Joris-Karl Huysmans: Down There (Là-Bas)

"I am furthermore obliged to admit," said Des Hermies, "that in spite of the blood shed on Golgotha, I personally feel as if my ransom had not been quite effected."

"There are three kingdoms," the astrologer resumed, pressing down the ashes of his pipe with his finger. "Of the Old Testament, that of the Father, the kingdom of fear. Of the New Testament, that of the Son, the kingdom of expiation. Of the Johannite Gospel, that of the Holy Ghost, the kingdom of redemption and love. They are the past, present and future; winter, spring and summer. The first, says Joachim of Floris, gives us the blade, the second, the leaf, and the third, the ear. Two of the Persons of the Trinity have shown themselves. Logically the Third must appear."

"Yes, and the Biblical texts abound, conclusive, explicit, irrefutable," said Carhaix. "All the prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zachariah, Malachi, speak of it.' The Acts of the Apostles is very precise on this point. In the first chapter you will read these lines, 'This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.' Saint John also announces the tidings in the Apocalypse, which is the gospel of the second coming of Christ, 'Christ shall come and reign a thousand years.' Saint Paul is inexhaustible in revelations of this nature. In the epistle to Timothy he invokes the Lord 'who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearance and his kingdom.' In the second epistle to the Thessalonians he writes, 'And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.' Now, he declares that the Antichrist is not yet, so the coming which he prophesies is not that already realized by the birth of the Saviour at Bethlehem. In the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Jesus responds to Caiaphas, who asks Him if He is the Christ, Son of God, 'Thou hast said, and nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.' And in another verse He says to His apostles, 'Watch, therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.'

"And there are other texts I could put my finger on. No, there is no use in talking, the partisans of the glorious kingdom are supported with certitude by inspired passages, and can, under certain conditions and without fear of heresy, uphold this doctrine, which, Saint Jerome attests, was in the fourth century a dogma of faith recognized by all. But what say we taste a bit of this crême de céléri which Monsieur Durtal praises so highly?"

It was a thick liqueur, sirupy like anisette, but even sweeter and more feminine, only, when one had swallowed this inert semi-liquid, there lingered in the roots of the papillæ a faint taste of celery.

"It isn't bad," said the astrologer, "but there's no life to it," and he poured into his glass a stiff tot of rum.

"Come to think of it," said Durtal, "the third kingdom is also announced in the words of the Paternoster, 'Thy kingdom come.'"

"Certainly," said the bell-ringer.

"But you see," interjected Gévingey, "heresy would gain the upper hand and the whole belief would be turned into nonsense and absurdity if we admitted, as certain Paracletists do, an authentic fleshly incarnation. For instance, remember Fareinism, which has been rife, since the eighteenth century, in Fareins, a village of the Doubs, where Jansenism took refuge when driven out of Paris after the closing of the cemetery of Saint Médard. There a priest, François Bonjour, reproduced the 'convulsionist' orgies which, under the Regency, desecrated the tomb of Deacon Paris. Then Bonjour had an affair with a woman and she claimed to be big with the prophet Elijah, who, according to the Apocalypse, is to precede the last arrival of Christ. This child came into the world, then there was a second who was none other than the Paraclete. The latter did business as a woolen merchant in Paris, was a colonel in the National Guard under Louis-Philippe, and died in easy circumstances in 1866. A tradesman Paraclete, a Redeemer with epaulettes and gold braid!

"In 1886 one Dame Brochard of Vouvray affirmed to whoever would listen that Jesus was reincarnate in her. In 1889 a pious madman named David published at Angers a brochure entitled The Voice of God , in which he assumed the modest appellation of 'only Messiah of the Creator Holy Ghost,' and informed the world that he was a sewer contractor and wore a beard a yard and a half long. At the present moment his throne is not empty for want of successors. An engineer named Pierre Jean rode all over the Mediterranean provinces on horseback announcing that he was the Holy Ghost. In Paris, Bérard, an omnibus conductor on the Panthéon-Courcelles line, likewise asserts that he incorporates the Paraclete, while a magazine article avers that the hope of Redemption has dawned in the person of the poet Jhouney. Finally, in America, from time to time, women claim to be Messiahs, and they recruit adherents among persons worked up to fever pitch by Advent revivals."

"They are no worse than the people who deny God and Creation," said Carhaix. "God is immanent in His creatures. He is their Life principle, the source of movement, the foundation of existence, says Saint Paul. He has His personal existence, being the 'I AM,' as Moses says.

"The Holy Ghost, through Christ in glory, will be immanent in all beings. He will be the principle which transforms and regenerates them, but there is no need for him to be incarnate. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son. He is sent to act, not to materialize himself. It is downright madness to maintain the contrary, thus falling into the heresies of the Gnostics and the Fratricelli, into the errors of Dulcin de Novare and his wife Marguerite, into the filth of abbé Beccarelli, and the abominations of Segarelli of Parma, who, on pretext of becoming a child the better to symbolize the simple, naïf love of the Paraclete, had himself diapered and slept on the breast of a nurse."

"But," said Durtal, "you haven't made yourself quite clear to me. If I understand you, the Holy Ghost will act by an infusion into us. He will transmute us, renovate our souls by a sort of 'passive purgation'-to drop into the theological vernacular."

"Yes, he will purify us soul and body."

"How will he purify our bodies?"

"The action of the Paraclete," the astrologer struck in, "will extend to the principle of generation. The divine life will sanctify the organs which henceforth can procreate only elect creatures, exempt from original sin, creatures whom it will not be necessary to test in the fires of humiliation, as the Holy Bible says. This was the doctrine of the prophet Vintras, that extraordinary unlettered man who wrote such impressive and ardent pages. The doctrine has been continued and amplified, since Vintras's death, by his successor, Dr. Johannès."

"Then there is to be Paradise on earth," said Des Hermies.

"Yes, the kingdom of liberty, goodness, and love."

"You've got me all mixed up," said Durtal. "Now you announce the arrival of the Holy Ghost, now the glorious advent of Christ. Are these kingdoms identical or is one to follow the other?"

"There is a distinction," answered Gévingey, "between the coming of the Paraclete and the victorious return of Christ. They occur in the order named. First a society must be recreated, embraced by the third Hypostasis, by Love, in order that Jesus may descend, as He has promised, from the clouds and reign over the people formed in His image."

"What rôle is the Pope to play?"

"Ah, that is one of the most curious points of the Johannite doctrine. Time, since the first appearance of the Messiah, is divided, as you know, into two periods, the period of the Victim, of the expiant Saviour, the period in which we now are, and the other, that which we await, the period of Christ bathed in the spittle of mockery but radiant with the superadorable splendour of His person. Well, there is a different pope for each of these eras. The Scriptures announce these two sovereign pontificates-and so do my horoscopes, for that matter.