\nShe has told me that perfect pleasure is a gift too common among the\ngods much to excite their gratitude. They walk under the trees of the\norchard, and pluck the gilded fruit whose weight bends them within\nreach of their hands. More lively and more sensitive, the divine\nfemales feel now and then some vexation at being unable to knot their\narms about the conquered male; there is sometimes melancholy in their\neyes, at seeing light shoulders moving away that happiness has not\ncrushed, and knees that gratitude has not bowed.\n\nWe speak.\n\nELISE\n\nTell me, you whom I love, are all men like you?\n\nI\n\nMen are not gods during love, but they are gods afterwards.\n\nELISE\n\nThat is to say that they become indifferent.\n\nI\n\nNo, satisfied, and surfeited.\n\nELISE\n\nThen they are not always hungry?\n\nI\n\nAlas! No.\n\nELISE\n\nBut, at least, they do not disdain the mouth whose moisture has made\nthem drunk?\n\nI\n\nThey forget even the taste of it.\n\nELISE\n\nThey too? I feel like crying.\n\nI\n\nThere are some who love tears.\n\nELISE\n\nYou love tears?\n\nI\n\nHow do I know? When one is happy, one no longer loves anything but\none's own happiness.\n\nThereupon she dreamed for a long time, perhaps without very well\nunderstanding, for there came no more words to her mouth, but only\nkisses.\n\nWith the details I could get from her, in our clearer moments, on the\nlife of the immortals, I pictured their dwelling-place as an earthly\nparadise of the kind described to us in the Jewish legends. It is\nprobable that ancient indiscretions had long ago informed some Asiatic\npoet. The popular mind, friendly to confusions, placed at the beginning\nof our world a paradisiac state which is parallel to our world, and\notherwise closed to men. The Greeks, with their adventures of the\ngods among us, also divined a little of the truth that had just been\nrevealed to me in these two mythological nights. I understood that\nmen do not invent, but remember. How I rejoiced at sharing in these\nmysteries! What moments! how express their odour, how paint their\nbrilliance and their beauty?\n\nI shall continue every morning to keep the journal of the happiness of\nmy heart and the satisfactions of my intellect. Lover of an immortal,\nI see the Arcana open at last before my one-time sorrowful desire. The\nArcana! For I feel that I am about to enter into the Unity.\n\nBut I have been writing for a long time, I am tired. My mistress is\nwaiting for me. She sleeps, she is still sleeping. Perhaps, with them,\nthere is no sleep. She tastes for the first time the happiness of not\nliving....\n\n\n\n\nFINAL NOTE\n\n\nM. JAMES SANDY ROSE was found sitting at his work-table, his head laid\non his desk. He seemed asleep, and he was dead. The pen had escaped\nfrom his fingers, and rolled to the ground, leaving a large blot of ink\non the paper. After the word \"vivre \"[1] comes the first letter of a\nword that ends in a serpentine scrawl. This letter is doubtless a V,\nand perhaps, as would have been fairly characteristic of his style,\nhe was going to begin a new phrase with this same word, _Vivre_, when\ndeath struck him down.\n\nAll this is of small importance. Besides, we are giving a facsimile of\nthe last page of this manuscript whose singular aspect has, no doubt,\na psychological value.\n\nIt has already been seen that the death of M. J. Sandy Rose was spoken\nof by the newspapers under the title of \"The Mystery of the Rue de\nM\u00e9dicis.\"\n\nTheir account, without being altogether inaccurate, was very\nincomplete. Here is exactly what happened, or at least what I saw and\nknew.\n\nSandy Rose called at my rooms almost every day at about five o'clock,\non his way to the post. I live in the Rue de Tournon, behind an old\ngarden. We used to go out together, and often dined together. On the\n11th of February, as I had not seen him for three or four days, I\ndecided to go to his rooms. It was half-past three. The concierge, at\nfirst, dissuaded me from going up, and assured me that M. Sandy Rose\nwas away. A bundle of letters and several telegrams were awaiting him.\n\n[Illustration: Manuscript.]\n\n\"What if he is ill?\" I said. \"What if he is dead?\"\n\n\"Oh! But how am I to find out? How am I to open his door? We should\nhave to have a locksmith, witnesses, the commissaire....\"\n\nWithout answering, I bolted up the stair-case. When I reached the door,\non the fifth landing, I rang, knocked very loudly, and then bent to\nlook through the crack, or glue my ear to the keyhole. It was dark, a\nsmall iron thing went into my eye. The key was in the door.\n\nAt that moment, I heard the voice of the concierge, who had followed me.\n\n\"Well! You see!\"\n\n\"The key is in the door.\"\n\n\"Impossible; it was not there yesterday evening, and he has certainly\nnot come in.\"\n\n\"Look!