The Temptation of St. Antony Part 10

"The fools who declaim against me pretend to explain the absurd; and, in order to destroy them entirely, I have composed little poems so comical that they are known by heart in the mills, the taverns, and the ports.

"A thousand times no! the Son is not co-eternal with the Father, nor of the same substance. Otherwise He would not have said, 'Father, remove from Me this chalice! Why do ye call Me good? G.o.d alone is good! I go to my G.o.d, to your G.o.d!' and other expressions, proving that He was a created being. It is demonstrated to us besides by all His names: lamb, shepherd, fountain, wisdom, Son of Man, prophet, good way, corner-stone."

_Sabellius_--"As for me, I maintain that both are identical."

_Arius_--"The Council of Antioch has decided the other way."

_Antony_--"Who, then, is the Word? Who was Jesus?"

_The Valentinians_--"He was the husband of Acharamoth when she had repented!"

_The Sethianians_--"He was Sem, son of Noah!"

_The Theodotians_--"He was Melchisidech!"

_The Merinthians_--"He was nothing but a man!"

_The Apollonarists_--"He a.s.sumed the appearance of one! He simulated the Pa.s.sion!"

_Marcellus of Ancyra_--"He is a development of the Father!"

_Pope Calixtus_--"Father and Son are the two forms of a single G.o.d!"

_Methadius_--"He was first in Adam, and then in man!"

_Cerinthus_--"And He will come back to life again!"

_Valentinus_--"Impossible--His body is celestial."

_Paul of Samosta_--"He is G.o.d only since His baptism."

_Hermogenes_--"He dwells in the sun."

And all the heresiarchs form a circle around Antony, who weeps, with his head in his hands.

A Jew, with red beard, and his skin spotted with leprosy, advances close to him, and chuckling horribly:

"His soul was the soul of Esau. He suffered from the disease of Bellerophon; and his mother, the woman who sold perfumes, surrendered herself to Pantherus, a Roman soldier, under the corn-sheaves, one harvest evening."

Antony eagerly lifts up his head, and gazes at them without uttering a word; then, treading right over them:

"Doctors, magicians, bishops and deacons, men and phantoms, back! back!

Ye are all lies!"

_The Heresiarchs_--"We have martyrs, more martyrs than yours, prayers more difficult, higher outbursts of love, and ecstasies quite as protracted."

_Antony_--"But no revelation. No proofs."

Then all brandish in the air rolls of papyrus, tablets of wood, pieces of leather; and strips of cloth; and pus.h.i.+ng them one before the other:

_The Corinthians_--"Here is the Gospel of the Hebrews!"

_The Marcionites_--"The Gospel of the Lord! The Gospel of Eve!"

_The Encrat.i.tes_--"The Gospel of Thomas!"

_The Cainites_--"The Gospel of Judas!"

_Basilides_--"The treatise of the spirit that has come!"

_Manes_--"The prophecy of Barcouf!"

Antony makes a struggle and escapes them, and he perceives, in a corner filled with shadows, the old Ebionites, dried up like mummies, their glances dull, their eyebrows white.

They speak in a quavering tone:

"We have known, we ourselves have known, the carpenter's son. We were of his own age; we lived in his street. He used to amuse himself by modelling little birds with mud; without being afraid of cutting the benches, he a.s.sisted his father in his work, or rolled up, for his mother, b.a.l.l.s of dyed wool. Then he made a journey into Egypt, whence he brought back wonderful secrets. We were in Jericho when he discovered the eater of gra.s.shoppers. They talked together in a low tone, without anyone being able to hear them. But it was since that occurrence that he made a noise in Galilee and that many stories have been circulated concerning him."

They repeat, tremulously:

"We have known, we ourselves; we have known him."

_Antony_--"One moment! Tell me! pray tell me, what was his face like?"

_Tertullian_--"Fierce and repulsive in its aspect; for he was laden with all the crimes, all the sorrows, and all the deformities of the world."

_Antony_--"Oh! no! no! I imagine, on the contrary, that there was about his entire person a superhuman beauty."

_Eusebius of Caesarea_--"There is at Paneadae, close to an old ruin, in the midst of a rank growth of weeds, a statue of stone, raised, as it is pretended, by the woman with the issue of blood. But time has gnawed away the face, and the rain has obliterated the inscription."

A woman comes forth from the group of Carpocratians.

_Marcellina_--"I was formerly a deaconess in a little church at Rome, where I used to show the faithful images, in silver, of St. Paul, Homer, Pythagoras and Jesus Christ.

"I have kept only his."

She draws aside the folds of her cloak.

"Do you wish it?"

_A voice_--"He reappears himself when we invoke him. It is the hour.

Come!"

And Antony feels a brutal hand laid on him, which drags him along.

He ascends a staircase in complete darkness, and, after proceeding for some time, arrives in front of a door. Then his guide (is it Hilarion?

he cannot tell) says in the ear of a third person, "The Lord is about to come,"--and they are introduced into an apartment with a low ceiling and no furniture. What strikes him at first is, opposite him, a long chrysalis of the colour of blood, with a man's head, from which rays escape, and the word _Knouphis_ written in Greek all around. It rises above a shaft of a column placed in the midst of a pedestal. On the other walls of the apartment, medallions of polished bra.s.s represent heads of animals--that of an ox, of a lion, of an eagle, of a dog, and again, an a.s.s's head! The argil lamps, suspended below these images, shed a flickering light. Antony, through a hole in the wall, perceives the moon, which s.h.i.+nes far away on the waves, and he can even distinguish their monotonous ripple, with the dull sound of a s.h.i.+p's keel striking against the stones of a pier.

Men, squatting on the ground, their faces hidden beneath their cloaks, give vent at intervals to a kind of stifled barking. Women are sleeping, with their foreheads clasped by both arms, which are supported by their knees, so completely shrouded by their veils that one would say they were heaps of clothes arranged along the wall. Beside them, children, half-naked, and half devoured with vermin, watch the lamps burning, with an idiotic air;--and they are doing nothing; they are awaiting something.