Maldoror And Poems Part 2

16.

The time has come to draw in the reins of my inspiration and to stop for a moment along the way, as when one looks at a woman's v.a.g.i.n.a; it is wise to look over the ground I have covered, and then, having rested my weary limbs, to soar off with a bold leap. To cover such a stretch in a single breath is by no means easy; one's wings get very tired, flying high, without hope or remorse...No, let us not lead any further the haggard pack of pickaxes and spades across the explosive mines of this impious song. The crocodile will not change a word of the vomitings from beneath his skull. So much the worse, if some lurking shade, excited by the praiseworthy object of avenging mankind whom I have so unjustly attacked, stealthily opens the door of my room, and brus.h.i.+ng against the wall like a seagull's wing, buries a dagger in the side of the plunderer of heavenly wrecks! The atoms of clay may just as well be dispersed in this way as any other.

THIRD BOOK.

1.

Let us recall the names of those imaginary beings of angelic nature, creations of a single mind, who, in the second song, shone with a light of their own. Once born, they die, like the sparks whose swift extinction on the burning paper the eye can hardly follow. Leman!...Lohengrin!...Lombano!...Holzer! for a moment you appeared on my charmed horizon covered in the insignia of youth; but I let you fall back into chaos, like diving bells. You will never come forth again. It is enough for me to keep the memory of you; you must give way to other substances, less beautiful perhaps, engendered by the stormy flood of a love resolved not to quench its thirst with the human race. A hungering love, which would devour itself, if it did not seek sustenance in celestial fictions: creating, in the long run, a pyramid of seraphim more numerous than the insects which swarm in a drop of water, he will weave them into an ellipse which he will whirl around himself. During this time, the traveler, who has stopped at the sight of a cataract, will, if he looks up, see a human being in the distance, borne towards h.e.l.las depths on a garland of living camellias! But...silence! The floating image of the fifth ideal slowly takes shape, like the blurred nuances of the aurora borealis, on the vaporous forefront of my intellect, where it takes on more and more of a precise consistency...Mario and I were going along the strand. Our horses, with straining necks, rent the membranes of s.p.a.ce and struck sparks from the stones on the beach. The cold blast struck us full in the face, billowing out our cloaks; and the hair of our twin heads was blowing in the wind. The seagull, by its cries and the beating of its wings, tried to warn us of the possible proximity of the tempest. It cried: 'Where are they going, at this mad gallop?' We said nothing; plunged in reverie, we let ourselves be borne along on the wings of this wild career; the fisherman, seeing us pa.s.s by, swift as the albatross, and believing that here, fleeing before him, were the two mysterious brothers, so called because they were always together, hastened to make the sign of the cross and hid with his petrified dog behind a huge boulder. Those who lived on the coast had heard strange things told of these two characters, who would appear on earth amid the clouds in times of great calamity, when a dreadful war threatened to thrust its harpoon into the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of two enemy countries, or cholera with its sling was preparing to hurl death and corruption into entire cities. The oldest beachcombers would frown gravely as they explained that these two phantoms, the vast span of whose black wings everyone had noticed in hurricanes, above sandbanks and reefs, were the spirit of the earth and the spirit of the sea, whose majestic forms would appear in the sky during the great revolutions of nature, and who were joined together by eternal friends.h.i.+p, the rarity and glory of which have astonished the endless cable of generations. It was said that, flying side by side, like two Andean condors, they liked to hover in concrete circles among the layers of the atmosphere nearest to the sun; that in those regions they lived on the purest essence of light; that with great reluctance they decided to direct their vertical light down towards the orbit in which the fear-stricken human globe deliriously revolves, inhabited by cruel spirits who ma.s.sacre one another on the fields where battle rages (when they are not treacherously and perfidiously killing one another with the dagger of hatred or ambition in the middle of towns), and who feed on beings as full of life as themselves, but lower down in the scale of existence. Or when, to urge men to repentance by the strophes of their prophecies, they firmly resolved to swim with huge and powerful strokes towards the sidereal regions where a planet moved amid the thick exhalations of greed, pride, imprecations and sneers which rose like pestilential vapours from its hideous surface; this planet seemed only as big as a bowl, being almost invisible because of the distance; and there, sure enough, there were many opportunities for them to regret bitterly their spurned and misunderstood kindness; and they went and hid in the bowels of volcanoes to converse with the enduring fires of lava which bubble in vats in the center of the earth, or at the bottom of the sea, where their disillusioned gaze could linger pleasantly on the fiercest monsters of the depths, who seemed models of gentleness in comparison with the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds of mankind. And then when the propitious darkness of night fell, they would rush out of the porphyry-crested craters and from the undersea currents, leaving behind them the stony chamber-pot where the constipated a.n.u.s of the human c.o.c.katoo strains, till they could no longer make out the shape of the vile planet suspended in s.p.a.ce. Distressed at their fruitless attempt, the spirit of the earth and the spirit of the sea embraced and wept, amid the stars who shared their grief, and beneath G.o.d's eye. Mario and he who galloped by his side were not unaware of the vague and superst.i.tious rumours spread by fishermen as, with doors bolted and windows closed, they whispered to one another around the fireside of an evening; while the night wind, wis.h.i.+ng to warm itself, whistles around the straw cabin, shaking with its force the fragile walls, surrounded at the base with sh.e.l.ls brought in by the dying undulations of the waves. We were not speaking. What have those who love to say to one another? Nothing. But our eyes expressed everything. I told him to pull his cloak around him more and he remarked that my horse was moving too far from his; each of us was as much concerned for the other's life as for his own; we are not laughing. He tries to force a smile. But I notice hat his face is deeply lined, and bears the terrible weight of reflection, which is constantly struggling with the sphinxes who, with their squinting eyes, baffle mortal intelligence in all its anguished endeavours. Seeing that his attempts are futile, he averts his eyes and bites his earthly rein, raging and foaming at the mouth and looking towards the horizon, which flees at our approach. In turn, I try to remind him of his gilded youth, which need only advance like a queen in the palace of pleasures; but he notices how difficult it is for my thin mouth to utter these words, how the years of my own spring have pa.s.sed, sad and glacial, like an implacable dream pa.s.sing over banquet tables, satin beds where love's pale priestess sleeps, paid with the glitter of gold, the bitter pleasures of dis-solitude and the torches of sorrow. Seeing that my attempts are futile, I am not surprised that I cannot make him happy; the Almighty appears with his instruments of torture in the resplendent aureole of his horror. I avert my eyes and look towards the horizon which flees at our approach...Our horses were galloping along the sh.o.r.es, as if they fled the eyes of men...Mario is younger than I; the dampness of the weather and the salt water which spurts up on us bring cold to his lips. I said to him: 'Take care!...Take care!...close your lips on one another; do you not see the sharp claws of the cold which will chap your skin, furrowing it with its smarting wounds?' He fixed his eye on my brow and answered with the movements of his tongue: 'Yes, I see these green claws, but I will not alter the natural position of my mouth to get rid of them. Since this appears to be the will of Providence, I wish to submit to it. Its will could have been less harsh.' And I exclaimed: 'I admire this n.o.ble revenge.' I wanted to tear out my hair, but he forbade me with such a stern look that I obeyed him respectfully. It was getting late, the eagle was returning to its nest amid the jagged mountain rocks. He said: 'I will lend you my cloak to protect you from the cold. I do not need mine.' I replied: 'Woe to you, if you do as you say. I do not want another to suffer instead of me, and especially not you.' He did not answer, because I was right; but I began to comfort him, because of the violent and hasty tone in which I had spoken. Our horses were galloping along the sh.o.r.e, as if they fled from the eyes of men...I looked up, like the prow of a s.h.i.+p borne upon a huge wave and I said to him: 'Are you crying? Tell me, king of the snows and the fog. I see no tears on your face, lovely as the cactus flower, and your eyes are dry as the bed of the stream; but in the depths of your eyes I see a blood-filled vessel in which your innocence boils, bitten in the neck by a scorpion of the largest kind. A violent wind blows down on the fire beneath the cauldron, spreading the dark flames outside your sacred eyeball. I moved close to you, my hair near your rosy brow, and I smelt burning, because my hair had been singed. Close your eyes; for, if you do not, your face, burning like the lava of the volcano, will fall in ashes into the palm of my hand.' And he turned towards me again, heedless of the reins he was holding in his hands, gazing at me tenderly, raising and lowering his lily eyelids like the ebb and flow of the sea. He wished to reply to my bold question, and did so as follows: 'Do not worry about me. Just as the mists of rivers drift over hillsides and on reaching the top rise into the atmosphere to form clouds; so have your anxieties on my account increased imperceptibly without any reasonable grounds, forming the illusory shape of a desolate mirage in your imagination. I a.s.sure you there is no fire in my eyes, although I feel as if my skull had been plunged into a basin of burning coals. How could my innocent flesh be burning in the cauldron, since I can hear only weak and indistinct cries which are but the moans of the wind pa.s.sing over our heads. A scorpion could not have taken up residence and fixed his sharp pincers in my torn sockets; rather I feel as if there are more powerful tentacles grinding my optic nerves. Yet I am of your opinion, that the blood which fills the cauldron was extracted from my veins by an invisible torturer as I slept at night. I waited a long time for you, beloved son of the ocean; my sleep-weakened arms engaged in vain combat with the One who had stolen into the vestibule of my house...Yes, I feel my soul padlocked in the bolt of my body and it cannot get out and flee from the sh.o.r.es lashed by human waves, no longer witness to the livid pack of miseries relentlessly pursuing the human lizards over the sloughs and pits of immense despair. But I shall not complain. I received life as a wound, and I have forbidden suicide to heal the scar. I want the Creator to contemplate the gaping creva.s.se for every hour of his eternity. That is the punishment I inflict on him. Our coursers slow down, their bodies trembling like the hunter set upon by peccaries. They must not start listening to what we are saying. By dint of attention, their intelligence would increase and they might understand us. Woe to them! for they would suffer more. Just think, in fact, of the boars of mankind: does it not seem that the degree of intelligence which separates them from other beings has only been granted at the irremediable price of incalculable suffering? Follow my example and dig your spur into your courser's side. 'Our horses were galloping along the sh.o.r.e, as if they fled the eyes of men.'

