Chapter I: I am not a slave

HE

Very true. But liberty is an internal joy. One is the more free the less one seeks to appear so. A woman is less beautiful when she has divulged her beauty. A man is less free when he makes a parade of his liberty. One must hide one's good fortunes.

My friend, I have shown you the philosophy of the gods. Accept its method if you feel yourself strong enough to follow it without despair. We are, and that suffices us. Can you say as much? you who cannot take a step towards happiness without taking one towards death? Hope, if you have need of hope. Drink, if you are thirsty. Do you think that I am jeering, and that, after having treated you as a god, I am treating you first as a man and then as a child? No. The truth is that every question immediately receives in my mind all the different and even contradictory solutions that can answer it. I see, would you believe it, the six sides of the cube at one glance. I know that the least reasonable of things is reason; I know that nothing is more cruel than sentiment. There is not one of your systems of which I cannot make a circuit in two or three thoughts. They are curious ruins; some of them still attract such a concourse of people that one forgets that they are ruins. Travel, and make pilgrimages. I have favoured the materialism of Epicurus, Saint Paul's Christianity, Spinoza's pantheism. Have I spoken to you of Spinoza? I loved him much also. We used to drink milk while we were discovering the identity of reality and perfection. He was one of the two completely happy men I have known; the other was Epicurus. Spinoza found happiness in asceticism; Epicurus, in pleasure. They both lived smiling. I regretted them equally. There are two masters for mankind, and nearer to mankind than myself.

I remember one of Spinoza's propositions: "Each man necessarily desires or repulses, according to the laws of his nature, what he considers good or bad." That means: every one naturally desires to be happy. Great commonplace, and great truth: there is no other philosophy, there is no other method. Virtue is, to be happy.

They are, then, very wicked, those among you, who, keeping power, that is to say force, in their own hands, use it to forbid men access to the road that displeases themselves. What! I should have used my power to undeceive Cecilia, whose innocent kisses were prayers, whose life was a happy walk towards martyrdom and heaven! What infatuation, to believe oneself in possession of the truth, and, then, what childishness, to believe that the truth is necessarily useful! My friend, what is true is true, and what is beautiful is beautiful, and between these terms, and between all that could be inserted, there is no necessary relation. I smile at human illusions, but I would not make them one in a single and compulsory illusion.

You love Elise; obey your desires even if they seem absurd to you. She will do the same for you, and you will both taste great joys.

We had returned, little by little, to our starting point. The young women joined us near the rose-garden. A different light had replaced the springtime brilliance that surrounded us. The real morning had just been born, a clear, cold winter morning. I wished to pluck a rose, but they disappeared as I stretched out my hand. Elise took my arm and pressed close to me.

ELISE

I am cold.

I doubted her divinity, I doubted myself, and the enchanted, luminous night I had just lived. My master's last words were disturbing the certainty that he had at first established in my mind. I, who had believed myself a god, became again a man.

HE

That is the effect of doubt. Then you no longer believe in me?

I

I believe in you.

Instantly, things recovered their magical appearance, and I was happy again. I gently pressed Elise's arm, and she looked at me with tenderness.

Meanwhile, the two young friends, who were walking before us, had come upon the steps of the Museum. We followed them. They examined in silence the cold nudity of all those women of stone, but sometimes I heard them laugh.

ELISE

And so these are your women.

I

They are not our women. These figures represent our ideal of the goddesses.

ELISE

Truly, this one is like me.

I

There are women as beautiful as that among us, but one does not know them. Each one of us thinks he has held in his arms the most beautiful woman in the world; when he reflects, he is no longer very sure of it, for, in the depths of his desire, an image ceaselessly forms, and ceaselessly vanishes, whose beauty no created thing could equal.

ELISE

So reality always deceives you. How do you manage to be happy?

I

We have desire.

I had spoken like a man, and not like one whose mistress is an immortal. Elise seemed indifferent to the obscure sorrow that darkened my words.

My nature now was double. When I thought of my master, of Elise, of the hours passed in the garden, I felt that I was caressed and upheld by warm waves of joy; when I considered the things of earth, I was cold, and I was sorrowful.

Elise left me once more to go and join her companions. My master called me. He was seated at the entrance to the hall, and was looking at nothing.

HE

I have still a few words to say to you, and these are the most important. You must forget our conversation.

I

Master, it is impossible. It is part of myself, it has entered into my flesh, into my blood, into my bones.

HE

Ah, well, you shall know then that I could have told you the exact opposite, and that that also would have been the truth. Another god may descend and speak to you and give you other teaching. In which will you put your trust?

I

Master, you disturb me. Can such a miracle be repeated?

HE

When one believes in a miracle, it may become a daily occurrence. You see, you would do better to forget.

I

I shall not forget.

HE

And what if I were to prove to you that I do not exist, that I am only a part of yourself, that responds to another part of yourself?

I

Master, I believe in you, and not in myself.

HE

Behold man with a true Christian nature, man after the fall! You will never wash away sin, or, rather, you will never wash away penitence. Why do you not hold your own against me? What a domestic animal has man become! Have you not at the bottom of your heart a secret desire? Does the god that I appear to you satisfy fully your need of worship and humiliation? Speak, my friend, I am what you desire that I should be. Choose. The phantasmagorias are at your command.

I

Well, yes, I should have wished you to be He, to perfect in my eyes the legends of my childhood.... But you have spoken, and I no longer believe but in you, in you alone.

HE

Choose. There is yet time. Choose.

I

I have chosen.

At that very instant, all pleasure vanished, and I felt ill, with that overwhelming illness that follows nights of debauch. Nothing, however, had changed around me, and I was standing among the same marbles, though they were frozen and made me almost ashamed and almost afraid. I heard the laughter of the young women in the neighbouring hall, but it seemed to me to come from a bevy of hoydens. My master, still seated there, was looking at me, but with eyes in which I thought I saw I know not what cruel mockery, I know not what mournful reproaches. I was seized with anguish, I breathed with difficulty, I was cold, the memory of my nocturnal lusts disgusted my heart. I was about to faint, perhaps, when my master spoke.

HE

So you have chosen. It is well. Good-bye.

I

Oh! No! Not yet!

HE

Would you care to salute those charming young women? Here they are.

I saw them advancing towards me, naked, and smiling from head to foot, with a docile smile. They held each other by their necks, their arms entwined, like the three graces, but their hips swayed to an evil rhythm.

I

How ugly they are! Sorceresses!

HE

They are your sins.

I

I detest them.

They turned and fled. Their buttocks, joined like three curious faces, made an obscene and singular diagram.

HE

Women belong to metaphysics.

I was too disturbed to understand this saying. I was thinking of Elise, whom I had loved so passionately, and I wept at seeing her thus. I wept also over myself and my lust.

HE

Women are creations of sensibility, of intelligence, or of faith; that depends on the moment, it depends on the man. The difference between the goddess and the girl of the public harem is made by the idea of sin. As a sinner, you see courtesans where, as a god, I see divinities. The world is what you make it, creator without knowing it. Since you have chosen, good-bye, good-bye!

I

Elise.

She whom I had loved, she whom I loved still, ran towards me, in the form of the young woman who had so moved my heart. She offered me her hands and her lips, as if she had returned from a journey, and she pressed me passionately in her arms.

HE

Then you have not chosen?

I

I cannot separate from her I love.

ELISE

I remain among men.