UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 BROWSING ROOM
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 tre Balzac 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC 
 AND ANALYTIC STUDIES 
 
 VOLUME II
 
 LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND COMPLETE COPIES 
 
 NO.
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 He took a piece of linen, and, after moistening it 
 sparingly in the precious liquid, he touclicd lightly 
 the rig/it eyelid of the corpse. The eye opened. 
 
 "Aha! " exclaimed Don Juan, grasping the phial 
 as, in a dream, we grasp the branch from which we 
 are suspended over a precipice. 
 
 He saw an eye sparkling with life.
 
 THE NOVELS 
 
 OF 
 
 HONORE DE BALZAC 
 
 NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME 
 COMPLETELY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH 
 
 BY G. BURNHAM 1VES 
 
 WITH FIVE ETCHINGS BY RICARDO DE LOS RIOS, AFTER 
 PAINTINGS BY EDOUARD TOUDOUZE 
 
 IN ONE VOLUME 
 
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 PRINTED ONLY FOR SUBSCRIBERS BY 
 
 GEORGE BARRIE & SON, PHILADELPHIA
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY GEORGE BARRIE & SON 
 
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 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 189971
 
 TO MARCELINE DESBORDES-VALMORE 
 
 To you, a daughter of Flanders, and one of its 
 recent glories, I dedicate this simple tradition of 
 Flanders. 
 
 DE BALZAC.
 
 At a somewhat indefinite period of Brabantine 
 history, communication between the island of Wal- 
 cheren and the shores of Flanders was maintained 
 by a small vessel intended for the transportation of 
 passengers. Middleburg, the capital of the island, 
 at a later period so famous in the annals of Protest- 
 antism, contained only two or three hundred houses. 
 Wealthy and prosperous Ostend was an unknown 
 seaport, flanked by a hamlet sparsely inhabited by 
 a few fishermen, by poor tradesmen, and by un- 
 molested pirates. Nevertheless, the hamlet of Os- 
 tend, comprising about a score of houses and three 
 hundred cabins, huts, or hovels built with the debris 
 of shipwrecked vessels, enjoyed a governor, a mili- 
 tia, a gallows, a convent, a burgomaster, in fact, all 
 the symbols of advanced civilization. Who reigned 
 at that time in Brabant, in Flanders, in Belgium? 
 On that point, tradition is silent. Let us confess at 
 once that this narrative is materially affected by 
 the vagueness, the uncertainty, the admixture of the 
 supernatural with which the favorite orators of 
 Flemish festivals frequently interlarded their com- 
 mentaries, whose poetic forms are as diverse as their 
 details are contradictory. Told by generation after 
 generation, repeated from fireside to fireside day and 
 night by the old men, by the minstrels, this chronicle 
 received a different coloring from each age. Like 
 (5)
 
 6 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 those monuments constructed according to the caprice 
 of the architectural systems of each epoch, black, 
 defaced masses which, nevertheless, delight the 
 souls of poets, it would drive commentators, sifters 
 of words, facts, and dates, to despair. The narrator 
 believes it, as all the superstitious folk of Flanders 
 have believed it, without thereby betraying greater 
 learning or greater weakness of intellect. As it is 
 impossible to reconcile all the versions, here is the 
 story, stripped, it may be, of its romantic simplicity, 
 which cannot be reproduced, but with its bold deeds 
 which history disavows, with its moral lesson which 
 religion approves, its strain of mysticism, a flower of 
 the imagination, its hidden meaning which the wise 
 man may interpret to suit himself. To every man 
 his chosen pasturage and the task of sorting the 
 good grain from the chaff. 
 
 The boat that carried passengers from the island 
 of Walcheren to Ostend was about to leave the vil- 
 lage. Before casting off the iron chain by which his 
 boat was made fast to a stone of the little pier where 
 his passengers embarked, the skipper blew several 
 blasts on his horn to summon those who were behind 
 time, for that was his last trip. Night was approach- 
 ing, by the fading gleams of the setting sun one 
 could barely make out the Flemish coast and dis- 
 tinguish the forms of the belated passengers, wan- 
 dering along the earthen walls which surrounded the 
 fields or among the tall reeds in the swamps. The 
 boat was full; someone called out: 
 
 " What are you waiting for? Let us start !"
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 7 
 
 At that moment, a young man appeared a few 
 steps away from the pier; the pilot, who had neither 
 seen him nor heard his footsteps, was much sur- 
 prised at his sudden appearance. He seemed to 
 have risen suddenly from the earth, as if he were 
 a peasant who had lain down in a field awaiting 
 the hour of departure, and had been awakened by 
 the horn. Was he a thief? was he an officer of the 
 customs or police? When he reached the pier at 
 which the boat was moored, seven persons who 
 were standing at the stern hastily took seats on the 
 benches, so that they might be by themselves and 
 not allow the stranger to join them. They acted in 
 obedience to a swift, instinctive thought, one of 
 those aristocratic thoughts that come to the minds 
 of the rich. Four of these persons belonged to the 
 oldest nobility of Flanders. First of all, a young 
 cavalier, accompanied by two beautiful greyhounds 
 and wearing upon his long hair a round cap adorned 
 with precious stones, clashed his gilded spurs and 
 twisted his moustache impatiently from time to time, 
 casting contemptuous glances at the rest of the ship's 
 company. A haughty young woman held a falcon 
 on her wrist and spoke with no one but her mother 
 and an ecclesiastic of high rank, evidently their kins- 
 man. These four made a great noise and talked 
 together as if they were alone on the boat. Never- 
 theless, close beside them was a man of great im- 
 portance in the country, a stout burgher of Bruges, 
 wrapped in a great cloak. His servant, armed to 
 the teeth, had placed two bags of gold by his side.
 
 8 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 Next to them, again, was a man of learning, a doctor 
 at the University of Louvain, attended by his clerk. 
 These people, who severally looked down on one 
 another, were separated from the bow of the boat 
 by the bench of rowers. 
 
 As the tardy passenger stepped aboard, he cast a 
 rapid glance at the stern, saw that there was no 
 room there, and went to seek a place among those 
 who were in the bow. They were poor people. 
 When they saw a bareheaded man, whose brown 
 camlet coat and short-clothes and starched shirt-front 
 were without ornament, who had neither cap nor hat 
 on his head, neither sword nor purse in his girdle, they 
 all took him for a burgomaster sure of his authority, 
 a kindly, gentle-natured burgomaster like some of 
 those old Flemings whose ingenuous characters have 
 been so faithfully portrayed for us by the painters 
 of the country. The poorer class of passengers 
 therefore greeted the stranger with demonstrations 
 of respect which gave birth to whispered raillery 
 among the people at the stern. An old soldier, a 
 man of toil and of fatigue, gave his place on the 
 bench to the stranger, seated himself on the boat's 
 rail, and maintained his balance by his manner of 
 resting his feet against one of the wooden cross- 
 pieces which connect the floor-boards of a boat, like 
 the bones of a fish. A young woman, the mother of 
 a little child, apparently belonging to the working- 
 class of Ostend, moved aside to make more room 
 for the new-comer. The movement implied neither 
 servility nor disdain, it was one of those acts of
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 9 
 
 courtesy by which poor people, who know by ex- 
 perience the value of a slight favor and the pleasures 
 of fraternal intercourse, reveal- the frankness and 
 naturalness of their hearts, so artless in the manifes- 
 tation of their good qualities and their defects; and 
 so the stranger thanked them with a gesture full of 
 dignity. Then he took his seat between the young 
 mother and the old soldier. Behind him were a 
 peasant and his son, the latter a boy of ten. A 
 poor woman, old and wrinkled, dressed in rags, with 
 an almost empty wallet, a perfect type of reckless 
 misery, was lying in the bow, curled up on a great 
 pile of ropes. One of the rowers, an old sailor 
 who had known her when she was lovely and rich, 
 had taken her aboard, in accordance with the admi- 
 rable expression of the common people, for the love 
 of God. 
 
 " Thank you, Thomas," the old woman had said; 
 " I'll say two Paters and two Aves for you in my 
 prayers to-night." 
 
 The skipper blew the horn for the last time, cast 
 his eye over the silent fields, threw the chain into 
 the boat, ran along the rail to the stern, seized the 
 tiller, and stood there as the boat drew away from 
 the pier; then, after looking up at the sky and when 
 they were in clear water, he shouted to his rowers 
 in a ringing voice: 
 
 " Pull, pull hard and fast! The sea has a squally 
 smile, the old hag! I feel the swell in the way the 
 rudder moves, and the wind in my old wounds." 
 
 Those words, in the jargon of the sea, a language
 
 10 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 intelligible only to the ears that are accustomed to 
 the noise of the waves, gave to the oars a hurried 
 but always rhythmical stroke; a united movement, 
 as different from the previous style of rowing as a 
 horse's gallop is from his trot. The aristocrats at 
 the stern took pleasure in watching all those brawny 
 arms, those brown faces with eyes of fire, those 
 strained muscles, and those diverse human forces 
 acting in concert to ferry them across the strait for 
 a trifling toll. Far from deploring their poverty, 
 those people called one another's attention laugh- 
 ingly to the grotesque expressions which the ex- 
 ertion imparted to their distorted features. In the 
 bow, the soldier, the peasant, and the old woman 
 gazed at the oarsmen with the sympathy natural to 
 persons who, as they live by toil, are familiar with 
 the intense suffering and feverish fatigue it causes. 
 Moreover, being accustomed to life in the open air, 
 they all realized from the appearance of the sky the 
 danger that threatened them, and therefore they 
 were all serious. The young mother rocked her 
 child in her arms, crooning an old church hymn to 
 soothe him to sleep. 
 
 " If we get there," said the soldier to the peasant, 
 "the good Lord will show that He's obstinate about 
 letting us live." 
 
 " Oh! He's the Master," interposed the old crone, 
 "but I think it's His pleasure to call us to Him. 
 Look at that light over yonder!" 
 
 With a movement of her head, she pointed to the 
 west, where bands of flame stood out vividly against
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS II 
 
 a bank of brown, red-edged clouds which seemed on 
 the point of setting free a furious gale. The sea 
 made a dull, muttering sound, a sort of inward rum- 
 bling, not unlike the voice of a dog when he growls. 
 But, after all, Ostend was not far away. At that 
 moment, sky and sea presented one of those spec- 
 tacles to which it is impossible, perhaps, for 
 painting, as for poetry, to give a longer duration 
 than they really have. Human creations demand 
 striking contrasts. So it is that artists generally 
 seek at Nature's hands its most gorgeous phenom- 
 ena, despairing doubtless of their ability to interpret 
 the grand and beautiful poesy of its everyday aspect, 
 although the human mind is often as deeply moved 
 in calm as in confusion, by silence as by the tempest. 
 There was a moment when everyone on the boat 
 was silent, gazing at sea and sky, whether from a 
 presentiment, or in obedience to that religious melan- 
 choly which seizes almost all of us at the hour of 
 prayer, at nightfall, at the moment when Nature is 
 silent and the church-bells speak. The sea cast a 
 white, pale reflection, changing, however, and not 
 unlike the colors of steel. The sky was generally 
 of a grayish hue. In the west were long narrow 
 bands like waves of blood, while in the east, gleam- 
 ing lines, as sharply defined as if drawn by a fine 
 pencil, were separated by dark clouds lying in folds, 
 like wrinkles on an old man's forehead. Thus on 
 all sides, the sea and sky had a sombre look, all in 
 half-tones, which threw into bold relief the ominous 
 flames of the setting sun. That aspect of Nature
 
 12 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 inspired a feeling of deep awe. If it were permis- 
 sible to import the bold metaphors of the common 
 people into written language, we might repeat what 
 the soldier said, that " the weather was on the run," 
 or what the peasant replied, that "the sky looked 
 like a hangman." The wind suddenly sprung up 
 from the westward, and the skipper, who had not 
 taken his eyes from the water, seeing the swell 
 rising on the horizon, cried out: 
 
 "Hold hard! hold hard!" 
 
 At that cry, the oarsmen at once ceased rowing 
 and lay on their oars. 
 
 " The skipper's right," said Thomas, coolly, when 
 the boat, after rising to the crest of a huge wave, 
 rushed down as if into a deep abyss opened by the 
 sea. 
 
 At that extraordinary movement, at that sudden 
 outburst of wrath on the part of old Ocean, the pas- 
 sengers at the stern turned pale as death and uttered 
 a piercing shriek: 
 
 "We are lost!" 
 
 " Oh! no, not yet," rejoined the skipper, calmly. 
 
 At that moment, the clouds were torn asunder by 
 the wind directly over the boat. The gray masses 
 having spread out with ominous celerity to east and 
 west, the twilight gleam fell full upon the boat 
 through the rift made by the storm and enabled the 
 passengers to see one another's faces. Noble and 
 wealthy, sailors and paupers, all alike were struck 
 dumb with amazement at the aspect of the last 
 comer. His golden hair, parted in two bands above
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 13 
 
 His serene and placid brow, fell In numberless curls 
 over His shoulders, outlining against the gray atmos- 
 phere a face of sublime sweetness, wherein the di- 
 vine love shone resplendent. He did not despise 
 death, He was certain of not dying. 
 
 But, although the people at the stern forgot for a 
 moment the implacable fury of the tempest that 
 threatened them, they soon reverted to their selfish- 
 ness and their life-long habits. 
 
 " That stupid burgomaster is very fortunate not to 
 see the danger that threatens us all ! He sits there 
 like a dog and will die without distress," said the 
 professor. 
 
 He had barely given expression to that seemingly 
 just sentiment when the tempest set free its legions. 
 The wind blew from all directions, the boat whirled 
 about like a top, and the water came in. 
 
 " Oh ! my poor child ! my poor child ! Who will 
 save my child?" cried the mother, in a heart-rending 
 voice. 
 
 " You yourself," replied the stranger. 
 
 The clear note of that voice entered the young 
 mother's heart and planted hope therein; she heard 
 that comforting word despite the howling of the gale, 
 despite the shrieks of the passengers. 
 
 " Blessed Virgin of Succor, who dwellest at Ant- 
 werp, I promise you a thousand pounds of wax and 
 a statue if you bring me safely out of this!" cried 
 the burgher, kneeling on his sacks of gold. 
 
 " The Virgin is no more at Antwerp than she is 
 here," observed the professor.
 
 14 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 " She is in heaven," said a voice that seemed to 
 come from the sea. 
 
 " Who can it be that spoke?" 
 
 "It was the devil!" cried the servant, "he is 
 making fun of the Virgin of Antwerp!" 
 
 "Drop your Blessed Virgin," said the skipper to 
 the passengers. " Just take these buckets and bale 
 out the boat. And you fellows," he added, turning 
 to the oarsmen, " row steady! We have a moment's 
 lull; in the name of the devil who lets you stay in 
 this world, let's be our own providence. This little 
 channel's an infernally dangerous place, as everyone 
 knows, and I've been crossing it these thirty years. 
 Is to-night the first time I have fought a gale?" 
 
 Then, standing at the helm, the skipper continued 
 to look at his boat, the sky, and the sea, in succes- 
 sion. 
 
 " He always laughs at everything, does the skip- 
 per," said Thomas, in an undertone. 
 
 "Will God let us die with those wretches?" the 
 haughty young woman asked the handsome young 
 nobleman. 
 
 " No, no, noble lady. Listen!" 
 
 He drew her toward him, and said in her ear: 
 
 " I know how to swim, but do not mention it! I 
 will take you by your lovely hair and carry you 
 safely to the shore; but I can save none but you!" 
 
 The young woman looked at her aged mother. 
 She was on her knees asking absolution for some- 
 thing from the bishop, who was not listening to her. 
 The chevalier read in his lovely mistress's eyes a
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 15 
 
 faint trace of filial affection, and said to her, in a 
 hollow voice: 
 
 " Submit to the will of God ! If it is His will to 
 call your mother to Him, doubtless it will be for her 
 welfare in the other world," he added, in a still 
 lower tone. "And for ours in this," he thought. 
 
 The Lady of the Rupelmonde possessed seven fiefs 
 besides the Barony of Ga"vres. The young woman 
 listened to the voice of her life, the interests of her 
 love speaking through the mouth of the handsome 
 adventurer, a young miscreant who haunted the 
 churches in search of a victim, a marriageable girl 
 or good hard cash. The bishop blessed the waves 
 and bade them be calm, but with little faith; he 
 was thinking of his concubine who awaited his 
 coming with a delicious repast, who at that moment, 
 perhaps, was going to the bath, perfuming herself, 
 arraying herself in velvet, or fastening the clasps 
 of her necklaces and jewels. Far from thinking 
 of the power of the Holy Church and giving com- 
 fort to the Christians about him by exhorting them 
 to trust in God, the wicked bishop intermingled 
 worldly regrets and words of love with the sacred 
 words of the breviary. The gleam that lighted 
 up those pallid faces made visible their widely- 
 differing expressions when the boat was lifted high 
 in air by a wave, then hurled down to the bottom 
 of the abyss, then shaken like a fragile leaf, the 
 plaything of the north wind in the autumn, and its 
 hull cracked and groaned and seemed on the point 
 of going to pieces. Then there were frightful cries
 
 16 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 followed by frightful pauses. The attitudes of the 
 persons seated in the bow contrasted strangely with 
 those of the rich and powerful passengers. The 
 young mother strained her child to her breast each 
 time that the waves threatened to engulf the fragile 
 bark; but she trusted to the hope that the stranger's 
 words had planted in her heart; each time she turned 
 her eyes toward that man and derived from His face 
 renewed faith, the steadfast faith of a weak woman, 
 the faith of a mother. Living in the Divine Word, in 
 the words of love let fall by Him, the simple creature 
 awaited with confidence the execution of that species 
 of promise, and hardly dreaded the peril. Glued to 
 the gunwale of the boat, the soldier kept his eyes 
 fastened upon that strange being, modelling the ex- 
 pression of his own rough, bronzed face upon His 
 impassive expression, by exerting his intelligence 
 and his will, whose vast energies had been somewhat 
 impaired during a passive, automatic sort of life; 
 with a jealous determination to appear as calm and 
 undisturbed as that man of higher courage, he ended 
 by identifying himself, unknowingly, perhaps, with 
 the secret principle of that inward power. There- 
 upon his admiration became a sort of instinctive 
 fanaticism, a love without bounds, a firm faith in 
 that man, like the enthusiasm soldiers feel for their 
 leader, when he is a man of powerful character, 
 surrounded by the glamour of victories and the glori- 
 ous prestige of genius. The poor old crone said in 
 a low voice: 
 
 "Ah! vile sinner that I am! have I suffered enough
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 Thereupon the stranger ivith the luminous visage 
 spoke to that little world of sorrow : 
 
 "Those who have faith shall be saved ! let them 
 follow Me.'" 
 
 He stood erect and walked with a Jinn step upon 
 the waves. Instantly the young mother took her 
 child in her arms and walked beside Him.
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 17 
 
 to atone for the pleasures of my youth ? Ah ! wretched 
 woman, why did you lead the joyous life of a cour- 
 tesan, why did you squander God's belongings with 
 men of the Church, and the belongings of the poor 
 with usurers and excisemen? Ah! I have sinned 
 grievously. O my God ! my God ! let me end my 
 hell on this abode of misery!" 
 
 Or else: 
 
 " Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, have pity on 
 me!" 
 
 "Console yourself, mother, the good Lord is no 
 usurer. Although I may have killed right and left, 
 good and bad alike, I'm not afraid of the resurrec- 
 tion." 
 
 "Ah! my fine officer, how lucky those fine ladies 
 are to be with a bishop, a holy man!" rejoined the 
 old woman; "they'll get absolution for their sins. 
 Oh! if I could hear a priest's voice say: 'Your sins 
 shall be forgiven,' I would believe it !" 
 
 The stranger turned toward her, and his kindly 
 glance made her tremble. 
 
 " Have faith," he said, " and you shall be saved." 
 
 " May God reward you, kind gentleman," she re- 
 plied. " If you tell the truth, I will make a pilgrim- 
 age, barefooted, to Notre-Dame de Lorette, for you 
 and for myself." 
 
 The two peasants, father and son, held their peace, 
 resigned and submissive to the will of God, like men 
 accustomed to follow instinctively, as animals do, 
 the impulse imparted to their natures. Thus, on the 
 one side, wealth, pride, learning, debauchery, crime,
 
 1 8 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 an epitome of human society as it is constituted by 
 the arts, reflection, education, the world and its laws; 
 but also, on that side only, shrieks, terror, a multi- 
 tude of varying feelings wrestling with horrible 
 doubts; there, and there only, the agony of fear. 
 Next, towering above those creatures, a powerful 
 man, the master of the boat, doubting nothing, the 
 leader, the fatalistic king, making himself his own 
 providence by crying: "Blessed Bucket!" instead 
 of " Blessed Virgin!" in short, defying the storm 
 and struggling with the sea breast to breast. And 
 at the other end of the boat the weak! the mother 
 rocking on her breast a little child who smiled at the 
 storm; a prostitute, once joyous and careless, now 
 in the clutches of horrible remorse; a soldier riddled 
 with wounds, with no other reward than his mutilated 
 body for a life of unwearying devotion: he had hardly 
 more than a crust of bread wet with tears, yet he 
 laughed at everything and went his way without 
 care, happy when he was drowning his glory in a 
 pot of beer, or narrating his glorious exploits to chil- 
 dren who followed him admiringly; gayly he en- 
 trusted to God the care of his future; and lastly, 
 two peasants, men of labor and fatigue, toil incar- 
 nate, the labor by which the world lives. Those 
 simple creatures cared nothing for thought and its 
 treasures, but were ready to bury them in a belief, 
 their faith being the more robust in that they had 
 never discussed or analyzed it; virgin natures wherein 
 the conscience had remained pure and the senti- 
 ment powerful; remorse, misfortune, love, toil, had
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 19 
 
 exercised, purified, concentrated, redoubled their 
 will, the only thing in man which resembles what 
 scholars call a soul. 
 
 When the boat, guided by the wonderful skill of 
 the skipper, was almost in sight of Ostend and only 
 fifty paces from the shore, she was blown off by a 
 fierce squall and instantly foundered. 
 
 Thereupon the stranger with the luminous visage 
 spoke to that little world of sorrow: 
 
 " Those who have faith shall be saved ! let them 
 follow Me!" 
 
 He stood erect and walked with a firm step upon 
 the waves. Instantly the young mother took her 
 child in her arms and walked beside Him. The 
 soldier suddenly arose, saying in his artless lan- 
 guage: 
 
 "Ah! nom d'une pipe! I'll follow You to the 
 devil." 
 
 Whereupon, with no indication of surprise, he 
 walked upon the sea. The old woman, believing in 
 God's omnipotence, followed the man and walked 
 upon the sea. The two peasants said to themselves: 
 
 "As they walk upon the water, why should not 
 we do as they do?" 
 
 They rose and hurried after them, walking upon 
 the sea. Thomas tried to imitate them; but as his 
 faith wavered, he fell several times into the sea and 
 rose again; at last, after three trials, he walked upon 
 the sea. The bold skipper clung like a barnacle to 
 a plank from his boat. The miser had faith and 
 rose; but he tried to take his gold, and his gold
 
 20 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 dragged him to the bottom of the sea. Making sport 
 of the impostor and the imbeciles who listened to 
 him, the professor, when he heard the stranger pro- 
 pose to the passengers to walk upon the waves, be- 
 gan to laugh and was swallowed up by the Ocean. 
 The young woman was dragged down into the abyss 
 by her lover. The bishop and the old lady went to 
 the bottom, heavy with crimes, perhaps, but even 
 heavier with incredulity, with confidence in false 
 images; heavy with false devotion, but unburdened 
 by alms-giving and true religious feeling. 
 
 The little troop of true believers who trod with a 
 firm tread and dryshod the plain of angry water heard 
 the awful roaring of the gale about them. Enormous 
 waves broke upon their path. An invincible force 
 rent the Ocean. Through the spray the faithful 
 espied in the distance, on the shore, a small, faint 
 light twinkling in the windows of a fisherman's hut. 
 As they walked courageously on toward that glimmer, 
 each fancied that he heard his neighbor crying above 
 the roaring of the waves: " Courage!" And yet not 
 one of them said a word, for all were intent upon 
 their danger. Thus they came safely to the shore. 
 When they were all seated by the fisherman's fire, 
 they looked in vain for their luminous Guide. From 
 the summit of a rock against whose base the tempest 
 tossed the skipper, clinging to his plank with the 
 strength that sailors put forth in their combats with 
 death, THE MAN went down, rescued the almost life- 
 less castaway; then He said, stretching out a helping 
 hand over his head:
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 21 
 
 " For this time 'tis well, but tempt not fate again; 
 'twould be too evil an example." 
 
 He took the sailor on His shoulders and bore him 
 to the fisherman's hut. He knocked at the door, so 
 that that humble place of refuge might be thrown 
 open to the unfortunate man; then the Saviour dis- 
 appeared. On that spot the convent of La Merci was 
 built for shipwrecked sailors, and there for many 
 years one might see the footprints that the feet of 
 Jesus Christ had made, so it was said, upon the 
 sand. In 1793, at the time of the French invasion of 
 Belgium, the monks carried away that priceless relic, 
 the evidence of the last visit Jesus made to earth. 
 
