And the Selenites would then ask themselves if the fixed stars also are not so many suns surrounded by their moons and by their other planets, and if the inhabitants of those planets also see other stars unknown to us, which would be that many more suns with as many planets, and so on and on, to infinity….”
“God has made us incapable of conceiving the infinite, so be content, human races, with the quia.”
“The serenade, the serenade,” the others were whispering. “That is the window.” The window was bathed in a rosy light that came from the interior of an imagined chamber. But the two debaters were by now aroused.
“And further,” Saint-Savin insisted, mocking, “if the world were finished and surrounded by the Void, God would also be finished: since His task, as you say, is to dwell in Heaven and on earth and in every place; He could not dwell where there is nothing. The Void is a non-place. Or else, to enlarge the world He would have to enlarge Himself, and be born for the first time where before He was not, and this would contradict His proclaimed eternity.”
“Enough, sir! You are denying the eternity of the Eternal One, and this I cannot allow. The moment has come for me to kill you, so that your socalled wit can no longer weary us!” And he drew his sword.
“If that is your wish,” Saint-Savin said, saluting and putting himself on guard. “But I will not kill you: I do not wish to subtract soldiers from my king. I will simply disfigure you, so that you will live wearing a mask, as the Italian comedians do, a fitting distinction for you. I will draw a scar from your eye to your lip, and I will give you this neat pig-castrator’s cut, but only after having taught you, between a feint and a parry, a lesson in natural philosophy.”
The abbé attacked, trying to strike home at once with great slashes, shouting at his opponent that he was a poisonous insect, a flea, a louse to be crushed mercilessly. Saint-Savin parried, then pressed him, driving him back against a tree, but philosophizing at every move.
“Aha! What wild slashes and thrusts, the vulgar chops of one blinded by rage! You lack any Idea of fencing. But you also lack charity, in your contempt for fleas and lice. You are too small an animal to be able to imagine the world as a big animal can, as the divine Plato displays it to us. Try to imagine the stars as worlds with other lesser animals, and remember that lesser animals in turn serve as worlds to still lesser breeds: then you will not find it contradictory to think that we—and also horses and elephants—are whole worlds for the fleas and the lice that inhabit us.
They do not perceive us because of our bigness, as we do not perceive larger worlds because of our smallness. Perhaps there is now a population of lice that takes your body for a world, and when one of them has traveled there from forehead to nape, his fellows say of him that he has dared venture to the confines of the known earth. This little populace considers your hair the forests of their country, and when I have struck you, they will see your wounds as lakes and seas.
When you use your comb, they believe this agitation is the flux and reflux of the ocean, and it is their misfortune to inhabit such a changeable world, because of your inclination to comb your hair constantly like a female, and now that I snip off that tassel, they will take your cry of anger for a hurricane. There!” And he snipped off an ornament, almost ripping the abbé’s embroidered jacket.
The abbé foamed with rage. He had moved to the center of the square, looking behind him to make sure there was room for the movements he was now essaying, then retreating so that the fountain would protect his back.
Saint-Savin seemed to dance around him, without attacking. “Raise your head, Monsieur l’Abbé. Look at the moon, and reflect that if your God was able to make the soul immortal, He could easily have made the world infinite. But if the world is infinite, it will be so in time as well as in space, and therefore it will be eternal, and when there is an eternal world, which has no need of creation, then it will be unnecessary to conceive the idea of God. Oh, what a fine joke, Monsieur l’Abbé.
If God is infinite, you cannot curtail His power: He could never ab opere cessare, and therefore the world will be infinite; but if the world is infinite, then there will no longer be God, just as there will soon be no more tassels on your jacket!” And suiting the deed to the word, he snipped off a few more appendages of which the abbé was so proud, then he shortened his guard, lifting the tip slightly; and as the abbé tried to close the distance, Saint-Savin sharply struck the flat of his opponent’s blade. The abbé almost dropped his sword, clutching with his left hand his aching wrist.
He cried: “I must finally cut you open, you villain, you blasphemer!
Holy womb! By all the damned saints of Paradise, by the blood of the Crucified!”
The lady’s window was opened, someone looked out and shouted. By now all present had forgotten the purpose of their enterprise and were moving around the two duellers, who shouted as they skirted the fountain, while Saint-Savin confounded his enemy with a series of circular parries and feints on the tip of his weapon.
“Do not call on the mysteries of the Incarnation for help, Monsieur l’Abbé,” he quipped. “Your holy Roman church has taught you that this ball of mud of ours is the center of the Universe, which turns around it, acting as its minstrel and strumming the music of the spheres. Be careful, you are allowing yourself to be driven too close to the fountain, you are getting your hem wet, like an old man suffering from stones…. But what if, in the great Void, infinite worlds are moving, as a great philosopher said before your similars burned him in Rome, and very many of them are inhabited by creatures like us, and what if all had been created by your God, where does the Redemption then fit?”
“What will God do with you, sinner!” the abbé cried, parrying a cut with some effort.
“Was Christ perhaps made flesh only once? Was Original Sin committed only once, and on this globe? What injustice! Both for the other worlds, deprived of the Incarnation, and for us, because in that case the people of all the other worlds would be perfect, like our progenitors before the Fall, and they would enjoy a natural happiness without the weight of the Cross. Or else infinite Adams have infinitely committed the first error, tempted by infinite Eves with infinite apples, and Christ has been obliged to become incarnate, preach, and suffer Calvary infinite times, and perhaps He is still doing so, and if the worlds are infinite, His task will be infinite, too. Infinite His task, then infinite the forms of His suffering: if beyond the
Galaxy there were a land where men have six arms, as in our own Terra Incognita, the Son of God would be nailed not to a cross but to a wooden construction shaped like a star—which seems to me worthy of an author of comedies.”
“Enough! I will put an end to your comedy!” the abbé screamed, beside himself, and he flung himself at Saint-Savin, wielding his final blows.
Saint-Savin parried them effectively, then there was a static instant. While the abbé had his sword raised after a prime parry, Saint-Savin moved towards him as if to attack, and pretended to fall forward. The abbé stepped to one side, hoping to strike him as he fell. But Saint-Savin, who had not lost control of his legs, sprang up like lightning, supporting himself with his left hand on the ground as the right darted upwards: it was the coup de la mouette. The tip of the sword marked the abbé’s face from the base of the nose to the upper lip, slicing off the left half of his moustache.
The abbé was cursing as no Epicurean would ever have dared to, while Saint-Savin stood erect and saluted, and the witnesses applauded his master stroke.
But at that very moment, from the end of the square, a Spanish patrol arrived, attracted perhaps by the noise. Instinctively, the French put their hands to their swords, the Spanish saw six armed enemies and cried betrayal. A soldier aimed his musket and fired. Saint-Savin fell, struck in the chest. The officer saw that four men, rather than engage in fighting, rushed to the fallen man, throwing aside their weapons. He looked at the abbé, covered with blood, realized that he had interrupted a duel, gave a command to his patrol, and all of them disappeared.
Roberto bent over his poor friend. “Did you see,” Saint-Savin murmured with an effort, “did you see, La Grive, my mouette? Ponder it and practice it. I would not have the secret die with me….”
“Saint-Savin, my friend”—Roberto was weeping—”you must not die in such a foolish way!”
“Foolish? I defeated a fool and I am dying on the field, and by enemy lead. In my life I have observed a wise mean … To
