II
He joined himself to a band of adventurers who were passing.
He learned to know hunger, thirst, fevers, and vermin. He became accustomed to the din of mellays and the sight of the dying. The wind tanned his skin. His limbs became calloused by contact with his armour; and since he was very strong, courageous, temperate, and of good counsel, he had no trouble in obtaining the command of a company.
At the beginning of a battle he roused his soldiers with a great wave of his sword. With a knotted rope he climbed the walls of citadels at night, swayed about by the hurricane, while the drops of Greek fire stuck to his cuirass, and the boiling pitch and melted lead streamed down from the battlements. Often the hurtling of a stone shivered his buckler. Bridges overloaded with men collapsed beneath him. With a sweep of his mace he rid himself of fourteen horsemen. In the lists he defeated all who came forward. More than a score of times he was taken for dead.
Thanks to divine favour he always escaped; for he protected churchmen, orphans, widows, and especially aged men. When he saw one of these last walking in front of him, he called to him, in order to see his face, as if he were afraid of killing him by mistake.
Fugitive slaves, revolted peasants, portionless bastards, all sorts of desperate men flocked to his banner, and he gathered an army of his own.
It increased. He became famous. He was sought after.
He aided in turn the Dauphin of France and the King of England, the Templars of Jerusalem, the Surenas of the Parthians, the Negus of Abyssinia, and the Emperor of Calicut. He fought Scandinavians covered with fish-scales, negroes furnished with targets of hippopotamus hide and mounted on red asses, golden-skinned Indians, brandishing above their diadems broad sabres brighter than mirrors. He vanquished the Troglodytes and the Anthropophagi. He traversed regions so torrid that under the burning heat of the sun the hair of men’s heads took fire of itself like torches; and others so icy that men’s arms came away from their bodies and fell to the ground; and countries where there were so many fogs that they marched surrounded by phantoms.
States in difficulty consulted him. He obtained unhoped-for terms in interviews with ambassadors. If a monarch governed ill, he arrived suddenly and remonstrated with him. He set peoples free. He delivered queens shut up in towers. It was he, and no other, who smote the great serpent of Milan and the dragon of Oberbirbach.
Now, the Emperor of Occitania, having triumphed over the Spanish Mussulmans, had united in concubinage with the sister of the Caliph of Cordova, and had a daughter by her, whom he had brought up as a Christian. But the Caliph, making as if he wished to be converted, came to him on a visit accompanied by a numerous escort, massacred all his garrison and plunged him into a dungeon-pit, where he treated him most harshly, in order to extract treasure from him.
Julian hastened to his aid, destroyed the army of the infidels, laid siege to the town, slew the Caliph, cut off his head, and threw it like a ball over the ramparts. Then he took the Emperor from his prison and caused him to remount his throne in presence of all his court.
As the price of such a service, the Emperor presented him with much silver in baskets; Julian would have none of it. Believing that he desired more, he offered him three-quarters of his wealth; another refusal. Then to share his kingdom; Julian thanked him and declined. And the Emperor wept for vexation, not knowing how to testify his gratitude, when he struck his forehead, said a word into the ear of a courtier, the curtains of a tapestry were raised, and a young girl appeared.
Her great black eyes shone like two soft lamps. A charming smile parted her lips. The ringlets of her hair were caught in the jewels on her open dress; and under the transparence of her tunic her youthful form was half-revealed. She was all dainty and plump, with a slender waist.
Julian was dazzled with love, the more so as he had so far led a life of extreme chastity.
So he received the Emperor’s daughter in marriage, with a castle which she held of her mother; and, the nuptials ended, they parted with no end of compliments on either side.
The palace was of white marble, built in the Moresque style, on a headland, in a grove of orange-trees. Terraces of flowers stretched down to the border of a bay, where pink shells crunched under the feet. Behind the castle extended a forest in the shape of a fan. The sky was always blue, and the trees bent now beneath the sea-breeze, now beneath the wind from the mountains that framed the distant horizon.
The rooms, full of twilight, were illumined by the incrustations upon the walls. Tall columns, slender as reeds, supported the vaulting of the cupolas, which were decorated with reliefs in imitation of the stalactites of grottoes.