 There it was that I, weary of life, found myself 
 some time after the Revolution of 1830. If you had 
 asked me the cause of my despair, it would have 
 been well-nigh impossible for me to tell it to you, my 
 mind had become so limp and flaccid. The springs 
 of my intellect relaxed before the blasts of the west- 
 erly wind. A black frost descended from the sky, 
 and the dark clouds that passed over my head gave 
 nature a sinister look; the vast expanse of the sea 
 everything said to me: "Whether death comes to- 
 day or to-morrow, must one not die? and then " 
 I strayed about, therefore, thinking of an uncertain 
 future, of my disappointed hopes. A prey to such 
 depressing thoughts, I mechanically entered the 
 church of the convent, whose gray towers loomed 
 like phantoms through the mist from the sea. I 
 gazed without enthusiasm at that forest of pillars 
 whose leafy capitals sustain the slender arches a
 
 22 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 graceful labyrinth. I walked heedlessly through the 
 lateral naves which spread out before me like por- 
 ticoes turning on their own axes. The uncertain 
 light of an autumn day enabled me to see but dimly 
 the carved keystones of the arches, the delicate 
 tracery that outlined so clearly the angles of all the 
 graceful rafters. The organs were silent. Only 
 the sound of my footsteps awakened the solemn 
 echoes hidden in the dark chapels. I seated myself 
 by one of the four pillars which support the dome, 
 near the choir. From that point my eyes embraced 
 the whole interior of the structure, which I gazed 
 upon without a thought for my surroundings. The 
 mechanical movement of my eyes alone showed me 
 the impressive labyrinth of all those pillars, the 
 immense carved rose-windows, suspended like net- 
 work, as if by miraculous means, above the lateral 
 doors and the main portal, the galleries high in air 
 where slender columns separated the windows, sur- 
 mounted by arches, by trefoil or by flowers, a lovely 
 filigree in stone. At the end of the choir a dome of 
 glass sparkled as if it were constructed of precious 
 stones set with great skill. To right and left, in con- 
 trast with that dome, which was of white and colored 
 glass in alternate rows, were the deep shadows of the 
 two long naves, in whose depths could be seen indis- 
 tinctly the shafts of a hundred gray columns. As I 
 gazed at those marvellous arches, those arabesques, 
 those garlands, those spirals, those Saracenic fan- 
 tasies, inextricably interlaced with one another, and 
 all lighted by a weird light, my perceptions became
 
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 23 
 
 confused. I found myself, as it were, on the di- 
 viding line between illusion and reality, caught in 
 the snares of optical delusions, and almost bewil- 
 dered by the multitude of different points of view. 
 Insensibly the carved stones became indistinct, I saw 
 them only through a cloud composed of golden dust 
 like that which darts about in the bands of light 
 formed by a sunbeam in a room. In the midst of that 
 vaporous atmosphere which made all outlines vague, 
 the lace-work of the rose-windows suddenly shone 
 forth resplendent. Each delicate nerve and line, 
 each trivial detail, gleamed like burnished silver. 
 The sun kindled fires in the panes of glass, whose 
 rich colors sparkled gayly. The pillars swayed, 
 their capitals moved gently to and fro. A caressing 
 shudder shook the edifice and its friezes moved with 
 cautious grace. Several large pillars went through 
 divers solemn evolutions like the motions of a dow- 
 ager who obligingly walks through a quadrille at the 
 close of a ball. Some straight, slender columns be- 
 gan to laugh and gambol, arrayed in their wreaths of 
 trefoil. Pointed arches collided with the long, nar- 
 row windows, which resembled the ladies of the 
 Middle Ages who wore their family crests painted 
 on their dresses of cloth of gold. The dance of 
 those mitred arches with those coquettish windows 
 was like a combat in the lists. Soon every stone in 
 the church began to vibrate, but without changing 
 its position. The organs spoke and filled my ears 
 with divine melody, with which were mingled angels' 
 voices, music of incredible sweetness, accompanied by
 
 24 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 the deep bass of the bells whose ringing indicated that 
 the two colossal towers were swaying on their solid 
 foundations. That strange witches' Sabbath seemed 
 to me the most natural thing on earth, for I am not 
 easily surprised after having seen Charles X. over- 
 thrown. I was myself swayed gently as if I were 
 sitting in a swing, which gave me a sort of nervous 
 pleasure, but it would be impossible for me to de- 
 scribe it. And yet, in the midst of that scene of 
 glowing excitement, the choir of the church seemed 
 to me as cold as if winter were reigning there. I 
 saw there a multitude of women dressed in white, 
 motionless and silent. A number of censers exhaled 
 a sweet perfume which penetrated my soul and re- 
 joiced it. The tapers burned brightly. The read- 
 ing-desk, gay as a minstrel in his cups, leaped like a 
 Chinese hat. I discovered that the cathedral was 
 whirling round and round so swiftly that everything 
 remained in its place. The colossal Christ, from His 
 place above the altar, smiled at me with a malicious 
 kindliness that made me afraid, and I looked away 
 from Him to gaze in admiration at a bluish vapor 
 stealing among the pillars in the distance and im- 
 parting an indescribable charm to them. Several 
 fascinating female figures in the friezes moved their 
 limbs. The cherubs who upheld great pillars flapped 
 their wings. I felt myself uplifted by a divine power 
 which plunged me into infinite joy, a sweet and lan- 
 guorous ecstasy. I believe that I would have given 
 my life to prolong the duration of that phantasma- 
 goria, but suddenly a shrill voice cried in my ear:
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 25 
 
 " Wake up and follow me!" 
 
 A withered old woman took my hand and made 
 my nerves tingle with a horrible sensation of cold. 
 Her bones were visible through the skin of her pallid, 
 almost greenish-hued face. The cold little old crea- 
 ture wore a black dress that dragged in the dust, 
 and had at her neck something white which I dared 
 not examine. Her staring eyes were fixed on the 
 sky so that only the whites could be seen. She led 
 me through the church, marking her path with the 
 ashes that fell from her dress. As she walked, her 
 bones rattled like a skeleton's. Step by step, as we 
 proceeded, I heard behind me the tinkling of a little 
 bell, whose jangling notes rang in my brain like 
 those of a harmonica. 
 
 " You must suffer! you must suffer!" it said to me. 
 
 We left the church and passed through the vilest 
 streets in the city; then she took me into a gloomy 
 house, crying in a voice as harsh and discordant as 
 that of a cracked bell : 
 
 " Defend me! defend me!" 
 
 We ascended a winding staircase. When she 
 knocked at a door in the shadow, a man, dumb 
 like the familiars of the Inquisition, opened it. We 
 found ourselves in a room hung with ragged old 
 tapestry, full of old linen, faded muslins, and gilded 
 copper. 
 
 " Here is everlasting wealth," she said. 
 
 I shuddered with horror, when I saw plainly, 
 by the light of a long candle and two tapers, that 
 the woman must recently have come forth from the
 
 26 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 cemetery. She had no hair. I tried to fly; she put 
 out her skeleton arm and surrounded me with a circle 
 of iron armed with spikes. At that movement a cry 
 uttered by millions of voices, the cheer of the dead, 
 echoed around us. 
 
 " I intend to make you happy forever/' she said. 
 " You are my son!" 
 
 We were sitting by a fireplace in which the ashes 
 were cold. The little old woman held my hand in 
 such a strong grasp that I was compelled to remain 
 there. I gazed fixedly at her and tried to divine the 
 story of her life by scrutinizing the rags in which 
 she crouched by my side. But was she alive? That 
 was a veritable mystery. I saw clearly that she 
 must once have been young and lovely, adorned 
 with all the charms of simplicity, a veritable Grecian 
 statue with the spotless brow. 
 
 "Aha!" I said, "now I recognize you. Unhappy 
 woman, why did you prostitute yourself to men? 
 At the age when passions enslave, you became rich, 
 you forgot your pure, sweet girlhood, your sublime 
 self-sacrifice, your innocence, your fruitful faith, and 
 you abdicated your original power, your intellectual 
 supremacy, for the powers of the flesh. Abandoning 
 your linen vestments, your couch of soft moss, your 
 grottoes illumined by divine rays, you preferred to 
 shine resplendent in diamonds, in luxury, in lust. 
 Audacious, proud, desiring everything, obtaining 
 everything, and overturning everything in your 
 path, like a popular courtesan hurrying to her 
 pleasures, you were as sanguinary as a queen
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 27 
 
 dazed by arbitrary power. Do you not remember 
 that you were stupefied at times, then suddenly 
 remarkably clear-sighted, after the pattern of Art 
 coming forth from a debauch? Poet, painter, song- 
 stress, fond of splendid ceremonials, you patronized 
 the arts only from caprice, and so that you might 
 sleep beneath magnificent hangings. Did you not 
 one day, in your capricious insolence, you who 
 should be chaste and modest, force everybody to 
 bow down to your slipper, and fling it at the head 
 of sovereigns who had earthly power, wealth, and 
 talent? Forever insulting man, and taking pleasure 
 in seeing how low human folly would stoop, some- 
 times you would bid your lovers walk on all fours, 
 give you their property, their treasures, their wives 
 even, when they were of any value! Without mo- 
 tive you have ruined millions of men, you have 
 driven them like sand-clouds from West to East. 
 You have descended from the lofty heights of 
 thought to take your seat beside kings. Woman, 
 instead of consoling men, you have tortured, afflicted 
 them! You demanded blood, sure of obtaining it ! 
 And yet you might have been content with a little 
 flour, brought up as you were to eat cakes and put 
 water in your wine. Original in everything, you 
 once forbade your famished lovers to eat, and they 
 did not eat. Why did you carry your extravagance 
 so far as to wish for the impossible? Why, like a 
 courtesan spoiled by her adorers, did you rave over 
 idiotic trifles and refrain from undeceiving those who 
 explained or justified all your errors? At last, you
 
 28 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 came to the end of your passions. Terrible as the 
 love of a woman of forty years, you roared aloud ! 
 you sought to clasp the whole universe in a last 
 embrace, and the universe that belonged to you 
 escaped you. Then, after the young men, old men 
 came to your feet, impotent creatures who made 
 you hideous. Nevertheless, some men with the 
 keen eye of the eagle said to you, with a glance: 
 'You shall die without renown because you have 
 deceived, because you have broken your promises 
 as a girl. Instead of being an angel with peaceful 
 brow, instead of sowing light and happiness along 
 your pathway, you have been a Messalina, fond of 
 the circus and of orgies, abusing your power! You 
 can never again be a virgin, you must have a mas- 
 ter. Your time has come. You already feel the 
 hand of death. Your heirs think you rich, they 
 will kill you and obtain nothing. Try at least to 
 throw aside those clothes of yours, which are no 
 longer in fashion, and become what you once were. 
 But no! you have committed suicide!' Is not that 
 your story?" I said to her in conclusion; "old, 
 decayed, toothless, chilly, forgotten now, and unob- 
 served as you pass? Why do you live? Why wear 
 your soliciting garb which arouses no one's desire? 
 Where is your fortune? why have you squandered 
 it? Where are your treasures? What noble thing 
 have you done?" 
 
 At that question, the little old woman stood erect 
 on her bones, threw off her rags, increased in stat- 
 ure, emerged smiling and resplendent from her black
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 29 
 
 chrysalis. Then, like a new-born butterfly, that 
 tropical creature came forth from her palms, ap- 
 peared before me a fair, young girl, clad in a robe 
 of spotless linen. Her golden hair fell over her 
 shoulders, her eyes sparkled, a luminous cloud en- 
 veloped her, a circle of gold fluttered about her head; 
 she waved her hand toward space, brandishing a 
 long sword of fire. 
 
 "See and believe!" she said. 
 
 Suddenly I saw in the distance tens of thousands 
 of cathedrals like the one I had just left, but deco- 
 rated with pictures and frescoes; I heard entrancing 
 music. Myriads of men swarmed around those edi- 
 fices like ants in their ant-hills; some eager to save 
 books and copy manuscripts, others ministering to 
 the poor, almost all studying. From the heart of 
 those unnumbered multitudes arose colossal statues, 
 reared by them. By the strange light cast by a 
 luminary as great as the sun, I read on the pedestals 
 of those statues: SCIENCE. HISTORY. LITERATURE. 
 
 The light went out, I found myself once more 
 alone with the young woman, who gradually resumed 
 her lifeless envelope, her mortuary rags, and became 
 old once more. Her familiar brought her a little 
 coal-dust to renew the ashes in her foot-warmer, for 
 the weather was cold; then he lighted for her 
 for her who had had myriads of wax-candles in her 
 palaces a little night-lamp, so that she could read 
 her prayers during the night. 
 
 " Faith is dead !" she said. 
 
 Such was the critical situation in which I beheld
 
 30 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 
 
 the most beautiful, the most immense, the truest, the 
 most fruitful of all powers. 
 
 "Wake up, monsieur, they're going to close 
 the doors," said a hoarse voice. 
 
 Turning my head, I saw the repulsive face of the 
 dispenser of holy water; he had shaken me by 
 the arm. I found the cathedral buried in darkness, 
 like a man wrapped in a cloak. 
 
 " To believe," I said to myself, "is to live! I 
 have just seen the funeral procession of a monarchy; 
 we must defend the CHURCH !" 
 
 Paris, February 1831.
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED
 
 TO MONSIEUR LE GENERAL BARON DE POMMEREUL 
 
 In memory of the unbroken friendship which 
 united our fathers, and which still subsists between 
 their sons. 
 
 DE BALZAC.
 
 There is one variety of the human race which 
 civilization produces in the social regime, just as flor- 
 ists create in the vegetable regime, by the hot-house 
 method, a hybrid species which they are unable to 
 reproduce either from seeds or by grafting. That 
 variety is the cashier, a genuine anthropomorphic 
 product, watered by religious ideas, nourished by 
 the guillotine, pruned by vice, which grows to matu- 
 rity in a third-floor apartment, between an estimable 
 wife and tiresome children. The number of cashiers 
 in Paris will always be a problem to the physiologist. 
 Did anyone ever understand the terms of the propo- 
 sition of which the known X is a cashier? To find 
 a man who must be always in presence of wealth, 
 like a cat in presence of a mouse in a cage? to find a 
 man who has the faculty of sitting on a cane-seated 
 chair in a box with a wire grating, where he has no 
 more room to walk than a ship's officer in his state- 
 room, for seven or eight hours a day during seven- 
 eighths of the year? to find a man whose knees and 
 spinal column will not become anchylosed at that 
 trade? a man who is great enough to be small? a 
 man who can acquire a distaste for money by dint of 
 handling it? Apply for such a specimen to any 
 religion, any code of morals, any college, any insti- 
 tution on earth, and mention Paris, that city of 
 temptations, that training-ground for hell, as the 
 (35)
 
 36 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 place in which the cashier is to be planted ! Ah! 
 well, the religions will all appear in single file, col- 
 leges, institutions, moral codes, all human laws, 
 great and small, will come to you as an intimate 
 friend comes when you ask him for a thousand-franc 
 note. They will put on a mournful expression, they 
 will make faces, they will point to the guillotine, as 
 your friend will point to the usurer's place of busi- 
 ness, one of the hundred doorways to the alms-house. 
 Nevertheless, moral nature has its whims, it ventures 
 to produce honest men and honest cashiers now and 
 then. And the pirates whom we dignify by the 
 name of bankers, and who take a license at three 
 thousand francs as a privateer takes his letters of 
 marque, have such veneration for those rare products 
 of the incubation of virtue, that they shut them up 
 in cages in order to keep them safe, as governments 
 keep curious animals. If the cashier has imagina- 
 tion, if the cashier has passions, or if the most perfect 
 of cashiers loves his wife and that wife is bored, or 
 ambitious, or simply vain, the cashier goes to pieces. 
 Search the annals of the counting-room: you will 
 not find a single instance of the cashier attaining what 
 is called a position. They go to the galleys, they go 
 abroad, or they vegetate in a second-floor apartment 
 on Rue Saint-Louis in the Marais. When Parisian 
 cashiers have reflected seriously upon their intrinsic 
 value, a cashier will be beyond price. It is certain 
 that certain men can never be aught else than cash- 
 iers, just as others are incorrigible rogues. Strange 
 civilization! Society awards virtue an annuity of a
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 37 
 
 hundred louis for its old age, lodgings on the second 
 floor, plenty of bread, a new cravat or two, and an 
 old wife encumbered by her children. As for vice, 
 if it has a little insolence, if it can circumvent an 
 article of the Code as cleverly as Turenne circum- 
 vented Montecuculli, society legalizes its stolen mil- 
 lions, bestows decorations upon it, stuffs it with 
 honors, and overwhelms it with tokens of high con- 
 sideration. Moreover, the government is in har- 
 mony with this profoundly illogical society. The 
 government levies upon youthful intellects, between 
 eighteen years and twenty, a conscription of pre- 
 cocious talents; it exhausts by premature toil the 
 powerful brains which it convokes in order to sort 
 them out on a board as gardeners do their seeds. It 
 provides for that process sworn weighers of talents 
 who test brains as gold is tested at the mint. Then 
 out of the five hundred heads excited by hope, with 
 which the most enlightened portion of the population 
 annually provides it, it selects one-third, stows them 
 away in great bags called its Schools, and shakes 
 them about therefor three years. Although each of 
 those grafts represents an enormous capital, it makes 
 cashiers of them, so to speak; it appoints them en- 
 gineers in ordinary; it employs them as captains of 
 artillery; in a word, it assures them all the highest 
 places in the subordinate grades. Then, when those 
 picked men, fattened on mathematics and stuffed 
 with science, have reached the age of fifty years, it 
 provides them, by way of reward for their services, 
 with the third-floor apartment, the wife burdened
 
 38 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 with children and all the joys of mediocrity. If, of 
 that deluded multitude, five or six men of genius 
 escape and climb to the social summits, is it not a 
 miracle? 
 
 The foregoing is an accurate balance-sheet of the 
 account between talent and virtue on the one side 
 and the government and society on the other, in an 
 age which deems itself progressive. Without these 
 preliminary observations, an episode of recent oc- 
 currence in Paris would seem improbable, whereas, 
 in the light of this summary, it may, perhaps, at- 
 tract the attention of minds of sufficient acumen to 
 have divined the real plague-spots of our civilization 
 which, since 1815, has replaced honor as a principle 
 of action by wealth. 
 
 On a gloomy autumn day, about five in the after- 
 noon, the cashier of one of the strongest banking- 
 houses in Paris was still at work by the light of a 
 lamp which had already been lighted for some time. 
 In accordance with the usages and customs of the 
 commercial world, the counting-room was situated in 
 the darkest part of a narrow, low entresol. To reach 
 it one must pass through a corridor lighted by inside 
 windows and extending the length of the various offices 
 whose ticketed doors resembled those of a bathing es- 
 tablishment. At four o'clock, the concierge had phleg- 
 matically announced, according to his orders: " The 
 counting-room is closed." At this time, the offices 
 were deserted, the mail despatched, the clerks had 
 gone home, the wives of the partners were awaiting 
 their lovers, the two bankers were dining with their
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 39 
 
 mistresses. Everything was in order. The place 
 where the strong-boxes were kept in an iron safe 
 was behind the grated box of the cashier, who was 
 engaged, no doubt, in balancing his cash. The open 
 wicket permitted one to see a closet of hammered 
 iron, which, thanks to the discoveries of modern 
 locksmithing, was so heavy that burglars could not 
 have carried it away. The door opened only at the 
 bidding of the person who could write the password, 
 the secret of which is faithfully kept by the letters 
 of the lock beyond the reach of corruption, a beau- 
 tiful realization of the Open, Sesame! of the Thou- 
 sand and One Nights. But that was not all. The 
 lock would strike a crushing blow at the face of the 
 man who, having discovered the password, was un- 
 acquainted with the last secret, the ultima ratio of 
 the dragon of the mechanism. The door of the room, 
 the walls of the room, the shutters at the windows 
 of the room, the whole room, in short, was sheathed 
 with sheet-iron plates a third of an inch thick, dis- 
 guised by a thin veneer of wainscoting. The shut- 
 ters were closed, the door was closed. If ever a 
 man might believe that he was absolutely alone and 
 sheltered from all eyes, that man was the cashier of 
 the house of Nucingen and Company, Rue Saint- 
 Lazare. The most profound silence reigned in that 
 iron cave. The dying fire in the stove gave forth the 
 sickening warmth which produces upon the brain 
 the clammy sensation and queasy uneasiness pecul- 
 iar to the day after a debauch. The stove tends 
 to produce sleep, it stupefies and helps materially to
 
 4O MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 banish the wits of concierges and clerks. A room 
 with a stove is a mattress in which man's energy 
 disappears, his nerves relax, and his will becomes 
 null. The department offices are the great nursery 
 of the mediocrities which governments require for 
 the maintenance of the feudal authority of money, 
 upon which the present social fabric rests. See 
 The Civil Service. The mephitic heat produced by 
 the herding of men together in those offices is not one 
 of the least important causes of the progressive degen- 
 eration of intellects; the brain from which the most 
 nitrogen is set free asphyxiates the others in the end. 
 The cashier was a man of about forty years, 
 whose bald head gleamed in the rays of the Carcel 
 lamp that stood on his table. The light shone upon 
 the white hairs interspersed with black that formed 
 a fringe around his head, to which the rounded out- 
 lines of his face gave the appearance of a ball. His 
 complexion was brick red. His blue eyes were sur- 
 rounded by wrinkles. He had the plump hand of 
 the corpulent man. His blue coat, slightly worn in 
 places, and the folds of his shiny trousers offered to 
 the eye that appearance of decay which long use 
 imparts, against which the brush struggles in vain, 
 and which gives superficial persons an exalted idea 
 of the economical habits and unswerving probity of 
 a man who is enough of a philosopher or enough 
 of an aristocrat to wear old clothes. But it is no 
 rare thing to find people who will haggle over trifles, 
 easily imposed upon, extravagant or incapable in 
 the momentous affairs of life.
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 41 
 
 The cashier's buttonhole was adorned with the 
 ribbon of the Legion of Honor, for he had commanded 
 a company in the dragoons, under the Emperor. Mon- 
 sieur de Nucingen, who was an army contractor 
 before becoming a banker, had been so situated as 
 to discover his future cashier's delicacy of feeling, 
 having met him in an exalted position from which 
 misfortune had dislodged him; and he testified his 
 regard by paying him a salary of five hundred francs 
 per month. This soldier had been a cashier since 
 1813, when he was cured of a wound received at the 
 battle of Studzianka, during the retreat from Moscow, 
 after he had languished six months at Strasburg, 
 whither a number of the officers of higher rank had 
 been carried, by order of the Emperor, to receive 
 special attention. The ex-dragoon, Castanier by 
 name, had the brevet rank of colonel and a retiring 
 pension of twenty-four hundred francs. 
 
 Castanier, in whom the cashier had in ten years 
 vanquished the military man, possessed the banker's 
 confidence to such an extent that he also superin- 
 tended the clerks in the private office behind his 
 counting-room, to which the baron came down from 
 his apartments by a secret staircase. There im- 
 portant affairs were decided; there was the sieve 
 in which propositions were sifted, the parlor in 
 which the plans were scrutinized; thence letters of 
 credit issued; lastly, there were the ledger and the 
 journal wherein the work of the other offices was 
 summarized. After closing the door at the foot of 
 the staircase leading to the State office, where the
 
 42 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 two bankers were usually to be found, on the first 
 floor of their hotel, Castanier had returned to his 
 seat and had glanced for a moment at several let- 
 ters of credit drawn on the house of Watschildine 
 at London. Then he had taken his pen and had 
 forged, at the bottom of each of them, the signa- 
 ture Nudngen. Just as he was examining those 
 false signatures to see which of them all was the 
 most perfect imitation, he raised his head as if he 
 had been stung by a gnat, obeying a presentiment 
 which cried out in his heart: " You are not alone!" 
 and the forger saw behind the grating, at the wicket 
 of his counting-room, a man whose breathing was 
 inaudible, who seemed to him not to breathe at all. 
 He had evidently entered by the door leading into 
 the corridor, which Castanier saw was wide open. 
 The ex-soldier experienced for the first time in his 
 life a sensation of fear which made him sit with 
 gaping mouth and bewildered eyes, staring at the 
 intruder, whose appearance was, in truth, horrify- 
 ing enough to stand in no need of the mysterious 
 circumstances attending his entrance. The oblong 
 shape of the stranger's face, the bulging outline of 
 his forehead, the acid tinge of his complexion, indi- 
 cated an Englishman, no less than the cut of his 
 clothes. The man fairly smelt of the Englishman. 
 Seeing his tightly-buttoned coat, his flowing cravat 
 colliding with a rumpled shirt-frill, its whiteness in- 
 tensifying the fixed, livid hue of an impassive face, 
 whose cold, red lips seemed made to suck the blood 
 from dead bodies, one could imagine the black gaiters
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 43 
 
 buttoned above the knee, and the rest of the semi- 
 Puritan costume of a wealthy Englishman out for a 
 walk. The flash emitted by the stranger's eyes 
 was insupportable and caused a painful impression 
 which was heightened by the rigidity of his features. 
 Thin and gaunt, the man seemed to have within him 
 a devouring principle which it was impossible for him 
 to satisfy. He must have digested his food so rapidly 
 that he could eat incessantly, without causing the 
 slightest trace of a flush ever to appear on his 
 cheeks. He could swallow a cask of the Tokay 
 wine known as vin de succession, and his piercing 
 glance, which read men's minds, would not waver 
 for an instant, nor his pitiless logic, which seemed 
 always to go to the very root of things. There was 
 in him something of the fierce and tranquil majesty 
 of the tiger. 
 
 "Monsieur, I have just received this bill of ex- 
 change," he said to Castanier, in a voice which put 
 itself in communication with the cashier's nerves 
 and assailed them all with a violence comparable to 
 that of an electric discharge. 
 
 " The counting-room is closed," replied Castanier. 
 
 " It is open," said the Englishman, pointing to the 
 safe. " To-morrow will be Sunday, and I cannot 
 wait. The amount is five hundred thousand francs, 
 you have it in the safe, and I owe it." 
 
 " But how did you manage to get in?" 
 
 The Englishman smiled, and his smile terrified 
 Castanier. Never was a fuller or more peremptory 
 response than the imperious, disdainful curl of the
 
 44 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 stranger's lip. Castanier turned, seized fifty pack- 
 ages of bank-notes each containing ten thousand 
 francs, and, as he passed them to the stranger who 
 had tossed him a bill of exchange signed by Baron 
 de Nucingen, he was attacked by a sort of convul- 
 sive trembling, at sight of the red gleam that issued 
 from that man's eyes and shone upon the forged 
 signature of the letter of credit. 
 
 "You haven't signed a receipt," stammered 
 Castanier, returning the bill. 
 
 " Pass me your pen," replied the Englishman. 
 
 Castanier handed him the pen he had used for his 
 forgeries. The stranger signed JOHN MELMOTH, 
 then returned the pen and paper to the cashier. 
 While Castanier was looking at the stranger's writ- 
 ing, which ran from right to left in the oriental 
 fashion, Melmoth disappeared, and made so little 
 noise that, when the cashier raised his head and saw 
 that he was no longer there, he uttered a sharp cry, 
 conscious of a pang like those which our imagination 
 attributes to the effects produced by poison. The 
 pen Melmoth had used caused a burning, disturbing 
 sensation in his vitals, like that produced by an 
 emetic. As it seemed impossible to Castanier that 
 the Englishman had divined his crime, he attributed 
 that internal suffering to the palpitation which, ac- 
 cording to received ideas, follows a mauvais coup the 
 moment after it is committed. 
 
 " Damnation! what a fool I am! God help me, 
 for if that animal had applied to these gentlemen 
 to-morrow, my goose would have been cooked !" said
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 45 
 
 Castanier to himself, as he threw the forged letters 
 he did not propose to use into the stove, where they 
 were consumed. 
 
 He placed a seal on the one he had selected for 
 use, took from the safe five hundred thousand francs 
 in bills and bank-notes, locked it, put everything in 
 order, took his hat and umbrella, extinguished the 
 lamp after lighting his candlestick, and went tran- 
 quilly, according to his custom when the baron was 
 absent, to hand one of the two keys of the safe to 
 Madame de Nucingen. 
 
 "You are very fortunate, Monsieur Castanier," 
 said the banker's wife, when he entered her apart- 
 ments, " we have a holiday on Monday; you can go 
 into the country, to Soizy." 
 
 " Will you be kind enough, madame, to say to 
 Nucingen that the bill of exchange from Watschil- 
 dine, which was delayed, has been presented. The 
 five hundred thousand francs are paid. So I shall 
 not return until Tuesday, about noon." 
 
 "Adieu, monsieur; a pleasant time to you." 
 
 " The same to you, madame," replied the old 
 dragoon as he went out, glancing, as he spoke, at a 
 young man then much in vogue, named Rastignac, 
 who was supposed to be Madame de Nucingen's 
 lover. 
 
 " Madame," said the young man, "that stout old 
 party looks to me as if he proposed to play some 
 trick on you." 
 
