"Who are you?"
"I am an angel," replied the voice.
"What did you say?"
"I am an angel. I am Maurice"s guardian angel."
"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 slipper 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 pa.s.sages in the Bible, the Church admits it unanimously, without, however, p.r.o.nouncing anathema upon those who hold a contrary opinion. You see before you one of these angels, yours, Maurice. I was commanded to watch over your innocence and to guard your chast.i.ty."
"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 a.s.sumed this appearance, Maurice, because, having henceforth to move among mankind, I have to make myself like them. The celestial spirits possess the power of a.s.suming 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."
Gilberte, pacified at length, was arranging her hair on her forehead.
The Angel pursued:
"The celestial spirits adopt, according to their fancy, one s.e.x 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.s as did Lucius with the pomade of the youthful Photis. For in my wisdom I had fixed beforehand the hour of my apparition 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 frivolous and given to vain words?"
"Come, come," said Maurice, shrugging his shoulders. "You are not going to revolt against----"
He pointed to the ceiling--not daring to finish.
But the Angel continued:
"Do you not know that the sons of G.o.d 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.
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 condemns 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 tempted to reject the authority of this Father, despite his knowledge of the Scriptures, 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 rebuked for that they kept not ward over their church. You will doubtless contend that the angels to whom the Apostle here refers are, properly speaking, the Bishops of the two cities in question, and that he calls them angels on account of their ministry. It may be so, and I cede 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 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."
"In his treatise on _The Greatest Good_, Book I, Chapter XII; Bede on Job----"
"Oh, please, Monsieur ..."
"Chapter VIII; John of Damascus on _Faith_, Book II, Chapter III. Those, I think, are sufficiently 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 possessed 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 coelo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris?_"
Hearken, Maurice. Before Time was, the Angels rose up to win dominion over Heaven, the most beautiful of the Seraphim 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 toils of a sensual life, you lay sunk in heavy slumber, I surrounded myself with books, I studied, I pondered over their pages, sometimes in one of the rooms of the library, under the busts of the great men of antiquity, 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 pillaged papa"s library and drove poor old Sariette off his head. You know, he has become completely idiotic."
"Busily engaged," continued the Angel, "in cultivating for myself a sovereign intelligence, I paid no heed to that inferior being, and when he thought to offer obstacles to my researches and to disturb my work I punished him for his importunity.
"One particular winter"s night in the abode of the philosophers and globes I let fall a volume of great weight on his head, which he tried to tear from my invisible hand. Then more recently, raising, with a vigorous arm composed of a column of condensed air, a precious ma.n.u.script 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 scented 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 impa.s.sively, "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."
"Ah, you are a Jew. I might have deduced it from your want of tact."
The Angel, not deigning to hear, continued in his melodious voice: "I have delved deep into Oriental antiquities and also into those of Greece and Rome. I have devoured the works of theologians, philosophers, physicists, geologists, and naturalists. I have learnt. I have thought. I have lost my faith."