AURICE at length turned his head, saw the figure, and perceiving that it moved, was also frightened. Meanwhile, Gilberte was regaining3 her senses. She imagined that what she had seen was some mistress whom her lover had hidden in the room. Inflamed4 with anger and disgust at the idea of such treachery, boiling with indignation, and glaring at her supposed rival, she exclaimed:
"A woman ... a naked woman too! You bring me into a room where you allow your women to come, and when I arrive they have not had time to dress. And you reproach me with arriving late! Your impudence5 is beyond belief! Come, send the creature packing. If you wanted us both here together, you might at least have asked me whether it suited me...."
Maurice, wide-eyed and groping for a revolver that had never been there, whispered in her ear:[80]
"Be quiet ... it is no woman. One can scarcely see, but it is more like a man."
She put her hands over her eyes again and screamed harder than ever.
"A man! Where does he come from? A thief. An assassin! Help! Help! Kill him.... Maurice, kill him! Turn on the light. No, don't turn on the light...."
She made a mental vow6 that should she escape from this danger she would burn a candle to the Blessed Virgin7. Her teeth chattered8.
The figure made a movement.
"Keep away!" cried Gilberte. "Keep away!"
She offered the burglar all the money and jewels she had on the table if he would consent not to stir. Amid her surprise and terror the idea assailed9 her that her husband, dissembling his suspicions, had caused her to be followed, had posted witnesses, and had had recourse to the Commissaire de Police. In a flash she distinctly saw before her the long painful future, the glaring scandal, the pretended disdain10, the cowardly desertion of her friends, the just mockery of society, for it is indeed ridiculous to be found out. She saw the divorce, the loss of her position and of her rank. She saw the dreary12 and narrow existence with her mother, when no one would make love to her, for men avoid women who fail to give them the security of the married state. And all this, why? Why this ruin, this[81] disaster? For a piece of folly13, for a mere14 nothing. Thus in a lightning flash spoke15 the conscience of Gilberte des Aubels.
"Have no fear, Madame," said a very sweet voice.
"Who are you?"
"I am an angel," replied the voice.
"What did you say?"
"Say it again. I am going mad. I do not understand...."
Maurice, without understanding either, was indignant. He sprang forward and showed himself; with his right hand armed with a slipper18 he made a threatening gesture, and said in a rough voice:
"You are a low ruffian; oblige me by going the way you came."
"Maurice d'Esparvieu," continued the sweet voice, "He whom you adore as your Creator has stationed by the side of each of the faithful a good angel, whose mission it is to counsel and protect him; it is the invariable opinion of the Fathers, it is founded on many passages in the Bible, the Church admits it unanimously, without, however, pronouncing anathema19 upon those who hold a contrary opinion. You see before you one of these angels, yours, Maurice. I was commanded to[82] watch over your innocence20 and to guard your chastity."
"That may be," said Maurice; "but you are certainly no gentleman. A gentleman would not permit himself to enter a room at such a moment. To be plain, what the deuce are you doing here?"
"I have assumed this appearance, Maurice, because, having henceforth to move among mankind, I have to make myself like them. The celestial21 spirits possess the power of assuming a form which renders them apparent to the eye and to the touch. This shape is real, because it is apparent, and all the realities in the world are but appearances."
The Angel pursued:
"The celestial spirits adopt, according to their fancy, one sex or the other, or both at once. But they cannot disguise themselves at any moment, according to their caprice or fantasy. Their metamorphoses are subject to constant laws, which you would not understand. Thus I have neither desire nor power to transform myself under your eyes, for your amusement or my own, into a lion, a tiger, a fly, or into a sycamore-shaving like the young Egyptian whose story was found in a tomb. I cannot change myself into an ass1 as did Lucius with the pomade of the youthful Photis.[83] For in my wisdom I had fixed23 beforehand the hour of my apparition24 to mankind, nothing could hasten or delay it."
Impatient for enlightenment, Maurice asked for the second time:
"Still, what are you up to here?"
Joining her voice to his, Madame des Aubels asked: "Yes, indeed, what are you doing here?"
The Angel replied:
"Man, lend your ear. Woman, hear my voice. I am about to reveal to you a secret on which hangs the fate of the Universe. In rebellion against Him whom you hold to be the Creator of all things visible and invisible, I am preparing the Revolt of the Angels."
"Do not jest," said Maurice, who had faith and did not allow holy things to be played with.
But the Angel answered reproachfully: "What makes you think, Maurice, that I am frivolous25 and given to vain words?"
"Come, come," said Maurice, shrugging his shoulders. "You are not going to revolt against——"
But the Angel continued:
"Do you not know that the sons of God have already revolted and that a great battle took place in the heavens?"
"That was a long time ago," said Maurice, putting on his socks.[84]
Then the Angel replied:
"It was before the creation of the world. But nothing has changed since then in the heavens. The nature of the Angels is no different now from what it was originally. What they did then they could do again now."