 " Nonsense! it's impossible, he's too big a fool." 
 
 " Piquoizeau," said the cashier, going into the
 
 46 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 porter's lodge, " why do you let anybody come up 
 to the counting-room after four o'clock?" 
 
 "Ever since four o'clock," said the concierge, 
 " I've been smoking my pipe on the doorstep, and 
 not a soul has gone into the offices. No one has 
 even left but these gentlemen " 
 
 "Are you sure of what you say?" 
 
 " Sure as I am of my own honor. Just about four, 
 Monsieur Werbrust's friend came, a young man from 
 Messieurs Du Tillet and Company, Rue Joubert." 
 
 "All right!" said Castanier, hastily leaving the 
 lodge. 
 
 The nauseating heat which his pen had communi- 
 cated to him assumed greater intensity. 
 
 " Ten thousand devils!" he thought, as he hurried 
 along Boulevard de Gand, " have I made my arrange- 
 ments wisely? Let us see! Two days to myself, 
 Sunday and Monday, then a day of uncertainty be- 
 fore they begin to look for me that gives me three 
 days and four nights. I have two passports and two 
 distinct disguises; isn't that enough to throw the 
 cleverest detectives off the scent? Tuesday morn- 
 ing, I will pick up a million in London, before they 
 have begun to have a suspicion of me here. I leave 
 my debts for the benefit of my creditors, who will 
 put a P. over them, and for the rest of my days I will 
 live happily in Italy, under the name of Comte Fer- 
 raro, that poor colonel whom I alone was with when 
 he died in the swamps of Zembin, and whose skin I 
 will put on. Ten thousand devils! this woman that 
 I am going to take with me may lead to my being
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 47 
 
 recognized. An old campaigner like me tied to a 
 petticoat, bewitched by a woman! why should I take 
 her? I must leave her. Yes, I shall have the cour- 
 age to do it. But I know myself, I shall be just fool 
 enough to come back to her. However, no one 
 knows Aquilina. Shall I take her? or shall I not 
 take her?" 
 
 " You will not take her!" said a voice that stirred 
 his entrails. 
 
 Castanier turned abruptly and saw the English- 
 man. 
 
 " So the devil is taking a hand in it!" exclaimed 
 the cashier aloud. 
 
 Melmoth had already passed his victim. Although 
 Castanier's first impulse was to fasten a quarrel 
 upon a man who could read his thoughts so readily, 
 he was tossed about by so many contrary sentiments 
 that the result was a sort of temporary inertness; so 
 he walked on as before, and relapsed into the fever 
 of thought natural to a man excited by passion to 
 the point of committing a crime, but lacking the 
 strength to carry its burden without the most cruel 
 agitation. And so, although determined to gather 
 the fruit of a crime half consummated, Castanier 
 still hesitated to carry out his undertaking, like most 
 men of mixed character in whom there is as much 
 strength as weakness, and who may resolve to re- 
 main pure as well as to become criminal, according 
 to the effect of the most trivial circumstances. In 
 the motley collection of men enlisted by Napoleon 
 there were many who, like Castanier, possessed the
 
 48 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 purely physical courage of the battle-field, but lacked 
 the moral courage which makes a man as great in 
 crime as he might be in virtue. The letter of credit 
 was so worded, that on his arrival in London he 
 could draw twenty-five thousand pounds sterling 
 from Watschildine, the correspondent of the house 
 of Nucingen, who was already advised by himself of 
 its speedy presentation. His passage was engaged 
 by an agent whom he had selected at random in 
 London, under the name of Comte Ferraro, on a 
 vessel which was to take a rich English family from 
 Portsmouth to Italy. Every contingency, however 
 trifling, had been provided for. He had laid his plans 
 so that they would look for him in Belgium and in 
 Switzerland while he was at sea. Then, when 
 Nucingen might believe that he was fairly on his 
 track, he hoped to have reached Naples, where he 
 intended to live under a false name, by favor of a 
 disguise so complete that he had determined to 
 change his whole face by imitating the ravages of 
 small-pox with the aid of an acid. 
 
 Despite all those precautions, which seemed cer- 
 tain to assure him impunity, his conscience tormented 
 him: he was afraid. The quiet, peaceful life he had 
 led so long had purified his military morals. He was 
 still upright, he did not soil his hands without regret. 
 So he listened for the last time to the arguments of 
 the honest nature which was struggling within him. 
 
 "Bah!" he said to himself at the corner of the 
 boulevard and Rue Montmartre, " a cab will take me 
 to Versailles to-night after the play. A post-chaise
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 49 
 
 awaits me there at my old quartermaster's, who 
 would keep my secret in the face of a dozen soldiers 
 all ready to shoot him if he refused to answer. So 
 I can't see that there's one chance against me. I 
 will take my little Naqui and go!" 
 
 "You will not go!" said the Englishman, whose 
 peculiar voice sent all the cashier's blood rushing to 
 his heart. 
 
 Melmoth entered a tilbury that was waiting for 
 him, and was driven away so swiftly, that Castanier 
 saw his mysterious enemy a hundred yards away, 
 driving up Boulevard Montmartre, at a fast trot, 
 before it even occurred to him to stop him. 
 
 "Upon my word, this is supernatural!" he said 
 to himself. " If I were idiotic enough to believe in 
 God, I should think he had put Saint-Michel on my 
 heels. Would the devil and the police give me a 
 chance to get hold of him in time? Did anyone 
 ever see such a thing! Nonsense! this is all folly." 
 
 Castanier turned into Rue du Faubourg-Mont- 
 martre, and slackened his pace as he neared Rue 
 Richer. On that street, in a new house, on the 
 second floor of an ell overlooking a garden, lived a 
 girl known in the quarter by the name of Madame 
 de la Garde, who was the innocent cause of the 
 crime committed by Castanier. To explain that 
 fact and to complete the history of the crisis under 
 which the cashier succumbed, it is necessary to re- 
 late succinctly some previous episodes in her life. 
 
 Madame de la Garde, who concealed her real 
 name from everybody, Castanier included, claimed 
 4
 
 50 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 to be a Piedmontese. She was one of those young 
 women who, it may be by extreme destitution, by 
 lack of work or by dread of death, frequently, too, 
 by the treachery of a first lover, are driven to adopt 
 a trade which the majority of them practise with 
 loathing, many with indifference, and some in obe- 
 dience to the laws of their nature. Just as she was 
 on the point of hurling herself into the abyss of 
 Parisian prostitution, at the age of sixteen, the girl 
 in question, lovely and pure as a Madonna, fell in 
 with Castanier. The ex-dragoon, being too un- 
 polished to succeed in society and tired of parading 
 the boulevards every evening in search of amours 
 to be bought, had long wished to reduce his irregu- 
 lar morals to something like order. Struck by the 
 beauty of the poor child whom chance threw into 
 his arms, he determined to rescue her from vice for 
 his own advantage, obeying a thought no less selfish 
 than beneficent, as are many of the thoughts of the 
 best of men. The natural impulse is often good, 
 society mingles its bad with it, the result being cer- 
 tain mixed impulses which the judge should treat 
 with indulgence. Castanier had just enough wit to 
 be cunning when his selfish interests were at stake. 
 He determined to establish his philanthropy on a 
 sure footing, so first of all he made the girl his mis- 
 tress. 
 
 "Aha!" he said to himself in his military jargon, 
 "an old wolf like me mustn't allow himself to be 
 cooked by a lamb. Before you go to housekeeping, 
 Papa Castanier, just reconnoitre the girl's moral
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 51 
 
 character a bit and find out- if she's capable of at- 
 tachment." 
 
 During the first year of that union, which, al- 
 though illicit, placed her in the least reprehensible 
 of all the positions which society censures, the 
 Piedmontese adopted for a nom de guerre Aquilina, 
 the name of one of the characters in Venice Pre- 
 served, an English tragedy which she had read by 
 chance. She fancied that she resembled that cour- 
 tesan, it may be in the precocious sentiments that 
 she felt in her heart, or in her face, or in the general 
 effect of her person. When Castanier saw that she 
 was leading the most orderly and most virtuous life 
 possible for a woman whose lot is cast outside of 
 social laws and proprieties, he manifested a wish to 
 live with her as her husband. She thereupon be- 
 came Madame de la Garde, in order to enjoy the 
 conditions attending a lawful marriage, so far as 
 Parisian customs permit. In truth, the fixed idea 
 of many of those poor girls consists in a longing to 
 be received as honest bourgeoises, foolishly faithful 
 to their husbands; capable of becoming excellent 
 mothers of families, of keeping their accounts and 
 mending the household linen. That longing is born 
 of such a praiseworthy sentiment that society 
 should take it into consideration. But society will 
 certainly be incorrigible, and will continue to look 
 upon the married woman as a corvette whose flag 
 and papers entitle her to go her way, while the kept 
 woman is the pirate who is captured for lack of the 
 proper papers. On the day when Madame de la
 
 52 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 Garde expressed a wish to sign her name " Madame 
 Castanier," the cashier lost his temper. 
 
 " Then you don't love me well enough to marry 
 me?" she said. 
 
 Castanier did not reply, but seemed absorbed in 
 thought. The poor girl bowed to the inevitable. 
 The ex-dragoon was in despair. Naqui was touched 
 by his despair, she would have liked to allay it; but, 
 in order to allay despair, one must know its cause. 
 On the day when Naqui attempted to learn that 
 secret, without asking questions, by the way, 
 the cashier piteously divulged the existence of a 
 certain Madame Castanier, a legitimate spouse, a 
 thousand times accursed, who lived in obscurity at 
 Strasburg, on a small property, and to whom he 
 wrote twice a year, maintaining such absolute 
 secrecy concerning her that no one knew that he 
 was married. Why that reticence? Although the 
 explanation is known to many military men who 
 may have found themselves in the same plight, 
 perhaps it will be well to give it. The genuine 
 troupier, if we may be allowed to employ the word 
 used in the army to denote soldiers who are destined 
 to die captains, that serf attached to the freehold 
 of a regiment, is a creature essentially ingenuous, a 
 Castanier sacrificed in advance to the trickery of 
 mothers in garrison towns, who are burdened with 
 daughters hard to marry. So it was, that, at Nancy, 
 during one of those brief periods when the imperial 
 armies tarried in France, Castanier had the misfor- 
 tune to attract the attention of a young woman with
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 53 
 
 whom he had danced at one of those functions called 
 in the provinces redoutes, which are frequently prof- 
 fered by the officers of the garrison to the town, and 
 vice versa. The good-natured captain at once became 
 the object of one of those campaigns of seduction for 
 which mothers find confederates in the human heart, 
 by working upon all its sensibilities, and among their 
 friends, who conspire with them. Like people of 
 but one idea, such mothers make everything sub- 
 ordinate to their great scheme, which becomes an 
 elaborately constructed work like the shell of sand in 
 which the ant-eater lies in wait. Perhaps no one 
 will ever enter that carefully-constructed labyrinth, 
 perhaps the ant-eater will die of hunger and thirst. 
 But if any hare-brained creature does enter, he will 
 remain. The secret calculations of avarice which 
 every man makes when he marries, hope, human 
 vanity, all the wires by which a captain is moved, 
 were attacked in Castanier. To his undoing he had 
 praised the daughter to the mother on bringing her 
 back after a waltz; then they had a little chat, which 
 was followed by a most natural invitation to call. 
 Once he was enticed to the house, the dragoon was 
 dazzled by the amiability of a family in which wealth 
 seemed to be concealed beneath affected niggardli- 
 ness. He was made the object of adroit flattery, and 
 everyone praised the various treasures that were 
 to be found in that house. A dinner, served on 
 silver plate conveniently lent by an uncle, the at- 
 tentions of an only daughter, the gossip of the town, 
 a rich sub-lieutenant who pretended to be trying to
 
 54 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 cut the grass from under his feet in short, the 
 thousand and one snares of provincial ant-eaters 
 were so cunningly laid that Castanier said to himself 
 five years later: 
 
 " I don't know yet how it was done!" 
 The dragoon received a dowry of fifteen thousand 
 francs and a young lady, luckily barren, whom two 
 years of married life transformed into the ugliest and 
 consequently the most ill-natured woman on earth. 
 Her complexion, kept white by a strict diet, became 
 pimply; her face, whose vivid coloring indicated the 
 most seductive virtue, was covered with blotches; 
 her figure, which seemed straight, had a twist in it; 
 the angel was a morose, suspicious creature who 
 drove Castanier mad; then the fortune took wings. 
 The dragoon, no longer recognizing the woman he 
 had married, consigned her to a small estate at 
 Strasburg, pending the time when it should please 
 God to embellish paradise with her. She was one 
 of those virtuous wives who, for lack of opportunity 
 to do anything else, drive the angels to despair with 
 their lamentations, pray to God in a way to weary 
 Him if He listens, and in the evening, while playing 
 boston with their neighbors, demurely tell stories 
 about their husbands that are worse than hanging- 
 matter. 
 
 When Aquilina was informed of Castanier's mis- 
 fortunes, she became sincerely attached to him, and 
 made him so happy by the enjoyments she procured 
 for him, her woman's genius enabling her to vary 
 them constantly, while lavishing them upon him
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 55 
 
 without stint, that she unwittingly caused the 
 cashier's ruin. Like many women whose destiny 
 seems to decree that they shall go down to the very 
 deepest depths of love, Madame de la Garde was 
 disinterested. She asked for neither gold nor jewels, 
 she never thought of the future, lived in the present 
 and especially in pleasure. The rich ornaments, the 
 dresses, the carriages, so ardently craved by women 
 of her sort, she accepted only as one more harmo- 
 nious feature in the tableau of life. She did not 
 want them from vanity or for show, but in order to 
 be more comfortable. And no one could do without 
 things of that sort more easily than she. When a 
 generous man, as almost all soldiers are, falls in 
 with a woman of that temper, he feels a sort of 
 rage in his heart when he finds himself unable to do 
 his share in the mutual exchange of life. He feels 
 that he is capable of stopping a diligence in order to 
 obtain money, if he has not enough for his lavish 
 expenditures. Man is made in that way. He some- 
 times commits a crime in order to remain a grand 
 and noble figure in the eyes of a woman or of a 
 special audience. A lover resembles a gambler, who 
 would consider himself dishonored if he failed to 
 repay what he borrows from the waiter, and who 
 commits horrible crimes, despoils his wife and chil- 
 dren, robs and murders, in order to arrive with full 
 pockets and with his honor untarnished in the eyes 
 of those who frequent the fatal place. So it was 
 with Castanier. At first, he installed Aquilina in a 
 modest fourth-floor apartment, and gave her only
 
 56 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 the simplest furniture. But when he discovered the 
 girl's manifold beauties and noble qualities, receiv- 
 ing at her hands pleasure undreamed of, which no 
 words can describe, he fairly doted on her and de- 
 termined to adorn his idol. Aquilina's dress con- 
 trasted so comically with her wretched lodgings, 
 that, for both their sakes, it was necessary to make 
 a change. That change swept away almost all of 
 Castanier's savings, for he furnished his semi-con- 
 jugal apartment with the magnificence peculiar to 
 the kept mistress. A pretty woman wants nothing 
 ugly about her. The one thing that .distinguishes 
 her from all other women is the sentiment of homo- 
 geneousness, one of the least noticed needs of our 
 nature, which leads old maids to surround them- 
 selves with none but old things. For that reason, 
 therefore, the fair Piedmontese must have the new- 
 est, the most stylish objects, the daintiest wares 
 that the shops afforded, fine hangings, silks and 
 jewels, light and fragile furniture, lovely porcelains. 
 She asked for nothing. But, when she was called 
 upon to choose, when Castanier said to her: " Which 
 do you like?" she would say: "Why, that is the 
 nicest!" The love that economizes is never true 
 love, so Castanier took the best that there was. 
 When the scale of proportion was once admitted, 
 everything in the household must necessarily be in 
 harmony. There were the linen, the silverware, 
 and the thousand and one accessories of a well- 
 ordered establishment, the kitchen outfit, the glass, 
 the devil ! Although Castanier intended, to use a
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 57 
 
 familiar expression, to do things simply, his debts 
 steadily increased. One thing necessitated another. 
 A clock required two candelabra. The carved man- 
 telpiece demanded a fireplace. The draperies and 
 hangings were too fresh and new to allow them to 
 be blackened by the smoke, so they must have 
 some of the fashionable chimneys, recently invented 
 by gentlemen skilful in the art of composing pros- 
 pectuses, which claimed to provide an invincible 
 guaranty against smoke. And then Aquilina found 
 it so pleasant to run about barefooted on her cham- 
 ber carpet, that Castanier spread carpets every- 
 where to frolic with Naqui; and, lastly, he built her 
 a bath-room, always for her greater comfort. The 
 shopkeepers, the workmen, the manufacturers of 
 Paris have a most extraordinary talent for increasing 
 the size of the hole a man makes in his purse; when 
 you consult them, they never know the price of 
 anything, and the frenzy of desire never brooks 
 delay; thus they procure orders in the shadow of an 
 approximate estimate, then they delay sending in 
 their bills, and lead the customer on into the vortex 
 of house-furnishing. Everything is delightful, fas- 
 cinating, and everyone is satisfied. A few months 
 later, these obliging merchants reappear, metamor- 
 phosed into statements of account of distressing 
 urgency; they have a pressing need of money, pay- 
 ments to be made at once, they even claim to be on 
 the verge of bankruptcy, they weep and they move 
 you to pity! Thereupon the crater opens, vomiting 
 forth a column of figures marching by fours, when
 
 58 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 they should march innocently three by three. Be- 
 fore Castanier knew the amount of his expenditures, 
 he had adopted the habit of providing his mistress 
 with a coupe whenever she went out, instead of 
 allowing her to ride in a cab. Castanier was a 
 gourmand, he had an excellent cook; and Aquilina, 
 to give him pleasure, regaled him with early vege- 
 tables, gastronomic rarities, and choice wines which 
 she purchased herself. But, as she had nothing of 
 her own, her gifts, although they were of priceless 
 value to him because of the thoughtful affection and 
 charming delicacy that dictated them, were a con- 
 stant drain upon Castanier 's purse, for he did not 
 choose that his Naqui should be without money, 
 and she always was without money! Thus the table 
 was a source of large expenditure, relatively to the 
 cashier's income. The ex-dragoon was obliged to 
 resort to commercial artifices to procure money, for 
 it was impossible for him to renounce his pleasures. 
 His love for the woman precluded him from opposing 
 the whims of the mistress. He was one of those 
 men who, whether from self-love or from weakness, 
 can refuse a woman nothing, and who have such a 
 powerful feeling of false shame at the thought of 
 saying: " I cannot my means will not allow me I 
 have no money," that they ruin themselves. So 
 that, when the day came that Castanier found him- 
 self on the brink of a precipice, and realized that, in 
 order to save himself, he must leave Aquilina and 
 betake himself to a bread-and-water diet, to the 
 end that he might pay his debts, he had become so
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 59 
 
 accustomed to that woman and that life, that he 
 postponed his plans of reform every morning. First 
 of all, under the stress of circumstances, he bor- 
 rowed. His position and his antecedents had won 
 for him a reputation for trustworthiness of which 
 he took advantage to lay out a system of borrowing 
 in proportion to his needs. Then, to disguise the 
 amount to which his debts rapidly climbed, he had 
 recourse to what are known in the business world 
 as circulations. These are notes which represent 
 no actual consideration in merchandise or money, 
 and which the first endorser pays for the obliging 
 maker a species of forgery, tolerated because it is 
 impossible to prove, and because, furthermore, this 
 ingenious fraud becomes real only in case of non- 
 payment. Finally, when Castanier saw that it was 
 impossible for him to continue his financial ma- 
 noeuvres, both because of the rapid increase of the 
 capital and of the enormous interest he had to pay, 
 he was obliged to face the thought of insolvency. 
 With disgrace staring him in the face, Castanier 
 preferred fraudulent insolvency to simple insolvency, 
 crime to misdemeanor. He determined to discount 
 the confidence which he owed to his previous prob- 
 ity, and to increase the number of his creditors by 
 borrowing, after the fashion of the famous cashier 
 of the royal Treasury, a sufficient sum to enable 
 him to live happily in a foreign country for the 
 balance of his days. And he had taken measures 
 to that end, as we have seen. Aquilina knew noth- 
 ing of the wearisomeness of that life, she simply
 
 60 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 enjoyed it as many women do, without asking where 
 the money came from, any more than certain people 
 ask how the wheat grows when they eat their fine 
 white bread; whereas the painstaking care and 
 the disappointments of the farmer stand behind the 
 baker's oven, just as crushing anxiety and the most 
 exacting toil lurk unseen beneath the exterior splen- 
 dor of most Parisian households. 
 
 At the moment that Castanier was undergoing the 
 tortures of uncertainty, meditating a step that would 
 change his whole life, Aquilina, buried in a capacious 
 armchair in front of the fire, was calmly awaiting 
 him, in the company of her maid. Like all maids in 
 the service of ladies of that sort, Jenny had become 
 her confidante, after she had discovered how unas- 
 sailable was the empire her mistress had obtained 
 over Castanier. 
 
 "What are we going to do to-night? Leon ab- 
 solutely insists upon coming," said Madame de la 
 Garde, running her eyes over a passionate letter 
 written upon paper of a grayish tinge. 
 
 " Here's monsieur!" said Jenny. 
 
 Castanier entered. Aquilina, with perfect uncon- 
 cern, crumpled the letter, took it in her tongs and 
 burned it. 
 
 "So that's what you do with your love-letters?" 
 said Castanier. 
 
 "Why, yes, of course," replied Aquilina; "isn't 
 that the best way to make sure they're not found? 
 And then, should not fire go to fire, as water goes to 
 the river?"
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 6l 
 
 " You say that, Naqui, as if it were a real love- 
 letter." 
 
 " Well, am I not lovely enough to receive them?" 
 she said, offering Castanier her forehead with a sort 
 of negligent air that would have told a man less 
 blinded than he that she was performing a conjugal 
 duty, so to speak, in giving him pleasure; but Cas- 
 tanier had reached that degree of passion, due to 
 habit, that made it impossible for him to notice any- 
 thing. 
 
 " I have a box for the Gymnase this evening," he 
 said; " let us dine early so as not to dine post- 
 haste." 
 
 "Go with Jenny. I am tired of the theatre. I 
 don't know what's the matter with me to-night, but 
 I prefer to sit by the fire." 
 
 "Come all the same, Naqui; 1 haven't long to 
 bore you with my attentions. Yes, Quiqui, I am 
 going away to-night and shall not return for some 
 time. I leave you mistress of everything here. 
 Will you keep your heart for me?" 
 
 " Neither my heart nor anything else. But, when 
 you come back, Naqui will still be Naqui to you." 
 
 " That's frank, upon my word. So you won't go 
 with me?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Why not?" 
 
 " Why, can I leave the lover who writes me such 
 sweet notes as that?" she said, with a smile, point- 
 ing with a half-mocking gesture to the charred 
 paper.
 
 62 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 "Can it be true?" queried Castanier. "Have 
 you a lover?" 
 
 "What!" rejoined Aquilina, "have you never 
 considered yourself seriously, my dear? In the first 
 place, you're fifty years old ! Then you have a face 
 to put on a fruit-woman's stand, for no one would 
 ever contradict her when she tried to sell it for a 
 pumpkin. When you come upstairs, you puff like 
 a porpoise. Your paunch quivers like a diamond on 
 a woman's head ! No matter if you did serve in the 
 dragoons, you're a very ugly old fellow! Gad ! I 
 don't advise you, if you want to retain my esteem, 
 to add to the qualities I have mentioned the absurd 
 folly of thinking that such a girl as I am can get 
 along without tempering your asthmatic love with 
 the flowers of some pretty youth " 
 
 " Of course you are joking, Aquilina?" 
 
 " Well, aren't you joking, too? Do you take me 
 for a fool that you talk about going away? 'I am 
 going away this evening,' " she said, mimicking 
 him. " You great drone, would you talk like that if 
 you were going to leave your Naqui? You would 
 cry like the calf that you are!" 
 
 " But, if I do go, will you go with me?" he asked. 
 
 " Tell me first if this talk about a journey isn't a 
 poor joke?" 
 
 " No; seriously, I am going away." 
 
 "Very well, then, seriously, I will stay here. A 
 pleasant journey, my boy! I'll wait for you. I 
 would rather leave life than leave my dear little 
 Paris."
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 63 
 
 " You won't come to Italy, to Naples, to lead a 
 pleasant, lazy, luxurious life, with your old man who 
 puffs like a porpoise?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Ingrate!" 
 
 "Ingrate?" she said, rising, "I can leave this 
 house instantly, carrying nothing but my person. I 
 have given you all the treasures a young girl pos- 
 sesses, and something that all your blood and mine 
 cannot give back to me. If I could, by any means 
 whatever, by selling my immortality, for instance, 
 recover the purity of my body as I have, perhaps, 
 recovered that of my soul, and could give myself to 
 my lover as pure as a lily, I would not hesitate one 
 second ! With what devotion have you rewarded 
 mine? You have fed and housed me from the same 
 feeling that leads one to feed a dog and give him a 
 kennel to sleep in, because he keeps good watch over 
 us, because he receives our kicks when we are in a 
 bad humor, and licks our hand as soon as we call him 
 back. Which of us two has been the more generous?" 
 
 "Oh! my dear child, don't you see that I am 
 joking," rejoined Castanier. " I am going on a little 
 trip that won't last long. But you must come to 
 the Gymnase with me; I shall start about midnight, 
 after saying adieu to you." 
 
 " My poor boy, so you are really going away?" 
 she said, taking him by the neck and drawing his 
 head down upon her bosom. 
 
 "You're suffocating me!" cried Castanier, with 
 his nose against Aquilina's breast.
 
 64 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 The honest girl put her lips to Jenny's ear: 
 
 " Go and tell Leon not to come until one o'clock. 
 If you don't find him and he arrives during our fare- 
 well, keep him in your room. Well," she said aloud, 
 holding Castanier's face in front of her own and 
 pulling his nose, " well, then, O loveliest of por- 
 poises, I will go to the theatre with you to-night. 
 But, in that case, let us have dinner! You have a 
 nice little dinner, everything that you like." 
 
 " It's very hard to leave a woman like you!" said 
 Castanier. 
 
 " Why do you go, then?" she asked. 
 
 "Ah! why? why? To explain it to you, I must 
 tell you things that would prove to you that my love 
 goes to the point of madness. If you have given me 
 your honor, I have sold mine, so we are quits. Is 
 that love?" 
 
 "What does that amount to?" she replied. 
 " Come, tell me that, if I had a lover, you would 
 continue to love me like a father; that would be 
 love! Come, tell me at once and give me your 
 hand on it." 
 
 " I would kill you," said Castanier, with a smile. 
 
 They adjourned to the dining-room, and went to 
 the Gymnase after they had dined. When the first 
 play was at an end, Castanier determined to speak 
 to certain acquaintances whom he had noticed in the 
 audience, in order to avert as long as possible any 
 suspicion that he had absconded. He left Madame 
 de la Garde in her box, which, in accordance with 
 her modest habits, was one of the best in the house,
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 65 
 
 and went out to saunter in the foyer. He had taken 
 but a few steps, when he recognized the features of 
 Melmoth, whose glance caused him the same inward 
 burning sensation, the same terror that he had felt 
 before; in a moment they stood face to face. 
 
