The Scaffold by Jean-Marie-Mathias Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

Author:Jean-Marie-Mathias Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2012-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

As this word was pronounced, the flaps of the great veil of the altar of Shiva were drawn apart, allowing the interior of the cavern that the god overhung to be seen. Two ascetics, their eyelids lowered according to their sacerdotal obligations, secured the vast bloody folds at the lateral extremities of the sanctuary.

The tripods were lit in the depths of this place of horror, as they were at the hour of sacrifice. The Spirit of Shiva was symbolically opposed to the free elevation of their flames. The disquieting light of those great flames, inverted by the curvature of arching plaques of gold, was reflected upon the sacrificial Stone. Two motionless temple servants stood, with their eyes lowered and their torches held high, at the head of that Stone.

There, stretched out on that bed of black marble, as pale as a cloudy sky, lay two charming young beings. The snowy folds of their transparent nuptial tunics disclosed the sacred contours of their corpses; the light of their smile announced the rise within them of a dawn, opening out in the invisible and vermilion spaces of the soul; and that secret aurora transformed their immobility into an eternal ecstasy.

Such a transport of supernatural felicity, surpassing the forces of sensation that the gods have measured out in humans, must surely have delivered them from life, for the lightning of Death had congealed its expressive reflection in their faces! Yes, each of them bore the imprint of the ideal joy whose suddenness had destroyed them.

And there, on that couch where the Brahmins of Shiva had posed them, they still maintained the attitude in which Death–of which, surely, they had been utterly unaware–had come to surprise them, brushing their beings with her shadow. They had vanished, unexpectedly lost in her, allowing the duality of their essences, in sudden fusion, to be swallowed up in that unique instant of love that no other living couple had ever known.

And those two mystic statues thus made incarnate the dream of a sensuousness accessible to none but immortal hearts.

The youthful beauty of Sedjnour, and his radiant whiteness, seemed to defy the darkness. He held, folded in his arms, the being of his being, the soul of his desire–and she, whose white head was set back by the movement of an arm thrown around the neck of her beloved, appeared to be asleep in a ravishing dream. Yelka’s majestic hand rested on Sedjnour’s forehead; the dark flood of her beautiful brown hair cascaded upon their two bodies, and her lips, half-open against his, were offering him, in a first kiss, the candor of her last sigh. She had undoubtedly intended, by a gentle effort, to attract her lover’s mouth towards the flower of her lips, thus causing him to experience, at the same time, the subtle and cherished perfume of the virginal breast that she still pressed against his adored torso. And this was at that very same moment when all the disappointments, all the goodbyes, all the tortures

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