2.

Behold the madwoman dancing along, with a vague memory of something in her mind. Children chase after her and throw stones at her, as if she were a blackbird. She brandishes a stick and makes as if to chase them, then continues on her way. She has left a shoe behind her on the path, and does not notice it. Long spiders' legs move on her nape; they are none other than her hair. Her face no longer looks like a human face, and she bursts into fits of laughter, like a hyena. She utters sc.r.a.ps of sentences in which, when they are put together, few would be able to find any clear meaning. Her dress has holes in several places and moves jerkily to show her bony and mud-bespattered legs. She moves forward in a daze, her youth, her illusions and her past happiness, which she glimpses through her ruined mind's haze, all swept along like a poplar leaf by the whirl of unconscious powers. She has lost her former grace and beauty; the way she walks is mean and low, her breath reeks of gin. If men were happy on this earth, it would surprise us. The madwoman reproaches no one, she is too proud to complain, and she will die without revealing her secret to those who are interested in her, but whom she has forbidden even to speak to her. Children chase after her and throw stones at her, as if she were a blackbird. She has dropped a roll of paper from her breast. A stranger picks it up, shuts himself in his room all night, and reads the ma.n.u.script, which contains the following: 'After many years of barrenness, Providence blessed me with a child, a girl. For three whole days I knelt in churches and never ceased thanking Him who had at last granted my wishes. With my own milk I suckled the child, who meant more to me than my own life. She was endowed with all the good qualities of body and soul, and she grew quickly. She would say to me: "I would like to have a little sister to play with; ask the good Lord to send me one; and I, in return, will wreathe a garland of violets, mint, and geraniums." My answer was to sit her on my lap, press her to my breast and kiss her lovingly. She was already interested in animals and used to ask me why it was that the swallow merely brushed against the cottages of men with its wings, without ever daring to enter. But I would put my finger on my mouth, as if to tell her to keep silent on this grave questions, the rudiments of which I did not wish to explain to her and perhaps over-excite her childish imagination with too vivid a sensation; and I was anxious to change the subject, which is a painful one for every being who belongs to the race which has imposed its unjust dominion on all the other animals of creation. Whenever she spoke to me of the graves in the cemetery, saying how there one could breathe the pleasant perfumes of cypresses and immortelles, I was careful not to contradict her; but I said to her that it was the town where the birds lived, that they sang there from morning till dusk, that the graves were their nests where, lifting up the gravelids, they slept at night with their family. It was I who sewed all the pretty little clothes she wore, as well as the lace-dress, with its thousand arabesques, which was reserved for Sundays. In winter, she had her special place by the hearth; for she considered herself an important person. In summer, the meadows felt the gentle pressure of her steps when she ventured out with her silk net on the end of a rush, chasing the wild, free hummingbird, and b.u.t.terflies with their frustrating, zig-zagging motion. "What have you been doing, you little scamp, your soup has been waiting for you for over and hour?" But she exclaimed as she flung her arms around my neck that she would never go back there. The next day she was off again, skipping over the daisies and the mignonettes; among the sunbeams and the whirling flight of the ephemera; knowing only life's prismatic gla.s.s, none of its rancour yet; glad to be no bigger than the bluet.i.t; innocently teasing the warbler, which does not sing as well as the nightingale; slyly putting her tongue out at the nasty raven which was looking at her in a fatherly way; graceful as a young cat in her movements. I was not to enjoy her company for much longer; the time was coming near when she would unexpectedly have to say goodbye to life's enchantments, abandoning forever the company of turtledoves, grouse and greenfinches, the babbling of the tulip and the anemone, the counsel of the marsh-gra.s.s, the sharp wit of the frogs, the coolness of the streams. I was told what happened; for I was not present at the event of which my daughter's death was the result. If I had been, I would have defended that angel at the cost of my blood...Maldoror was pa.s.sing with his bulldog; he sees a young girl sleeping in the shade of a plane-tree, and at first he took her for a rose. It is impossible to say which came first to his mind: the sight of this young girl, or the resolution which followed. He undresses rapidly, like a man who knows what he is going to do. Stark naked, he flung himself upon the girl, lifting her dress to commit an a.s.sault upon modesty...in broad daylight...that will not worry him, you may be sure. But let us not dwell on this impure act. Discontented in mind, he hurriedly gets dressed again, casts a prudent glance towards the dusty pathway where no one is walking, and orders the bulldog to strangle a blood-bespattered young girl with a snap of his jaws. He points out to the mountain-dog the place where the suffering victim is breathing and shrieking, and withdraws from the scene, not wis.h.i.+ng to be present as the sharp teeth enter the pink veins. It seemed to the dog that the execution of this order was harsh. He thought he was being asked to do what had already been done, and contented himself, this monstrous snouted wolf, with violating in turn the virginity of this delicate child. From her torn belly the blood flows again along her legs, over the meadow...Her moans join the whining of the animal. The young girl gives him the golden cross which adorned her neck, so that he would spare her. She had not dared to show it to the wild eye of him who had first thought of taking advantage of the weakness of her age. But the dog knew well that if he disobeyed his master, a knife-thrust from his sleeve would open up his entrails without a word of warning. Maldoror (how revolting to p.r.o.nounce the name!) heard the agonized cries of pain, and was astonished that the victim was so tenacious of life that she was not already dead. He approaches the sacrificial altar and sees the behaviour of his bulldog, gratifying his base instincts, rising above the young girl, as a s.h.i.+p-wrecked man raises his head above the waves. He kicks him and cuts out one of his eyes. The maddened bulldog flees across the countryside, dragging after him along a stretch of the road, which though it is short, is still too long, the body of the young girl which is hanging from him and which only comes free as a result of the jerky movements of the fleeing dog; but he is afraid of attacking his master, who will never set eyes on him again. He takes an American penknife from his pocket, consisting of twelve blades which can be put to different uses. He opens the angular claws of this steel hydra; and armed with a scalpel of the same kind, seeing that the green of the gra.s.s had not yet disappeared beneath all the blood which had been shed, he prepares, without blenching, to dig his knife courageously into the unfortunate child's v.a.g.i.n.a. From the widened hole he pulls out, one after one, the inner organs; the guts, the lungs, the liver and at last the heart itself are torn from their foundations and dragged through the hideous hole into the light of day. The sacrificer notices that the young girl, a gutted chicken, has long been dead. He stops his ravages, which had gone on until then with increasing eagerness, and lets the corpse sleep, again, in the shade of the plane-tree. The knife was picked up where it had been left, a few steps away. A shepherd, a witness of the crime whose author was never discovered, waited until long afterwards before telling the tale, until he had made sure that the criminal had reached the frontier and that he no longer had to fear the revenge which would be taken on him if he told the truth. I pitied the madman who had committed this appalling crime which the legislators had not foreseen and for which there were no precedents. I pitied him, because it is likely that his reason deserted him as he went to work with the twelve-bladed knife, ripping the viscera from top to bottom. I pity him because, if he was not mad, his shameful behaviour shows that he must be harbouring intense hatred against his fellow-beings, to swoop so savagely down on to the flesh and arteries of a harmless child, my daughter. I was present at the burial of the last remains, silently resigned; and every day I come and pray over a grave.' When he has finished reading this, the stranger's strength fails him and he faints. He comes to, and burns the ma.n.u.script. He had forgotten this memory of his youth (how habit dulls the memory!); and after an absence of twenty years, he had returned to this fateful land. He will not buy a bulldog!...He will not converse with shepherds!...He will not sleep in the shade of plane-trees!...Children chase after her and throw stones at her, as if she were a blackbird.

3.