 " Forger!" cried the Englishman. 
 
 When he heard that word, Castanier glanced at 
 the people who were walking near them. He fancied 
 that he detected an expression of amazement mingled 
 with curiosity upon their faces, and determined to 
 rid himself of the Englishman on the spot; he raised 
 his hand to strike him, but he felt that his arm was 
 paralyzed by an irresistible power, which took pos- 
 session of his strength and nailed him to the spot; 
 he allowed the stranger to take his arm, and they 
 walked together up and down the foyer like two 
 friends. 
 
 "Who is strong enough to resist me?" said the 
 Englishman. " Do you not know that everybody 
 on earth is bound to obey me, that I can do any- 
 thing? I read men's hearts, I see the future, I know 
 the past. I am here, and I may be elsewhere! 1 
 depend neither on time nor space nor distance. The 
 world is my servant. I have the faculty of being 
 always happy and of always imparting happiness. 
 My eye ' sees through walls, discovers treasures, 
 and 1 draw freely upon them. At a nod of my 
 head, palaces spring up, and my architect is never at 
 fault. I can make flowers bloom in any soil, pile up 
 gold and precious stones, procure women who are 
 never the same; in a word, everything yields to me. 
 5
 
 66 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 I could trade on the Bourse with perfect safety, if 
 the man who knows how to find gold where misers 
 bury it needed to draw upon other men's purses. 
 Feel, therefore, O miserable wretch doomed to ever- 
 lasting shame, feel the power of the claw that holds 
 you! Try to bend this arm of iron! soften this 
 heart of adamant! dare to stir from my side! If 
 you should be in the depths of the caverns under 
 the Seine, would you not hear my voice? If you 
 should enter the Catacombs, would you not see me? 
 My voice drowns the roar of the thunder, my eyes 
 rival the sun in brilliancy, for I am the equal of Him 
 who bears the light." 
 
 Castanier listened to those terrible words, nothing 
 in his feelings tended to contradict them, and he 
 walked by the Englishman's side, unable to leave 
 him. 
 
 " You belong to me, you have committed a crime. 
 So I have found at last the companion I sought. Do 
 you know your destiny? Ha! ha! you expected to 
 see a play, you shall not be disappointed, you shall 
 see two. Come, present me to Madame de la Garde 
 as one of your best friends. Am I not your last 
 hope?" 
 
 Castanier returned to his box, accompanied by the 
 stranger, whom he made haste to present to Madame 
 de la Garde according to the orders he had received. 
 Aquilina did not seem surprised to see Melmoth. 
 The Englishman declined to sit at the front of the 
 box, but insisted that Castanier should sit beside 
 his mistress. The Englishman's slightest wish was a
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 67 
 
 command that must be obeyed. The play about to 
 be performed was the last. At that time, the smaller 
 theatres gave only three plays. The Gymnase had 
 an actor just then who assured its popularity. Perlet 
 was to play the Comedien d'Etampes, a vaudeville in 
 which he played four different parts. When the 
 curtain rose, the stranger stretched his hand out 
 over the audience. Castanier uttered a cry of 
 alarm, but it stuck in his windpipe, which contracted 
 violently, for Melmoth pointed to the stage, thus 
 giving him to understand that he had ordered the 
 play to be changed. The cashier beheld Nucingen's 
 private office; his employer was there in consultation 
 with one of the higher officials from the prefecture 
 of police, who was describing Castanier's modus 
 operandi, and advising him of the robbery of his 
 safe, the forgery committed to his detriment, and the 
 flight of his cashier. A complaint was at once drawn 
 up, signed, and despatched to the king's attorney. 
 
 "Do you think we shall be in time?" asked 
 Nucingen. 
 
 " Yes," replied the officer; " he's at the Gymnase, 
 and suspects nothing." 
 
 Castanier fidgeted on his chair and attempted to 
 leave the box; but the hand Melmoth laid upon his 
 shoulder compelled him to remain, by the same 
 ghastly power whose effects we feel in a nightmare. 
 That man was nightmare personified, and weighed 
 upon Castanier like an atmosphere heavy with 
 poison. When the poor cashier turned to the Eng- 
 lishman to implore mercy, he encountered a glance of
 
 68 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 fire which shot forth electric currents, sharp points 
 of metal, as it were, which seemed to enter Casta- 
 nier's body, transfix him, and nail him to his chair. 
 
 " What have I done to you?" he said, in his dis- 
 tress, panting like a deer on the brink of a stream; 
 " what do you want of me?" 
 
 "Look!" cried Melmoth. 
 
 Castanier looked at what was taking place on the 
 stage. The scene had been changed, the play was 
 done; Castanier saw himself on the stage, alighting 
 from his carriage with Aquilina; but, just as they 
 were entering the courtyard of his house on Rue 
 Richer, the scene suddenly changed again and he 
 saw the interior of his apartment. Jenny was sit- 
 ting by the fire, in her mistress's bedroom, talking 
 with a subaltern of a regiment of the line then in 
 garrison in Paris. 
 
 "He is going away," said the sergeant, who 
 seemed to belong to a well-to-do family, " so I shall 
 be happy at my ease! I love Aquilina too dearly to 
 endure the thought of her belonging to that old toad ! 
 For my part, I will marry Madame de la Garde!" 
 cried the sergeant. 
 
 " Here are monsieur and madame, hide! Quick! 
 quick! go in here, Monsieur Leon!" said Jenny. 
 " Monsieur isn't likely to stay long." 
 
 Castanier saw the subaltern crawl behind Aqui- 
 lina's dresses in her dressing-room. Soon he him- 
 self came on once more and went through the parting 
 scene with his mistress, who made fun of him in her 
 asides to Jenny, talking to him all the while in the
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 69 
 
 sweetest, most affectionate tone. She wept with 
 one side of her face, smiled with the other. The 
 audience demanded a repetition of the scene. 
 
 "Accursed woman!" cried Castanier from his box. 
 
 Aquilina laughed till the tears rolled down her 
 cheeks, crying: 
 
 "Mon Dieu! what a comical Englishwoman Per- 
 let makes! Why, you're the only one in the whole 
 audience who isn't laughing, old boy! Laugh, I tell 
 you!" she said to the cashier. 
 
 Mel moth began to laugh in a way that made the 
 cashier shudder. The English chuckle wrung his 
 entrails and agitated his brain as if a surgeon had 
 trepanned him with a hot iron. 
 
 " They laugh! they laugh!" said Castanier, hys- 
 terically. 
 
 At that moment, instead of seeing the mock-mod- 
 est lady whom Perlet represented so comically, and 
 whose Anglo-French dialect kept the whole audi- 
 ence in a roar of laughter, the cashier saw himself 
 hurrying along Rue Richer, entering a cab on the 
 boulevard, making a bargain with the driver to take 
 him to Versailles. Again the scene changed. He 
 recognized the little one-eyed inn kept by his former 
 quartermaster, at the corner of Rue de 1'Orangerie 
 and Rue des Recollets. It was two o'clock in the 
 morning, the most profound silence reigned, no one 
 was watching his movements, post-horses were har- 
 nessed to his carriage, and it was on its way from a 
 house on Avenue de Paris, the residence of an Eng- 
 lishman in whose name it had been ordered, in order
 
 70 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 to avert suspicion. Castanier had his money and 
 his passports, he entered the carriage and started. 
 But at the barrier he saw divers gendarmes on foot 
 waiting for the carriage. He uttered a terrible cry 
 which a glance from Melmoth silenced. 
 
 "Look, and hold your peace!" said the English- 
 man. 
 
 In a moment, Castanier saw himself cast into 
 prison at the Conciergerie. Then, in the fifth act of 
 that drama entitled The Cashier, he saw himself, 
 three months later, leaving the Assize Court, sen- 
 tenced to twenty years' penal servitude. He cried 
 aloud once more when he saw himself on exhibition 
 on Place du Palais-de-Justice and branded by the 
 executioner's red-hot iron. Finally, in the last scene, 
 he was in the courtyard at Bice"tre, with sixty other 
 convicts, awaiting his turn to have the fetters riveted 
 on his leg. 
 
 "Mon Dieu! I cannot laugh any more!" said 
 Aquilina. "You are very dismal, my boy! what 
 in Heaven's name's the matter with you? That 
 gentleman isn't here now." 
 
 "Just a word, Castanier," said Melmoth, when 
 the performance was at an end and the box-opener 
 was putting on Madame de la Garde's cloak. 
 
 The corridor was crowded, flight was impossi- 
 ble. 
 
 "Well, what is it?" 
 
 " No human power can prevent you from escort- 
 ing Aquilina home, going to Versailles, and being 
 arrested."
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 71 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because the arm that holds you will not let you 
 go," said the Englishman. 
 
 Castanier would have liked to be able to say a 
 word, to annihilate himself, and disappear in the 
 depths of hell. 
 
 " If the devil should ask you for your soul, wouldn't 
 you give it to him in exchange for a power equal to 
 the power of God? At a single word, you could re- 
 store to Baron de Nucingen's strong-box the five 
 hundred thousand francs you took from it. Then, 
 by tearing up your letter of credit, you could wipe 
 out every trace of crime. Lastly, you would have 
 gold in oceans. You hardly believe any of this, do 
 you? Very good; if it all comes to pass, you will at 
 least believe in the devil." 
 
 " If it were possible!" said Castanier, joyfully. 
 
 " He who can do this," replied the Englishman, 
 "assures you that it is." 
 
 Melmoth put out his arm as he and Castanier and 
 Madame de la Garde were walking along the boule- 
 vard. A fine rain was falling, the ground was muddy, 
 the atmosphere heavy, and the sky black. The in- 
 stant that man's arm was extended, the sun shone 
 upon Paris. To Castanier it seemed to be a beautiful 
 July afternoon. The trees were covered with leaves, 
 and the good Parisians, in their Sunday clothes, 
 strolled along in two joyous lines. The liquorice- 
 water vendors were crying: " Fresh-made bever- 
 age!" Gorgeous equipages rolled by. The cashier 
 uttered a cry of terror. At that cry, the boulevard
 
 72 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 became damp and dark as before. Madame de la 
 Garde had entered the carriage. 
 
 " Come, come, hurry, my dear!" she said, " either 
 get in or stay out. Upon my word, you're as trying 
 to-night as this rain." 
 
 " What must I do?" Castanier asked Melmoth. 
 
 " Do you wish to take my place?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Very well, I will be at your apartments in a few 
 moments." 
 
 "Look you, Castanier, you're not in your ordi- 
 nary frame of mind," said Aquilina. "You're con- 
 templating something out of the way, you were too 
 glum and too thoughtful during the performance. 
 My dear boy, are you in need of anything that I can 
 give you? tell me." 
 
 " I am waiting until we get home to find out 
 whether you love me." 
 
 " It isn't worth while to wait," she said, throwing 
 her arms about his neck, " see this." 
 
 She kissed him passionately, to all appearance, 
 and showered upon him the cajoleries that, in crea- 
 tures of that class, become part of the stock in trade, 
 just as stage tricks are to an actress. 
 
 "Where does this music come from?" said Cas- 
 tanier. 
 
 "Well, well, so you hear music now, do you?" 
 
 "Heavenly music!" he replied. "I should say 
 that the strains come from on high." 
 
 "What! you have always refused to give me a 
 box at the Italiens, on the pretext that you couldn't
 
 IN AQUILINA'S DRESSING-ROOM 
 
 Castanier went into the dressing-room after light- 
 ing- the candle. The poor girl, dazed with fear, 
 followed him, and great was her astonishment when 
 Castanier, having put aside the dresses hanging 
 against the wall, revealed the subaltern. 
 
 "Come, my dear fellow" he said.
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 73 
 
 endure music, and now you're music-mad ! Why, 
 you're crazy! your music's in your noddle, old 
 dunderpate," she said, taking his head and rock- 
 ing it against her shoulder. "Say, papa, are the 
 carriage-wheels singing?" 
 
 "Just listen, Naqui ! If the angels sing for the 
 good Lord, it must be such singing as this; the 
 strains enter my body through every pore as well 
 as through my ears, and I know not how to describe 
 it to you, for it is as sweet as distilled honey!" 
 
 " Why, of course, the angels do entertain the good 
 Lord with music, for they are always represented 
 with harps. On my word of honor, he's mad!" 
 she said, as Castanier assumed the attitude of an 
 opium-eater in a trance. 
 
 They had reached the house. Castanier, en- 
 grossed by all that he had seen and heard, not 
 knowing whether he should believe or doubt, stag- 
 gered like a drunken man, bereft of reason. He re- 
 covered consciousness in Aquilina's room, whither 
 he had been carried by his mistress, the concierge, 
 and Jenny, for he had fainted on alighting from the 
 carriage. 
 
 " My friends, my friends, he is coming !" he ex- 
 claimed, burying himself in his easy-chair by the 
 fire, with a gesture of despair. 
 
 At that moment, Jenny heard the bell, went to the 
 door, and announced the Englishman as a gentleman 
 who said that he had an appointment with Castanier. 
 Melmoth suddenly appeared. There was a profound 
 silence. He looked at the concierge, the concierge
 
 74 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 left the room. He looked at Jenny, Jenny left the 
 room. 
 
 "Madame," he said to the courtesan, "permit 
 me to conclude a little matter that admits of no 
 delay." 
 
 He took Castanier's hand, and Castanier arose. 
 They went together into the unlighted salon, for 
 Melmoth's eye illumined the most dense darkness. 
 Fascinated by the strange expression of the unknown, 
 Aquilina remained helpless in her bedroom, inca- 
 pable of thinking of her lover, whom she believed 
 to be safely hidden in her maid's room, whereas 
 Jenny, surprised by Castanier's early return, had 
 hidden him in the dressing-room, as in the drama 
 witnessed by Melmoth and his victim. The door of 
 the apartment was closed with violence, and Cas- 
 tanier soon reappeared. 
 
 "What is the matter with you?" cried his mis- 
 tress, horror-struck. 
 
 The cashier's face was transformed. His ruddy 
 complexion had given place to the strange pallor 
 that made the stranger awe-inspiring and cold. His 
 eyes gave forth a threatening flame that wounded 
 one by its insufferable brilliancy. His affable man- 
 ner had become despotic and proud. To the courte- 
 san he seemed to have grown thin, his brow was 
 awful in its majesty, and he exhaled a terrifying cur- 
 rent that weighed upon others like a heavy atmos- 
 phere. Aquilina for a moment had a feeling of awe. 
 
 " What can have happened between that diabolical 
 man and you in so short a time?" she asked.
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 75 
 
 " I have sold my soul. I can feel that I am no 
 longer the same. He has taken my being and given 
 me his." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "You could not understand. Ah!" added Cas- 
 tanier, coldly, "that devil was right! I see every- 
 thing and know everything. You have deceived me!" 
 
 Those words froze Aquilina's blood. Castanier 
 went into the dressing-room after lighting the candle. 
 The poor girl, dazed with fear, followed him, and 
 great was her astonishment when Castanier, having 
 put aside the dresses hanging against the wall, re- 
 vealed the subaltern. 
 
 "Come, my dear fellow," he said, taking Leon 
 by the button of his coat and leading him into the 
 bedroom. 
 
 The Piedmontese, pale and desperate, had thrown 
 herself into her armchair. Castanier sat on the 
 couch by the hearth, leaving Aquilina's lover stand- 
 ing. 
 
 " You are an old soldier," said Leon, " I am ready 
 to give you satisfaction." 
 
 "You're a fool," retorted Castanier, dryly. " I 
 don't need to fight, I can kill whomever I please, 
 with a glance. I am going to tell you your story, 
 my boy. Why should I kill you? You have on your 
 neck a red line that I can see. The guillotine awaits 
 you. Yes, you will die on Place de Greve. You 
 belong to the executioner, nothing can save you. 
 You are one of a section of the Carbonari. You're 
 conspiring against the government."
 
 76 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 "You never told me that!" cried the Piedmontese 
 to Leon. 
 
 "So you don't know," continued the cashier, 
 "that the ministry decided this morning to prose- 
 cute your society? The procureur-general has taken 
 your names. You are denounced by traitors. At 
 this moment, they're at work preparing the charge 
 against you." 
 
 " Then it was you who betrayed him?" said Aqui- 
 lina, and she rose and rushed at Castanier with a 
 roar like that of a wounded lioness. 
 
 " You know me too well to believe it," he replied, 
 with an imperturbable manner that turned her to 
 stone. 
 
 " How do you know it, then?" 
 
 " I didn't know it until I went into the salon; but 
 now I see everything, I know everything, I can do 
 everything." 
 
 The subaltern was stupefied. 
 
 "Then save him, my friend!" cried the girl, 
 throwing herself at Castanier's feet. " Save him, 
 if you can do everything! I will love you, I will wor- 
 ship you, I will be your slave instead of your mis- 
 tress ! I will bow to your most extravagant caprices, 
 you shall do with me what you will ! Yes, I will find 
 something more than love for you; I will be as de- 
 voted as a daughter to her father, in addition to 
 But you understand, Rodolphe! However violent 
 my passions may be, I will always be yours! What 
 is there that I can say to you to move you? I will 
 invent new pleasures I God help me! if you want
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 77 
 
 me to do anything under heaven, to throw myself 
 out of the window, you have only to say: ' Leon!' 
 and I will jump into hell, welcome every variety of 
 suffering, disease, and sorrow, whatever you choose 
 to inflict on me!" 
 
 Castanier was unmoved. His only reply was to 
 point to Leon, and say, with a demoniacal laugh: 
 
 " The guillotine awaits him." 
 
 " No, he shall not leave this room, I will save 
 him!" she cried. "Yes, I will kill the man that 
 touches him! Why won't you consent to save 
 him?" she shrieked in a piercing voice, her eyes 
 aflame, her hair dishevelled. "Can you?" 
 
 " I can do anything." 
 
 " Why won't you save him?" 
 
 "Why?" cried Castanier in a voice that shook 
 the rafters. "Ah! I am having my revenge! It is 
 my trade to do harm." 
 
 "Die!" rejoined Aquilina, "he, my lover, die! is 
 it possible?" 
 
 She rushed to her commode, snatched a stiletto 
 from a work-basket, and leaped at Castanier, who 
 began to laugh. 
 
 " You know very well that steel cannot touch me 
 now." 
 
 Aquilina's arm relaxed like a harp-string suddenly 
 cut. 
 
 " Go, my dear fellow," said the cashier, turning 
 to the subaltern; "go about your business." 
 
 He put out his hand, and the soldier was obliged 
 to obey the superior force Castanier exerted.
 
 78 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 " I am in my own house, I might send to the com- 
 missioner of police and hand over to him a man 
 who comes into my house by stealth, but I prefer to 
 restore your liberty: 1 am a devil, not a spy." 
 
 " I will go with him!" said Aquilina. 
 
 "Go with him," Castanier retorted. "Jenny!" 
 
 Jenny answered his summons. 
 
 "Send the concierge to call a cab for them. 
 Here, Naqui," he added, taking a package of bank- 
 notes from his pocket, "you shall not leave a man 
 who still loves you, like a poor abandoned creature." 
 
 He handed her three hundred thousand francs; 
 Aquilina took them, threw them on the floor, spit on 
 them, stamped on them in a frenzy of despair. 
 
 "We will both go out on foot," she exclaimed, 
 "without a sou from you! Stay, Jenny." 
 
 " Good-night," retorted the cashier, picking up his 
 money. " I have just returned from a journey. 
 Jenny," he said, looking at the wondering lady's 
 maid, " you seem to me a good girl. You're without 
 a mistress; come here! For to-night you shall have a 
 master." 
 
 Aquilina, distrustful of everyone, went at once 
 with the subaltern to the house of one of her friends. 
 But Leon was under suspicion by the police, who 
 caused him to be followed wherever he went. He 
 was arrested a few days later, with his three friends, 
 as the newspapers of the day record. 
 
 The cashier was conscious of a complete change, 
 moral as well as physical. The former Castanier, 
 child, youth, lover, soldier, brave, deceived, married,
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 79 
 
 undeceived, cashier, passionate, a criminal through 
 love, no longer existed. His interior form had burst. 
 In a twinkling his brain had expanded, his senses 
 had broadened. His mind embraced the whole 
 world, he saw things as if he were placed at a tre- 
 mendous height. Before going to the play, he had 
 a most insane passion for Aquilina; rather than give 
 her up he would have shut his eyes to her infidel- 
 ity; that blind sentiment had faded away as a cloud 
 vanishes before the sun's rays. 
 
 Overjoyed to step into her mistress's shoes and 
 possess her fortune, Jenny did whatever the cashier 
 wished. But Castanier, having the power to read 
 the mind, discovered the real motive of that purely 
 physical devotion. So he amused himself with that 
 girl with the malicious greediness of a child who, 
 after squeezing the juice from a cherry, throws 
 away the stone. The next morning, at breakfast, 
 when she fancied herself duly installed as mistress 
 of the house, Castanier, as he drank his coffee, re- 
 peated to her word for word, thought for thought, 
 what she was saying to herself. 
 
 " Do you know what you're thinking, my girl?" 
 he said, with a smile; "this is it: ' This lovely violet- 
 wood furniture that I wanted so badly, and these 
 beautiful dresses that I've been trying on, are mine! 
 They have cost me only a few trifles that madame 
 refused him, I don't know why! Faith, for the sake 
 of riding in a carriage, having fine clothes, having a 
 box at the theatre, and obtaining a nice little income, 
 I'd give him enjoyment enough to kill him, if he
 
 80 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 weren't as lusty as a Turk. I never saw such a 
 man!' Is that about it?" he continued, in a voice 
 that made Jenny turn pale. "Well, my girl, you 
 wouldn't hold to your bargain, and it's for your own 
 good that I send you away; you would die at the 
 task. Come, let us part good friends." 
 
 He dismissed her coldly, giving her a small sum. 
 
 The first use Castanier had promised himself to 
 make of the terrible power he had purchased at the 
 price of his everlasting salvation was to satisfy his 
 inclinations fully and absolutely. After putting his 
 affairs in order, and settling his accounts satisfac- 
 torily with Monsieur de Nucingen, who hired an 
 honest German to succeed him, he determined to 
 have a debauch worthy of the Roman Empire at its 
 best, and plunged into it as desperately as Belshaz- 
 zar attacked his last feast. But, like Belshazzar, 
 he distinctly saw a hand gleaming with light writing 
 his doom in the midst of his carousing, not on the 
 narrow walls of a room, but on the boundless walls 
 upon which the rainbow appears. His feast was 
 not, in truth, a revel confined to the limits of a ban- 
 quet, it was a reckless squandering of every element 
 of strength and enjoyment. The earth itself was, 
 in a manner, the festive board that he felt quiver- 
 ing beneath his feet. It was the last revel of a 
 debauchee who spares nothing. Drawing without 
 stint upon the treasure of human lust, the key of 
 which had been handed him by the demon, he soon 
 reached the bottom. That enormous power, grasped 
 in a moment, was put to the test, found reliable, and
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 8l 
 
 abused. That which was everything was nothing. 
 It often happens that possession ruins the most 
 ecstatic poems of desire, for the object possessed 
 rarely answers to desire's dreams. That pitiful 
 ending of a few passions was the secret concealed 
 beneath Melmoth's omnipotence. The emptiness of 
 human nature was abruptly revealed to his successor, 
 to whom supreme power brought nothingness by 
 way of dowry. In order to understand clearly the 
 peculiar situation in which Castanier was placed, 
 one must be able to form an idea of its swift trans- 
 formations, and to conceive how brief was their dura- 
 tion, a thing which it is difficult to explain to those 
 who are imprisoned by the laws of time, space, and 
 distance. His broadened faculties had changed the 
 relations that formerly existed between the world 
 and himself. Like Melmoth, Castanier could in a 
 few seconds alight in the smiling valleys of Hindos- 
 tan, fly upon demons' wings across the African 
 deserts, and skim along the surface of the sea. Just 
 as his keenness of vision enabled him to go to the 
 root of everything the instant that his faculties were 
 directed upon any material object, or into another 
 person's mind, so his tongue tasted, so to speak, all 
 the delicious flavors at one touch. His pleasure 
 resembled the blows of the axe of despotism, which 
 fells the tree in order to obtain the fruit. The trans- 
 itions, the alternations which furnish a measure of 
 joy and suffering, and give variety to all human 
 pleasures, had no existence for him. His palate, 
 sensitive beyond all measure, had suddenly been 
 6
 
 82 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 spoiled through being surfeited with everything. 
 Women and good cheer were two varieties of pleas- 
 ure which palled upon him so completely as soon 
 as he was able to enjoy them in such way as to 
 out-pleasure pleasure, that he ceased to have the 
 slightest desire to eat or to love. Knowing that he 
 was the master of all the women he might desire, 
 and knowing that he was possessed of a power 
 which would never fail him, he wanted no more of 
 women; finding them prepared in advance to submit 
 to his most outrageous caprices, he felt a horrible 
 thirst for love, and wished them to be more loving 
 than it was in their power to be. But the only things 
 the world denied him were faith and prayer, those 
 two healing and consoling loves. Everyone obeyed 
 him. It was a ghastly state of affairs. The torrents 
 of sorrows, of pleasures, of thoughts, that shook his 
 body and his soul would have been too much for 
 the strongest human being ; but there was in him 
 a power of living proportioned to the violence of the 
 sensations that assailed him. He felt within him an 
 enormous something which the earth no longer satis- 
 fied. He passed the day spreading his wings, seek- 
 ing to traverse the spheres of light of which he had 
 a distinct and distressing intuition. He was drying 
 up internally, for he was hungry and thirsty for 
 things which could not be eaten or drunk, but which 
 attracted him irresistibly. His lips glowed with 
 desire, like Melmoth's own, and he panted for the 
 UNKNOWN, for he knew everything. Being per- 
 mitted to see the active principle and the mechanism
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 83 
 
 of the world, he ceased to admire their results, and 
 soon manifested that profound contempt which makes 
 the man of superior mould like a sphinx who knows 
 everything, sees everything, and remains silent and 
 unmoved. He did not feel the slightest inclination 
 to communicate his knowledge to other men. Rich 
 in the possession of the whole earth, and endowed 
 with the power to encircle it at one bound, wealth 
 and power no longer had any meaning for him. He 
 experienced that ghastly depression attaching to 
 supreme power which only God and Satan can 
 overcome by an activity of which they alone possess 
 the secret. 
 