There were fountains in the halls, mosaics in the courtyards, festooned partition-walls, a thousand refinements of architecture and everywhere such silence that one could hear the rustling of a scarf or the echo of a sigh.
Julian made war no longer. He rested, surrounded by a people at peace; and each day a crowd passed before him with genuflexions and hand-kissing in the Oriental fashion.
Clad in purple he leaned on his elbows in a window-recess and recalled his hunts of bygone days; and he could have wished to be coursing over the desert after the gazelles and the ostriches, to be hiding in the bamboos on the watch for leopards, to be traversing the forests full of rhinoceroses, climbing to the summit of the most inaccessible mountains to get better aim at the eagles, or fighting the white bears on the icebergs of the sea.
Sometimes in a dream he saw himself like our father Adam in the midst of Paradise among all the beasts; he stretched out his arm and made them die; or else they passed before him two by two in order of their bigness, from the elephants and the lions to the ermines and the ducks, as on the day when they entered Noah’s Ark. In the shade of a cavern he darted unerring javelins upon them; others came; there was no end to them; and he woke up rolling his eyes savagely.
Princes of his acquaintance invited him to hunt. He always refused, thinking by this sort of penance to avert his misfortune; for it seemed to him that the fate of his parents depended on the murder of the animals. But he suffered from not seeing them, and his other desire became intolerable.
To divert him his wife sent for jugglers and dancing-girls.
She walked with him, in an open litter, in the country; at other times stretched on the side of a skiff they watched the fish straying in the water clear as the sky. Often she threw flowers in his face; sitting at his feet she drew music from a three-stringed mandoline; then, placing her clasped hands on his shoulder, she would ask in a timid voice, “Why, what ails you, my dear lord?”
He gave no reply, or burst into sobs; at last one day he confessed his horrible thought.
She opposed it with very sound arguments: his father and mother were probably dead; if ever he saw them again, by what chance, with what purpose, would he come to work this abomination? Therefore his fears were groundless, and he ought to take to hunting again.
Julian smiled as he heard her, but he did not decide to satisfy her desire.
One evening in the month of August, when they were in their room, she had just gone to bed, and he was kneeling for his prayers, when he heard the barking of a fox, then light footsteps under the window; and caught sight in the dusk of something that looked like animals. The temptation was too strong. He took his quiver down from the peg.
She seemed surprised.
“It is to obey you!” he said, “I shall be back by sunrise.”
For all that, she was apprehensive of some unhappy accident.
He reassured her, then went out, astonished at the inconsequence of her moods.
Soon afterwards a page came to announce that two strangers, in the absence of the lord, asked to see the lady at once.
And soon came into the room an old man and an old woman, bent, dusty, in coarse garments, each leaning on a staff.
They took courage and declared that they brought Julian news of his parents.
She leant forward to listen to them.
Meanwhile, having understood each other by a glance, they asked her if he always loved them still, if he ever spoke about them.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
Then they exclaimed:
“Well, we are they!” And they sat down very weary and overcome with fatigue.
Nothing could persuade the young wife that her husband was their son.
They proved it to her by describing certain marks which he had on his body.
She sprang from her couch, called her page, and a repast was set before them.
Although they were very hungry, they could not eat much; and even at a distance she could perceive the trembling of their gnarled hands as they took the goblets.
They had a thousand questions to ask about Julian. She answered them all, but was careful to say nothing about his gloomy notion with regard to them.
When there was no sign of his return, they had left their castle; and they had travelled for several years, following vague indications, without losing hope. They had required so much money for the ferries and in the hostelries, for the rights of princes and the exactions of robbers, that they had come to the bottom of their purse and were now begging. What matter, now that they were soon to embrace their son? They extolled his happiness in having so gracious a wife, and never wearied admiring her and kissing her.
The richness of the apartment astonished them greatly, and the old man, having examined the walls, asked why they bore the blazon of the Emperor of Occitania.
She replied:
“He is my father!”