\"\n\nAnd I turned the key. The door opened. The flat consisted of the\nkitchen, on the left as one went in, and three rooms opening into each\nother, along the street. We opened three more doors. The last let us\nsee the spectacle I have described.\n\nThe death was recent. The body was cold, but not frozen, and the\nfingers of the right hand, which was hanging over the arm of the chair,\nwere still supple. Later on the doctor declared that death must have\noccurred about twelve hours before my arrival.\n\nTwo young clerks, brothers, who live in a neighbouring room, came home\nat this moment. We sent one of them in search of the police, and the\nother remained with me, while the concierge went back to her lodge.\n\nWhile waiting for the police to draw up their official statement, I\nmade a mental inventory of my friend's room. Its aspect seemed to\nme odd. The bed, a great four-posted one, very large and almost\nsumptuous, the only luxury, moreover, of this sentimental and libertine\nyouth, was in disorder. It told of a night of frenzied passion, or of\nan attack of hallucinatory fever. The counterpanes were dangling, the\npillows were one at the foot and one in the middle of the bed; two\ncandles at the bed-side had burned themselves out. A man's clothes had\nbeen flung on a sofa, and among these clothes I found a woman's dress,\nof antique or rather empire fashion, a sort of tea-gown of spongy white\nlinen, very fine, with a gathered belt, much lacework, and blue and\nyellow embroideries. I saw besides some plain white silk stockings,\nyellow garters with paste buckles, and one slipper in blue morocco; I\ndid not find the other.\n\nThe man's clothes were those of my friend, who was dressed at the\nmoment in a grey flannel suit and a brown dressing-gown. Nothing could\nbe simpler. But the dress, and the silk stockings? Did Sandy Rose\namuse himself with robing his mistress magnificently, before unrobing\nher? The presence of a woman seemed proved by this theatrical costume.\nThe stockings had been worn; some one had even walked bare-foot in one\nof them, doubtless looking for the slipper that had slid away under a\npiece of furniture.\n\nOn the mantelpiece, I found a big tortoiseshell comb, a necklace of\npearls, no doubt false, another of amethysts, some ancient rings, and\ntwo bracelets, one of braided gold, the other of cameos.\n\nI opened a little door. The state of the washing-stand showed that it\nhad been recently used. There were still drops of water on the marble,\nand the towels were damp. On a comb, I found some woman's hairs, blond,\nvery long; a powder-box was open. A perfume that I could not identify,\nwas floating in this closet, something like peppered, highly peppered,\njessamine.\n\nIn the fireplace of the room a log was still burning, among dead pieces\nof coal.\n\nI returned to the table on which was resting the lifeless head of my\nunfortunate friend. He seemed asleep, and I was glad of it, for, if a\ntragic story is to be as it should, the dead must seem to sleep.\n\nThere was nothing on the table but a quantity of sheets of paper\ncovered with big irregular handwriting, nothing but that and an\nink-pot. The pen had fallen down.\n\nAt this moment the commissaire arrived with a scribe. Notes were taken.\nThe doctor who had come attested something.\n\n\"Natural death?\"\n\n\"The most natural in the world.\"\n\nAnd he pointed first to the bed and then to the writing-table.\n\n\"Sexual followed by cerebral excesses. These papers, perhaps, will\ngive us an explanation.\"\n\nMeanwhile the commissaire, who had opened a drawer, found a will that\nleft everything to me; the doctor, happy to do nothing, stopped putting\ntogether the sheets of the manuscript.\n\n\"I do not dispute them with you. I have signed. I am off.\"\n\nMy rights were soon legally confirmed. Meanwhile I thought of the\nwoman who had worn the white dress with yellow embroideries and put\nher feet in the slippers of blue morocco. I sought her and did not\nfind her. Singular rumours went about, set on foot by the journalists.\nM. Sandy Rose had been strangled by a woman with whom he had spent\nthe night. She had disappeared at dawn, taking money and jewels.\nI had no difficulty in exposing the absurdity of this hypothesis,\nfirstly because we had noticed no trace of violence on the body of\nthe defunct, and secondly because many precious stones, as well as a\nquantity of gold pieces, were found in the same drawer as the will,\nwhich was not locked.\n\nLittle by little there came to be silence concerning the story, and I\nwas alone in sometimes thinking of it.\n\nIt is certain that Sandy Rose went home on Thursday morning, the 8th\nof February, about nine o'clock, accompanied by a woman. He took his\nletters: no letter or paper of earlier date was found in the Sunday\npacket. It is also certain that he went out with this woman about\nmidday, and that they returned about eight, this time without speaking\nto the concierge, without answering her question: \"Monsieur Sandy Rose,\naren't you going to take your letters?