 Castanier had not, like his master, an inexhausti- 
 ble power of hatred and evil-doing; he felt that he 
 was a demon, but a demon in futuro, whereas Satan 
 is a demon for all eternity; nothing can redeem him, 
 and he knows it, so he takes pleasure in stirring up 
 the world with his three-pronged fork, as if it were 
 a dungheap, and interfering with God's projects. 
 Unluckily for Castanier, he retained a shadow of 
 hope. He could go abruptly, in an instant, from 
 pole to pole, as a bird flies desperately from side to 
 side of its cage; but when he had taken that flight, 
 like the bird, he saw boundless space. He had a 
 vision of the infinite which made it impossible for 
 him to regard human affairs as other men regard 
 them. The madmen who desire the power of the 
 devil judge that power from their standpoint as 
 human beings, not foreseeing that they must shoul- 
 der the devil's ideas when they assume his power,
 
 84 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 while they continue to be men and to remain among 
 other men who can no longer understand them. The 
 unpublished Nero who dreams of burning Paris for 
 his diversion, just as a supposititious conflagration is 
 represented on the stage, does not suspect that Paris 
 will become to him what an ant-hill by the roadside 
 is to the hurried traveller. The sciences were to 
 Castanier what an enigma is to him who knows the 
 answer. Kings and governments aroused his pity. 
 His grand debauch, therefore, was, in a certain 
 sense, a deplorable farewell to his human state. 
 He felt stifled on earth, for his infernal power en- 
 abled him to watch the processes of creation, whose 
 moving causes and final result he knew. Knowing 
 that he was excluded from what men call heaven in 
 every language, he could think of nothing but heaven. 
 He understood the inward shrivelling depicted on his 
 predecessor's face, he measured the significance of 
 that glance inflamed by a hope never fulfilled, he 
 experienced the thirst that parched that red lip, and 
 the distress of a constant combat between two ex- 
 panded natures. He might yet be an angel, he was 
 a devil. He resembled the sweet creature who was 
 imprisoned by the ill-will of a sorcerer in a deformed 
 body, and, being bound by the terms of her compact, 
 required the assistance of another person's will to 
 destroy the hated envelope. Just as the truly great 
 man is the more eager in his search for infinity of 
 sentiment in a woman's heart, after being deceived, 
 so Castanier suddenly found himself beset by a 
 single idea, the idea which was, perhaps, the key to
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 85 
 
 the worlds above. By virtue of the very fact that he 
 had renounced his hope of everlasting happiness, 
 he could think of nothing but the future of those who 
 pray and believe. When, upon the conclusion of 
 the debauch during which he took possession of his 
 power, he felt the clutch of that sentiment, he ex- 
 perienced the agony that the sanctified poets, the 
 apostles, and the great oracles of the faith have de- 
 scribed in such grandiose terms. Spurred on by the 
 flaming sword whose sharp point he felt in his loins, 
 he ran to Melmoth's house to see what had become 
 of his predecessor. The Englishman lived on Rue 
 Ferou, near Saint-Sulpice, in a gloomy, dark, damp, 
 cold house. That street, which runs north and south 
 like all those which strike the left bank of the Seine 
 at right angles, is one of the most dismal in Paris, and 
 its characteristics are reflected in the houses that line 
 it. When Castanier stood in the doorway, he saw 
 that it was draped with black, as was the vestibule. 
 The vestibule gleamed with the lights of a mortuary 
 apartment. A temporary cenotaph had been erected 
 there, and a priest stood on each side. 
 
 " I need not ask you why you have come, mon- 
 sieur," said an old portress to Castanier: " you look 
 too much like the poor dear deceased. If you're his 
 brother, you have come too late to bid him good-bye. 
 The excellent man died the night before last." 
 
 "How did he die?" Castanier asked one of the 
 priests. 
 
 "Be happy," an old priest answered, raising one 
 side of the black cloths that surrounded the cenotaph.
 
 86 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 Castanier saw one of those faces which faith 
 makes sublime, and through whose pores the soul 
 seems to go forth to shine upon other men and ex- 
 cite them by persistently instilling sentiments of 
 charity. The priest was Sir John Melmoth's con- 
 fessor. 
 
 "Monsieur, your brother," he said, "made an 
 end worthy of emulation, which must have rejoiced 
 the hearts of the angels. Do you know what joy is 
 aroused in heaven by the conversion of one single 
 soul? The tears of repentance, called forth by 
 divine grace, flowed unceasingly; death alone could 
 dry them. The Holy Spirit was in him. His ardent, 
 earnest words were worthy of the prophet-king. 
 While it is true that 1 have never, in the course 
 of my life, heard a more horrifying confession than 
 that of this Irish gentleman, it is equally true that I 
 have never heard more fervent prayers than his. 
 Great as his sins may have been, his repentance 
 filled the abyss in an instant. God's hand was 
 visibly extended over him, for he did not resemble 
 himself; he had become so beautiful, with a saintlike 
 beauty. His eyes, once so hard, were softened by 
 his tears; his voice, once so resonant and terrifying, 
 acquired the softness and charm which distinguish 
 the voices of men who have humbled themselves. 
 He so edified those who listened to his words, that 
 the persons drawn hither by the spectacle of that 
 Christian death fell upon their knees as they heard 
 him glorify God, tell of His infinite grandeur, and 
 discourse of heavenly things. Although he leaves
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 87 
 
 his family nothing, he has surely bestowed upon it 
 the most precious treasure that families can possess, 
 a sanctified soul that will watch over you all and lead 
 you in the straight path." 
 
 These words produced such a powerful effect upon 
 Castanier, that he left the house abruptly and walked 
 toward Saint-Sulpice, obeying a sort of fatality; Mel- 
 moth's repentance had bewildered him. About that 
 time, a man, famous for his eloquence, was holding 
 conferences on certain days, in the morning, his aim 
 being to demonstrate the verities of the Catholic 
 Church to the youth of the period, who had been de- 
 clared, by another no less eloquent voice, to be in- 
 different in the matter of faith. The conference on 
 that day was to be followed by the Irishman's 
 funeral. Castanier arrived at the precise moment 
 when the preacher was about to sum up the proofs of 
 our happy future, with the unctuous charm, with the 
 penetrating eloquence, which made him illustrious. 
 The ex-dragoon, into whose skin the devil had crept, 
 was in the most favorable condition to receive with 
 fruitful results the seed of the divine words as in- 
 terpreted by the priest. In truth, if there is one 
 indubitable phenomenon, is it not the moral phenom- 
 enon which the common people have called the char- 
 coal-burner's faith?* The power of faith is in direct 
 ratio to the greater or less use a man has made of 
 his reasoning powers. Men of simple lives, and sol- 
 diers, are of this number. They who have marched 
 
 *Lafoi du charbonnier , a phrase used to express a faith that is absolute and 
 unquestioning.
 
 88 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 under the banner of instinct are much better fitted 
 to receive the light than they whose minds and 
 hearts have become fatigued in the subtleties of the 
 world. From the age of sixteen until he was nearly 
 forty, Castanier, a man of the South, had followed 
 the French flag. A simple cavalryman, obliged to 
 fight yesterday and to-day and to-morrow, he natu- 
 rally thought of his horse before thinking of himself. 
 During his military apprenticeship, therefore, he had 
 few hours to think of the future of mankind. As 
 an officer, he had given his thoughts to his soldiers, 
 and he had gone from battle-field to battle-field with- 
 out once thinking of the day after death. Military 
 life calls for few ideas. Men who are incapable of 
 rising to the height of those lofty combinations 
 which embrace the rights and duties of nations with 
 respect to one another, political plans as well as 
 plans of campaign, the science of the tactician and 
 that of the administrator such men live in a state of 
 ignorance comparable to that of the stupidest peasant 
 in the least progressive province of France. They 
 go forward, passively obeying the mind that com- 
 mands them, and kill the men in front of them as 
 the wood-cutter fells trees in a forest. They pass 
 and repass constantly from a state of violent excite- 
 ment which calls for the exertion of all their physi- 
 cal strength, to a state of repose during which they 
 repair their losses. They strike and drink, they 
 strike and eat, they strike and sleep, in order that 
 they may strike more effectively. In that life of 
 turmoil their mental qualities are exercised but little.
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 89 
 
 The mental equipment retains its primitive simplicity. 
 When these men, who exhibit such energy on the 
 field of battle, return to civilization, the greater part 
 of those who have remained in the lower grades are 
 without acquired ideas, without faculties, without 
 breadth. So that the younger generation is amazed 
 to find those members of our glorious and terrible 
 armies as devoid of intelligence as any clerk, and as 
 simple-minded as children. It would be hard to find 
 a captain in the death-dealing Garde Imperiale who 
 is fitted to sign receipts for subscriptions to a news- 
 paper. When old soldiers are in this condition, their 
 minds, innocent of reasoning power, obey any power- 
 ful impulsion. The crime committed by Castanier 
 was one of those facts which raise so many questions, 
 that, in order to discuss it, the moralist would have 
 demanded a division of the question, to employ a 
 parliamentary expression. The crime was suggested 
 by passion, by one of those instances of feminine 
 witchcraft so irresistible that no man can say: "I will 
 never do that," when a siren takes a hand in the 
 struggle and exerts her fascinations. The word of 
 life therefore fell upon a mind new to the religious 
 truths which the French Revolution and the life of a 
 soldier had caused Castanier to neglect. The awful 
 words: " You will be happy or unhappy throughout 
 eternity!" made the more violent impression upon 
 him because he had grown weary of earth, because 
 he had shaken it like a tree without fruit, and be- 
 cause, in the impotence of his desires, nothing more 
 was needed than that a certain point in heaven or
 
 90 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 earth should be forbidden to him, to make his heart 
 yearn for it. If we may be permitted to compare 
 such momentous things with social trifles, he resem- 
 bled those multi-millionaire bankers whom no one 
 in society can resist, but who, not having been ad- 
 mitted to the circles of nobility, have no other desire 
 than to be so admitted, and count for nothing all 
 the social privileges they may have acquired so long 
 as one is still lacking. That man, more powerful 
 than all the kings on earth, that man, who could, 
 like Satan, contend with God himself, stood leaning 
 against one of the pillars of Saint-Sulpice, bowed by 
 the weight of a sentiment and buried in thoughts 
 of the future, even as Melmoth had buried himself. 
 
 " He is very fortunate!" cried Castanier, " he died 
 with the certainty of going to heaven." 
 
 Instantly a most complete change took place in the 
 cashier's ideas. Having been a demon for several 
 days, he was now a mere man once more, the image 
 of the original fall commemorated in all cosmogonies. 
 But, though he became outwardly small, he had ac- 
 quired a source of inward grandeur, he had dipped 
 into the infinite. The infernal power had revealed 
 to him the divine power. His thirst for heaven was 
 more intense than his hunger had been for earthly 
 pleasures, so soon exhausted. The enjoyments the 
 devil promises are only those of 'earth intensified, 
 whereas the joys of heaven are without bounds. 
 That man believed in God. The words that de- 
 livered the treasures of the world to him were as 
 nothing in his sight, and those treasures seemed to
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 91 
 
 him as contemptible as pebbles are in the eyes of 
 those who love diamonds; for, as he saw them, they 
 were mere tinsel in comparison with the undying 
 beauties of the other life. To his mind, any good 
 coming from that source was accursed. He remained 
 plunged in an abyss of dark shadows and depressing 
 thoughts, listening to the service for Melmoth. The 
 Dies Irce terrified him. He understood in all its 
 grandeur that cry of the penitent soul shuddering in 
 presence of the Divine Majesty. He was suddenly 
 consumed by the Holy Spirit as fire consumes straw. 
 Tears flowed from his eyes. 
 
 "Are you a kinsman of the deceased?" inquired 
 the beadle. 
 
 " His heir," replied Castanier. 
 
 "Something for the cost of the service!" cried 
 the beadle. 
 
 " No," said the cashier, who did not choose to 
 give the devil's money to the church. 
 
 " For the poor!" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " For repairing the church!" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "For the chapel of the Virgin!" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " For the seminary!" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Castanier withdrew, to avoid the angry glances 
 of several churchmen. 
 
 "Why," he said to himself as he gazed at Saint-Sul- 
 pice, "why did men build these gigantic cathedrals,
 
 92 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 which I have seen in all countries? This senti- 
 ment, which the masses have shared in all ages, 
 must rest upon something." 
 
 "You call God something!" cried his conscience. 
 "God! God! God!" 
 
 That word, echoed by an inward voice, over- 
 whelmed him, but his sensation of terror was 
 allayed by the distant strains of the divine music 
 which he had already vaguely heard. He attrib- 
 uted those harmonious sounds to the choir of the 
 church, and gazed at the great doorway. But by 
 listening more attentively, he found that the sound 
 seemed to come from all sides; he looked about and 
 saw no musicians anywhere. While that melody 
 wafted into his soul the azure poesy and distant 
 gleams of hope, it also increased the activity of the 
 remorse which tormented the doomed man, who 
 went about Paris as men go who are crushed by 
 sorrow. He looked at everything and saw nothing, 
 he walked at random after the manner of idlers; he 
 stopped for no cause, talked to himself, and took no 
 pains to avoid being struck by a board or the wheel 
 of a carriage. Repentance insensibly delivered him 
 over to that grace which crushes the heart gently 
 and at the same time pitilessly. Soon there was in 
 his face, as in Melmoth's, a something grand, but 
 distraught; a cold, disconsolate expression like that of 
 a man in despair, and the breathless eagerness born 
 of hope; and, over and above all else, his heart was 
 filled with disgust for all the good things of this in- 
 ferior world. His glance, terrifying in its keenness,
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 93 
 
 concealed the most humble prayers. He suffered 
 in proportion to his power. His soul, violently 
 agitated, forced his body to bend, as a fierce wind 
 bends the lofty firs. No more than his predecessor 
 could he refuse to live, for he did not wish to die 
 under the yoke of hell. His punishment became 
 unendurable to him. At last, one morning, it oc- 
 curred to him that Melmoth of blessed memory had 
 suggested to him that he take his place and that he 
 had accepted; that other men could undoubtedly be 
 found who would do as he had done; and that, at an 
 epoch whose fatal indifference in religious matters 
 was loudly proclaimed by the inheritors of the elo- 
 quence of the Fathers of the Church, he ought easily 
 to find a man who would agree to the stipulations of 
 the contract in order to reap its advantages. 
 
 " There is a place where the value of kings is 
 quoted, where nations are weighed, where systems 
 are compared, where governments are measured by 
 the crown of a hundred sous, where ideas and creeds 
 are appraised, where everything is discounted, where 
 God himself borrows and pledges his income in souls 
 as surety, for the Pope has an account current there. 
 If I can find a soul for sale anywhere, is not that the 
 place?" 
 
 Castanier joyously bent his steps to the Bourse, 
 thinking that he could traffic in a soul there as in the 
 public funds. An ordinary man would have been 
 afraid of being laughed at; but Castanier knew by 
 experience that everything wears a serious aspect to 
 the man in despair. Like the condemned felon who
 
 94 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 would listen to a madman if he should tell him that 
 by pronouncing certain absurd words he could fly 
 away through the keyhole, the man who suffers is 
 credulous and does not abandon an idea until it has 
 failed, as the branch breaks in the hand of the drown- 
 ing man. About four o'clock, Castanier made his 
 appearance among the groups formed, after the close 
 of dealings in public securities, for trading in private 
 shares and for negotiating purely commercial trans- 
 actions. He was acquainted with several merchants, 
 and, by pretending to be in search of someone, was 
 able to listen to the current rumors concerning men 
 in embarrassed circumstances. 
 
 " Let me know, my boy, when I discount any of 
 Claparon and Company's paper for you! They let 
 the messenger from the Bank carry back their notes 
 that came due this morning," said a stout banker in 
 his blunt language. " If you have any of it, keep 
 it!" 
 
 This Claparon was in the courtyard, talking ear- 
 nestly with a man who was known to discount notes 
 at usurious rates. Castanier at once walked toward 
 them. 
 
 Claparon was a speculator noted for taking the 
 chances of bold ventures which might ruin him as 
 well as enrich him. When Castanier approached 
 him, the money-lender had just left him and the 
 speculator had allowed a gesture of despair to escape 
 him. 
 
 " Well, Claparon, so we have a hundred thousand 
 francs to pay at the Bank, and here it is four o'clock;
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 95 
 
 everybody knows it, and we have no time to arrange 
 our little failure," said Castanier. 
 
 " Monsieur!" 
 
 " Speak lower," rejoined the cashier. " Suppose 
 I should suggest a transaction in which you could 
 pick up as much gold as you wanted?" 
 
 " It wouldn't pay my debts, for I don't know of 
 any sort of a transaction that doesn't require time 
 to cook." 
 
 " I know of one that would enable you to pay 
 them in a moment," replied Castanier, " but which 
 would require you to " 
 
 "To what?" 
 
 " To sell your interest in paradise. Isn't that as 
 legitimate a trade as any other? We are all stock- 
 holders in the great enterprise of eternity." 
 
 " Do you know that I'm just in the mood to horse- 
 whip you?" said Claparon, angrily; " it isn't fair to 
 crack foolish jokes on a man who is down!" 
 
 " I am speaking seriously," rejoined Castanier, 
 taking a package of bank-notes from his pocket. 
 
 " In the first place," said Claparon, " I won't sell 
 my soul to the devil for a trifle. I need five hundred 
 thousand francs to go " 
 
 "Who talks of being niggardly?" retorted Cas- 
 tanier, sharply. " You shall have more money than 
 the Bank vaults will hold." 
 
 He held out a pile of notes which decided the 
 speculator. 
 
 "Done!" said he. "But how do we arrange 
 it?"
 
 Cj6 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 " Come over yonder where there isn't anybody," 
 said Castanier, pointing to a corner of the court- 
 yard. 
 
 Claparon and his tempter exchanged a few words, 
 each with his face turned toward the wall. None 
 of those who had noticed them guessed the object of 
 that private conference, although their curiosity was 
 keenly aroused by the extraordinary character of the 
 gestures made by the two contracting parties. When 
 Castanier returned, the bystanders uttered loud ex- 
 clamations of amazement. As in all assemblages of 
 Frenchmen, where the slightest incident attracts at- 
 tention at once, all faces were turned toward the 
 two men who were the cause of the excitement; 
 and not without a feeling of horror did they observe 
 the change that had taken place in them. At the 
 Bourse, it is the common custom for brokers to walk 
 about as they converse, so that everybody who is in 
 the crowd is soon seen and observed, for the Bourse 
 is like a large bouillotte table, where the skilful 
 players are able to detect a man's style of play and 
 the condition of his purse from his face. So it was 
 that everyone had noticed Claparon's face and Cas- 
 tanier's. The latter, like the Irishman, was nervous 
 and forceful, his eyes shone, his complexion was 
 clear. Everyone had been amazed at that majesti- 
 cally terrible countenance and had wondered where 
 worthy Castanier had obtained it; but Castanier, 
 stripped of his power, was a faded, wrinkled, feeble, 
 prematurely old man. When he led Claparon away, 
 he was like a sick man in an attack of fever, or like
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 97 
 
 a theriaki in the momentary exaltation caused by 
 opium; but, when he returned, he was in the state 
 of prostration which follows fever and during which 
 sick men expire, or else in the terrible depression 
 caused by excessive indulgence in narcotics. The 
 demoniacal spirit that had enabled him to endure his 
 wild debauches had disappeared; the body was left 
 alone, exhausted, without support, without protec- 
 tion against the assaults of remorse and the weight 
 of true repentance. Claparon, whose mental suffer- 
 ing everyone had understood, reappeared, on the 
 contrary, with gleaming eyes and the pride of Luci- 
 fer on his face. Bankruptcy had passed from one 
 face to the other. 
 
 " Go and die in peace, old boy," said Claparon to 
 Castanier. 
 
 " In pity's name, send for a carriage for me and a 
 priest, the vicar of Saint-Sulpice!" replied the ex- 
 dragoon, sitting down on a stone. 
 
 The words " a priest" were overheard by several 
 persons and aroused a sneering murmur from the 
 brokers, a class of men whose only faith consists in 
 the belief that a bit of paper called a certificate is 
 worth a domain. The register of the public debt 
 is their Bible. 
 
 "Shall I have time to repent? "said Castanier 
 in a piteous voice that made a deep impression on 
 Claparon. 
 
 A cab carried away the moribund. The speculator 
 went at once to pay his notes at the Bank. The 
 impression produced by the sudden change of face 
 7
 
 98 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 between the two men faded away in the crowd as 
 the wake of a ship fades away on the sea. News 
 of the utmost importance aroused the attention of the 
 business world. At that hour, when every selfish 
 interest is at stake, Moses, appearing with his two 
 luminous horns, would hardly obtain the honors of a 
 pun, and would be denied by men preparing to make 
 reports. When Claparon had paid his notes, he was 
 stricken with dread. He was convinced of his 
 power, returned to the Bourse, and offered his bar- 
 gain to other embarrassed traders. "The invest- 
 ment in the consols of hell, with the privileges 
 attached to the enjoyment thereof," according to the 
 expression of a notary whom Claparon made his 
 successor, brought seven hundred thousand francs. 
 The notary sold the treaty with the devil for five 
 hundred thousand to a building contractor, who dis- 
 posed of it for three hundred thousand to an iron- 
 monger; and he passed it on to a carpenter for two 
 hundred thousand. At last, about five o'clock, no 
 one believed in the strange contract, and purchasers 
 were shy from lack of faith. 
 
 At half-past five, the owner was a house-painter, 
 who was standing near the door of the temporary 
 Bourse, then located on Rue Feydeau. This house- 
 painter, a simple-minded creature, did not know 
 what he had within him. " It was everything," he 
 said to his wife, when he went home. 
 
 Rue Feydeau is, as all idlers know, one of those 
 streets beloved of young men who, in default of a 
 mistress, marry the whole sex. On the first floor
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED 99 
 
 of the most commonplace and respectable of houses, 
 dwelt one of those ravishing creatures whom Heaven 
 delights to overburden with the rarest charms, and 
 who, as they cannot be duchesses or queens, because 
 there are more pretty women than titles or thrones, 
 content themselves with a banker or a broker, whom 
 they make happy at a stated price. This excellent 
 and lovely maiden, called Euphrasie, was the object 
 of the ambition of a notary's clerk whose ambition 
 was immeasurable. In truth, this second clerk of 
 Maitre Crottat, notary, was in love with that woman 
 as young men are wont to be in love at twenty-two. 
 He would have murdered the Pope and the whole 
 college of cardinals to procure a paltry hundred louis 
 which were required by Euphrasie for the purchase 
 of a shawl which had turned her head, and in ex- 
 change for which sum her maid had promised her to 
 the clerk. The lovelorn youth paced back and forth 
 in front of Madame Euphrasie's windows, like the 
 white bears in their cages at the Jardin des Plantes. 
 He had thrust his right hand under his waistcoat, 
 over his left breast, and was trying to tear out his 
 heart, but had succeeded only in twisting the elastics 
 of his suspenders. 
 
 " What can I do to get ten thousand francs?" he 
 was saying to himself. " Take the money I am to 
 carry with me when that deed is registered? Great 
 God ! that loan won't ruin the purchaser, he's a mil- 
 lionaire seven times over! To-morrow I will throw 
 myself at his feet, and say: ' Monsieur, I have taken 
 ten thousand francs of yours, I am twenty -two years
 
 100 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 old, and I love Euphrasie that's my story. My 
 father is rich, he will pay you the money, don't ruin 
 me! Haven't you ever been twenty-two years old 
 and mad with love?' But these miserly landowners 
 have no souls! He's quite capable of turning me 
 over to the king's attorney instead of being touched. 
 Sacredieu I if one could only sell his soul to the devil ! 
 But there's no God or devil either, they're all fiddle- 
 faddle, you never hear of them except in blue books 
 and from old women. What shall I do?" 
 
 " If you choose to sell your soul to the devil," 
 said the house-painter, who had overheard some of 
 the clerk's words, "you will have ten thousand 
 francs." 
 
 "Then I shall have Euphrasie," said the clerk, 
 grasping at the bargain proposed to him by the devil 
 in the guise of a house-painter. 
 
 The compact consummated, the frantic clerk went 
 and bought the shawl, rushed up to Madame Eu- 
 phrasie's apartment, and, as he had the devil in 
 him, he remained there twelve days without once 
 going out, squandering all his paradise there, think- 
 ing only of love and its orgies, in which the memory 
 of hell and its privileges was submerged. 
 
 Thus was the extraordinary power acquired by the 
 discovery of the Irishman, the offspring of the rev- 
 erend Mathurin, destroyed. 
 
 It was impossible for certain orientalists, mystics, 
 and archaeologists interested in such matters to de- 
 cide upon the method of invoking the demon. For 
 this reason:
 
 MELMOTH CONVERTED IOI 
 
 On the thirteenth day of his insane nuptials, the 
 poor clerk lay on his pallet in an attic in his em- 
 ployer's house on Rue Saint- Honore. Shame, that 
 stupid goddess who dares not look at herself, took 
 possession of the young man, who fell sick ; he 
 attempted to doctor himself, and made a mistake in 
 the dose of a curative drug which we owe to the 
 genius of a man well known on the walls of Paris. 
 So the clerk died from an overdose of quicksilver, 
 and his dead body turned as black as a mole's back. 
 Some devil had certainly passed that way, but what 
 one? Was it Astaroth? 
 
 " This estimable young man has been taken to 
 the planet Mercury," said the chief clerk to a 
 German demonologist who came to investigate the 
 affair. 
 
 " I can readily believe it," said the German. 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur," he continued, "that opinion ac- 
 cords with Jacob Boehm's own words in his forty- 
 eighth proposition concerning the Threefold Life of 
 Man, wherein it is said that 'if God accomplishes 
 all things by his FIAT, the FIAT is the secret matrix 
 which comprehends and grasps the nature formed 
 by the spirit born of Mercury and God.' " 
 
 " I beg your pardon, monsieur?" 
 
 The German repeated his citation. 
 
 " We don't understand," said the clerks. 
 
 " Fiat! " said one of them, "fiat lux! " 
 
 "You can satisfy yourselves of the accuracy of 
 this citation," said the German, "by reading the
 
 102 MELMOTH CONVERTED 
 
 passage, on page 75, of the Threefold Life of Man, 
 published in 1809 by Monsieur Migneret, and trans- 
 lated by a philosopher, a great admirer of the illus- 
 trious cobbler." 
 
 "Ah! he was a cobbler, was he?" said the chief 
 clerk. "Think of that!" 
 
 " In Prussia!" replied the German. 
 
 " Did he work for the king?" asked an unlettered 
 second clerk. 
 
 " He ought to have put patches on his sentences," 
 said the third clerk. 
 
 "That man is pyramidal !" cried the fourth clerk, 
 pointing to the German. 
 
 Although he was a demonologist of the first order, 
 the stranger did not know what mischievous devils 
 clerks are; he went away, not understanding their 
 jests, and convinced that those young men consid- 
 ered Boehm a pyramidal genius. 
 
 "There is education in France," he said to him- 
 self. 
 