"No! It is not possible. It is contrary to faith. If you were an angel, a good angel as you make out you are, it would never occur to you to disobey your Creator."
"You are in error, Maurice, and the authority of the Fathers condemns27 you. Origen lays it down in his homilies that good angels are fallible, that they sin every day and fall from Heaven like flies. Possibly you may be tempted28 to reject the authority of this Father, despite his knowledge of the Scriptures29, because he is excluded from the Canon of the Saints. If this be so, I would remind you of the second chapter of Revelation, in which the Angels of Ephesus and Pergamos are rebuked30 for that they kept not ward11 over their church. You will doubtless contend that the angels to whom the Apostle here refers are, properly speaking, the Bishops31 of the two cities in question, and that he calls them angels on account of their ministry32. It may be so, and I cede33 the point. But with what arguments, Maurice, would you counter the opinion of all those Doctors and Pontiffs whose unanimous teaching it is that angels may fall from good into evil? Such is the[85] statement made by Saint Jerome in his Epistle to Damasus...."
"Monsieur," said Madame des Aubels, "go away, I beg you."
But the Angel hearkened not, and continued:
"Saint Augustine, in his True Religion, Chapter XIII; Saint Gregory, in his Morals, Chapter XXIV; Isidore——"
"Monsieur, let me get my things on; I am in a hurry."
"Oh, please, Monsieur ..."
"Chapter VIII; John of Damascus on Faith, Book II, Chapter III. Those, I think, are sufficiently35 weighty authorities, and there is nothing for it, Maurice, but to admit your error. What has led you astray is that you have not duly considered my nature, which is free, active, and mobile, like that of all the angels, and that you have merely observed the grace and felicity with which you deem me so richly endowed. Lucifer possessed36 no less, yet he rebelled."
"But what on earth are you rebelling for?" asked Maurice.
"Isaiah," answered the child of light, "Isaiah has already asked, before you: 'Quomodo cecidisti de c?lo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris?' Hearken, Maurice. Before Time was, the Angels rose up to[86] win dominion37 over Heaven, the most beautiful of the Seraphim38 revolted through pride. As for me, it is science that has inspired me with the generous desire for freedom. Finding myself near you, Maurice, in a house containing one of the vastest libraries in the world, I acquired a taste for reading and a love of study. While, fordone with the toils39 of a sensual life, you lay sunk in heavy slumber40, I surrounded myself with books, I studied, I pondered over their pages, sometimes in one of the rooms of the library, under the busts41 of the great men of antiquity42, sometimes at the far end of the garden, in the room in the summer-house next to your own."
On hearing these words, young d'Esparvieu exploded with laughter and beat the pillow with his fist, an infallible sign of uncontrollable mirth.
"Ah ... ah ... ah! It was you who pillaged43 papa's library and drove poor old Sariette off his head. You know, he has become completely idiotic44."
"Busily engaged," continued the Angel, "in cultivating for myself a sovereign intelligence, I paid no heed45 to that inferior being, and when he thought to offer obstacles to my researches and to disturb my work I punished him for his importunity46.
"One particular winter's night in the abode47 of the philosophers and globes I let fall a volume of great weight on his head, which he tried to tear[87] from my invisible hand. Then more recently, raising, with a vigorous arm composed of a column of condensed air, a precious manuscript of Flavius Josephus, I gave the imbecile such a fright, that he rushed out screaming on to the landing and (to borrow a striking expression from Dante Alighieri) fell even as a dead body falls. He was well rewarded, for you gave him, Madame, to staunch the blood from his wound, your little scented49 handkerchief. It was the day, you may remember, when behind a celestial globe you exchanged a kiss on the mouth with Maurice."
"Monsieur," said Madame des Aubels, with a frown, "I cannot allow you...."
But she stopped short, deeming it was an inopportune moment to appear over-exacting on a matter of decorum.
"I had made up my mind," continued the Angel impassively, "to examine the foundations of belief. I first attacked the monuments of Judaism, and I read all the Hebrew texts."
"You know Hebrew, then?" exclaimed Maurice.
"Hebrew is my native tongue: in Paradise for a long time we have spoken nothing else."
The Angel, not deigning51 to hear, continued in his melodious52 voice: "I have delved53 deep into Oriental antiquities54 and also into those of Greece[88] and Rome. I have devoured55 the works of theologians, philosophers, physicists56, geologists57, and naturalists58. I have learnt. I have thought. I have lost my faith."
"What? You no longer believe in God?"