At that he trembled, recalling the prediction of the gipsy, and the old woman thought of the word of the hermit. Doubtless her son’s glory was but the dawn of the splendours of eternity; and the pair remained awestruck in the light of the candelabra which illumined the table.
They must have been very handsome in their youth. The mother still had all her hair, the fine braids of which, like wreaths of snow, hung down to the bottom of her cheeks; and the father, with his tall form and his long beard, was like a church statue.
Julian’s wife counselled them not to wait for him. She put them to bed herself in her own room, then closed the casement; they fell asleep. Day was about to appear and outside the window the little birds were beginning to sing.
Julian had crossed the park; and was marching in the forest with vigorous step, rejoicing in the softness of the grass and the sweetness of the air.
The shadows of the trees lay upon the moss. Sometimes the moon made white patches in the glades, and he hesitated to go on, thinking that he saw a sheet of water, or again the surface of calm pools blended with the colour of the herbage. Everywhere was a great silence; and he discovered none of the animals which had been roaming round his castle only a few minutes before.
The wood became thicker, the darkness profound. Puffs of warm wind passed by, full of softening perfumes. He sank in heaps of dead leaves, and leant against an oak to take breath.
All at once, behind him leapt a darker mass, a wild boar. Julian had not time to seize his bow, and grieved at that as if it were a misfortune.
Then, coming out of the wood, he caught sight of a wolf slinking along a hedge.
Julian sent an arrow after it. The wolf halted, turned its head to look at him, and went on its way. It trotted on, always keeping the same distance between them, halted now and then, and, as soon as it was aimed at, took to flight again.
In this manner Julian traversed an interminable plain, then sandhills, and found himself at last on a table-land commanding a great stretch of country. Flat rocks were strewn among caves and ruins. He stumbled over dead men’s bones; here and there mouldering crosses leaned over in melancholy fashion. But shapes moved in the uncertain shadow of the tombs, and out of it came hyenas, excited, panting. Their claws clattering on the flagstones, they came up to him, and smelled him with yawns that showed their gums. He unsheathed his sabre. They fled at once in all directions and, continuing their limping and precipitate gallop, were lost in the distance amid a cloud of dust.
An hour later, he met in a ravine a furious bull, his horns levelled, pawing the sand with his hoof. Julian thrust his lance under his dewlap. It shattered as if the animal had been made of brass; he shut his eyes and waited for his death. When he opened them again, the bull had disappeared.
At that his soul was overwhelmed with shame. A superior power was taking away his strength; and he went back to the forest to return home.
It was entangled with creepers; and he was cutting them with his sabre when a polecat suddenly slipped between his legs, a panther made a spring over his shoulder, a serpent climbed in a spiral about an ash-tree.
In its foliage was a monstrous jackdaw, which looked at Julian; and, here and there, a number of great sparks showed among the branches, as if the sky had caused all its stars to rain down on the forest. They were the eyes of animals, wild cats, squirrels, owls, parrots, monkeys.
Julian darted his arrows at them; the arrows with their feathers settled on the leaves like white butterflies. He hurled stones at them; the stones fell back without hitting anything. He cursed himself, could have struck himself, howled imprecations, was like to choke with rage.
And all the animals that he had pursued were represented, forming a circle close about him. Some were squatted on their rumps, the others standing at their full height. He stood in the centre, frozen with terror, incapable of the smallest movement. By a supreme effort of will, he took a step; the animals perched on the trees spread their wings, those which trod the ground moved their limbs; and all accompanied him.
The hyenas marched before him, the wolf and the wild boar behind. The bull at his right hand rocked its head, and at his left the serpent writhed through the plants, while the panther, with arched back, advanced with velvety step in great strides. He moved as gently as possible, not to irritate them, and from the depths of the thickets he saw issuing porcupines, foxes, vipers, jackals and bears.
Julian started to run; they ran too. The serpent hissed, the foul-smelling beasts drooled. The wild boar rubbed his heels with its tusks, the wolf the palms of his hands with its hairy muzzle. The monkeys grimaced as they pinched him, the polecat rolled over his feet. A bear took away his bonnet with a back-stroke of its paw; and the panther scornfully let fall an arrow which it carried in its mouth.