 Paris, May 6, 1835.
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE
 
 TO THE READER 
 
 At the outset of the author's literary life, a friend long since 
 dead suggested to him the subject of this Study, which he 
 subsequently found in a collection of stories published about 
 the beginning of this century; and, according to his conjec- 
 ture, it is a fantastic creation written by Hoffman, of Berlin, 
 probably published in some German almanac, and overlooked 
 by his publishers in collecting his works. The HUMAN 
 COMEDY is sufficiently rich in original inventions for the 
 author to avow an innocent plagiarism ; like honest La Fon- 
 taine, he has treated in his own way, and unwittingly, a tale 
 already told. This was not one of the varieties of humor 
 fashionable in 1830, a period when every author did the atro- 
 cious to amuse young girls. When you reach Don Juan's 
 refined parricide, try to guess how, under almost identical cir- 
 cumstances, the honest folk would behave, who, in the nine- 
 teenth century, take an annuity on the strength of a chronic 
 catarrh, or those who let a house to an old woman for the rest 
 of her days? Would they try to bring their tenants to life? I 
 should be very glad if sworn weighers of consciences would 
 examine the question of what similarity there can possibly be 
 between Don Juan and those fathers who give their children 
 in marriage because of hopes. Does human society, which is 
 advancing in the path of progress, according to the view of 
 some philosophers, consider the art of waiting for dead men's 
 shoes a step in the right direction ? That art has given birth 
 to honorable professions, by means of which men live on 
 death. It is the business of certain people to hope for some- 
 body's death, they brood over it, they squat on a dead body 
 every morning and use it for a pillow at night : they are the 
 coadjutors, the cardinals, the supernumeraries, tontine holders, 
 etc. Add to these, many persons of delicate sensibilities, who 
 (105)
 
 106 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 are anxious to buy an estate the price of which exceeds their 
 means, but who coolly and logically reckon the chances of life 
 remaining to their fathers, mothers-in-law, septuagenarians or 
 octogenarians, saying: "Within three years, I must neces- 
 sarily inherit, and then " A murderer disgusts us less than 
 a spy. The murderer may have yielded to an impulse of 
 frenzy, he may repent, become a noble man. But the spy is 
 always a spy: he is a spy at table, on his promenades, in bed, 
 night and day; he is vile every instant. What would it be, 
 then, to be a murderer as vile as a spy ! But have you not dis- 
 covered, in the heart of our society, a multitude of creatures led 
 by our laws, by our morals, by our customs, to think inces- 
 santly about the death of their kindred, to long for it? They 
 consider the value of a coffin as they haggle over the price of 
 shawls for their wives, as they ascend the staircase at the 
 theatre, as they think longingly of the Bouffons, as they wish 
 that they owned a carriage. They are committing murder at 
 the very moment when dear little creatures, fascinating in 
 their innocence, offer their infantile lips to be kissed, saying : 
 " Good-night, father! " Every hour in the day they see eyes 
 that they would like to close, but which open every morning 
 to the light, like Belvidero's in this Study. God only knows 
 of how many parricides they are guilty in thought ! Imagine 
 a man having to pay an annuity of three thousand francs to 
 an old woman, and both of them living in the country, sepa- 
 rated by a brook, but so far strangers that they can hate each 
 other cordially without violating those social proprieties which 
 place a mask on the faces of two brothers, one of whom has 
 the entail and the other a second son's share. All European 
 civilization rests upon HEREDITY as upon a pivot, it would 
 be madness to suppress it ; but might we not try, as in the 
 case of the machines which are the pride of our age, to perfect 
 that all-important mechanism? 
 
 The author's purpose in retaining the old formula, To the 
 Reader, at the head of a work in which he aims to represent 
 all literary forms, is to place herein a remark relating to sev- 
 eral of his Studies, especially to this one. Each one of his
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 107 
 
 compositions is based upon ideas more or less new, to which 
 it seemed to him that it might be well to give expression ; he 
 may insist upon the priority of certain forms and ideas which 
 have since passed into the domain of literature and have, in 
 some cases, become vulgarized there. The date of the origi- 
 nal publication of each Study should not be a matter of indif- 
 ference to those of his readers who wish to do him justice. 
 
 Reading gives us unknown friends, and what a friend is a 
 reader ! We have friends whom we know who read nothing 
 that we write ! The author hopes to have paid his debt by 
 dedicating this work to the UNKNOWN GODS. 
 
 In a superb palace at Ferrara, on a winter evening, 
 Don Juan Belvidero was entertaining a prince of the 
 House of Este. At that period, a banquet was a 
 marvellous spectacle which only royal wealth or the 
 power of a great nobleman could command. Seated 
 about a table lighted by perfumed candles, seven 
 hilarious women were conversing pleasantly, amid 
 beautiful chefs-d'oeuvres of art whose white marble 
 stood out in bold relief against the red stucco of the 
 walls and in striking contrast to the rich Turkish 
 rugs. Dressed in satin, gleaming with gold and 
 laden with precious stones less brilliant than their 
 eyes, one and all were telling tales of violent pas- 
 sions, differing as widely as the charms of the nar- 
 rators. But they differed neither in words nor 
 gestures; an expression of the eyes, a glance, a ges- 
 ture or two, or the tone of voice, served as commen- 
 taries, lascivious, riotous, melancholy, or cunning, 
 upon their words. 
 
 One seemed to say: "My beauty is of the sort 
 that warms an old man's frozen heart."
 
 108 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 Another: " I love to lie on cushions and think with 
 ecstasy of those who adore me." 
 
 A third, a novice at such functions, was inclined to 
 blush: " In the bottom of my heart I feel remorse!" 
 she said. " I am a Catholic, and I am afraid of hell. 
 But I love you so dearly, oh! so dearly, and so 
 dearly, that I can sacrifice eternity to you." 
 
 A fourth, emptying a cup of Chio wine, cried: 
 "Vive la gaietel I begin a new life every morning! 
 Oblivious of the past, still drunken from the joys of 
 the preceding day, every night I exhaust a life of 
 happiness, a life full of love!" 
 
 The woman sitting beside Belvidero gazed at him 
 with flashing eyes. She was silent. " I would not 
 trust to hired bravoes to kill my lover if he abandoned 
 me!" Then she had laughed; but her hand convul- 
 sively crushed a sweetmeat-box of exquisitely carved 
 gold. 
 
 "When will you be Grand Duke?" the sixth 
 woman asked the prince, with an expression of 
 murderous joy in her teeth, and the delirium of wine 
 in her eyes. 
 
 "And when will your father die?" laughed the 
 seventh, tossing her bouquet to Don Juan with a 
 gesture intoxicating in its wantonness. She was an 
 innocent girl, accustomed to make sport of all sacred 
 things. 
 
 "Oh! do not speak of it!" cried the young and 
 handsome Don Juan Belvidero; "there is but one 
 everlasting father in the world, and cruel fate de- 
 creed that I should have him!"
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 109 
 
 The seven courtesans of Ferrara, Don Juan's 
 friends, and the prince himself uttered a cry of 
 horror. Two hundred years later, under Louis XV., 
 people of refined taste would have laughed at that 
 sally. But it may be that, at the beginning of a de- 
 bauch, their minds were still too lucid. Despite the 
 flame of the candles, the outcry of the passions, the 
 sight of gold and silver vessels, the fumes of wine, 
 despite the contemplation of the most ravishingly 
 beautiful women, perhaps there still survived, in the 
 depths of their hearts, a little of that shamefaced re- 
 spect for things human and divine which struggles 
 on until revelry has drowned it in the last waves 
 of sparkling wine. Nevertheless, the flowers were 
 already crushed, eyes were beginning to glare wildly, 
 and drunkenness was making its way, as Rabelais 
 expresses it, even to the sandals. During that 
 momentary pause, a door opened; and, as at the 
 feast of Belshazzar, God made himself manifest in 
 the person of an old servant, with white hair, trem- 
 bling footsteps, and wrinkled brow; he entered the 
 room with melancholy mien, cast a withering glance 
 at the garlands, the silver-gilt cups, the pyramids 
 of fruit, the splendor of the banquet, the purple 
 flush upon the astonished faces, and the brilliant 
 colors of the cushions crushed by the white arms 
 of women; then he cast a pall upon the riotous 
 assemblage by uttering in a hollow voice the fateful 
 words: 
 
 "Signore, your father is dying!" 
 
 Don Juan rose, with a wave of the hand to his
 
 1 10 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 guests which might be translated: " Excuse me, this 
 doesn't happen every day." 
 
 Does not a father's death often surprise young 
 people amid the splendors of life, amid the insane 
 ideas of a debauch? Death is' as abrupt in her 
 caprices as a courtesan in her disdain, but more 
 faithful it never deceives anyone. 
 
 When Don Juan had closed the door of the ban- 
 quet-hall and was walking along a cold, unlighted 
 corridor, he forced himself to assume a theatrical 
 expression of grief; for, reflecting upon his role of 
 son, he had cast his merriment aside with his nap- 
 kin. The night was very dark. The silent servant 
 who led the young man toward the mortuary cham- 
 ber lighted his master but dimly, so that DEATH, 
 seconded by the cold, the silence, the darkness, by 
 the reaction after drunkenness, perhaps, was able to 
 insinuate a few thoughts into that rake's mind; he 
 reviewed his past life, and became as pensive as a 
 man under indictment on his way to the courtroom. 
 
 Bartholomeo Belvidero, Don Juan's father, was an 
 old man of ninety, who had passed the greater part 
 of his life in active commercial pursuits. Having 
 often travelled in the talismanic countries of the 
 Orient, he had amassed immense wealth there and 
 had acquired knowledge far more precious, he said, 
 than gold and diamonds, for which he cared but little. 
 " I prefer a tooth to a ruby, and power to learning!" 
 he would sometimes exclaim, with a smile. That 
 excellent father loved to have Don Juan tell him of 
 some youthful escapade, and would say to him, with
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE III 
 
 a cunning leer, as he lavished gold upon him: " My 
 dear child, do nothing but the foolish things that 
 amuse you." He was the only old man who ever 
 took pleasure in looking at a young man; paternal 
 affection enabled him to forget his own decay by 
 contemplating such lusty life. At the age of sixty, 
 Belvidero had fallen in love with an angel of peace 
 and beauty. Don Juan was the only fruit of that 
 belated and ephemeral passion. For fifteen years 
 the goodman had bewailed the loss of his dear 
 Juana. His numerous servants and his son attrib- 
 uted to his sorrow the strange habits he had con- 
 tracted. Taking refuge in the least accessible wing 
 of his palace, Bartholomeo very rarely left it, and 
 even Don Juan could not gain admission to his father's 
 apartments without having first obtained leave. If 
 that self-willed anchorite walked about the palace or 
 in the streets of Ferrara, he seemed to be seeking 
 something that he wanted; he walked dreamily, 
 with indecision, preoccupied like a man at war with 
 an idea or a memory. While the young man gave 
 sumptuous entertainments and the palace echoed 
 with the outbursts of his mirth, while horses pawed 
 the earth in the courtyard, and pages quarrelled over 
 their dice on the steps, Bartholomeo ate seven ounces 
 of bread per day and drank water. If he asked for 
 a little chicken, it was for the purpose of giving the 
 bones to a black spaniel, his faithful companion. He 
 never complained of the noise. When he was ill, 
 if the sound of the horn and the barking of dogs 
 disturbed his sleep, he would simply say: "Ah! Don
 
 112 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 Juan has returned !" Never on this earth was so 
 unobtrusive and indulgent a father known; and 
 young Belvidero, being accustomed to treat him 
 without ceremony, had all the faults of spoiled 
 children; he lived with Bartholomeo as a capricious 
 courtesan lives with an aged lover, obtaining pardon 
 for an impertinence by a smile, selling her good 
 humor, and allowing herself to be loved. 
 
 As he mentally reconstructed the picture of his 
 youthful years, Don Juan realized that it would be 
 very hard to find a flaw in his father's kindness. 
 Listening to a remorseful feeling that sprang to life 
 deep down in his heart, as he walked along the 
 corridor, he felt that he was almost ready to forgive 
 Belvidero for having lived so long. He opened his 
 heart to sentiments of filial affection, as a thief be- 
 comes an honest man by virtue of the prospective 
 enjoyment of a million, safely hidden away. Soon 
 the young man entered the bare, high-studded rooms 
 that composed his father's suite. Oppressed by the 
 damp atmosphere, breathing the dense air, the musty 
 odor exhaled by old tapestries and dust-covered cup- 
 boards, he found himself in the old man's old-fashioned 
 bedroom, beside a disgustingly filthy bed and a dying 
 fire. A lamp that stood on a Gothic table cast, at 
 unequal intervals, a flickering light of varying bril- 
 liancy upon the bed, and thus exhibited the old 
 man's face in constantly changing aspects. The 
 wind whistled through the rattling window-frames, 
 and the snow beat upon the panes with a dull sound. 
 The scene presented such a violent contrast to that
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 113 
 
 which Don Juan had just left, that he could not re- 
 press a sudden start. Then he turned cold when, 
 on drawing near the bed, a sudden flare of light, 
 caused by a gust of wind, illumined his father's 
 face: the features were distorted, the skin, drawn 
 tight over the bones, had a greenish tinge, which the 
 whiteness of the pillow on which the old man's head 
 lay rendered even more ghastly; the toothless mouth, 
 drawn by pain and partly open, emitted an occasional 
 deep sigh, lugubrious to the last degree, and prolonged 
 by the howling of the gale. Despite those indications 
 of dissolution, an indescribable expression of power 
 shone upon that face. A powerful mind was con- 
 tending there with death. The eyes, hollowed by 
 disease, maintained a strange fixity of expression. 
 It seemed as if Bartholomeo were trying to slay, 
 with his dying glance, an enemy seated at the foot 
 of his bed. That glance, cold and unwavering, was 
 the more terrifying to behold, in that the head 
 was as absolutely motionless as a skull on a physi- 
 cian's table. The body and the limbs, whose out- 
 lines could be followed beneath the bedclothes, were 
 equally rigid. Everything was dead except the eyes. 
 There was something mechanical in the sounds that 
 issued from the mouth. 
 
 Don Juan was somewhat ashamed to appear at 
 his dying father's bedside with a courtesan's bou- 
 quet in his bosom and to bring thither the perfumes 
 of the banquet and the fumes of wine. 
 
 " You were enjoying yourself !" cried the old man 
 when he perceived his son. 
 8
 
 114 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 At the same moment, the clear, pure voice of a 
 woman singing for the entertainment of the guests, 
 supported by the chords of a viol upon which she 
 accompanied herself, drowned the howling of the 
 storm and penetrated to the chamber of death. Don 
 Juan tried not to listen to that brutal confirmation of 
 his father's words. 
 
 " I do not reproach you, my child," said Barthol- 
 omeo. 
 
 Those gentle words stung Don Juan to the quick; 
 he could not forgive his father for that poignant 
 kindness. 
 
 "How full of remorse I am, father!" he said, 
 hypocritically. 
 
 "Poor Juanino," replied the dying man, in a 
 hollow voice, " I have always been so indulgent 
 to you, that you could not wish for my death, could 
 you?" 
 
 " Oh!" cried Don Juan, " if only it were possible 
 to restore your life by giving up a part of my own! 
 One can always say that sort of thing with safety," 
 thought the rake; " it's as if I should offer my mis- 
 tress the whole world !" 
 
 He had hardly completed that reflection when the 
 old spaniel barked. That intelligent voice made 
 Don Juan shudder, he believed that the dog had 
 read his thoughts. 
 
 " I was sure that I could rely upon you, my son!" 
 cried the moribund. " I shall live. Your wish shall 
 be gratified, I say. I shall live, but without depriv- 
 ing you of a single day that belongs to you."
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 11$ 
 
 " He is delirious," said Don Juan to himself. 
 "Yes, my dearest father," he added, aloud, "of a 
 certainty, you will live as long as I do, for your 
 image will always be in my heart." 
 
 " I am not referring to that life," said the old 
 nobleman, collecting his strength to sit up in bed, 
 for he was seized by one of those suspicions which 
 are born only beneath the pillows of dying men. 
 " Hark ye, my son," he continued, in a voice weak- 
 ened by this last effort, "I am no more anxious to 
 die than you are to do without mistresses, wine, 
 horses, falcons, dogs, and gold." 
 
 " I can well believe it," thought the son, kneel- 
 ing at the bedside and kissing one of Bartholomeo's 
 cadaverous hands. "But," he said, aloud, "we 
 must bow to God's will, my dear father." 
 
 "I am God!" mumbled the old man. 
 
 "Do not blaspheme!" cried the youth, when he 
 saw the menacing expression assumed by his father's 
 features. "Beware of blaspheming, for you have 
 received extreme unction, and I could never be com- 
 forted if I knew that you had died in a state of sin." 
 
 "Will you listen to me?" cried the dying man, 
 gnashing his teeth. 
 
 Don Juan held his peace. A ghastly silence 
 reigned in the room. Amid the dull hissing of the 
 snow, the strains of the viol and the lovely voice 
 still reached their ears, faint as the first glimmer of 
 dawn. The moribund smiled. 
 
 " I thank you for inviting singers, for bringing 
 music with you! A banquet, young and lovely
 
 Il6 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 women, soft and white, with black hair! all the 
 pleasures of life. Bid them remain, I am about to 
 be born again." 
 
 " The delirium is at its height," said Don Juan to 
 himself. 
 
 " I have discovered a means of renewing life. 
 Look in the table-drawer, you can open it by press- 
 ing a spring hidden by the griffin." 
 
 "I have it, father." 
 
 " Very well, take a small phial of rock-crystal." 
 
 " Here it is." 
 
 " I have spent twenty years " 
 
 At that moment, the old man felt that his end was 
 approaching, and he summoned all his strength to 
 say: 
 
 "As soon as I have drawn my last breath, you 
 will rub me with that water from head to foot; I 
 shall come to life again." 
 
 "There's very little of it," rejoined the young 
 man. 
 
 Although Bartholomeo could no longer speak, he 
 was still able to see and hear; at those words, he 
 turned his head toward Don Juan with a frightfully 
 sudden movement, his neck remained twisted like 
 that of a statue which the sculptor's fancy has con- 
 demned to look sidewise, and his eyes became fixed 
 in a hideous stare. He was dead, dead at the 
 moment of losing his last, his only illusion. Upon 
 seeking a sure refuge in his son's heart, he found 
 there a grave deeper than men are accustomed to 
 give their dead. Hence his hair stood erect in horror,
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 1 17 
 
 and his convulsive glance still spoke. He was a 
 father rising in a frenzy from his sepulchre to de- 
 mand vengeance at the hand of God. 
 
 " Well, it is all over with the good man at last!" 
 cried Don Juan. 
 
 In his haste to examine the mysterious phial by 
 the light of the lamp, as a toper consults his bottle 
 at the end of his repast, he had not seen his father's 
 eye blanch. The panting dog looked alternately at 
 his dead master and the elixir, just as Don Juan 
 looked from his father to the phial. The lamp cast 
 a flickering light. The silence was profound, the 
 viol mute. Belvidero started, fancying that he saw 
 his father move. Terrified by the rigid expression 
 of the accusing eyes, he closed them, as he would 
 have closed a blind that was banging in the wind on 
 an autumn night. He stood motionless as a statue, 
 lost in a whole world of reflections. Suddenly a 
 shrill sound like the shriek of a key in a rusty lock 
 broke the silence. Don Juan, in his surprise, nearly 
 dropped the phial. A sweat colder than the blade of 
 a dagger issued from every pore. A painted wooden 
 cock arose above a clock and crowed three times. 
 It was one of those ingenious pieces of mechanism 
 by whose aid the scientists of that day were awak- 
 ened in the morning at the hour when their labors 
 were to begin. Already the first flush of dawn was 
 reddening the window-panes. Don Juan had passed 
 ten hours in reflection. The old clock was more 
 faithful in its service than he was in performing his 
 duties toward Bartholomeo. Its mechanism consisted
 
 Il8 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 of wood, pulleys, cords, and wheels, whereas he had 
 the mechanism peculiar to man, called a heart. In 
 order to avoid further risk of losing the mysterious 
 liquid, the sceptical Don Juan replaced it in the 
 drawer of the little Gothic table. At that solemn 
 moment, he heard an uproar in the corridors; there 
 were confused voices, stifled laughter, light steps, 
 the rustling of silk in a word, the noise of a joyous 
 party trying to find its way. The door opened, and 
 the prince, Don Juan's friends, the seven courtesans, 
 and the musicians appeared in the doorway, in the 
 fantastic disorder of dancers surprised by the break 
 of day, when the sun is contending for the mastery 
 with the paling flames of the candles. They all 
 came to offer the young heir the customary con- 
 dolences. 
 
 " Oho! can it be that Don Juan takes this affair 
 seriously?" said the prince in La Brambilla's ear. 
 
 "Why, his father was a very good man," she 
 replied. 
 
 Meanwhile, Don Juan's nocturnal meditations had 
 imparted to his features an expression so striking 
 that it imposed silence on the party. The men 
 stood motionless. The women, whose lips were 
 parched with wine, whose cheeks were blotched by 
 kisses, knelt and began to pray. Don Juan could not 
 repress a shudder as he saw splendor, joy, laughter, 
 singing, youth, beauty, power, the whole of life pros- 
 trating itself thus in the presence of death. But, in 
 that adorable Italy, debauchery and religion worked 
 so well together in those days, that religion was a
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 119 
 
 debauch, and debauchery a religion ! The prince 
 warmly pressed Don Juan's hand ; then, every 
 face having assumed at the same moment an iden- 
 tical grimace, expressive of sorrow and indifference 
 in equal parts, the phantasmagoria disappeared, 
 leaving the room empty. It was a faithful image of 
 life! 
 
 As they went down the steps, the prince said to 
 La Rivabarella: 
 
 " Well, well ! who'd have believed that Don Juan 
 would be such an impious braggart? He loves his 
 father!" 
 
 " Did you notice the black dog?" asked La Bram- 
 billa. 
 
 " Well, he's immensely rich now," observed Bi- 
 anca Cavatolino, with a sigh. 
 
 "What care 1!" cried the proud Veronese, she 
 who had crushed the sweetmeat-box. 
 
 "What care you, say you?" cried the duke. 
 "With his ducats he's as much a prince as I!" 
 
 At first, Don Juan, swayed by a multitude of con- 
 flicting thoughts, wavered between several alterna- 
 tives. Having taken counsel of the treasure amassed 
 by his father, he returned toward evening to the 
 death-chamber, his soul heavy with revolting selfish- 
 ness. He found all the retainers of the household 
 engaged in putting together the decorations of the 
 bed upon which the late monsignore was to lie in 
 state on the morrow in the centre of a superb mortu- 
 ary chamber a curious spectacle, which all Ferrara 
 was expected to see and admire. Don Juan made
 
 120 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 a gesture, and his servants paused in their work, 
 abashed and trembling. 
 
 "Leave me here alone," he said in an altered 
 voice; " you will not return until I am gone." 
 
 When the footsteps of the old servant, who was 
 the last to go, had died away in the distance, Don 
 Juan hurriedly closed and locked the door, and, sure 
 that he was alone, exclaimed : 
 
 " Let us try!" 
 
 Bartholomeo's body lay upon a long table. To 
 conceal from all eyes the revolting spectacle of a 
 dead body which, because of its extreme decrepitude 
 and gauntness, resembled a skeleton, the embalmers 
 had spread over it a cloth which enveloped it com- 
 pletely, except the head. The mummy-like object 
 lay in the centre of the room, and the cloth, naturally 
 pliable, marked vaguely the rigid, angular, and ema- 
 ciated outlines of the figure. The face was already 
 marked by large violet blotches which indicated the 
 necessity of finishing the embalming process. Despite 
 the scepticism with which he was armed, Don Juan 
 trembled as he uncorked the magic phial. When he 
 stood beside the head, he was obliged to wait a 
 moment, he trembled so. But that young man had 
 been, in his early youth, cunningly corrupted by the 
 morals of a dissolute court; so that a reflection 
 worthy of the Duke of Urbino inspired him with a 
 courage which was quickened by a feeling of the 
 keenest curiosity; indeed, it seemed as if the evil one 
 himself had whispered to him these words, which 
 echoed in his heart: Moisten one eye! He took a
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 121 
 
 piece of linen, and, after moistening it sparingly in 
 the precious liquid, he touched lightly the right eyelid 
 of the corpse. The eye opened. 
 
 "Aha!" exclaimed Don Juan, grasping the phial 
 as, in a dream, we grasp the branch from which we 
 are suspended over a precipice. 
 
 He saw an eye sparkling with life, a child's eye 
 in a death's-head, the light trembled in the clear 
 aqueous fluid; and, sheltered by two black lashes, it 
 sparkled like the solitary lights the traveller spies 
 on a winter's night in a lonely country-side. That 
 flashing eye seemed to long to spring at Don Juan, 
 and it thought, spoke, accused, tried, condemned, 
 threatened ; it cried aloud and bit. All the human 
 passions were astir in it. There were the most 
 loving entreaties, a kingly wrath, the love of a 
 maiden craving mercy from her executioners; and, 
 lastly, the profound, meaning glance which a man 
 ascending the steps leading to the scaffold casts upon 
 his fellow-man. Such abundant life shone in that 
 fragment of life that Don Juan recoiled in dismay; 
 he paced back and forth, afraid to look at that eye, 
 which glared at him from the floor, from the hang- 
 ings. The room was studded with gleaming points, 
 full of fire, life, intelligence. On all sides were 
 blazing eyes that barked at his heels. 
 
 " He might have lived another hundred years," 
 he exclaimed involuntarily, as he stood gazing at 
 that luminous spark, drawn back to his father's side 
 by a diabolical influence. 
 
 Suddenly the intelligent eye closed and opened
 
 122 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 again rapidly, like the eye of a woman who con- 
 sents. Had a voice said: "Yes!" Don Juan would 
 have been no more frightened. 
 
 "What shall I do?" he thought. 
 
 He mustered courage to try to close the white lid. 
 His efforts were unavailing. 
 
 " Shall I put it out? Perhaps that would be parri- 
 cide?" he said to himself. 
 
 "Yes," said the eye, with a wink of ghastly 
 irony. 
 
 "Aha!" cried Don Juan, "there's witchcraft in 
 it." 
 
 He put out his hand to destroy the eye. A great 
 tear rolled down the hollow cheeks of the corpse and 
 fell upon Belvidero's hand. 
 
 "It is burning hot!" he cried, throwing himself 
 upon a chair. 
 
 The struggle had fatigued him as if, like Jacob, he 
 had been contending against an angel. 
 
 At last, he rose, saying: 
 
 " If only there is no blood !" 
 
 Then, summoning all the courage that one requires 
 to do a cowardly deed, he destroyed the eye, forcing 
 it out with a cloth, but without looking at it. An un- 
 expected but heart-rending groan startled him. The 
 poor spaniel expired howling. 
 
 "Can he be in the secret?" said Don Juan to 
 himself, gazing at the faithful animal. 
 
 Don Juan Belvidero was esteemed a dutiful son. 
 He erected a monument of white marble on his 
 father's tomb, and entrusted the execution of the
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 123 
 
 figures to the most famous artists of the time. He 
 was not perfectly at ease on the day when the 
 statue of his father kneeling at the feet of Religion 
 imposed its enormous weight upon the grave at the 
 bottom of which he buried the only feeling of re- 
 morse that had ever touched his heart in moments 
 of physical weariness. By dint of gloating over the 
 vast wealth amassed by the old merchant, Don Juan 
 became miserly: had he not two lives to provide 
 with money? His profoundly searching glance 
 penetrated to the basic principle of social life, and 
 embraced the world the more effectively because he 
 viewed it through a tomb. He analyzed men and 
 things in order to be done once and for all with the 
 past, represented by history; with the present, 
 represented by the law; with the future, revealed 
 by religion. He took the soul and matter, threw 
 them into a crucible, found nothing, and thereupon 
 became DON JUAN ! 
 