"I believe in Him, since my existence depends on His, and if He should fail to exist, I myself should fall into nothingness. I believe in Him, even as the Satyrs and the M?nads believed in Dionysus and for the same reason. I believe in the God of the Jews and the Christians59. But I deny that He created the world; at the most He organised but an inferior part of it, and all that He touched bears the mark of His rough and unforeseeing touch. I do not think He is either eternal or infinite, for it is absurd to conceive of a being who is not bounded by space or time. I think Him limited, even very limited. I no longer believe Him to be the only God. For a long time He did not believe it Himself; in the beginning He was a polytheist; later, His pride and the flattery of His worshippers made Him a monotheist. His ideas have little connection; He is less powerful than He is thought to be. And, to speak candidly60, He is not so much a god as a vain and ignorant demiurge. Those who, like myself, know His true nature, call Him Ialdabaoth."
"What's that you say?"
"Ialdabaoth."[89]
"Ialdabaoth. What's that?"
"I have already told you. It is the demiurge whom, in your blindness, you adore as the one and only God."
"You're mad. I don't advise you to go and talk rubbish like that to Abbé Patouille."
"I am not in the least sanguine61, my dear Maurice, of piercing the dense48 night of your intellect. I merely tell you that I am going to engage Ialdabaoth in conflict with some hopes of victory."
"Mark my words, you won't succeed."
"Lucifer shook His throne, and the issue was for a moment in doubt."
"What is your name?"
"Well, my poor Arcade, I regret to see you going to the bad. But confess that you are jesting with us. I could at a pinch understand your leaving Heaven for a woman. Love makes us commit the greatest follies63. But you will never make me believe that you, who have seen God face to face, ultimately found the truth in old Sariette's musty books. No, you will never get me to believe that!"
"My dear Maurice, Lucifer was face to face with God, yet he refused to serve Him. As to the kind of truth one finds in books, it is a truth that enables us sometimes to discern what things are not, without ever enabling us to discover what they[90] are. And this poor little truth has sufficed to prove to me that He in whom I blindly believed is not believable, and that men and angels have been deceived by the lies of Ialdabaoth."
"There is no Ialdabaoth. There is God. Come, Arcade, do the right thing. Renounce64 these follies, these impieties65, dis-incarnate yourself, become once more a pure Spirit, and resume your office of guardian angel. Return to duty. I forgive you, but do not let us see you again."
"I should like to please you, Maurice. I feel a certain affection for you, for my heart is soft. But fate henceforth calls me elsewhere towards beings capable of thought and action."
"Monsieur Arcade," said Madame des Aubels, "withdraw, I implore66 you. It makes me horribly shy to be in this position before two men. I assure you I am not accustomed to it."
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1
ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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audacity
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| n.大胆，卤莽，无礼 | |
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regaining
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| 复得( regain的现在分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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inflamed
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| adj.发炎的，红肿的v.（使）变红，发怒，过热( inflame的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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chattered
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| （人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤 | |
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9
assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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15
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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16
reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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slipper
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| n.拖鞋 | |
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anathema
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| n.诅咒；被诅咒的人(物)，十分讨厌的人(物) | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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pacified
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| 使（某人）安静( pacify的过去式和过去分词 )； 息怒； 抚慰； 在（有战争的地区、国家等）实现和平 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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27
condemns
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| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的第三人称单数 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
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28
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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29
scriptures
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| 经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典 | |
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30
rebuked
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| 责难或指责( rebuke的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bishops
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| （基督教某些教派管辖大教区的）主教( bishop的名词复数 )； （国际象棋的）象 | |
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32
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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cede
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| v.割让，放弃 | |
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treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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37
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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38
seraphim
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| n.六翼天使(seraph的复数)；六翼天使( seraph的名词复数 ) | |
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toils
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| 网 | |
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slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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41
busts
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| 半身雕塑像( bust的名词复数 )； 妇女的胸部； 胸围； 突击搜捕 | |
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42
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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43
pillaged
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| v.抢劫，掠夺( pillage的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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45
heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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46
importunity
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| n.硬要，强求 | |
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47
abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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48
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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49
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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50
tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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51
deigning
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| v.屈尊，俯就( deign的现在分词 ) | |
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52
melodious
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| adj.旋律美妙的，调子优美的，音乐性的 | |
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53
delved
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| v.深入探究，钻研( delve的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
antiquities
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| n.古老( antiquity的名词复数 )；古迹；古人们；古代的风俗习惯 | |
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55
devoured
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| 吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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56
physicists
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| 物理学家( physicist的名词复数 ) | |
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57
geologists
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| 地质学家，地质学者( geologist的名词复数 ) | |
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naturalists
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| n.博物学家( naturalist的名词复数 )；（文学艺术的）自然主义者 | |
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59
Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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60
candidly
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| adv.坦率地，直率而诚恳地 | |
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61
sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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62
arcade
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| n.拱廊；(一侧或两侧有商店的)通道 | |
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63
follies
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| 罪恶，时事讽刺剧； 愚蠢，蠢笨，愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 ) | |
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64
renounce
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| v.放弃；拒绝承认，宣布与…断绝关系 | |
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65
impieties
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| n.不敬( impiety的名词复数 )；不孝；不敬的行为；不孝的行为 | |
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66
implore
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| vt.乞求，恳求，哀求 | |
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