Tremdall, for the last time, has touched the hand of him who is deliberately going away, always fleeing onwards, the image of man always pursuing him! The wandering Jew says to himself that he would not be fleeing thus if the sceptre of the earth belonged to the race of crocodiles. Tremdall, standing in the valley, puts his hand before his eyes to concentrate the solar rays and make his sight more penetrating, while the other touches the breast of s.p.a.ce with his horizontal unmoving hand. Leaning forward, the statue of friends.h.i.+p, his eyes mysterious as the sea, he contemplates the traveler's garters as (with the aid of a metal walking stick) they make their way up the hillside. The earth seems to give way beneath his feet and even if he wished, he could not hold back his tears and his feelings: 'He is far away; I see his form making its way along a narrow path. Where is he going, with that slow and heavy step? He does not know himself...Yet I am convinced that I am not asleep: who is it approaching, and going to meet Maldoror? How huge the dragon is...bigger than an oak. You would think that its whitish wings, joined firmly to its body, had sinews of steel, such was the ease with which they cleft the air. Its body begins with a tiger's head and ends in a long serpent's tail. It was not accustomed to seeing such things. What is that on his brow? I see a word there, written in a symbolic language which I cannot decipher.' With one last wing-beat, he repaired to a place near him whose tone of voice I know. He said to him: 'I have been waiting for you, as you for me. The hour is come. Here I am. Read on my brow my name written in hieroglyphic signs.' Scarcely had he seen the enemy coming than Maldoror changed into an immense eagle, and prepared for the combat, contentedly clacking his hooked beak, by which he means that he will take it upon himself alone to eat the dragon's lower parts. Now they are describing circles of diminis.h.i.+ng concentricity, as each weighs up the other's strengths. They are wise to do so. The dragon seems to me to be stronger; I should like him to gain victory over the eagle. I shall experience great emotions at this spectacle in which a part of my being is involved. Powerful dragon, I will, if necessary, spur you on with my shouts. For it is in the eagle's interest that he should be defeated. Why are they waiting before they attack? I am in mortal terror. Come on, dragon, you attack first. You have just landed a sharp blow with your claw: that is not too bad. I can a.s.sure you that the eagle has felt it; the wind blows away his beautiful, blood-stained feathers. Oh! the eagle has plucked out one of your eyes with his beak, whereas you have only torn off his skin; you should have been looking out for that. Bravo! take your revenge, and smash one of his wings; there is no denying how strong and sharp your tiger's teeth are. If you could only approach the eagle as he whirls in s.p.a.ce and swoops down towards earth. I notice that even when he is falling you are wary of this eagle. He is on the ground, he will not be able to get up again. The sight of all these gaping wounds intoxicates me. Fly around him at ground level and finish him off, if you can, with the blows of your scaly serpent's tail. Courage, my fine dragon. Dig your powerful claws deep into him, and let blood mix with blood to form streams in which no water flows. It is easier said than done. The eagle has just devised a new strategic plan of defence, occasioned by the unfortunate risks of this memorable struggle; he is wise. He is sitting solidly in an unshakeable position, on his remaining wing, on his haunches, and on his tail, which had previously served as a rudder. He defies attacks even more extraordinary than those which have hitherto been flung at him. Now he turns with the speed of the tiger, and does not seem to flag; now he is on his back with his two strong claws in the air, coolly and ironically weighing up his adversary. I must know who the victor will be; the combat cannot go on for ever. I am thinking of the consequences! The eagle is fearsome; he is making enormous leaps which shake the earth, as if he were about to take off; yet he knows that is impossible. The dragon does not trust appearances. He believes that at any moment the eagle will attack him on the side where he has lost his eye...O wretch that I am! This is what happens. How could the dragon have let himself be caught by the breast? In vain he uses his strength and his cunning. I see that the eagle, clinging to him with all his limbs like a bloodsucker, is burying his beak, and indeed his entire neck, deeper and deeper in the dragon's belly. Only his body can be seen. He appears perfectly at ease; he is in no hurry to come out. No doubt he is looking for something, while the tiger-headed dragon utters groans which awaken the forests. Behold the eagle, as he comes out of that cave. Eagle, how revolting you are! You are redder than a pool of blood! Though you hold a palpitating heart in your beak, you are so covered with wounds that you can hardly stand upright on your feathered claws; and, without relaxing the tight grip of your beak, you are staggering beside the dragon which is dying in the throes of frightful pain. Victory has been hard to achieve; no matter, you have won it; one must at least tell the truth...You are acting according to the laws of reason as, moving away from the dragon's corpse, you divest yourself of the eagle's form. And so, Maldoror, you are the victor! And so, Maldoror, you have defeated Hope! From this moment, despair will prey on your purest substance! From this moment you will return, with a firm step, to your career of evil! Although I have become, so to speak, dulled to suffering, the last blow you struck the dragon did not fail to have its effect on me. Judge for yourself if I am suffering! But you frighten me. See, see that man fleeing in the distance. The busy foliage of malediction has grown on him, excellent soil; he is accursed and accursed. Where are your sandals taking you? Where are you going, tottering forward like a sleepwalker on a roof? May your perverse destiny be fulfilled! Maldoror, adieu! Adieu, until eternity, when we will not be together!

4.

It was a spring day. The birds were pouring forth their warbling songs, and human beings were going about their different duties, bathed in the holiness of toil. Everything was working towards its destiny: trees, planets, dogfish. Everything, that is, except the Creator! He was lying stretched out on the road, with his clothes all torn. His lower lip was hanging down like a heavy chain; his teeth had not been cleaned, and the blond waves of his hair were full of dust. His body, benumbed by heavy sluggishness, pinned down on the stones, was making futile attempts to get up. His strength had deserted him and he was lying there, weak as an earthworm, impa.s.sive as the bark of a tree. Floods of wine filled the ruts which had been hollowed out by the nervous jerkings of his shoulders. Pig-snouted brutishness covered him with its protective wings and cast loving glances at him. His legs, their muscles slack, swept across the ground like two flapping sails. Blood flowed from his nostrils: as he fell he had knocked his face against a post...He was drunk! Horribly drunk! Drunk as a bug which in one night has gorged three barrels of blood; his incoherent words resounded all around; I shall refrain from repeating them here, for even if the supreme drunkard has no self-respect, I must respect men. Did you know that the Creator was drunk? Have pity on the lip, soiled in the cups of debauch. The hedgehog which was pa.s.sing stuck his needles into his back and said: 'Take that. The sun has run half its course. Just wait till I call the c.o.c.katoo with its hooded beak.' The woodp.e.c.k.e.r and the owl, who were pa.s.sing, buried their necks in his belly and said: 'Take that. What are you up to on this earth? Is it to offer the spectacle of this lugubrious comedy to animals? But I promise that neither the mole, nor the ca.s.sowary, nor the flamingo will imitate you.' The a.s.s, which was pa.s.sing by, gave him a kick in the temple and said: 'Take that. What had I done to you to deserve such long ears? Even the crickets despise me.' The toad, which was pa.s.sing by, spat a fountain of slime on to his brow and said: 'Take that. If you had not given me such big bulbous eyes and I had seen you in the state you are in now, I would chastely have hidden the beauty of your limbs beneath a shower of ranunculi, myositis, and camelias, so that no on would see you.' The lion, who was pa.s.sing by, inclined his royal head and said: 'For my part, I respect him, even though his radiance now seems to be eclipsed. You others, so proud and superior, are mere cowards, since you attacked him while he was asleep. How would you like to be in his place and to have to endure from pa.s.sers-by the insults which you have not spared him'? Man, who was pa.s.sing by, stopped before the unrecognizable Creator; and for three full days, to the applause of the crab-louse and the viper, he shat on his august face! Woe to man, for this insult; for he did not respect the enemy, sprawled out in a mixture of blood and wine; defenceless, and almost lifeless! Then the sovereign G.o.d; awoken at last by all these mean jibes, got up as best he could; staggering, he went and sat down on a stone, with his two hands hanging down like the consumptive's two t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es; and cast a gla.s.sy, lack-l.u.s.tre glance over all of nature, which belonged to him. Oh human beings, you are enfants terribles; but let us spare, I implore you, this great being who has not yet finished sleeping off the vile liquor and who has not got enough strength left to stand up straight; he has slumped down on to the boulder, on which he is sitting like a weary traveler. Look closely at the pa.s.sing beggar; he saw the dervish stretching out a thin and hungry hand and, without knowing to whom he was giving alms, threw a piece of bread into the hand of him who was begging for mercy. The Creator expressed his grat.i.tude with a nod of the head. Oh! you will never know how difficult it can be to keep on holding the reins of the universe! Sometimes the blood rushes to one's head when one is seriously trying to conjure a last comet from nothingness, and with it a new race of spirits. The intellect, stirred to the depths, yields like a beaten man and, for once in its life, lapses into the aberrations which you have witnessed!