 Master of life's illusions, he plunged headlong, 
 young and handsome as he was, into life, despising 
 the world, but taking possession of the world. His 
 happiness could not be the bourgeoise felicity that 
 feeds upon a dish of boiled beef at stated intervals, 
 a comfortable warming-pan in winter, a lamp for the 
 evening, and new slippers every quarter. No; he 
 seized upon existence as a monkey seizes a nut, 
 and, without being entertained for long, he skilfully 
 peeled off the vulgar envelopes of the fruit to relish 
 the savory pulp. Poetry and the sublime transports 
 of human passion no longer appealed to him. He
 
 124 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 did not commit the error of those strong men who, 
 fancying sometimes that small minds believe in 
 great ones, think of exchanging lofty thoughts of 
 the future for the small change of our ephemeral 
 ideas. He might, like them, have walked with his 
 feet on the earth and his head in the clouds; but he 
 preferred to sit and dry with his kisses the lips of 
 more than one loving, lovely, and perfumed woman; 
 for, like Death, wherever he went he devoured 
 everything without shame, desiring the love of ab- 
 solute possession, an oriental love, long-enduring, 
 unresisting pleasure. Loving woman only in women, 
 he made irony the natural bent of his mind. When 
 his mistresses made use of a bed to ascend to the 
 skies where they proposed to lose themselves in 
 the embrace of intoxicating bliss, Don Juan would ac- 
 company them, grave, unreserved, and as sincere as 
 ever German student could be. But he said /, when 
 his mistress, in a frenzy of passion, said WE. He 
 was admirably skilled in the art of allowing him- 
 self to be drawn on by a woman. He was always 
 able to make her believe that he was trembling like 
 a young collegian who says to his first partner at a 
 ball: " Do you like dancing?" But he also knew 
 how to roar on occasion, to draw his mighty sword, 
 and crush the commanders. There was mockery 
 in his simplicity and laughter in his tears, for he 
 could always weep as a woman weeps when she 
 says to her husband: " Give me a carriage, or I shall 
 die of consumption." In the eyes of merchants, the 
 world is a bale of merchandise or a package of notes
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 125 
 
 in circulation; to most young men it is a woman; to 
 some women it is a man; to certain minds it is a 
 salon, a club, a quarter, a city; in Don Juan's eyes, 
 the world was himself ! A model of charming and 
 noble manners, of fascinating wit, he moored his boat 
 to every shore; but, while inviting guidance, he went 
 only where he wished to be guided. The more he 
 saw, the more he doubted. By scrutinizing men, he 
 often divined that courage was rashness; prudence, 
 poltroonery; generosity, cunning; justice, a crime; 
 delicacy of feeling, mere folly; probity, a matter of 
 temperament ; and, by a strange fatality, he dis- 
 covered that those persons who were really up- 
 right, refined, just, generous, prudent and brave, 
 obtained no consideration among men. 
 
 " What sardonic jesting!" he said to himself. 
 " It does not come from a God." 
 
 And thereupon, renouncing the idea of a better 
 world, he did not bare his head at the mention of 
 a name, and looked upon the stone saints in the 
 churches simply as works of art. Moreover, being 
 familiar with the machinery of human society, he 
 never jostled prejudices too rudely, because he was 
 not so powerful as the executioner; but he circum- 
 vented social laws with the grace and wit so well 
 depicted in his scene with Monsieur Dimanche. He 
 was, in truth, the perfect type of Moliere's Don Juan, 
 of Goethe's Faust, of Byron's Manfred, and of Matu- 
 rin's Melmoth. Colossal images drawn by the most 
 colossal geniuses of Europe, which, perhaps, Mozart's 
 strains will no more fail to illustrate than Rossini's
 
 126 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 lyre! Terrifying images, which the principle of evil, 
 existing in man, makes eternal, and of which some 
 copies are found in every age: entering into a parley 
 with mankind, it may be, as in the case of Mirabeau; 
 or content to act in silence, like Bonaparte; or to 
 compress the whole world into an ironical phrase, 
 like the divine Rabelais; or laughing at persons 
 instead of insulting things, like the Marechal de 
 Richelieu; or, better still, making sport of men and 
 things at the same time, like the most famous of our 
 ambassadors. But the profound genius of Don Juan 
 Belvidero was a summing up, by anticipation, of all 
 those geniuses. He mocked at everything. His life 
 was one long mockery, which embraced men, things, 
 institutions, ideas. As for eternity, he had talked 
 confidentially for half an hour with Pope Julius II., 
 and at the close of the conversation he said to him, 
 with a laugh: 
 
 "If it is absolutely necessary to choose, I prefer 
 to believe in God rather than in the devil ; power 
 united to goodness always presents more resources 
 than the genius of evil can command." 
 
 " True, but it is God's will that we do penance in 
 this world " 
 
 " So you still believe in your indulgences?" replied 
 Belvidero. "Very well, I have a whole existence 
 in reserve to do penance for the sins of my first 
 life." 
 
 "Oh! if that is your understanding of old age," 
 cried the Pope, " you are in danger of being canon- 
 ized."
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 127 
 
 "After your elevation to the papacy, one can be- 
 lieve anything." 
 
 And they went to watch the workmen engaged in 
 building the immense basilica consecrated to Saint 
 Peter. 
 
 "Saint Peter is the man of genius who gave us 
 our twofold power," said the Pope to Don Juan, "he 
 deserves the monument. But sometimes, at night, 
 I think that a deluge will pass a sponge over it and 
 we shall be obliged to begin anew." 
 
 Don Juan and the Pope laughed heartily, they had 
 understood each other. A fool would have gone the 
 next day to seek recreation with Julius II. at Ra- 
 phael's house, or at the lovely Villa Madama; but 
 Belvidero went to see him officiate as pontiff, in 
 order to be relieved of his doubts. In a debauch, 
 Rovere might have belied his sacred character and 
 commented on the Apocalypse. 
 
 However, this legend was not undertaken to fur- 
 nish material for those who may wish to write me- 
 moirs of Don Juan's life; its purpose is to prove to 
 honest persons that Belvidero did not die in his duel 
 with a stone, as some lithographers would have us 
 believe. 
 
 When Don Juan Belvidero reached the age of 
 sixty, he settled in Spain. There, in his old age, he 
 married a young and enchanting Andalusian. But, 
 by design, he was neither a good father nor a good 
 husband. He had noticed that we are never so 
 fondly loved as by the women for whom we care but 
 little. Donna Elvire, who had been piously reared
 
 128 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 by an old aunt in the depths of Andalusia, in a 
 chateau a few leagues from San-Lucar, was all de- 
 votion and all charm. Don Juan rightly guessed that 
 she was a woman who would fight long against a 
 passion before yielding to it, so he hoped to keep her 
 virtuous until his death. It was a serious jest, a 
 game of chess which he proposed to play during his 
 declining days. Strong in his knowledge of all the 
 mistakes made by his father Bartholomeo, Don Juan 
 determined to make the most trivial acts of his old 
 age assist in the success of the drama that was to be 
 enacted beside his death-bed. For instance, the 
 greater part of his wealth was buried in the vaults 
 of his palace at Ferrara, where he went but rarely. 
 As for the other half of his fortune, it was invested 
 in an annuity, in order that both his wife and his 
 children should be interested in the prolongation of 
 his life, a species of trickery which his father would 
 have done well to practise; but that species of 
 machiavelianism was not very necessary to him. 
 Young Philippe Belvidero, his son, grew to be a 
 Spaniard as conscientiously religious as his father 
 was impious, by virtue, perhaps, of the proverb: 
 Miserly father, prodigal son. 
 
 The abbe of San-Lucar was chosen by Don Juan 
 to guide the consciences of the Duchess of Belvidero 
 and Philippe. That ecclesiastic was a saintly man, 
 of fine figure, admirably well-proportioned, with 
 handsome black eyes, a head worthy of Tiberius, 
 emaciated by fasting, pale from macerations, and 
 beset by temptation day after day, as all recluses
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 129 
 
 are. The old nobleman hoped, perhaps, that he 
 might be able to kill a monk before the end of his 
 first lease of life. But, whether it was that the 
 abbe was as strong as Don Juan himself, or that 
 Donna Elvire had more prudence or more virtue 
 than Spain attributes to woman, Don Juan was 
 constrained to pass his last days like an old country 
 curate, without scandal, at his own fireside. Some- 
 times he seemed to enjoy finding his wife or his son 
 at fault in respect to their religious duties, and im- 
 periously demanded that they execute all the obliga- 
 tions imposed on the faithful by the court of Rome. 
 Indeed, he was never so happy as when he was 
 listening to the gallant abbe of San Lucar, Donna 
 Elvire, and Philippe discussing a case of conscience. 
 Meanwhile, notwithstanding the prodigious care that 
 Don Juan de Belvidero bestowed on his person, the 
 days of decrepitude arrived; with that period of dis- 
 tress came the outcries of impotence, outcries more 
 heart-rending in proportion to his pride in the mem- 
 ories of his effervescent youth and voluptuous ma- 
 turity. That man, in whose mind the climax of 
 mockery consisted in persuading others to believe in 
 the laws and principles of which he made sport, fell 
 asleep at night upon a perhaps! That model of good 
 taste, that duke, of matchless vigor in a debauch, 
 magnificent at courts, charming in his manner to 
 women whose hearts he had twisted as the peasant 
 twists an osier band, that man of genius was afflicted 
 by an obstinate catarrh, pitiless sciatica, brutal gout. 
 He watched his teeth leaving him, as the fairest and 
 9
 
 130 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 most beautifully dressed women go away, one by 
 one, at the end of a party, leaving the salon deserted 
 and bare. His bold hands trembled, his slim legs 
 tottered, and one evening apoplexy grasped his neck 
 with its ice-cold, hooked fingers. After that fatal 
 day, he became morose and stern. He slandered 
 the devotion of his son and wife, declaring at times 
 that their delicate and touching attentions were lav- 
 ished upon him with such a show of affection only 
 because he had invested his whole fortune in an 
 annuity. At such times, Elvire and Philippe would 
 shed bitter tears and redouble their caresses, where- 
 upon the old man's cracked voice would assume an 
 affectionate tone as he said to them: 
 
 "My friends, my dear wife, you will forgive me, 
 won't you? I torment you a little. Alas! O God, 
 why dost Thou make use of me to test the virtues of 
 these two heavenly creatures? I, who should be 
 their joy, am a scourge to them." 
 
 In that way he chained them to his pillow, making 
 them forget whole months of testiness and cruelty 
 by a single hour in which he displayed the ever- 
 new treasures of his fascinating manners and of 
 a pretended affection. A paternal system which 
 succeeded infinitely better than that which his father 
 had formerly adopted toward him. At last his ill- 
 ness reached such a dangerous stage that it was nec- 
 essary to put him to bed, and to that end to handle 
 him as carefully as a felucca entering a dangerous 
 strait. At last came the day of his death. That 
 sceptical, brilliant creature, whose understanding
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 131 
 
 alone survived the most horrible of all forms of 
 decay, found himself between a physician and a 
 confessor, his two antipathies. But he was jovial 
 with them. Was there not a light shining for him 
 behind the veil of the future? Upon that veil, made 
 of lead for other people, but transparent for him, 
 the lightsome, ravishing joys of youth frisked about 
 like ghosts. 
 
 It was a lovely summer evening when Don Juan 
 became conscious of the approach of death. The 
 Spanish sky was wonderfully clear, the orange- 
 trees filled the air with perfume, the stars shone 
 with a bright, white light, nature seemed to offer 
 him absolute pledges of his resurrection, a pious 
 and obedient son stood gazing at him with love and 
 respect. About eleven o'clock, he requested to be' 
 left alone with that innocent creature. 
 
 " Philippe," he said to him in such a kind, affec- 
 tionate voice that the young man started and wept 
 with pleasure; never had that inflexible father uttered 
 the word Philippe in such a tone. "Listen to me, 
 my son," continued the moribund. " I am a great 
 sinner. That is why I have thought constantly of 
 death throughout my life. Long ago I was a friend 
 of the great Pope Julius II. That illustrious pontiff 
 feared that the excessive irritation of my passions 
 might lead me to commit some mortal sin between 
 the moment of my death and the administering of the 
 consecrated oils: he gave me a phial containing some 
 of the holy water that gushed from the rocks in the 
 desert. I have kept the secret of that encroachment
 
 132 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 upon the treasure of the Church, but I am author- 
 ized to disclose it to my son in articulo mortis. You 
 will find the phial in the drawer of this Gothic table 
 which has always stood beside my pillow. The 
 priceless vessel may be of service to you also, my 
 beloved Philippe. Swear to me, by your everlast- 
 ing salvation, that you will faithfully execute my 
 orders." 
 
 Philippe looked at his father. Don Juan was too 
 keen a judge of the expression of human sentiments 
 upon the features not to be able to die in peace on 
 the faith of such a look, even as his father had died 
 in despair on the faith of his. 
 
 " You deserved a better father," continued Don 
 Juan. " I venture to confess, my child, that at 
 the moment when the excellent abbe of San-Lucar 
 administered the viaticum to me, I was thinking of 
 the incompatibility of two powers so extensive as 
 those of God and the devil." 
 
 " Oh! father!" 
 
 " And I said to myself that, when Satan makes 
 his peace, he ought, under pain of being considered 
 a miserable wretch, to stipulate for the pardon of his 
 adherents. That thought haunts me. So I should 
 go to hell, my son, if you should not fulfil my 
 desires.'*' 
 
 "Oh! father, tell me them quickly!" 
 
 "As soon as I have closed my eyes," rejoined 
 Don Juan, " after two or three minutes, perhaps, 
 you will take my body, while it is still warm, and 
 lay it on a table in the centre of this room. Then
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 133 
 
 you will extinguish the lamp; the light of the stars 
 will be sufficient for you. You will remove my 
 clothes; and while you recite Paters and Aves, thus 
 lifting up your soul to God, you will carefully anoint 
 with that holy water my eyes, my lips, and my 
 whole head first, then the body and the limbs in 
 succession; but God's power is so great, my son, 
 that you must not be astonished at anything you 
 may see!" 
 
 With that, Don Juan, feeling that death was at 
 hand, added, in an awful voice: 
 
 "Hold fast the phial!" 
 
 Then he quietly breathed his last in the arms of 
 his son, whose tears flowed abundantly upon his 
 livid, sneering face. 
 
 It was about midnight when Don Philippe Belvi- 
 dero placed his father's body on the table. Having 
 kissed the scowling brow and the gray hair, he extin- 
 guished the lamp. The soft light of the moon, whose 
 fantastic reflections illumined the fields, enabled the 
 pious Philippe to see his father's body indistinctly, 
 like a white form amid the shadows. The young 
 man soaked a cloth in the liquid, and faithfully 
 anointed that sacred head, praying fervently the 
 while. He heard a mysterious shivering, but attrib- 
 uted it to the breeze playing among the tree-tops. 
 When he had moistened the right arm, he felt the 
 strong embrace of a powerful, youthful arm about 
 his neck: his father's arm! He uttered a heart- 
 rending shriek and dropped the phial, which was 
 broken in a thousand pieces. The liquid evaporated.
 
 134 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 The servants of the chateau hurried to the spot, 
 armed with torches. That shriek had surprised and 
 terrified them as if the last trump had shaken the 
 world to its foundation. In a moment, the room was 
 filled with people. The trembling crowd saw Don 
 Philippe unconscious, but held fast in the grasp of 
 his father's strong arm, which was thrown around 
 his neck. And then a supernatural thing! they 
 saw Don Juan's face, as youthful and beautiful as 
 the face of Antinous; a face with sparkling eyes 
 and bright red lips, surrounded by jet-black hair, and 
 moving about in a way that was horrible to contem- 
 plate, with no power to move the skeleton to which 
 it belonged. 
 
 " Miracle!" cried an old servant. 
 
 And all the Spaniards repeated: 
 
 "Miracle!" 
 
 Too devout to admit the possibility of magic, 
 Donna Elvire sent for the abbe of San-Lucar. 
 When the priest saw the miracle with his own eyes, 
 he determined to make the most of it, like a shrewd 
 man and an abbe who asked nothing better than to 
 add to his income. Declaring at once that Don Juan 
 would infallibly be canonized, he appointed the cere- 
 mony of the apotheosis to take place in his convent, 
 which should thenceforth be called, he said, San-Juan 
 de Lucar. At those words, the face made a facetious 
 grimace. 
 
 The liking of the Spaniards for solemn functions 
 of that sort is so well known that it should not be 
 difficult to conceive the religious enchantments
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 135 
 
 whereby the abbey of San-Lucar celebrated the 
 translation of the blessed Don Juan Bel-videro in its 
 church. A few days after that illustrious noble- 
 man's decease, the miracle of his partial resurrection 
 was so widely known within a radius of fifty leagues 
 of San-Lucar that it was like a comedy to see the 
 sightseers on the roads; they came from all direc- 
 tions, attracted by a Te Deum sung by torchlight. 
 The ancient mosque of the convent of San-Lucar, a 
 marvellous edifice built by the Moors, whose arches 
 had heard for three centuries past the name of Jesus 
 Christ substituted for that of Allah, was too small 
 to contain the multitude assembled to witness the 
 ceremony. Crowded together like ants, hidalgos in 
 velvet cloaks and armed with their good swords, 
 stood around the pillars, unable to find room to bend 
 their knees, which bent nowhere else. Lovely peas- 
 ant-women, whose basquines outlined voluptuous 
 forms, supported white-haired old men. Young men 
 with eyes that flashed fire found themselves beside 
 bedizened old women. Then there were couples 
 trembling with joy, inquisitive fiancees escorted by 
 their swains; bridegrooms a day old; children timidly 
 holding one another by the hand. That vast multi- 
 tude, gay with bright colors, brilliant with contrasts, 
 bedecked with flowers and jewels, made a not un- 
 pleasant uproar in the silence of the night. The 
 great doors of the church were thrown open. Those 
 who had arrived too late and were obliged to remain 
 outside, saw from afar, through the three open por- 
 tals, a scene of which the airy scenery of our modern
 
 136 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 operas would afford but a feeble conception. Zealots 
 and sinners, eager to earn the good graces of a new 
 saint, lighted in his honor in that vast church myriads 
 of tapers, a selfish illumination which imparted a 
 magically beautiful aspect to the edifice. The dark 
 arches, the pillars and their capitals, the deep 
 chapels gleaming with gold and silver, the galleries, 
 the Saracenic ornamentation, the most delicate fea- 
 tures of that delicate carving, stood clearly forth in 
 that flood of light, like the fanciful figures that form 
 in a red-hot brazier. It was an ocean of gleaming 
 lights, dominated by the gilded choir at the rear of 
 the church, where rose the main altar, whose splen- 
 dor rivalled that of the rising sun. But the splendor 
 of golden lamps, of silver candelabra, of banners, 
 tassels, saints, and ex-votos, paled before the shrine 
 on which Don Juan lay. The scoffer's body gleamed 
 with jewels, flowers, crystals, diamonds, gold, and 
 plumes as white as a seraph's wings, and took the 
 place of a picture of the Christ over the altar. 
 Around it blazed innumerable candles which filled 
 the air with waves of flame. The worthy abbe of 
 San-Lucar, arrayed in his pontifical vestments, armed 
 with his mitre, studded with precious stones, his 
 lawn-sleeves, his golden crucifix, was seated, king of 
 the choir, in an armchair of imperial magnificence, in 
 the midst of all his clergy, impassive old men with 
 silvery hair, clad in rich albs, who surrounded him 
 like the saints whom painters represent as grouped 
 around the Almighty. The precentor and the dig- 
 nitaries of the Chapter, decorated with the gorgeous
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 137 
 
 insignia of their ecclesiastical vanities, went and 
 came in the clouds formed by the incense, like stars 
 gliding through the firmament. When the triumphal 
 hour was at hand, the bells woke the echoes of the 
 country-side, and that vast throng breathed upward 
 to God the first outcry of praise with which the Te 
 Deum begins. Sublime outcry! There were pure, 
 clear voices, women's voices, blended in ecstasy 
 with the grave, powerful voices of men, thousands of 
 voices united in such a mighty wave of sound, that 
 the organ failed to soar above it, despite the roaring 
 of its pipes. Only the shrill notes of the youthful 
 voices of the choir-boys and the full tones of a few 
 tenors evoked pleasing images, depicted infancy and 
 strength, in that ravishing concert of human voices 
 blended in an outburst of love. 
 
 Te Deum laudamus ! 
 
 From the heart of that cathedral, black with kneel- 
 ing men and women, the psalm arose like a light 
 that suddenly shines forth in the darkness, and the 
 silence was broken as by a thunderclap. The voices 
 ascended with the clouds of incense which cast a 
 transparent, bluish veil over the fantastic beauties of 
 the architecture. All was splendor, perfume, light, 
 and melody. Just as those strains of love and grati- 
 tude were wafted up toward the altar, Don Juan, too 
 courteous not to express his thanks, too clever not 
 to understand raillery, replied by a ghastly laugh 
 and solemnly moved in his shrine. But, as the devil 
 caused him to think of the risk he ran of being taken 
 for an ordinary man, a saint, a Boniface, a Pantaleon,
 
 138 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 
 
 he interrupted that outpouring of love by a howl 
 with which the thousand voices of hell were blended. 
 Earth blessed, Heaven cursed. The church trembled 
 on its ancient foundations. 
 
 "Te Deum laudamus!" sang the assemblage. 
 
 " Go to all the devils, brute beasts that you are! 
 God ! God ! Carajos demonios ! Animals, how tire- 
 some you are with your old man God !" 
 
 And a torrent of imprecations poured forth, like a 
 river of burning lava during an eruption of Vesuvius. 
 
 "Deus Sabaoth ! Sabaoth!" cried the Christians. 
 
 "You insult the majesty of hell!" replied Don 
 Juan, gnashing his teeth. 
 
 Soon the living arm succeeded in coming from the 
 shrine, and threatened the assemblage with gestures 
 instinct with despair and irony. 
 
 " The saint is blessing us!" said the old women, 
 the children, and the betrothed young men, credulous 
 folk. 
 
 This explains how we are often led astray in our 
 adorations. The man of superior mind makes sport 
 of those who compliment him, and sometimes compli- 
 ments those of whom he is really making sport in 
 his heart. 
 
 At the moment when the abbe, prostrate before 
 the altar, chanted: Sancte Johannes, ora pro nobis! he 
 distinctly heard the words: O coglione! 
 
 " What is going on up there?" cried the sub-prior, 
 seeing the shrine move. 
 
 "The saint is playing the devil," replied the 
 abbe.
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE 139 
 
 Thereupon that living head tore itself violently 
 away from the body which had ceased to live, and 
 fell upon the celebrant's yellow skull. 
 
 " Remember Donna Elvire!" cried the head, as it 
 buried its teeth in the abbe's head. 
 
 The latter uttered a frightful shriek which dis- 
 turbed the ceremony. All the priests ran up and 
 surrounded their sovereign. 
 
 " Idiot, say that there is a God, will you!" cried 
 the voice, just as the abbe, bitten in the brain, was 
 breathing his last. 
 
 Paris, October 1830.
 
 SERAPHITA
 
 TO MADAME EVELINE DE HANSKA, NEE COMTESSE 
 RZEWUSKA 
 
 This, madame, is the work that you asked at my 
 hands: I am happy, in dedicating it to you, to be able 
 to bear witness to the respectful affection which you 
 have deigned to allow me to entertain for you. If I 
 am accused of failure after trying to evolve from 
 the profundities of mysticism this book which, in 
 addition to the transparency of our beautiful lan- 
 guage, demanded the luminous poesy of the Orient, 
 yours be the blame! Did not you bid me undertake 
 this task, comparable to that of Jacob, saying to me 
 that even the most imperfect sketch of the figure of 
 which you had dreamed from childhood, as I myself 
 had done, would be a thing of some value to you? 
 So here it is, that thing of some value. Why may 
 not this work belong exclusively to those noble minds 
 which, like yours, have been preserved from worldly 
 trivialities by solitude? such minds would be able to 
 supply the melodious measure which it lacks, and 
 which would have made of it, in the hands of one of 
 our poets, the glorious epic which France is still 
 awaiting; but those same minds will accept it from 
 me like one of those balustrades carved by some 
 artist overflowing with faith, whereon pilgrims lean 
 d43)
 
 144 DEDICATION 
 
 to meditate upon the end of man, as they gaze upon 
 the choir of a beautiful church. 
 
 I am, madame, with respect, your devoted ser- 
 vant 
 
 DE BALZAC. 
 
 Paris, 23d August, 1835.
 
 AT THE FOOT OF THE F ALB ERG 
 
 On a certain morning when tlie sun was shining 
 brightly upon the landscape we have described, kin- 
 dling the flames of all the ephemeral diamonds pro- 
 duced by the crystallisation of the snow and ice, tu'o 
 persons passed across the fiord, flew along the base 
 of the Falberg, and soared toward its summit from 
 bastion to bastion.
 
 SERAPHITUS 
 
 As one looks at the coast-line of Norway upon a 
 map, how can one's imagination fail to be moved to 
 wonder by its fantastic indentations, a long stretch 
 of granite lacework upon which the waves of the 
 North Sea roar incessantly? who has not dreamed 
 of the majestic spectacles presented by those beach- 
 less shores, by that multitude of creeks and little 
 bays and fiords, of which not one is like the others, 
 and which are all trackless abysses? Would not one 
 say that nature had taken delight in stamping in 
 ineffaceable hieroglyphs the symbol of Norwegian 
 life, by giving to that coast the shape of an immense 
 fish-bone? for fishing is the principal industry of the 
 country, and furnishes almost the entire food-supply 
 of the few men who cling like lichens to those bar- 
 ren cliffs. On a territory covering fourteen degrees 
 of latitude, there are hardly seven hundred thousand 
 souls. Thanks to the perils unattended by glory, to 
 the everlasting snows with which the mountain 
 peaks of Norway the very name causes a shiver 
 greet the traveller, their sublime beauties have re- 
 mained unexplored, and will be found to harmonize 
 10 (145)
 
 146 SERAPHITA 
 
 perfectly with the human phenomena, likewise un- 
 explored, at least so far as their poetic side is con- 
 cerned, which have taken place there, and of which 
 this is the story. 
 
 When one of these little bays, a mere cleft in the 
 rock in the eyes of the eid ir-duck, is so wide that the 
 water does not freeze solid in the prison of stone in 
 which it struggles, the people of the country call it a 
 fiord, a word which almost all geographers have tried 
 to naturalize in their respective languages. Despite 
 the generic resemblance of these quasi-canals, each 
 has its own special physiognomy: in all of them the 
 sea has found its way into every fissure, but every- 
 where the rocks are cleft in a different way, and their 
 volcanic precipices defy the most fanciful geometrical 
 terms: here, the granite is toothed like a saw; there, 
 its surface is too steep to allow the snow to rest upon 
 it, or the Northern firs with their graceful plumes to 
 find a foothold; farther on, the upheaval of the soil 
 has hollowed out some dainty, lovely valley adorned 
 by tier above tier of trees with dark foliage. You 
 would be tempted to call that country the Switzer- 
 land of the sea. Between Drontheim and Christi- 
 ania there is one of these indentations called the 
 Stromfiord. If the Stromfiord is not the loveliest 
 spot in all that lovely region, it has, at all events, 
 the merit of combining all the terrestrial splendors 
 of Norway, and of having served as the scene of a 
 truly celestial story. 
 
