[The following excerpts are from chapter 2 of THE RELIC by José Maria de Eça de Queirós, translated by Aubrey F.G. Bell.]
Suddenly everything disappeared, and the devil, looking at me, said thoughtfully: “It is finished, my friend. Another God, and another religion! And this one will spread an indescribable tedium through earth and heaven.” And as we went down the hill the devil began to describe to me with animation the cults and feasts and religions that flourished in his youth. All that coast of the Great Green then, from Byblos to Carthage, from Eleusis to Memphis, was crowded with gods. Some of them astonished men by their perfect beauty, others by their complicated ferocity; but all took part in the life of men, making it divine: they journeyed in triumphal cars, breathed the scent of flowers, drank wine, loved sleeping maidens. That is why they were loved with a love which will never return, and people emigrating might leave their flocks and forget the rivers at which they had drunk, but lovingly carried their gods with them in their arms.
[ . . . ]
Then the devil told me of the human holocausts of Moloch, of the mysteries of the Good Goddess at which lilies were watered with blood, and of the fervent funeral rites of Adonis. He paused, smiling: “Has my friend ever been in Egypt?” I told him that I had and had made the acquaintance of Mary; and the devil said courteously: “It was not Mary but Isis.” When the floods reached Memphis the water was covered with sacred boats; and a heroic joy, ascending to the stars, made men equal to gods. And Osiris, horned as a bull, loved Isis, and all down the Nile, amid the clamor of the harps of bronze, sounded the lowing of the divine cow in love.
Then the devil told me of the gentle, beautiful brilliance of the religion of Nature in Greece. There everything was white and polished, pure, luminous and serene; harmony sprang from the sculptured marble and from the constitution of the cities, from the eloquence of the academies and the skill of the athletes. Among the islands of Ionia, which floated like baskets of flowers on the soft silent sea, the Nereids hung upon the ships, listening to the tales of those who voyaged in them; the Muses on foot sang in the valleys; and the beauty of Venus concentrated in itself the beauty of Greece.
But this Carpenter of Galilee had appeared, and all was over. Men’s faces had become perpetually pale and mortified; a dark cross, crushing the earth, withered the splendor of the roses and robbed kisses of their sweetness; and the new god delighted in ugliness.