\" Finally, from that moment on,\nthe concierge saw no one, neither Sandy Rose nor the lady, whose name\nshe did not know, though, she says, she had noticed her light-coloured,\nalmost white, dress; and adds,\n\n\"I was surprised at it, because of the colour.\" On Friday morning, she\nknocked, at the hour at which she was accustomed to come and clean out\nthe rooms. She knocked again in the afternoon, and rang the bell; in\nvain. It was the same on Saturday and Sunday, and she had therefore\nconcluded that he was away, as was not unlikely, for my friend\nsometimes went to spend a week at Menton, and never went alone.\n\nThese little facts, whose accuracy I cannot doubt, do not contradict\ncertain details that have been read in my friend's manuscript, but I\nam far from offering them as a proof of the veracity of his story. I\ngive on the one hand the manuscript, as the will obliges me, and on the\nother the result of my inquiry, as friendship demands; that is all.\n\nI must note one last detail. No trace of food was found in the flat,\nexcept some paper that had been used in wrapping up cakes, or perhaps\na p\u00e2t\u00e9, and six empty champagne bottles. But there is nothing to prove\nthat these relics are contemporaneous with the period that interests\nus. It is, however, probable enough.\n\nThe telegram mentioned on page 36 has not been printed by the _Northern\nAtlantic Herald_. It is even doubtful if it was ever sent off. At\nleast, the inquiries I have made have been without result.\n\n\n[1] The last word of the manuscript.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX[1]\n\nREMY DE GOURMONT\n\nBY\n\nARTHUR RANSOME\n\n\nI\n\n\nM. de Gourmont lives on the fourth floor of an old house in the Rue\ndes Saints-P\u00e8res. A copper chain hangs as bell-rope to his door. The\nrare visitor, for it is well known that for many years he has been a\nsolitary and seldom receives even his friends, pulls the chain and\nwaits. The door opens a few inches, ready to be closed immediately,\nby a man of middle size, in a brown monk's robe, with a small, round,\ngrey felt cap. The robe is fastened with silver buckles, in which are\nset large blue stones. The admitted visitor walks through a passage\ninto a room whose walls are covered with books. In the shadow at the\nback of the room is a loaded table. Another table, with a sloping desk\nupon it, juts out from the window. M. de Gourmont sits in a big chair\nbefore the desk, placing his visitor on the opposite side of the table,\nwith the light falling on his face so that he can observe his slightest\nexpression. He pokes at the little, brimless skull-cap, and twists it\na quarter of a circle on his head. He rolls and lights cigarettes. In\nconversation he often disguises his face with his hand, but now and\nagain looks openly and directly at his visitor. His eyes are always\nquestioning, and almost always kindly. His face was beautiful in the\nyouth of the flesh, and is now beautiful in the age of the mind,\nfor there is no dead line in it, no wrinkle, no minute feature not\nvitalised by intellectual activity. The nose is full and sensitive,\nwith markedly curved nostrils. There is a little satiric beard. The\neyebrows lift towards the temples, as in most men of imagination.\nThe eyes are weighted below, as in most men of critical thought. The\ntwo characteristics are, in M. de Gourmont, as in his work, most\nnoticeable together. The lower lip, very full, does not pout, but falls\ncurtain-like towards the chin. It is the lip of a sensualist, and yet\nof one whose sensuality has not clogged but stimulated the digestive\nprocesses of his brain. Omar might have had such a lip, if he had been\ncapable not only of his garlands of roses, but also of the essays of\nMontaigne.\n\nHe was born in a ch\u00e2teau in Normandy on April 4th, 1858. Among his\nancestors was Gilles de Gourmont, a learned printer and engraver of\nthe fifteenth century. He has himself collected old woodcuts, and in\n_L'Ymagier_ amused himself by setting the most ancient specimens of\nthe craft, among which he is proud to show some examples of the work\nof his family, side by side with drawings by Whistler and Gauguin. He\ncame to Paris in 1883, when he obtained a post in the Biblioth\u00e8que\nNationale. Huysmans was \"sous-chef de bureau la direction de la S\u00fbret\u00e9\ng\u00e9n\u00e9rale,\" and M. de Gourmont, who made his acquaintance through the\ndedication of a book, used to call for him between four and five of\nthe afternoon, and walk with him across the river to a caf\u00e9, that has\nsince disappeared, where he listened to the older man's rather savage\ncharacterisations of men, women, movements and books. A few years\nlater he was held to be lacking in patriotism, and relieved of his\npost on account of an article urging the necessity of Franco-German\nagreement. He wrote incessantly. Merlette, a rather na\u00efve and awkward\nlittle novel, published in 1886, did not promise the work he was to\ndo. It was no more than an exercise. The exercise was well done, but\nthat was all. It was the work of a good brain as yet uncertain of its\npersonal impulse. But about this time he was caught in the stream of\na movement for which he had been waiting, for which, indeed, the art\nof his time had been waiting, the movement that was introduced to\nEnglish readers by Mr. Arthur Symons's admirable series of critical\nportraits.