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« on: July 18, 2024, 02:05:07 pm » |
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THE Théophile-Gautier sailed at dusk. At the same hour, and almost at the same time of year, Georges experienced again the vision he had had of Athens as he was leaving for Delos. In its hollow between the mountains, open towards the sea, the little hill on which stands the most beautiful temple in the world, held it up to the last rays of the sun as it has done for these two thousand years. The lines of the horizon were no less perfect than those of the columns, chiselled in the evening air. The monument, which immortalizes man’s encounter with the gods, seemed like a toy that one could take away. At its feet lay the town where Georges had lived such a varied life for so many months.
Remembering the day he had left from this same place, but on another journey, he began to compare the two departures. Then, he had been journeying into the past, towards a new aspect of a past civilization. It was natural that his own past should have come to life in the setting of Delos. Today, he was going towards the future, and all the impressions of his stay in Athens began to shade off on the Athenian horizon. Francoise, Rudolf, the baronet, the Armenian and the Lebanese, the Embassy---already they represented a world as remote as the world of his childhood. He was turning a new page of his life. Perhaps the one he was leaving here would prove to have been the happiest.
But was it really so? Had he grasped all the happiness which had been within his reach? Certain images suddenly came to him, like the odorous breezes from a land he could no longer reach. He discovered in himself the intoxication of yielding to all temptations, at the very moment when he was leaving the paradise where all temptations were permissible. He felt like a believer who, at his last hour, is struck by the idea that perhaps he has made a fool’s bargain. He knew very well that there were similar paradises elsewhere, but he was prejudiced against copies whose original existed only in Athens. Too late he understood the mistake he had made in thinking that even here he had seen only the copy of an antique civilization. He felt now that, in the climate where it was born, that civilization, like the Parthenon, was an inheritance. He had seen its ridiculous side, its miseries and its dangers. Now he saw its beauty, its grandeur, and the laws of its being. His body was emerging almost untouched from contact with these blinding realities, but his soul would for ever bear the impress of Greece.
As he looked passionately at that land, he peopled it with all that could have been, and now, no doubt, would never be---dreams which had certainly been Rudolf’s before they had become his, dreams which would remain on the altar of their farewell. Admirable as it was, the temple was empty. In vain did the imagination fill it, and Georges shrank from it as though he was shrinking from himself.
Was his profession to blame for the frustrations of his year in Greece? Or should he rather thank it for having saved him from the excesses for which his present nostalgia was perhaps only platonic? For there are also believers who take pleasure in doubting, to increase the joy of their faith. Georges sinned in thought, but who knows whether, like Rudolf, he would not still have refused to sin in deed? The Service was full of this kind of sinner. It was the reason why its uniform had so often the quaint air of a harlequin’s costume: the glancing light showed up the many-coloured threads blended into the blue fabric, revealing all sorts of desires sacrificed to the cause of good order.
The marvellous views of Athens in the sunset recalled other problems than those of his personal and professional life. There was another way in which the city already symbolized for him another world: the dazzling and vivid image of the world of peace. It was the peace that reigned over its houses, hills, and mountains; it was the peace symbolized by its temple, itself a victim of so many wars, yet still standing victorious. The first branch of the olive had grown in its shadow, and Georges very much feared that he was leaving the last there. Everywhere else fanatics and madmen were agitating; bestial cruelty was abroad. Everywhere else, in the name of creeds, of flags, and of codes, the attack on human happiness was being pressed home---means to annihilate that olive tree and pulverize that marble. And now that the gods were dead, there was no one to save him. Everywhere else men were scheming and inventing---the destruction of a world so beautiful, a world which should be so delightful.
When the Parthenon finally vanished in a flaming sky, Georges was seized with despair. And yet, to do honour to its eternal example, he forced himself to hope still. He could have wished to see the disappearance, not of the Parthenon, of Pheidias, but of its predecessor which the Persians had burnt and which had been so marvellously superseded. He would have liked to believe that he belonged to a civilization which was certain of its superiority and which deserved to triumph. He had a meaning for the word “liberty”: the meaning which it had had for those who had made it their ideal and their practice. He had a meaning for the words “friendship” and “love”. But for the word “Embassy” he had no longer any meaning whatever.
THE END
A sequel, "La Fin des ambassades", appeared in 1953. An English translation thereof entitled "Diplomatic Conclusions" came out in 1954 and will probably appear here in due course.
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