A certain irony was evident in their stealthy proceedings. Looking at him out of the corner of their eyes, they seemed to be meditating a plan of revenge; and, deafened by the humming of insects, beaten by birds’ tails, suffocated by breaths, he walked with his arms stretched forward, his eyelids closed, like a blind man, without even the strength to cry “Mercy!”
The crow of a cock vibrated in the air. Others answered it; it was day; and over the orange-trees he recognized the summit of his palace.
Then, at the edge of a field, he saw, three paces off, some red partridges fluttering in the stubble. He undid his cloak and flung it over them like a net. When he uncovered them, he could find only one, and that one long dead and rotten.
This deception exasperated him more than all the others. His thirst for carnage came back to him; failing beasts, he could have massacred men.
He climbed the three terraces, burst in the door with a blow of his fist; but at the foot of the stairs the thought of his dear wife relieved his heart. She was sleeping, no doubt, and he would go and surprise her.
Having drawn off his sandals, he turned the lock gently and entered.
The leaded panes obscured the pale light of the dawn. Julian caught his feet in some garments on the floor; further on, he stumbled against a side-board still covered with dishes. “She must have been eating,” he said to himself, and went towards the bed, which was lost in the darkness of the farther side of the room. When he reached the bed-side, in order to embrace his wife, he leant over the pillow where the two heads were reposing side by side. Thereupon he felt the touch of a beard against his mouth.
He recoiled, thinking he was going mad; but he returned to the bed-side, and his fingers, as he felt about, came against hair which was very long. To convince himself of his error, he passed his hand gently over the pillow yet again. It was indeed a beard, this time, and a man!—a man lying with his wife!
Bursting into a wrath beyond measure, he fell upon them with his poniard; and he stamped and foamed, with howls like a savage beast. Then he stopped. The dead, pierced to the heart, had not so much as moved. He listened attentively to the two groanings almost equal, and, as they subsided, another one far away continued them. Indistinct at first, this plaintive, long-drawn voice came nearer, became loud, cruel: and to his terror he recognized it for the belling of the great black stag.
And, as he turned round, he thought he saw in the door-way the phantom of his wife, light in hand.
The din of the murder had brought her. With one staring glance she comprehended all, and, flying in horror, let fall her candle.
He picked it up.
His father and mother lay before him, stretched on their backs, with their bosoms pierced; and their countenances, of a majestic gentleness, were as if they guarded some eternal secret. Smears and clots of blood showed on their white skin, on the sheets, on the floor, upon an ivory crucifix hanging in the alcove. The crimson reflection of the window, touched at that moment by the sun, lit up those crimson stains, and cast yet others all over the apartment. Julian went up to the two bodies saying to himself, trying to persuade himself, that it could not be, that he was mistaken, that there are sometimes extraordinary resemblances. At last he stooped to look more closely at the old man; and he saw between the half-closed eyelids a lifeless eye that burnt him like fire. Then he crossed to the other side of the couch, occupied by the other corpse, the face of which was partially concealed by its white hair. Julian passed his hand under its braids, lifted its head;—and he gazed at it, holding it at the length of his rigid arm, while he lighted himself with the candle in his other hand. Some drops soaking through the mattress fell one by one upon the boards.
At the end of the day he presented himself before his wife; and, in a voice unlike his own, commanded her first, not to answer him, not to come near him, not even to look at him, then to follow, under pain of damnation, all his orders, which were irrevocable.
The obsequies were to be carried out according to the instructions which he had left in writing on a faldstool in the chamber of the dead. He left her his palace, his vassals, all his possessions, not even retaining the clothes on his body, nor his sandals, which they would find at the top of the staircase.
She had obeyed the will of God in being the occasion of his crime, and was to pray for his soul, since thenceforward he should be as one dead.
The dead were magnificently interred in the chapel of a monastery three days’ journey from the castle. A monk with his cowl drawn over his head followed the train far apart from the rest, and no one dared to speak to him.
During the Mass he remained flat on his belly in the porch, his arms out-stretched in a cross, and his brow in the dust.
After the burial, they saw him take the road that led to the mountains. He turned round several times, and at last disappeared.