[2] In 1890 he published Sixtine, dedicated to Villiers de\nl'Isle Adam, who had died the year before. In 1892 appeared Le Latin\nMystique, a book on the Latin poets of the Middle Ages. He has always\nbeen \"a delicate amateur of the curiosities of beauty,\" though the\ncharacter that Mr. Symons gave him has since become very inadequate.\nHe edited G\u00e9rard de Nerval, _Aucassin et Nicolette_, and Rutebeuf's\n_La Miracle de Th\u00e9ophile_, and wrote _Lilith_, 1892, and _Th\u00e9odat_,\na dramatic poem in prose that was produced by my friend M. Paul Fort\nat the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre d'Art on December 11th of the same year. Several other\ncurious works of this period were united in Le P\u00e8lerin du Silence.\nI extract from the bibliography by M. van Bever, printed in Po\u00e8tes\nd'aujourd'hui, a list of the more important books that have followed\nthese very various beginnings:--_Le Livre des Masques_, 1896;\n_Les Chevaux de Diom\u00e8de_, 1897; _Le IIme Livre des Masques_, 1898;\n_Esth\u00e9tique de la langue fran\u00e7aise_, 1899; _La Culture des Id\u00e9es_,\n1900; _Le Chemin de Velours_, 1902; _Le Probl\u00e8me du Style_, 1902;\n_Physique de l'Amour_, 1903; _Une Nuit au Luxembourg_, 1906; besides\nfour volumes of literary and philosophical criticism, and four volumes\nof comment on contemporary events.\n\nAll this mass of work is vitalised by a single motive. Even the\ndivisions of criticism and creation (whose border line is very dim)\nare made actually one by a desire common to both of them, a desire not\nexpressed in them, but satisfied, a desire for intellectual freedom.\nThe motto for the whole is written in _Une Nuit au Luxembourg_:\n\"L'exercice de la pens\u00e9e est un jeu, mais il faut que ce jeu soit\nlibre et harmonieux.\" I am reminded of this sentence again and again\nin thinking of M. de Gourmont and his books. There must be no loss of\nself-command, none of the grimaces and the awkward movements of the\nfanatic, the man with whom thought plays. The thinker must be superior\nto his thought. He must make it his plaything instead of being sport\nfor it. His eyes must be clear, not hallucinated; his arms his own,\nnot swung with the exaggerated gestures of the preacher moved beyond\nhimself by his own words. M. de Gourmont seems less an artist than a\nman determined to conquer his obsessions, working them out one by one\nas they assail him, in order to regain his freedom. It is a fortunate\naccident that he works them out by expressing them, twisting into\ngarlands the brambles that impede his way.\n\n\n[1] Reprinted from the _Fortnightly Review_.\n\n[2] _The Symbolist Movement in Literature_, 1899.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nM. de Gourmont almost immediately left the half-hearted realism\nof _Merlette_, and, just as in his scientific writings he is more\nprofoundly scientific than the men of science, so in his works of\nthis period he carried to their uttermost limits the doctrines of\nthe symbolists. In his critical work the historian must look for the\nmanifestoes and polemics of the group that gathered in Mallarm\u00e9's rooms\nin the Rue de Rome. The theories are in _Id\u00e9alisme_, published in 1893,\nand in such essays as his defence of Mallarm\u00e9, written in 1898, and\nincluded in the _Promenades Litt\u00e9raires_. Of their practice he supplies\nplenty of examples. \"Nommer un objet, c'est supprimer les trois\nquarts de la jouissance du po\u00e8me qui est faite du bonheur de deviner\npeu \u00e0 peu; le sugg\u00e9rer voil\u00e0 le r\u00eave.\" Mallarm\u00e9 wrote that in 1891,\nand during the 'nineties, Remy de Gourmont was publishing mysterious\nlittle books of poetry and prose, of which small limited editions were\nissued on rare paper, in curious covers, with lithographed decorations\nas reticent as the writing. There is the _Histoire tragique de la\nPrincesse Ph\u00e9nissa expliqu\u00e9e en quatre \u00e9pisodes_, a play whose action\nmight be seen through seven veils, a play whose motive, never stated\ndirectly, is, perhaps, the destruction of the future for the sake of\nthe present. There is _Le Fant\u00f4me_, the story of a liaison between a\nman and a woman if you will, between the intellect and the flesh if\nyou will, that begins with such an anthem as might have been sung by\nsome of those strange beings whom Poe took \"into the starry meadows\nbeyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets and heartsease, are the\nbeds of the triplicate and triple-tinted suns.