5.

A red lantern, the flag of vice, hanging from the end of a tringle, rocking its carca.s.s, lashed by the four winds, above a ma.s.sive, worm-eaten door. A dingy corridor, smelling of human thighs, led to a yard where c.o.c.ks and hens, scrawnier than their own wings, were looking for food. On the wall which surrounded the yard, on the east side, several very small openings had been made and were closed off by a metal grating. Moss covered this main part of the building which had no doubt once been a convent and was now used as a residence for all those women who, every day, showed the inside of their v.a.g.i.n.a to the clients in return for a little money. I was on a bridge, the piers of which went down into the muddy water of the moat. From its raised surface I contemplated the old ramshackle building and I could observe the minutest details of its inner architecture. Sometimes a grating would rise with a creak, as if by the impulsion of a hand which did violence to the metal; a man's head would appear in the half-open s.p.a.ce; then his shoulders emerged with flakes of plaster falling on them, followed in this laborious extraction by his cobweb-covered body. Putting his hands like a crown on the filth of all kinds which pressed the ground with its weight, his feet still caught in the twists of the grating, he resumed his natural posture and went to dip his hands in a rickety bucket whose soapy water had seen entire generations come and go; then he made off as quickly as possible, away from these suburban side-streets, to breathe the purer air nearer the town-centre. When the client had gone, a completely naked woman came out in the same manner, and went over towards the same bucket. Then the c.o.c.ks and the hens rushed up in a crowd from all parts of the yard, attracted by the smell of s.e.m.e.n, forced her on to the ground despite her vigorous resistance, swarmed all over her body as if it were a dung-heap and tore at the flaccid lips of her swollen v.a.g.i.n.a with their beaks until the blood came out. The hens and c.o.c.ks, sated, went back to scratch around in the gra.s.s of the yard; the woman, now clean, got up, trembling and covered in wounds, as when one awakes after a nightmare. She dropped the cloth she had brought to wipe her legs with; no longer needing the communal bucket, she went back to her lair to await the next client. At this sight I, too, wanted to enter that house. I was about to come down from the bridge when I saw, on the coping of the column, the following inscription in Hebrew characters: 'You who cross this bridge, do not go in there. There crime sojourns with vice; one day, the friends of a young man who had pa.s.sed through the fatal door waited in vain for his return.' My curiosity overcame my fear; a few moments later, I was standing before a grating of solid, intercrossing metal bars, with narrow s.p.a.ces between them. I wanted to look inside, through that dark screen. At first I could see nothing; but I was soon able to make out the objects in the dark room by means of the rays of the sun, which was setting and would soon disappear on the horizon. The first and only thing which struck my sight was a blond stick consisting of horns which fitted into one another. The stick was moving! It was walking in the room! Its jerking was so violent that the floor shook; with its two ends it was making huge holes in the wall and seemed like a ram battering the gates of a besieged town. Its efforts were in vain; the walls were made of freestone, and when it hit the wall I saw it bend like a steel blade and rebound like an elastic ball. Then this stick was not made of wood! I noticed later that it coiled and uncoiled easily, like an eel. Although it was as tall as a man, it did not stand upright. Sometimes it would try and then its ends could be seen through the grating. It was leaping up wildly and violently, then falling to the ground again. It could not break down the obstacle. I began to look at it more and more carefully, and I saw that it was a hair! After its great struggle with the matter which surrounded it like a prison, it went and rested against the bed which was in the room, with its root on the carpet and its tip against the head of the bed. After a few moments of silence, during which I heard broken sobs, it raised its voice and spoke thus: 'My master has left me in this room and forgotten all about me. He has not come back to look for me. He got up from this bed on which I am lying, combed his perfumed hair and did not realize that I had already fallen to the ground. Yet if he had picked me up, there would have been nothing surprising in such a simple act of justice. He has abandoned me in the confines of this room after being enfolded in a woman's arms. And what a woman! The sheets are still damp from their warm, moist embraces and bear, in their untidiness, the stamp of a night of love...' And I wondered who his master could be! And I pressed my face even harder against the grating. 'While all of nature was slumbering chastely, he coupled with a degraded woman in lewd, impure caresses. He demeaned himself so far as to allow those withered cheeks, despicable in their habitual shamelessness, to approach his august face. He did not blush, but I blushed for him. There is no doubt that he was happy to spend a night with such a spouse. The woman, struck by his majestic appearance, seemed to be enjoying incomparable delights, and kissed his neck madly.' And I wondered who his master could be! And I pressed my face even harder against the grating! 'During this time, irritant pustules began to appear and grow in number as a result of his unaccustomed eagerness for fleshly pleasures; I felt them surrounding my roots with their deadly gall and imbibing with their suckers the generative substance of my life. The more they abandoned themselves to their wild, insane movements, the more I felt my strength diminis.h.i.+ng. At the moment when their bodily desires were reaching the paroxysm of pa.s.sion, I noticed that my root had slumped, like a soldier wounded by a bullet. The torch of life had gone out in me and I fell from his ill.u.s.trious head like a dead branch; I fell to the ground, without courage, without strength, without vitality; but with deep pity for him to whom I had belonged; but with eternal sorrow for his willful aberration!' And I wondered who his master could be! And I pressed my face even harder against the grating! 'If he had at least taken to himself the innocent breast of a virgin! She would have been worthier of him, and the degradation would not have been so great. With his lips he kisses that mud-covered brow, on which men have trampled, full of dust...he breathes in, with his shameless nostrils, the emanations of those two moist armpits!...I saw the membranes of the latter shrink in shame while, for their part, his nostrils shrunk from the infamous inhalation. But neither he nor she paid any attention to the solemn warnings of the armpits, to the dull, pale revulsion of the nostrils. She raised her arms higher and he, thrusting more strongly, buried his face deeper into their hollow. I was obliged to be a party to this profanation. I was obliged to be a spectator at this unspeakable contortion; to be present at the unnatural alloying of these two beings, whose different natures were separated by an immeasurable gulf...' And I wondered who his master could be! And I pressed my face even harder against the grating! 