Psyche (Couperus)/Chapter 25
A great commotion was going on in the direction of the castle. In that direction all eyes were turned, and the dancing girls forgot to dance. From fear, the crowd stood still, as if petrified, and forgot to conceal the anxiety of their minds. The palaces seemed to tremble; the air -atoms quivered audibly. Something dreadful was about to happen.
The royal castle shone with a strange lustre; a sun seemed to send forth a halo; an ominous aureola appeared in the distance. The fearful rays of the Sun of Consternation outshone the day, outshone the sun: from their centre, they penetrated through houses and people.
And everything shone, softened by the glow of piercing sunbeams. The rays quivered everywhere in the air, and the aureola filled the world.
The cause of consternation came rattling on with the rapidity of an arrow. All hearts stood still, all breath was taken away, all dancing was stopped, all rejoicing ceased.
From the castle, over the triumphal way, a triumphal chariot rattled along with the speed of an arrow. On the top, a living jewel, stood Emeralda, and guided the four and twenty steeds. It was her splendour and her aureola which appeared in the air. It was her rays which caused the houses to shine with splendour and pierced the people with flashes. She stood immovable, clad in the strength of precious stones, in a tunic of sapphire, in a robe of brilliants, with deep flounces of gems and white cameos; her mantle was like a bell, with folds of purple carbuncle, lined with enamelled ermine. From her crown of beryl, from her heart of ruby, the rays shot forth, shone out her fear-inspiring aureola and streamed over the town and in the air, eclipsing the sun, which turned pale. Her eyes of emerald, stars in her opal face, chalcedonic, looked inexorable, and her bosom of precious stones heaved not. Only her heart of ruby beat regularly, and then her lustre grew alternately dim and bright. . . .
She stood immovable and guided her horses, her four and twenty foaming stallions, rearing greys, which drew her triumphal car, like a broad enamelled shell on innumerable wheels, on cutting wheels so numerous, that they seemed to run into one another—a turning confusion of spokes.
The dazzling, fear-inspiring chariot rattled on with the rapidity of an arrow. And suddenly, awaking from their stupefaction, the people madly danced again and shouted the same jubilant cry. The tabours sounded, the white roses rained down, and before the queen the people prostrated themselves and paved her path with their bodies. The grey stallions foamed and reared; they came on, they came on, they trampled over the first bodies—men and women, girls and children, dressed for a festival and bedecked with flowers. . . . Over her people rode Emeralda; the innumerable wheels rattled, a confusion of spokes, revolving, cutting furrows in flesh and blood, reducing blood and human flesh to a muddy mass. But farther up they danced, farther up they sang, before casting themselves down for her Triumph. . . .
Then Emeralda, looking over her triumphal way, saw, with the keen glance of her black carbuncle pupil, a little form, naked and fair, who lifted up her small, child’s hand.
And fiercer and fiercer gleamed her heart of ruby, for she had recognised the form.
And the desire flamed up in her: the thirst for more power and to become like a god.
Emeralda recognised Psyche. And she reined in her twelve pair of horses, she drove them more slowly, and under the less quickly revolving wheels she heard the jubilant cry of the dying people. The blood dropped from the wheels, but the roses rained down and covered the horrible sight. On the bloody, muddy mass, the roses rained down, white, from the balconies of the palaces.
Emeralda stopped.
Under her, death was silent.
Around, the town was silent. She alone reigned and shot out her terrible fan of rays, which scorched the houses and pierced the air.
And before her, at a little distance, stood Psyche, proud, pearl-white, crowned with roses, in a veil of gold.
And the silent crowd recognised in her the third princess of the kingdom.
“Psyche!” said Emeralda, and her voice sounded loud through the town from the focus of her rays, “have you come to bring me the unutterable Jewel, the Gem of Power, the Bestower of Universal Power, the sacred Stone of Mysticism? Have you found the Mystery of the Godhead, and,
“—Do you rule with me the Universe and God?”
The town shuddered and quivered. The people were stupefied.
The air-atoms trembled audibly.
Then Psyche’s voice sounded clearly, silver-clearly, from the consciousness of the wisdom and sacred knowledge which she possessed.
“Emeralda, for you I have gone through Hell along the black seas, oceans of pitch, along the horrible sloughs of flaming hurricanes, along the craters and caverns scarlet and yellow, along the azure fires and through the white and lilac glow. Give heed to what I say. Hell answered ‘Vanity!’ when I asked for the Jewel; the leviathans roared ‘Vanity!; the chimeras hissed ‘Vanity!’; the spirits cried ‘Vanity!’; and the whole plaintive viol trilled:
“‘Vanity!’
“Do you understand me, Emeralda? Your wish was Vanity, for the mystic Jewel that bestows godlike power is Vanity, and . . . . Does not Exist.”
Then it was terrible. The queen, a living idol, burned with rage, blazed with rage; her heart was inflamed with rage.
Around her, decked out for sacrifice, in festive garb, in the sunshine and her own dazzling splendour, her people trembled with fear. And cruelty gleamed in her fixed face; her emerald eyes started so revengefully from their sockets as though blinded by their own splendour, and she pulled at the numerous reins. . . .
The horses reared, the white roses fell down, the people screamed with joy and the fear of death, and the triumphal chariot rattled on.
Swift as an arrow it thundered on over the people, who paved the way in ecstacy, and Psyche saw the maddened horses approaching, snorting, foaming, panting, trampling, pulling, their eyes round and mad. . . .
For a moment she stood firm, proud, tall, pearl-white in the sacred knowledge she possessed; then the angry hoofs struck her down, and the horses trampled her as a flower. Emeralda’s chariot rattled over her, with its many cutting wheels, and whilst she died like a crushed lily, trampled in her own lily-whiteness, she thought of her old father, and how she had crept to his breast and hidden her face in his beard, before she went to sleep at night. . . .
She died. . . . But while she lay trampled to death in the mud of human flesh and blood, and the sacrificial roses kept falling down over her corpse unrecognizable——
She returned to life, hovering through the air, and felt so light and unencumbered, and was whiter than ever and naked.
And on her tender shoulders she felt two new wings quivering . . . .!
She hovered over her own body into a drifting cloud, a mist of fragrance, which farther on she lost sight of; and light, white, and rarefied, she looked wonderingly at her trampled body and laughed. Strange, clear, and childlike sounded her laugh in the cloud and vapoury fragrance. . . .