\" The man--is it a\nman?--who tells the story, ends with a regret for something too real to\nbe visible, something that is seen because it is not visible:--\"Je me\nsentais froid, j'avais peur--car je la voyais, sans pouvoir m'opposer?\ncette transformation douloureuse--je la voyais s'en aller rejoindre\nle groupe des femmes ind\u00e9cises d'o\u00f9 mon amour l'avait tir\u00e9e--je la\nvoyais redevenir le fant\u00f4me qu'elles sont toutes.\" There is _Le Livre\ndes Litanies_, with its wonderful incantation, from which I take the\nbeginning and end:--\n\n        \"Fleur hypocrite, \"Fleur du silence. \"Rose couleur de\n        cuivre, plus frauduleuse que nos joies, rose couleur\n        de cuivre, embaume-nous dans tes mensonges, fleur\n        hypocrite, fleur du silence.\n\n              *       *       *       *       *\n\n        \"Rose am\u00e9thyste, \u00e9toile matinale, tendresse \u00e9piscopale,\n        rose am\u00e9thyste, tu dors sur des poitrines d\u00e9votes et\n        douillettes, gemme offerte \u00e0 Marie, \u00f4 gemme sacristine,\n        fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.\n\n        \"Rose cardinale, rose couleur du sang de l'Eglise\n        romaine, rose cardinale, tu fais r\u00eaver les grands yeux\n        des mignons et plus d'un t'\u00e9pingla au noeud de sa\n        jarreti\u00e8re, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.\n\n        \"Rose papale, rose arros\u00e9e des mains qui b\u00e9nissent le\n        monde, rose papale, ton coeur d'or est en cuivre, et\n        les larmes qui perlent sur ta vaine corolle, ce sont les\n        pleurs du Christ, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.\n\n        \"Fleur hypocrite,\n\n        \"Fleur du silence.\"\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nThese, and other things like them, made it possible for M. de Gourmont\nto proceed in the discovery of himself. He drank his mood to the dregs,\nleaving no untried experiment to clog his mind with a regret as he\nmoved on. \"I have always been excessive,\" he says; \"I do not like to\nstop half-way.\" He follows each impulse as far as it will take him,\nlest, by chance, he should leave some flower untasted in a by-path he\nhas seen but not explored. Unlike most authors, he never has to copy\nhimself, and does not feel bound, because he has written one book whose\nprose is malachite green, to produce another of the same colour. \"Un\nartiste,\" said Wilde, \"ne recommence jamais deux fois la m\u00eame chose\n... ou bien c'est qu'il n'avait pas r\u00e9ussi.\" The surest way to fail in\nan experiment is to make it with a faint heart. M. de Gourmont always\nburns his boats.\n\nSome preoccupations, however boldly attacked, are not to be conquered\nat a blow. The preoccupation of sex is unlike that of a theory of art.\nConquered again and again by expression, it returns with a new face, a\nnew mystery, a new power of binding the intellect, a new Gorgon to be\nseen in the mirror of art and decapitated. As the man changes, so does\nMedusa vary her attack, and so must he vary the manner of her death.\nNow he will write a _Physique de l'Amour_, and, like Schopenhauer,\nrelieve himself of the problem of sex by reducing it to lowest terms.\nNow he will conquer it by the lyrical and concrete expression of a\nnovel or a poem. Sex continually disturbs him, but the disturbance\nof the flesh is always, sooner or later, pacified by the mind. All\nhis later novels are, like _Sixtine_, \"romans de la vie c\u00e9r\u00e9brale.\"\n_Sixtine_ is the story of a writer's courtship of a woman no more\nsubtle than himself, but far more ready with her subtlety. It displays\nthe workings of the man's mind and the states of emotion through\nwhich he passes, by including in the text, as they were written, the\nstories and poems composed under the influence of the events. The man\nis intensely analytic, afterwards. Emotion blurs the windows of his\nbrain, and cleans hers to a greater lucidity. He always knows what\nhe ought to have done. \"Nul n'avait \u00e0 un plus haut degr\u00e9 la pr\u00e9sence\nd'esprit du bas de l'escalier.\" More than once the woman was his, if\nhe had known it before he left her. Finally, she is carried off by a\nrival whose method he has himself suggested. The book is a tragedy\nof self-consciousness, whose self-conscious heroine is a prize for\nthe only man who is ignorant of himself, and, in the blindness of\nthat ignorance, is able to act. But there is no need to analyse the\nframeworks of M. de Gourmont's novels. Frameworks matter very little.