'When he was sick of breathing his woman, he wanted to wrench off her muscles one by one; but as she was a woman, he forgave her, preferring to make one of his own s.e.x suffer. He called in a young man from an adjoining cell. This young man had come to spend a few carefree moments with one of these women; he was enjoined to come and stand one step from his face. I had been lying on the ground for a long time now. Not being strong enough to get up on my burning root, I could not see what they did. All I know is that the young man was hardly within arm's reach when bits of flesh began to fall at the feet of the bed and came to rest on both sides of me. They told me in hushed tones that my master's claws had ripped them off the adolescent's shoulders. The latter, after some hours in which he had struggled against one of greater strength, got up from the bed and withdrew majestically. He was literally flayed from head to foot; he trailed his skin, which had been turned inside out, over the flagstones of the room. He said that his own character was full of goodness; that he liked to believe that his fellow-beings were good too; for that reason he had agreed to the wish of the distinguished stranger who had called him in; but that he would never have expected to be flayed by such a torturer. By such a torturer, he added after a pause. At last he went towards the grating which compa.s.sionately opened to ground level in the presence of this body deprived of an epidermis. Without abandoning his skin, which could still be useful to him, if only as a cloak, he was trying to escape from this cut-throat; once he left the room, I could no longer see if he had had the strength to reach the gate which let out of that building. Oh, how the hens and the c.o.c.ks moved respectfully away from the long trail of blood on the drenched ground, despite their hunger!' And I wondered who his master could be! And I pressed my face even harder against the grating! 'Then he who should have thought more of his dignity and his righteousness sat up and leant, with some difficult, on his tired elbows. Alone, dark, disgusted, and hideous! He dressed slowly. The nuns, buried for centuries in the convent's catacombs, having been awoken with a start by the noises of that dreadful night, the cras.h.i.+ng and the shaking in the cell above the vaults, now held hands, and came and formed a funeral circle around him. And while he looked for the ruined remnants of his former splendour; while he washed his hands with spittle, then wiping them in his hair (for it was better to wash them with spittle than not to wash them at all, after and entire night of vice and crime), they intoned the laments for the dead, which are sung when someone has been buried. And in fact the youth was not to survive the tortures inflicted on him by a divine hand, and his agonies came to an end during the nuns' songs.' I remembered the inscription on the column; I understood what had become of the p.u.b.escent dreamer whose friends had been waiting for him since his disappearance...And I wondered who his master could be! And I pressed my face even harder against the grating! 'The walls opened to let him pa.s.s; the nuns, seeing him soar into the sky with wings till then hidden beneath his emerald robe, returned to their places beneath the lid of the tomb. He has returned to his celestial dwelling, leaving me here; it is not fair. The other hairs are still on his head; and I am lying in this dismal room on a floor covered with clotted blood and bits of dried meat; this room is d.a.m.ned since he came in; n.o.body enters; yet I am locked in. It is all over now. I shall never again see the legions of angels marching in thick phalanxes, nor the stars moving in the gardens of harmony. Well...let it be...I shall be able to bear my woe with resignation. But I shall not fail to tell men what happened in this cell. I shall give them permission to discard their dignity like a useless coat, since they have my master's example before them; I shall advise them to suck the verge of crime, since another has already done so.' The hair stopped speaking...And I wondered who his master could be! And I pressed my face even harder against the grating!...Immediately, thunder clapped; a phosph.o.r.escent light penetrated into the room. In spite of myself I stepped back, warned by an inexplicable instinct; although I had moved away from the grating, I heard another voice, but this time insinuating, quiet, for fear of being heard: 'Stop leaping up and down! Be quiet...be quiet...if anyone should hear you! I will put you back with the other hairs; but first wait for the sun to set on the horizon, that night may cover your steps...I have not forgotten you; but you would have been seen as you left, and I would have been compromised. Oh! if only you knew how much I have suffered since that moment! When I returned to heaven, my archangels surrounded me inquisitively; they did not want to ask me the motive for my absence. They, who had never dared to look up at me, cast looks of utter amazement on my downcast face as they tried to solve the riddle; although they could not see into the heart of this mystery, their whispered thoughts expressed the fear that an unusual change had come about in me. They were shedding silent tears; and they had a vague sense that I was no longer the same, that I was now inferior to my previous self. They wanted to know what disastrous resolution could have made me cross the frontiers of heaven and come down to earth to indulge in pleasures which they themselves despised. They noticed on my brow a drop of sperm and a drop of blood. The first had shot from the thighs of the courtesan! The second had spurted from the martyr's veins! Odious stigmata! Indestructible rosaces! My archangels found the flaming remnants of my opal tunic in the thickets of s.p.a.ce, floating above the wide-eyed people of the earth. They could not piece it together again, and my body remains naked before their innocence; a memorable punishment for abandoned virtue. See the furrows which have hollowed out a bed in my discoloured cheeks: it is the drop of sperm and the drop of blood, slowly oozing down over my dry wrinkles. Reaching my upper lip, they make an enormous effort and penetrate the sanctuary of my mouth, attracted, like a lover, by the irresistible throat. They are suffocating me, these implacable drops. Until now I had considered myself the Almighty; but no; I must bow my head before remorse which cries out to me: "You are only a wretch!" Stop leaping up and down! Be quiet...be quiet...if anyone should hear you! but first wait for the sun to set on the horizon, that night may cover your steps...I have seen Satan, my great enemy, rouse himself from his larva-like torpor and, lifting up the bony tangle of his ma.s.sive frame, harangue his a.s.sembled troops; as I deserved, he poured scorn upon me. He said he was very surprised that his proud rival, caught in the act by one of his perpetual spying missions which had at last met with success, could so debase himself as to kiss the dress of human debauch, after a long voyage over the reefs of ether; and that he should brutally torture and kill a member of the human race. He said that this young man, crushed in the machinery of my refined tortures, might have been a genius; might have consoled men on this earth for the blows of misfortune with wondrous songs of poetry and courage. He said that the nuns of the convent-brothel were no longer quiet in their graves; but prowled around the yard, gesticulating like automata, crus.h.i.