At midnight the Doctor went to bed and his dreams when asleep were the same as those of his waking hours.
V
How the Dean Placed His Hopes in Eclecticism, the Doctor in Revelation and the Warden in Digestion
One evening when the Dean, the Warden and the Doctor were together in the latter’s vast study, they had a most interesting discussion.
“My friend,” said the Warden, “one ought to be an eclectic and an epicurean. Choose that which is good and reject that which is evil. Philosophy is a huge garden which extends all over the world. Pluck the dazzling flowers of the East, the pale blossoms of the North, the wild violets and cultivated roses, make a nosegay of them and inhale its perfume. If that perfume is not the most exquisite that you could imagine, it will at least be a thousand times more agreeable and more fragrant than that of a single flower—be its scent the strongest in the world.”
“More varied, certainly,” replied the Doctor, “but more fragrant, no—not at least if one could but find the flower which combines and concentrates in itself the scents of all the others. For in your bouquet you would not be able to prevent certain smells from destroying each other; and, in philosophy, certain beliefs from contradicting each other. The truth is a one whole—and with your eclecticism you will never obtain other than a truth composed of fragments. I too have been an eclectic, but now I am an absolutist. What I desire is not a chance approximation, but the absolute truth. Every intelligent man, has, I believe, the presentiment of it and on the day when he meets it on his path he will cry: ‘There it is at last!’ It is the same thing where beauty is concerned. In my own case I did not know love until I was twenty-five. I had seen pretty women, but they had not stirred me. It would have been necessary to take something from each of them to form the ideal being whom I dimly perceived, and even then, as with the bouquet of which you spoke just now, I should not have obtained perfect beauty—which is indissoluble, like gold and the truth. But one day I at last met that woman; I knew that it was she and I loved her.”
Somewhat agitated, the Doctor paused, and the Warden looked towards the Dean with a shrewd smile. After a moment Heraclius Gloss went on:
“It is revelation that we must wait for. It was revelation which lit the way for the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, and brought him to the Christian faith. …”
“Which, for you, is not the true faith,” interrupted the Warden with a laugh, “since you do not believe in it. So revelation is no more sure than eclecticism.”
“Pardon me, my friend,” retorted the Doctor. “Paul was not a philosopher. He had only a half-revelation; but his mind could not grasp the absolute truth, which is abstract. But philosophy has progressed since then, and on the day when some circumstance or other—a book, or a word perhaps—reveals the truth to a man enlightened enough to understand it, it will suddenly make everything clear and all superstition will vanish before it, as the stars vanish at sunrise.”
“Amen!” said the Warden, “but tomorrow a second man will be enlightened and a third on the day after. Then they will hurl their revelations at each other’s heads. Luckily, though, revelations are not very dangerous weapons.”
“But don’t you believe in anything then?” exclaimed the Doctor, who was beginning to get angry.
“I believe in digestion,” replied the Warden solemnly. “I swallow with indifference every creed, dogma, morality, superstition, hypothesis and illusion, just as at a good dinner I eat with equal pleasure hors d’ouvre, soup, joint, vegetables, sweets and dessert, after which I stretch myself philosophically on my bed, assured that my undisturbed digestion will bring me pleasant sleep during the night and life and health on the following morning.”
“Take my advice,” the Dean hastened to interpose, “and don’t let us push the comparison any farther.”
An hour afterwards, as they were leaving the house of the learned Heraclius, the Warden suddenly began to laugh and said:
“Poor Doctor, if the truth appears before him as the woman he loved did, he will be the most deceived man that the world has ever known.”
And a drunkard who was making his way home with difficulty fell down from sheer fright when he heard the Dean’s boisterous laugh mingling its deep bass with the Warden’s piercing falsetto.
VI
How for the Doctor the Road to Damascus Turned Out to Be the Ruelle des Vieux Pigeons, and How the Truth Was Revealed to Him in the Form of a Metempsychosic Manuscript
On the 17th March in the year of grace 17—, the Doctor woke up in a feverish condition. During the night he had several times in his dreams seen a tall white man, dressed in patriarchal robes, who touched him on the forehead with his finger and spoke unintelligible words. To the learned Heraclius this dream seemed to be a very significant warning. But why a warning and significant of what? The doctor did not know exactly, but nevertheless