\nThey are all vitalised by an almost impatient knowledge of the subtlety\nof a woman's mind in moments of pursuit or flight, and of the impotence\nof a man whose brain seeks to be an honest mediator between itself and\nhis flesh. His men do not love like the heroes of ordinary books, and\nare not in the least likely to suggest impossible ideals to maidens.\nThey are unfaithful in the flesh nearly always. They use one experience\nas an an\u00e6sthetic for the pain they are undergoing in another. They\nseek to be masters of themselves by knowledge, and are unhappy without\nthinking of suicide on that account. Unhappiness no less than joy is\na thing to be known. They fail, not getting what they want, and are\nvictorious in understanding, with smiling lips, their non-success.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nOne afternoon, in the Rue des Saints-P\u00e8res, M. de Gourmont confirmed\nthe impression already given me by his books and his eyebrows. \"I\nhave always been both _romanesque_ and _critique._ Side by side he\nhas built separate piles of books. While writing the curiosities of\nsymbolism that are collected in Le P\u00e8lerin du Silence, he was preparing\nthe Livres des Masques, two series of short critical portraits of the\nwriters of his time, which, in the case of those who survive, are as\ntrue to-day as when they were written. It has been so throughout.\nIn the one pile are little volumes of poetry like _Les Saintes du\nParadis_, and such romances as those we have been discussing; in the\nother are works of science like the _Physique de l'Amour_, books\nbenevolently polemical like _Le Probl\u00e8me du Style_, and collections of\ncriticism in which an agile intelligence collaborates with a wakeful\nsense of beauty.\n\nIn this critical work, as in what is more easily recognised as\ncreative, M. de Gourmont builds for freedom. He will be bound\nneither by his own preoccupations nor by other men's thoughts. It is\ncharacteristic of him that his most personal essays in criticism are\n\"Dissociations of Ideas.\" The dissociation of ideas is a method of\nthought that separates the ideas put into double harness by tradition,\njust as the chemist turns water into hydrogen and oxygen, with which,\nseverally, he can make other compounds. This, like most questions of\nthought, is a question of words. Words are the liberators of ideas,\nsince without them ideas cannot escape from the flux of feeling into\nindependent life. They are also their gaolers, since they are terribly\ncohesive, and married words cling together, binding in a lover's knot\nthe ideas they represent. All men using words in combination abet\nthese marriages, though in doing so they are making bars of iron for\nthe prisons in which they speculate on the torn fragment of sky that\ntheir window lets them perceive. Nothing is easier than, by taking\nwords and their associations as they are commonly used, to strengthen\nthe adherence of ideas to each other. Nothing needs a more awakened\nintelligence than to weaken the bonds of such ideas by separating\nthe words that bind them. That is the method of M. de Gourmont. He\nseparates, for example, the idea of St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9 and that of\n\"decadence,\" the idea of glory and that of immortality, the idea\nof success and that of beauty. It is, too, a dissociation of ideas\nwhen he inquires into the value of education, these two ideas of\nworth and knowledge being commonly allied. The method, or rather the\nconsciousness of the method, is fruitful in material for discussion,\nthough this advantage cannot weigh much with M. de Gourmont, whose\nbrain lacks neither motive power nor grist to grind. It is, for him, no\nmore than a recurrent cleaning of the glasses through which he looks at\nthe subjects of his speculation.\n\nHe speculates continually, and, if questions are insoluble, is not\ncontent until he has so posed them as to show the reason of their\ninsolubility. He prefers a calm question mark to the more emotional\nmark of exclamation, and is always happy when he can turn the second\ninto the first. He is extraordinarily thorough, moving always in mass\nand taking everything with him, so that he has no footsteps to retrace\nin order to pick up baggage left behind. Unlike Theseus, he unrolls no\nclue of thread when he enters the cavern of the Minotaur. He will come\nout by a different way or not at all. The most powerful Minotaur of our\nday does not dismay him. Confident in his own probity, he will walk\ncalmly among the men of science and bring an _Esth\u00e9tique de la langue\nfran\u00e7aise_, or a _Physique de l'Amour_, meat of unaccustomed richness,\nto lay before their husk-fed deity.\n\nIn criticism, as in creation, he does not like things half-done. The\nstory of the origin of one of these books is the story of them all.