+ng b.u.t.tercups and lilacs underfoot; that their indignation had driven them mad, but not so made as to forget the cause of the malady which afflicted their brains...(See them advancing, dressed in their white shrouds; they do not speak; they hold hands; their disheveled hair falls on their naked shoulders; a bouquet of black flowers in their bosom. Nuns, go back to your vaults. Night has not yet completely fallen; it is only evening twilight...Oh hair, you can see for yourself; on all sides I am attacked by the maddening feeling of my depravity!) He said that the Creator, who boasts of being Providence for all that exists, has behaved, to say the least, with great negligence, in presenting such a spectacle to the starry worlds; for he clearly expressed his plan to report to all the orbiting planets on how, by my own example, I maintain virtue and goodness in the immensity of my realms. He said that the great esteem in which he had held such a n.o.ble rival had vanished from his imagination; and that he would prefer to put his hand on a young girl's breast, although this is an act of execrable wickedness, than to spit in my face, covered in three layers of mingled blood and sperm; he would rather not defile his slimy spittle by such an act. He said he justly felt superior to me, not in vice, but in virtue and modesty; not in crime, but in justice; he said I should be strung up for my countless faults; that I should be burned slowly over a blazing fire and that I should then be thrown into the sea, provided the sea was willing to receive me. That since I boasted of being just, I, who had condemned him to eternal pain for a slight revolt which had not had grave consequences, then I ought to be severely just with myself, and judge my conscience impartially, laden as it was with heinous crimes!...Stop leaping up and down! Be quiet...be quiet...if anyone should hear you! I will put you back with the other hairs; but first wait for the sun to set on the horizon, that night may cover your steps.' He paused for a moment; although I could not see him at all, I judged from the length of the pause that a surge of emotion was heaving in his breast, like a whirlwind arousing a family of whales. Divine breast, defiled one day by the bitter touch of a shameless woman's nipples! Royal soul, which in a moment of forgetfulness abandoned itself to the crab of debauchery, to the octopus of weakness, to the shark of individual abjection, to the boa of amorality, and to the monstrous snail of imbecility! The hair and its master hugged one another close, like two friends who meet one another again after a long absence. The Creator continued, the accused appearing before his own tribunal: 'And what will men think of me, of whom they thought so highly, when they find out about the aberrations of my behaviour, my sandals' hesitant march over the muddy labyrinths of matter, the direction of the dark route I took over the stagnant waters and damp rushes of the pool where dark-footed crime, shrouded in fog, turns blue and roars...I see that i will have to work hard to rehabilitate myself in the future and regain their esteem. I am the Almighty; and yet in one respect I am inferior to the men I created with a grain of sand! Tell them a bold lie, tell them that I have never left heaven, where I am constantly enclosed, with all the cares of the throne, among the marbles, the statues and the mosaics of my palaces. I appeared before the celestial sons of mankind and I said to them: "Hunt evil away from your cottages, and let the cloak of good come in to your hearths. He who lays a hand on one of his fellow men, fatally wounding him in the chest with a murderous knife, let him not hope for any mercy from me, let him fear the scales of my justice. He will go and hide his sorrow in the woods; but the rustling of the leaves through the grove will sing the ballad of remorse in his ears; and he will flee those parts, stung in the hips by bushes, holly, and blue-thistles, his rapid steps caught up in the supple creepers, bitten by scorpions. He will make for the pebbles of the beach; but the rising tide with its spray and its dangerous surge will tell him that it is not unaware of his past; and he will rush blindly towards the cliff tops, while the strident equinoctial winds, whistling down into the natural caves of the gulf and the huge holes gouged in the rock-face, bellow like the huge herds of buffalo on the pampas. The lighthouses will pursue him to the northern limits with their sarcastic lights, and the will o' the wisps of the maremma, simple burning lights dancing in a fantastic style, will make the hairs of his pores s.h.i.+ver and make the iris of his eyes green. Let modesty thrive in your huts, and may it be safe in the shade of your fields. Thus will your sons become handsome and bow down in grat.i.tude to their parents; if not, sickly and stunted as the scrolls of parchment in libraries, they will be led to revolt, and will step forward and curse the day of their birth and the lewd c.l.i.toris of their mother. How can men be brought to obey these strict laws if the legislator himself refuses to be bound by them...and my shame is as immense as eternity.' I heard the hair humbly forgive him for confining him, since his master had acted from discretion, and not from carelessness; and the last pale ray of the sun which gave me light disappeared into the ravines of the mountain. Turning towards it, I saw it coil round, like a shroud...'Stop leaping up and down! Be quiet...be quiet...if anyone should hear you! He will put you back with the other hairs. And now that the sun has set on the horizon, cynical old man and soft strand of hair, creep away from the brothel, while night, spreading its shadow over the convent, covers the lengthening of your furtive steps over the plain.' Then the louse, suddenly emerging from behind a promontory, says to me, brandis.h.i.+ng its claws: 'What do you think of that?' But I did not want to reply. I withdrew and came back on to the bridge. I effaced the original inscription, and replaced it with this: 'It is painful to keep such a secret, like a dagger, in one's heart; but I swear never to reveal what I witnessed when, for the first time, I entered this terrible dungeon.' I threw the knife I had used to carve out these letters over the parapet. And making a few rapid reflections on the character of the Creator who was in his infancy and who was destined, alas! to make mankind suffer for quite a while (eternity is long) whether by his own acts of cruelty or by the ign.o.ble spectacles of the chancres caused by a great vice, I closed my eyes like a drunken man at the thought of having such a being as my enemy, and sadly went on my way through the mazes of the streets.

