Читать книгу The Undying Fire - H.G. Wells - Страница 5

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Celestial badinage is at once too high and broad to come readily within the compass of earthly print and understanding. The Satanic element of unexpectedness can fill the whole sphere of Being with laughter; thrills begotten of those vast reverberations startle our poor wits at the strangest moments. It is the humour of Satan to thrust upon the Master his own title of the Unique and to seek to wrest from him the authorship of life. (But such jesting distresses the angels.)

"I alone create."

"But I—I ferment."

"Matter I made and all things."

"Stagnant as a sleeping top but for the wabble I give it."

"You are just the little difference of the individual. You are the little Uniqueness in everyone and everything, the Unique that breaks the law, a marginal idiosyncracy."

"Sire, you are the Unique, the Uniqueness of the whole."

Heaven smiled, and there were halcyon days in the planets. " I shall average you out in the end and you will disappear."

"And everything will end."

"Will be complete."

"Without me!"

"You spoil the symmetry of my universe."

"I give it life."

"Life comes from me."

"No, Sire, life comes from me."

One of the great shapes in attendance became distinct as Michael bearing his sword. " He blasphemes, Lord. Shall I cast him forth?"

"But you did that some time ago," answered Satan, speaking carelessly over his shoulder and not even looking at the speaker. " You keep on doing it. And— I am here."

"He returns," said the Lord soothingly. "Perhaps I will him to return. What should we be without him?"

"Without me, time and space would freeze into crystalline perfection," said Satan, and at his smile the criminal statistics of a myriad planets displayed an upward wave. "It is I who trouble the waters. I trouble all things. I am the spirit of life."

"But the soul," said God.

Satan, sitting with one arm thrown over the back of his throne towards Michael, raised his eyebrows by way of answer. This talk about the soul he regarded as a divine weakness. He knew nothing of the soul.

"I made man in my own image," said God.

"And I made him a man of the world. If it had not been for me he would still be a needless gardener— pretending to cultivate a weedless garden that grew right because it couldn't grow wrong— in'those endless summers the blessed ones see.' Think of it, ye Powers and Dominions! Perfect flowers! Perfect fruits! Never an autumn chill! Never a yellow leaf! Golden leopards, noble lions, carnivores unfulfilled, purring for his caresses amidst the aimless friskings of lambs that would never grow old! Good Lord! How bored he would have been! How bored! Instead of which, did I not launch him on the most marvellous adventures? It was I who gave him history. Up to the very limit of his possibilities. Up to the very limit.... And did not you, Lord, by sending your angels with their flaming swords, approve of what I had done?"

God gave no answer.

"But that reminds me," said Satan unabashed.