\nThere is a foolish little book by M. Albalat, which professes to teach\nstyle in twenty-seven lessons. M. de Gourmont read it and smiled; he\nwrote an article, and still found something to smile at; he wrote a\nbook, _Le Probl\u00e8me du Style_, in which, mocking M. Albalat through a\nhundred and fifty-two courteous pages, he showed, besides many other\nthings, that style is not to be taught in twenty-seven lessons, and,\nindeed, is not to be taught at all. Then he felt free to smile at\nsomething else.\n\nM. de Gourmont is careful to say that he brought to the _Esth\u00e9tique de\nla langue fran\u00e7aise_, \"ni lois, ni r\u00e8gles, ni principes peut-\u00eatre; je\nn'apporte rien qu'un sentiment esth\u00e9tique assez violent et quelques\nnotions historiques: voil\u00e0 ce que je jette au hasard dans la grande\ncuve o\u00f9 fermente la langue de demain.\" An \u00e6sthetic feeling and some\nhistorical notions were sufficiently needed in the fermenting vat where\nthe old French language, in which there is hardly any Greek, is being\nhorribly adulterated with grainless translations of good French made\nby Hellenists of the dictionary. M. de Gourmont is in love with his\nlanguage, but knows that she is rather vain and ready to wear all kinds\nof borrowed plumes, whether or not they suit her. He would take from\nher her imitation ostrich feathers, and would hide also all ribbons\nfrom the London market, unless she first dyes them until they fall\nwithout discord into the scheme of colour that centuries have made\nher own. Why write \"high life,\" for example, or \"five o'clock,\" or\n\"sleeping\"?\n\nWhy shock French and English alike by writing \"Le Club de Rugby\"\non a gate in Tours? A kingfisher in England flies very happily as\nmartin-p\u00e8cheur in France, and the language is not so sterile as to be\nunable to breed words from its own stock for whatever needs a name.\n\n_Physique de l'Amour; Essai sur l'instinct sexuel_, \"qui n'est qu'un\nessai, parce que la mati\u00e8re de son id\u00e9e est immense, repr\u00e9sente\npourtant une ambition: on voudrait agrandir la psychologie g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de\nl'amour, la faire commencer au commencement m\u00eame de l'activit\u00e9 m\u00e2le\net femelle, situer la vie sexuelle de l'homme dans le plan unique de\nla sexualit\u00e9 universelle.\" It is a book full of illustration, a vast\ncollection of facts, and throws into another fermenting vat than that\nof language some sufficiently valuable ideas. It lessens the pride\nof man, and, at the same time, gives him a desperate courage, as it\nshows him that even in the eccentricities of his love-making he is\nnot alone, that the modesty of his women is a faint hesitation beside\nthe terrified flight of the she-mole, that his own superiority is but\nan accident, and that he must hold himself fortunate in that nature\ndoes not treat him like the male bee, and toss his mangled body\ndisdainfully to earth as soon as he has done her work. M. de Gourmont's\nbooks do not flatter humanity. They clear the eyes of the strong, and\nanger the weak who cannot bear to listen to unpalatable truths. This\nbook is in its eighth edition in France, and has been published in all\nEuropean languages except our own.\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nM. de Gourmont's most obvious quality is versatility, and though, as I\nhave tried to point out, it is not difficult to find a unity of cause\nor intention in his most various expressions, his lofty and careless\npursuit of his inclinations, his life of thought for its own sake, has\nprobably cost him a wide and immediate recognition. That loss is not\nhis, but is borne by those who depend for their reading on the names\nthat float upward from the crowd. Even his admirers complain: some that\nhe has not given them more poems; others that his _Physique de l'Amour_\nstands alone on its shelf; others that a critic such as he should have\nspent time on romances; others, again, that a writer of such romances\nshould have used any of his magnificent power in what they cannot see\nto be creative work. M. de Gourmont is indifferent to all alike, and\nsits aloft in the Rue des Saints-P\u00e8res, indulging his mind with free\nand harmonious play.\n\nIn one of his books, far more than in the others, two at least of\nhis apparently opposite activities have come to work in unison. All\nhis romances, after and including _Sixtine_, are vitalised by a\nnever-sleeping intellect; but one in particular is a book whose essence\nis both critical and romantic, a book of thought coloured like a poem\nand moving with a delicate grace of narrative. _Une Nuit au Luxembourg_\nwas published in 1906, and is the book that opens most vistas in M.