FOURTH BOOK.

1.

A man, a stone, or a tree is going to begin this fourth song. When the foot slips on a frog which it has crushed, one has a feeling of disgust; but when one merely brushes against the human body with one's hand, the skin of one's fingers cracks like fragments of a block of mica smashed by hammer-blows; and just as, on s.h.i.+p's deck, the heart of a shark, though it has been dead for an hour, goes on beating with dogged vitality, so too our entrails are stirred to the depth long after that touch. Such is the horror which man inspires in his fellow-beings! Perhaps in suggesting this I am mistaken; but it may be that I am right. I know, I can conceive of a malady more terrible than the puffiness of the eyes which comes from long hours of meditation on the strange character of man: but I am still seeking it...and I have not been able to find it! I do not think I am less intelligent than the next man, but who would dare to declare that I have succeeded in my investigation? What a lie his lips would be telling! The ancient temple of Denderah is one and a half hours' journey from the left bank of the Nile. Today countless swarms of wasps have taken possession of its gutters and cornices. They fly around the columns like the thick waves of a head of black hair. Sole inhabitants of the cold porch, they guard the entrance to the vestibule as if it were a hereditary right. I compare the buzzing of their metallic wings to the incessant cras.h.i.+ng of ice-floes flung against one another when the ice breaks up in polar seas. But when I consider the conduct of him who providence gave the throne of this earth three pinions of my sorrow make a far louder hum! When, after eighty years' absence, a comet reappears in some part of the heavens, it displays its brilliant nebulous trail for men and for crickets to behold. No doubt it is unaware of this long journey; the same is not true of me: sitting up in bed while the jagged shapes of a gloomy and arid horizon loom up in force from the depths of my soul, I give myself up to dreams of compa.s.sion, and I blush for man! The sailor, cut by the blasts of the north wind, hurries back to his hammock when he has finished his night watch: why am I not granted this consolation? The thought that I have willfully fallen as low as my fellow-beings, that I have less right than the next man to bewail our fate, which remains shackled to the hardened crust of a planet, or the essence of our perverse souls, pierces me like a ma.s.sive nail. We have seen whole families wiped out by fire-damp explosions; but the pain they felt must have been short, since death is almost instantaneous, amid the ruins and the noxious ga.s.ses...I...I still exist, like basalt. In the middle as at the beginning of their lives angels still look the same: yet it is ages since I looked myself. Man and I, confined within the bounds of our understanding, as often a lake is amid a circle of coral islands, instead of joining forces to defend ourselves against chance and misfortune, avoid each other, and, trembling with hate, take opposite roads, as if we had stabbed one another with the point of a dagger. You would think that each one realizes the scorn the other feels for him; motivated by a feeling of relative dignity, we are anxious not to mislead our adversary; each one keeps to himself and is aware that peace, if it were proclaimed, would be impossible to keep. Well, then, let it be! Let my war against man go on for eternity, since each recognizes his own degradation in the other...since we are both mortal enemies. Whether I am destined to win a disastrous victory or to succ.u.mb, the struggle will be good: I alone against mankind. I shall not use weapons made of wood or iron; I shall spurn all the minerals of the earth; the powerful and seraphic resonance of the harp will be a formidable talisman in my hands. In several ambushes man, the sublime monkey, has already pierced my breast with his porphyry lance: a soldier does not show his wounds, however glorious they may be. This terrible war will bring sorrow to both sides: two friends stubbornly seeking to destroy one another, what a scene!

