The Temptation of St. Antony: читать книгу онлайн полностью и бесплатно

Antony—"They are all gone!"

"I remain!" says some one.

And, face to face with him stands Hilarion, but transfigured—beautiful as an archangel, luminous as a sun, and so tall that, in order to see him, Antony lifts up his head—"Who, then, are you?"

Hilarion—"My kingdom is as wide as the universe, and my desire has no limits. I am always going about enfranchising the mind and weighing the worlds, without hate, without fear, without love, and without God. I am called Science."

Antony, recoiling backwards—"You must be, rather, the Devil!"

Hilarion, fixing his eyes upon him—"Do you wish to see him?"

Antony no longer avoids his glance. He is seized with curiosity concerning the Devil. His terror increases; his longing becomes measureless.

"If I saw him, however—if I saw him?" … Then, in a spasm of rage:

"The horror that I have of him will rid me of him forever. Yes!"

A cloven foot reveals itself. Antony is filled with regret. But the Devil overshadows him with his horns, and carries him off.

Chapter VI.

The Mystery of Space.

He flies under Antony's body, extended like a swimmer; his two great wings, outspread, entirely concealing him, resemble a cloud.

Antony—"Where am I going? Just now I caught a glimpse of the form of the Accursèd One. No! a cloud is carrying me away. Perhaps I am dead, and am mounting up to God? …

"Ah! how well I breathe! The untainted air inflates my soul. No more heaviness! no more suffering!

"Beneath me, the thunderbolt darts forth, the horizon widens, rivers cross one another. That light spot is the desert; that pool of water the ocean. And other oceans appear—immense regions of which I had no knowledge. There are black lands that smoke like live embers, a belt of snow ever obscured by the mists. I am trying to discover the mountains where each evening the sun goes to sleep."

The Devil—"The sun never goes to sleep!"

Antony is not startled by this voice. It appears to him an echo of his thought—a response of his memory.

Meanwhile, the earth takes the form of a ball, and he perceives it in the midst of the azure turning on its poles while it winds around the sun.

The Devil—"So, then, it is not the centre of the world? Pride of man, humble thyself!"

Antony—"I can scarcely distinguish it now. It is intermingled with the other fires. The firmament is but a tissue of stars."

They continue to ascend.

"No noise! not even the crying of the eagles! Nothing! … and I bend down to listen to the music of the spheres."

The Devil—"You cannot hear them! No longer will you see the antichthon of Plato, the focus of Philolaüs, the spheres of Aristotle, or the seven heavens of the Jews with the great waters above the vault of crystal!"

Antony—"From below it appeared as solid as a wall. But now, on the contrary, I am penetrating it; I am plunging into it!"

And he arrives in front of the moon—which is like a piece of ice, quite round, filled with a motionless light.

The Devil—"This was formerly the abode of souls. The good Pythagoras had even supplied it with birds and magnificent flowers."

Antony—"I see nothing there save desolate plains, with extinct craters, under a black sky.

"Come towards those stars with a softer radiance, so that we may gaze upon the angels who hold them with the ends of their arms, like torches!"

The Devil carries him into the midst of the stars.

"They attract one another at the same time that they repel one another. The action of each has an effect on the others, and helps to produce their movements—and all this without the medium of an auxiliary, by the force of a law, by the virtue simply of order."