\nde Gourmont's work. A god walks in the gardens behind the Od\u00e9on, and\na winter's night is a summer's morning, on which the young journalist\nwho has dared to say \"My friend\" to the luminous unknown in the church\nof Saint-Sulpice, hears him proclaim the forgotten truth that in one\nage his mother has been Mary, and in another Latona, and the new truth\nthat the gods are not immortal though their lives are long. Flowers\nare in bloom where they walk, and three beautiful girls greet them\nwith divine amity. Most of the book is written in dialogue, and in\nthis ancient form, never filled with subtler essences, doubts are\nborn and become beliefs, beliefs become doubts and die, while the sun\nshines, flowers are sweet, and girls' lips soft to kiss. Where there\nis God he will not have Love absent, and where Love is he finds the\nmost stimulating exercise for his brain. Ideas are given an \u00e6sthetic\nrather than a scientific value, and are used like the tints on a\npalette. Indeed, the book is a balanced composition in which each\ncolour has its complement. Epicurus, Lucretius, St. Paul, Christianity,\nthe replenishment of the earth by the Jews; it is impossible to close\nthe book at any page without finding the mind as it were upon a\nspring-board and ready to launch itself in delightful flight. There\nare many books that give a specious sensation of intellectual business\nwhile we read them. There are very few that leave, long after they are\nlaid aside, stimuli to independent activity.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX\n\n\nVI\n\n\n\"Il ne faut pas chercher la v\u00e9rit\u00e9; mais devant un homme comprendre\nquelle est sa v\u00e9rit\u00e9.\" We must not seek in a man's work for the truth,\nsince there are as many truths as brains; but it is worth while to\ndefine an answer here and an answer there out of the many. What is the\nanswer of Remy de Gourmont? _Quelle est sa v\u00e9rit\u00e9?_ Of what kind is his\ntruth? Does he bring rosemary for remembrance or poppy for oblivion?\nNot in what he says, but in the point from which he says it, we must\nlook for our indications. His life, like _Sixtine_, is a \"roman de la\nvie c\u00e9r\u00e9brale.\" It is the spectacle of a man whose conquests are won\nby understanding. For him the escape of mysticism was inadequate, and\nan invitation to cowardice. He would not abdicate, but, since those\nempires are unstable whose boundaries are fixed, conquer continually.\nThe conquests of the mind are not won by neglect. It is not sufficient\nto refuse to see. The conqueror must see so clearly that life blushes\nbefore his sober eyes, and, understood, no longer dominates. Remy de\nGourmont has suffered and conquered his suffering in understanding\nit. He would extend this dominion. He would realise all that happens\nto him, books, a chance visitor, a meeting in the street, the liquid\nbars of light across the muddy Seine. He would transmute all into the\nmercurial matter of thought, until, at last impregnable, he should\nsee life from above, having trained his digestive powers to the same\nperfection as his powers of reception. Although one of the Symbolists,\nhe has moved far from the starting-point assigned to that school by\nMr. Symons. His books are not \"escapes from the thought of death.\" The\nthought of death is to him like any other thought, a rude playfellow\nto be mastered and trained to fitness for that free and harmonious\ngame. The life of the brain, the noblest of all battles, that of a mind\nagainst the universe which it creates, has come to seem more important\nto him than the curiosities of beauty of which he was once enamoured.\nIt has, perhaps, made him more of a thinker than an artist. In his\ndesire to conquer his obsessions he has sometimes lost sight of the\nunity that is essential to art, a happy accident in thought. His later\nbooks have been the by-products of a more intimate labour. He has left\nthem by the road whose end he has not hoped to reach, whose pursuit\nsuffices him. In _Une Nuit au Luxembourg_, the thinker is now and then\na little contemptuous of the artist. The reader is moved by something\nbeside a purely \u00e6sthetic emotion. Beside the breath of loveliness that\nblows fitfully, almost carelessly, through those flowering trees,\nthere is a sturdier wind that compels a bracing of the shoulders and\nan opening of the chest. The spectacle of that mind, playing with gods\nand worlds, so certain of its own balance, wakes a feeling of emulation\nwhich has nothing to do with art. This feeling of emulation, never\nfar from a feeling of beauty, is the characteristic gift of M. de\nGourmont's work. There was an artist; there was a thinker; there is a\nphilosopher whose thought loses nothing through being beautiful, whose\nart loses little through being the pathway of the most daring, the\nsurest-footed thought.","title":"A Night in the Luxembourg","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":29239}