2.

Two columns, which it was not difficult, far less impossible, to take for baobabs, could be seen in the valley, bigger than two pin. In fact, they were two huge towers. Now though, at first sight, two baobobs do not look like two pins, or even like two towers, nevertheless, by adroit use of the strings of prudence, one may affirm, without fear of error (for if this affirmation were accompanied by the least sc.r.a.p of such fear, it would be no affirmation; although a single name expresses these two phenomena of the soul whose characteristics are sufficiently well-defined as not to be easily confused), one may affirm that a baobob is not so very different from a column that comparison between these two architectural forms should be forbidden...or geometrical forms...or both...or neither...or rather high and ma.s.sive forms. I have just discovered, I do not deny it, the epithets appropriate to the nouns column and baobob: and I want you to know that it is not without a feeling of joy mingled with pride that I make this observation to those who, after raising their eyelids, have made the very praiseworthy resolution to look through these pages, while the candle burns if it is night, while the sun casts its light, if it is day. And yet, even if a higher power were to command us, in the clearest possible terms, to cast this judicious comparison, which everyone has been able to relish with impunity, into the abyss of chaos, even then, and especially then, let us not lose sight of this main axiom, that the habits acquired over years through books and contact with one's fellows, and the innate character of each individual, which develops in rapid efflorescence all these would impose on the human mind the irreparable stigma of relapse into the criminal use (criminal, that is, if we momentarily and spontaneously take the point of view of the superior power) of a rhetorical figure which several people despise, but many adore. If the reader finds this sentence too long, let him accept my apologies; but let him expect no groveling on my part. I may acknowledge my mistakes; but I will not make them more serious by my cowardice. My reasoning will sometimes jingle the bells of madness and the serious appearance of what is, after all, merely grotesque (although, according to some philosophers, it is quite difficult to tell the difference between the clown and the melancholic man, life itself being but a comic tragedy or a tragic comedy); however, each of us is free to kill flies and even rhinoceri from time to time as a relaxation from too demanding labours. The speediest way of killing flies, though it may not be the best, is this: you crush them between the first two fingers of your hand. The majority of writers who have gone into this subject have calculated, apparently convincingly, that it is preferable in several cases to cut off their heads. If anyone should reproach me for speaking of such an absolutely trivial subject as pins, I should like him to note, without bias, that the greatest effects are often produced by the smallest causes. And without straying more from the setting of this piece of paper, can one not see that the laborious piece of literature which I have been composing since the beginning of this strophe would perhaps be relished less if were based on a problem in chemistry or internal pathology. Besides, in nature there all kinds of tastes; and when at the beginning I compared the columns to the pins with such exact.i.tude (certainly I did not think I would one day be reproached for it), I based this on the laws of optics which have proved that the further away from an object one stands, the smaller the image of its reflection on the retina.

Thus it is that what our mind's tendency to farce takes for a wretched attempt at wit is simply, in the author's own mind, an important truth, solemnly proclaimed! Oh that mad philosopher who burst into laughter when he saw an a.s.s eating a fig! I am not making this up; ancient books have recounted in the fullest detail this willful and shameful derogation of human n.o.bility. I cannot laugh. I have never been able to laugh, though I have tried to do so several times. It is very difficult to learn to laugh. Or rather I think that a feeling of loathing for this monstrosity is an essential feature of my character. Now I have witnessed something even more outrageous: I have seen a fig eating as a.s.s! And yet I did not laugh; honestly, not a muscle on my face moved. The need to cry took such violent possession of me that my eyes shed a tear. 'Nature! Nature!' I cried, sobbing. 'The hawk tears the sparrow to pieces, the fig eats the a.s.s, and the tapeworm devours man.' Before deciding to go on, I wonder if I have spoken of the way to kill flies. I have, have I not? And yet it is equally true that I had not previously spoken of the destruction of rhinoceri. If certain of my friends were to claim the contrary, I would not listen to them and I would bear in mind that praise and flattery are two great stumbling-blocks. However, in order to appease my conscience as far as possible, I cannot help observing that this dissertation on the rhinoceros would carry me beyond the limits of patience and composure and would probably (let us even be so bold as to say certainly) daunt the present generation. To think of not speaking of the rhinoceros after the fly! At least as a pa.s.sable excuse I ought to have mentioned (but I did not!) this unpremeditated omission, which will not surprise those who have studied in depth the real and inexplicable contradictions which abide in the lobes of the human brain. Nothing is unworthy of a great and simple understanding; the least phenomenon in nature, if there is anything mysterious about it, can be an inexhaustible subject of reflection for the wise man. If someone sees an a.s.s eating a fig or a fig eating an a.s.s (these two circ.u.mstances do not often occur, unless it be in poetry), you may be sure that after reflecting for two or three minutes on what course to adopt, he will abandon the path of virtue and start laughing like a c.o.c.k! Yet it is not exactly proven that c.o.c.ks deliberately open their mouths to imitate men and to grin anxiously. I am applying to birds the same word grimace that we use for men. The c.o.c.k does not change his nature, not because he is unable to do so, but because he is too proud. Teach them to read and they refuse. No parrot would go into such raptures at its own ignorant and inexcusable weakness. Oh execrable debas.e.m.e.nt! how like a goat one looks when one laughs! The smooth calmness of the brow has disappeared and given way to enormous fish-eyes which (isn't it deplorable?)...which...start to s.h.i.+ne like lighthouses! It will often happen that I solemnly make the most clownish statements...I do not consider this a sufficiently decisive motive for me to open my mouth wide! I cannot help laughing, you will reply; I accept this absurd explanation, but then let it be a melancholy laugh. Laugh, but cry at the same time. If even that is impossible, urinate; but I warn you that some kind of li