 The general shape of the Stromfiord, at first sight, 
 is that of a funnel in which a breach has been made
 
 SERAPHITA 147 
 
 by the sea. The passage which the waves have 
 opened presents to the eye the image of a struggle 
 between the ocean and the granite, two equally 
 potent creations: one by its inertia, the other by its 
 mobility. By way of proofs, a number of reefs of 
 fantastic formation forbid ships to enter. In some 
 places, the fearless children of Norway can leap from 
 side to side, unawed by an abyss a hundred fathoms 
 deep and only six feet wide. Sometimes a frail and 
 unsteady bit of gneiss has fallen across the abyss 
 and joins the two cliffs. Sometimes hunters or 
 fishermen have thrown firs across, in guise of bridges, 
 to join two perpendicular quays, at whose bases the 
 sea roars incessantly. The dangerous, narrow en- 
 trance to the fiord turns to the right with a snakelike 
 twist, encounters a mountain which rises to a height 
 of eighteen hundred feet above the sea-level, its 
 base forming a vertical shelf half a league in length, 
 whose unyielding granite does not begin to crumble, 
 to split, or to recede until it reaches a point about 
 two hundred feet above the water. So that the 
 sea, rushing violently in, is dashed back with equal 
 violence, by the vis inertice of the mountain, against 
 the opposite shore, to which the fierce blows of the 
 waves have imparted graceful curves. At the head 
 of the fiord is a mass of gneiss crowned with forests, 
 from which a river falls in cascades, becoming a 
 rushing torrent when the snow melts in the spring, 
 when it forms a sheet of water of vast extent, and 
 roars down into the fiord, vomiting forth aged firs 
 and larches, which can hardly be distinguished amid
 
 148 SERAPHITA 
 
 the foam. Hurled violently into the deep waters 
 of the gulf, these trees soon reappear on the surface, 
 become entangled there and form little islands, which 
 float ashore on the left bank, where the people of 
 the little village on the Stromfiord find them, broken 
 and torn, sometimes with their trunks entire, but 
 always stripped of bark and branches. The moun- 
 tain which receives the assaults of the sea against 
 its base in the Stromfiord, and the assaults of the 
 north wind upon its summit, is called the Falberg. 
 
 Its peak, always enveloped in a cloak of snow and 
 ice, is the steepest in Norway, where the proximity 
 of the pole causes, at an altitude of eighteen hun- 
 dred feet, a cold equal to that which reigns on 
 the loftiest mountains of the globe. The side of the 
 mountain toward the sea is an almost perpendicular 
 cliff, but inclines gradually toward the east, and is 
 connected with the falls of the Sieg by a series of 
 valleys at different elevations, where the cold allows 
 nothing to grow save furze-bushes and stunted trees. 
 That part of the fiord into which the stream empties 
 at the feet of the forest is called Siegdalhen, a 
 word which may be translated " the slope of the 
 Sieg," that being the name of the river. The 
 curve opposite the sheer precipice of the Falberg is 
 the valley of Jarvis, a lovely spot overlooked by 
 hills covered with firs, larches, birches, and a few 
 oaks and beeches, the richest and most brightly col- 
 ored of all the decorations that northern nature has 
 bestowed upon those rugged cliffs. The eye can 
 readily distinguish the line at which the soil, heated
 
 SERAPHITA 149 
 
 by the sun's rays, begins to allow cultivation and 
 affords sustenance for the various species of Nor- 
 wegian flora. At that spot, the fiord is so wide that 
 the waves, hurled back by the Falberg, expire with 
 gentle murmuring on the lowest fringe of those hill- 
 sides, a shore bordered with fine sand, sown with 
 spangles of mica, with pretty pebbles, with bits 
 of porphyry and marble of innumerable shades, 
 brought from Sweden by the waters of the river, 
 and with drift from the sea, shells and sea-flowers 
 which have been tossed there by the storms, from 
 the pole or from the south. 
 
 At the base of the mountains of Jarvis lies the 
 village, consisting of some two hundred wooden 
 houses, whose inhabitants are lost to the world like 
 swarms of wild bees in a forest, which, without 
 increasing or diminishing in numbers, vegetate con- 
 tentedly, living by plunder in the bosom of nature 
 at its wildest. The unknown existence of that vil- 
 lage is easily explained. Few men were bold enough 
 to venture among the reefs at the outlet of the fiord 
 to engage in fishing, an industry in which the Nor- 
 wegians engage on a grand scale on other less perilous 
 parts of the coast. The fish are numerous enough 
 in the fiord to furnish a large part of the food-supply 
 of the people; the pasture land in the valleys sup- 
 plies them with milk and butter; then there are some 
 excellent fields in which they are able to raise rye, 
 hemp, and vegetables, which they defend against 
 the extreme cold and against the short-lived but in- 
 tense heat of their summer with the skill that all
 
 1 50 SERAPHITA 
 
 Norwegians display in that twofold contest. The lack 
 of communications, either by land, where the roads 
 are impracticable, or by sea, where none but small 
 boats can thread their way through the maritime de- 
 files of the fiord, prevents them from enriching them- 
 selves by finding a market for the wood of their 
 forests. It would require an outlay as enormous to 
 make the fiord navigable as to open a road into the 
 interior. The roads from Christiania to Drontheim 
 give the fiord a wide berth, and cross the Sieg by 
 a bridge several leagues from its mouth; the shore 
 between the valley of Jarvis and Drontheim is 
 covered with vast, impassable forests; and the Fal- 
 berg is separated from Christiania by inaccessible 
 precipices. The village of Jarvis might, perhaps, 
 have been placed in communication with the interior 
 of Norway and with Sweden by way of the Sieg; 
 but, to be brought in touch with civilization, the 
 Stromfiord required a man of genius. That man of 
 genius did, in fact, make his appearance; he was a 
 poet, a Swedish monk, who died admiring and vene- 
 rating the beauties of the country as one of the most 
 magnificent of the Creator's works. 
 
 Now, those men whom study has endowed with 
 that inward sight whose rapid perception brings in 
 succession before their minds, as upon a canvas, the 
 most strongly contrasted landscapes of the earth, 
 will readily form an idea of the general appearance 
 of the Stromfiord. They, and they alone, perhaps, 
 will be able to sail, in imagination, among the reefs 
 at the tortuous entrance of the bay wherein the sea
 
 SERAPHITA IJI 
 
 roars endlessly; to follow its wild waves along the 
 eternal shelving faces of the Falberg, whose pyram- 
 idal white peaks blend with the misty clouds in a sky 
 that is almost always of a pearly-gray; to admire 
 the lovely, indented surface of the bay; to listen 
 to the cascades of the Sieg, which falls in long, white 
 threads upon a breastwork of fine trees scattered 
 about in confusion, standing erect or hidden among 
 fragments of gneiss; and then to rest on the joyous 
 pictures presented by the sloping hills of Jarvis, 
 where the vegetable treasures of the North spring 
 from the earth, in families, in myriads: here, birches 
 graceful as maidens and swaying gracefully like 
 them; there, colonnades of beech-trees, with cen- 
 tenary, moss-grown trunks; all the contrasts of the 
 varying shades of green, of white clouds floating 
 among black firs, of vast moors covered with purple 
 heather in an infinite variety of shades in fine, all 
 the colors, all the perfumes, of that flora whose 
 marvels are unknown to the world. Magnify the 
 proportions of that amphitheatre, soar among the 
 clouds, lose yourself in the clefts of the cliffs 
 where the sea-dogs seek repose, your imagination 
 will never rise to the magnificence or the poesy of 
 that corner of Norway! Could your imagination 
 ever be as great as the ocean that confines it, as 
 capricious as the fanciful figures outlined by those 
 forests, those clouds, those shadows, and by the 
 rapid variations of the light? 
 
 Do you see, above the fields by the shore, on the 
 upper margin of the tillage land that extends in a
 
 152 SERAPHITA 
 
 wavy line along the base of the high hills of Jarvis, 
 two or three hundred houses covered with ncever, 
 a roofing material made of birch-bark, frail, low 
 houses, which resemble silk-worms on a mulberry- 
 leaf, blown there by the wind? Above those hum- 
 ble, peaceful dwellings is a church, built with a 
 simplicity that harmonizes with the poverty of 
 the village. A cemetery surrounds the apse of the 
 church, and a little farther on is the rectory. Still 
 higher up, on a hump of the mountain, stands a 
 house, the only one in the village built of stone, 
 and, for that reason, called by the natives the 
 "Swedish chateau." In truth, some thirty years 
 before this story opens, a rich man came from 
 Sweden to Jarvis and settled there, exerting himself 
 to improve the fortunes of the village. That little 
 house, built with the design of inducing the natives 
 to build similar ones for themselves, was remarkable 
 by reason of the solidity of its construction, and by 
 reason of the wall that enclosed it, a rare thing in 
 Norway, where, notwithstanding the great abun- 
 dance of stone, wood is used for all fences, even for 
 those about the fields. The house, thus protected 
 from the snow, stood on raised ground in the centre 
 of a vast courtyard. The windows were sheltered 
 by penthouses projecting to a great distance and 
 supported by great squared firs, which impart a sort 
 of patriarchal appearance to the structures of the 
 northern countries. From beneath those sheltering 
 projections one could readily distinguish the wild 
 nakedness of the Falberg, compare the infinite
 
 SERAPHITA 153 
 
 expanse of the open sea to the mere drop of water 
 in the foaming gulf, listen to the ceaseless flowing of 
 the Sieg, whose surface seemed motionless at a dis- 
 tance as it fell into its granite bowl, bounded for 
 three leagues around by the glaciers of the North ; 
 in a word, one could see the whole region in which 
 the supernatural events of this narrative are to take 
 place. 
 
 The winter of 1799 and 1800 was one of the 
 roughest within the memory of Europeans; the sea 
 about Norway rushed bodily into the fiords, where 
 the violence of the surf ordinarily prevents it from 
 freezing. A terrific wind, the effects of which re- 
 sembled those of the Spanish levanter, swept the 
 ice from the Stromfiord and blew all the snow to 
 the head of the inlet. Not for many years had the 
 people of Jarvis been permitted to see, in winter, 
 the colors of the sky reflected in the vast mirror of 
 the water, a curious spectacle in the bosom of those 
 mountains whose inequalities were all buried be- 
 neath the successive layers of snow, the sharpest 
 peaks as well as the deepest valleys forming slight 
 folds merely in the vast robe cast by nature over 
 that landscape, at that time melancholy beyond 
 words in its glaring monotony. The long falling 
 sheets of the Sieg, being suddenly frozen, described 
 an enormous arch beneath which the natives might 
 have passed out of reach of the hurricanes, had any 
 of them been bold enough to venture abroad. But 
 the dangers of travelling, even the shortest distances, 
 kept the most fearless hunters at home, for they
 
 1 54 SERAPHITA 
 
 feared that on account of the snow they might not 
 be able to recognize the paths cut along the edges of 
 precipices and crevasses and on the mountain sides. 
 So it was that no living thing gave animation to that 
 desert of white, where the north wind from the 
 pole reigned supreme, its voice alone being audible 
 there at rare intervals. The sky, almost always of 
 a grayish hue, caused the water to assume the tints 
 of burnished steel. Perchance an old eider-duck, 
 now and then, flew unharmed through the boundless 
 expanse of sky, protected by the warm down about 
 which hover the dreams of the wealthy, who have 
 no knowledge of the dangers which are the price of 
 those feathers; but, like the Bedouin who alone 
 ploughs the trackless sands of Africa, the bird was 
 neither seen nor heard ; the benumbed atmosphere, 
 deprived of its magnetic currents, echoed neither 
 the flapping of its wings nor its cheery cries. In- 
 deed, no eye of sufficient keenness could have en- 
 dured the glare of that precipice covered with 
 dazzling crystals, and the pitiless reflection of the 
 snow, barely softened on the summit by the rays of 
 a pallid sun, which appeared now and again as if 
 desirous to demonstrate the fact that it still lived. 
 Often, when heaps of gray clouds, driven in squad- 
 rons among the mountain peaks and the firs, con- 
 cealed the sky beneath a threefold curtain, the 
 earth, in default of light from heaven, furnished 
 light for itself. So it was that in that spot were to 
 be seen all the majestic features of the cold that for- 
 ever encompasses the pole, its leading characteristic
 
 SERAPHITA 155 
 
 being the royal silence in which absolute monarchs 
 live. Every principle carried to extremes bears 
 within itself the appearance of a negation and the 
 symptoms of death: is not life a contest between 
 two forces? In that spot there was nothing to indi- 
 cate life. A single power, the unproductive strength 
 of the ice, reigned unopposed. The roaring of the 
 open sea in its passion did not reach that silent 
 basin, where there is so much uproar during the 
 three short months when nature makes all haste to 
 produce the scanty crops necessary for the support 
 of that patient people. A few tall firs reared aloft 
 their black pyramids laden with snowy garlands, 
 and the shape of their hanging branches, with their 
 drooping needles, completed the mourning aspect of 
 those mountain tops, where they assumed in the 
 distance the appearance of brown specks. 
 
 Every family remained by its own fireside, in a 
 house carefully closed, supplied with biscuit, pre- 
 served butter, and dried fish, provisions laid in be- 
 forehand for the seven winter months. One could 
 hardly see the smoke from those dwellings. Almost 
 all of them were buried under the snow, but protected 
 against injury from its weight by long boards run- 
 ning from the roof to posts set solidly in the earth 
 at a considerable distance and forming a covered 
 road around the house. During such terrible winters, 
 the women weave and dye the cotton or woollen 
 stuffs of which their clothes are made, while most 
 of the men read, or abandon themselves to those 
 absorbing reflections which have given birth to the
 
 1 56 SERAPHITA 
 
 profound theories, the mystic dreams of the North, 
 its beliefs, its exhaustive studies concerning an ab- 
 struse point in science, which they investigate as if 
 with a probe; a semi-monastic mode of life which 
 compels the mind to fall back upon itself, to find its 
 sustenance within itself, and which makes of the 
 Norwegian peasant a being apart among the people 
 of Europe. Such, then, was the condition of the 
 Stromfiord in the first year of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, about the middle of the month of May. 
 
 On a certain morning when the sun was shining 
 brightly upon the landscape we have described, kin- 
 dling the flames of all the ephemeral diamonds pro- 
 duced by the crystallization of the snow and ice, two 
 persons passed across the fiord, flew along the base 
 of the Falberg, and soared toward its summit from 
 bastion to bastion. Were they two human beings or 
 two arrows? One who had seen them rising, frieze 
 above frieze, would have taken them for two eider- 
 ducks sailing in company through the clouds. Neither 
 the most superstitious fisherman nor the most daring 
 huntsman would have attributed to human creatures 
 the power to retain their footing along the faint lines 
 marked upon the granite where those two glided 
 along none the less with the uncanny surefooted ness 
 possessed by somnambulists when, forgetting all the 
 risks attendant upon their weight and the dangers of 
 the slightest deviation from the true course, they 
 run along the edges of roofs, maintaining their equi- 
 librium by virtue of some unknown power. 
 
 "Stop, Seraphitus," said one of the two, a pale
 
 SERAPHITA 157 
 
 young girl, " and let me breathe. I have looked only 
 at you as we climbed the walls of this abyss; other- 
 wise, what would have become of me? But then, I 
 am only a poor, weak creature. Do I tire you?" 
 
 " No," said he, upon whose arm she was leaning. 
 "Forward, Minna! the place where we now are is 
 not secure enough for us to stay here." 
 
 Again they both made the long pieces of board 
 fastened to their feet whistle over the snow, and 
 reached the first shelf which chance had clearly 
 marked upon the side of the abyss. The person 
 whom Minna called Seraphitus supported himself 
 upon his right heel to raise the board, which was 
 about six feet long, narrow as a child's foot, and 
 was made fast to his shoe by two thongs made of 
 the skin of a sea-dog. The board was about two 
 inches thick and faced with reindeer skin, the hair 
 of which, standing erect in the snow, brought Sera- 
 phitus abruptly to a standstill; he drew up his left 
 foot, to which was attached a similar patten not 
 less than twelve feet long, turned hastily around, 
 seized his timid companion, lifted her in his arms 
 notwithstanding the long pattens with which her 
 feet were shod, and seated her on a block of granite 
 after brushing the snow away with his cloak. 
 
 "You are safe here, Minna, you can tremble at 
 your ease." 
 
 " We have already climbed a third of the way up 
 the Ice-Cap," she said, glancing up at the peak to 
 which she gave the popular name by which it is 
 known in Norway. " I cannot believe it."
 
 1 58 SERAPHITA 
 
 But she was too much out of breath to say more, 
 so she smiled at Seraphitus, who placed his hand 
 upon her heart without replying, and held her so, 
 listening to its resonant palpitations, which were as 
 hurried as those of a young bird taken by surprise. 
 
 " It often beats as quickly when I have not been 
 running," she said. 
 
 Seraphitus bowed, with no sign of disdain or in- 
 difference. Despite the grace which made that 
 movement of his head almost courtly, it neverthe- 
 less betrayed a dissent which, in a woman, would 
 have been bewitchingly coquettish. Seraphitus 
 pressed the maiden warmly to his heart. Minna 
 took the caress for a reply, and continued to gaze 
 at him. As Seraphitus raised his head, tossing back 
 from his forehead the golden masses of his hair 
 with an almost impatient gesture, so as to expose his 
 brow, he read happiness in his companion's eyes. 
 
 " Yes, Minna," he said, in a voice whose paternal 
 accent had a fascinating sound in the mouth of one 
 still in his teens, " look at me, do not look down." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Do you want to know? Try it." 
 
 Minna cast a hasty glance at her feet, and uttered 
 a sudden shriek, like a child who has fallen in with 
 a tiger. The horrible sensation of dizziness had 
 seized her, that single glance had sufficed to com- 
 municate the contagion to her. The fiord, jealous 
 of encroachments upon its domain, roared aloud in a 
 voice that confused her, ringing in her ears, as if to 
 'devour her more surely by interposing between her
 
 SERAPHITA 1 59 
 
 and life. Thereupon a shiver crept down her back 
 from her hair to her feet, icy cold at first, but it soon 
 poured into her nerves an insufferable heat, beat 
 violently in her veins, and tortured all her extremities 
 with electric shocks like those caused by touching 
 the electric eel. Too weak to resist, she felt herself 
 irresistibly drawn by an unknown force down from 
 the shelf on which they stood, where she fancied 
 that she saw some monster darting venom at her, a 
 monster whose magnetic eyes fascinated her, whose 
 open jaws seemed to be crunching his prey in antici- 
 pation. 
 
 " I die, my Seraphitus, having never loved anyone 
 but you," she said, mechanically making a move- 
 ment as if to jump. 
 
 Seraphitus breathed softly on her forehead and 
 her eyes. Suddenly, like the traveller refreshed by 
 a bath, Minna found that only the memory remained 
 of her poignant suffering, already banished by that 
 caressing breath which permeated her body and in- 
 undated her with balsamic emanations, as swiftly as 
 the breath had passed through the air. 
 
 "Who, then, are you?" she said, with a feeling 
 of delicious terror. " But I know, you are my life. 
 How can you look into that abyss without dying?" 
 she continued, after a pause. 
 
 Seraphitus left her clinging to the granite, and 
 went and took up his position, as a ghost might 
 have done, on the very edge of the shelf, whence 
 his eyes gazed down into the fiord, defying its 
 dazzling depth; his body did not tremble, his brow
 
 160 SERAPHITA 
 
 remained as white and impassive as that of a marble 
 statue: abyss against abyss! 
 
 "Seraphitus, if you love me, come back!" cried 
 the girl. "Your danger renews my torture. Who 
 are you, pray, that you have such superhuman 
 power at your age?" she asked him, when she felt 
 his arms about her once more. 
 
 " Why," he replied, " you look without fear upon 
 spaces far more vast." 
 
 And this strange being pointed with his raised 
 finger to the halo of blue sky left by the clouds 
 above their heads, in which the stars could be seen 
 in broad day by virtue of an atmospheric law not yet 
 explained. 
 
 " But what a difference!" she said, with a smile. 
 
 "You are right," he replied; "we were born to 
 bend our steps heavenward. One's native country, 
 like a mother's face, never frightens a child." 
 
 His voice stirred the very entrails of his com- 
 panion, who had become silent. 
 
 " Well, let us go on," he added. 
 
 They flitted together along the faintly-marked 
 paths on the mountain-side, from terrace to terrace, 
 from line to line, with the rapidity of the Arabian 
 horse, that bird of the desert. In a few moments, 
 they reached a carpet of grass and mosses and 
 flowers, whereon no human creature had ever rested. 
 
 "What a lovely sorter!" exclaimed Minna, call- 
 ing the mead by its true name; " but how happens 
 it to be at this height?" 
 
 " We are above the line of the Norwegian flora, it
 
 SERAPHITA l6l 
 
 is true," said Seraphitus; " but the presence of these 
 few blades of grass and flowers is due to this cliff 
 which shelters them from the polar cold. Put this 
 flower in your bosom, Minna," he added, plucking 
 a flower; " take this fragrant, unique flower that no 
 human eye has ever beheld, and keep it as a souve- 
 nir of this morning, unique in your life! Never again 
 will you find a guide to lead you to this sosler." 
 
 As he spoke, he suddenly handed her a hybrid 
 plant which his eagle eye had shown him among 
 the stalkless silenes and the saxifrages, a veritable 
 marvel of beauty blossoming under the breath of 
 angels. With childish eagerness, Minna seized the 
 plant, in color a transparent green as brilliant as 
 the green of the emerald, consisting of small green 
 leaves rolled together in the shape of a horn, light 
 brown in the centre, but changing gradually to green 
 toward the edges, which were serrated with teeth of 
 marvellous delicacy of outline. The leaves were so 
 close together that they seemed to blend with one 
 another, and produced a multitude of pretty rose- 
 shaped effects. Here and there, upon that carpet, 
 rose white stars bordered with a thread of gold, 
 with purple stamens but no pistils protruding from 
 their bosoms. A perfume, suggestive at once of 
 that of the rose and the orange-blossom, but fleeting 
 and wild, gave the final touch to the indefinably 
 celestial quality of that mysterious flower, which 
 Seraphitus contemplated with a sort of melancholy, 
 as if its odor expressed to him plaintive thoughts 
 which he alone understood. But to Minna that 
 ii
 
 162 SERAPHITA 
 
 extraordinary phenomenon seemed to be a mere ca- 
 price whereby nature had amused herself by endow- 
 ing stones with the freshness, the beauty, and the 
 fragrance of plants. 
 
 " Why should it be unique? Will it never be re- 
 peated?" the girl asked Seraphitus, who blushed, 
 and abruptly changed the subject. 
 
 " Let us sit down; turn around and look! Per- 
 haps you will not tremble at this height? The abyss 
 is so deep now that you can no longer distinguish 
 its depth, it has acquired the smooth aspect of the 
 sea, the indistinctness of the clouds, the color of 
 the sky; the ice in the fiord is a lovely turquoise 
 shade; the forests of firs are mere faint dark-brown 
 lines; for us, all abysses should be thus adorned." 
 
 Seraphitus uttered these words with the impres- 
 siveness of tone and gesture known only to those 
 who have climbed to the summit of the loftiest 
 mountains on the globe; a manner contracted so in- 
 stinctively that the haughtiest traveller finds him- 
 self compelled to treat his guide as a brother, and 
 does not deem himself his superior until they de- 
 scend again into the valleys where men dwell. He 
 knelt at Minna's feet and removed her snow-shoes. 
 The child was not conscious of it, so lost in wonder 
 was she at the imposing spectacle presented by the 
 Norwegian landscape, the high cliffs being visible 
 from base to summit at a single glance: so deeply 
 .moved was she by the solemn permanence of those 
 ice-bound peaks, which mere words were powerless 
 to describe.
 
 SERAPHITA 163 
 
 " We did not come here by the aid of human 
 strength alone," she said, clasping her hands; 
 "surely I am dreaming." 
 
 " You call those facts supernatural of which the 
 causes elude you," he replied. 
 
 "Your answers," she rejoined, "are always 
 stamped with an indefinable depth of meaning. Be- 
 side you, I understand everything without an effort. 
 Ah! I am free." 
 
 " You no longer have your snow-shoes on, that is 
 all." 
 
 " Oh!" she exclaimed, " when I would have loved 
 to unfasten yours and kiss your feet!" 
 
 "Keep such words for Wilfrid," rejoined Sera- 
 phitus, gently. 
 
 "Wilfrid!" Minna repeated, in an outburst of 
 wrath, which subsided as soon as she had glanced at 
 her companion. "You never lose your temper!" 
 she said, trying, but in vain, to take his hand ; 
 "you are despairingly perfect in every respect." 
 
 "And from that you conclude that I am without 
 feeling?" 
 
 Minna was terrified at that keen glance flashed 
 into her mind. 
 
 "You make it clear to me that we understand 
 each other," she replied, with the fascinating grace 
 of the woman who loves. 
 
 Seraphitus shook his head slowly as he glanced at 
 her with an expression at once sad and sweet. 
 
 "Do you who know everything," continued 
 Minna, " tell me why the shyness that I felt with
 
 164 SERAPHITA 
 
 you down yonder has vanished since we came up 
 here; why do I now dare, for the first time, to look 
 you in the face, whereas, down in the valley, I 
 hardly dared to steal a glance at you?" 
 
 " Here, perhaps, we have laid aside the trivial 
 things of earth," he replied, removing his cloak. 
 
 "You were never so handsome," said Minna, 
 seating herself upon a moss-covered rock, and losing 
 herself in contemplation of the being who had guided 
 her over a part of the mountain which at a distance 
 seemed inaccessible. 
 
 Never, in very truth, had Seraphitus shone with 
 such dazzling brilliancy; no other expression would 
 do justice to the animation of his features and the 
 general aspect of his person. Was that splendor 
 due to the lustre imparted to the complexion by 
 the pure air of the mountains and the reflection of the 
 snow? was it produced by the internal commotion 
 which overexcites the body when it is resting after 
 long-continued agitation? was it attributable to the 
 sharp contrast between the golden radiance cast by 
 the sun and the darkness of the clouds through 
 which the lovely couple had passed? Perhaps we 
 should add to those causes the effects of one of the 
 most beautiful phenomena which human nature has 
 it in its power to offer. If some skilful physiologist 
 had examined that creature, who seemed at that mo- 
 ment, judging by the pride depicted upon his brow 
 and the gleam that shot from his eyes, a young 
 man of some seventeen years ; if he had sought 
 the active principle of that vigorous life beneath
 
 SERAPHITA 165 
 
 the fairest skin that ever the North bestowed upon 
 one of its children, he would undoubtedly have be- 
 come convinced of the existence of a phosphores- 
 cent fluid in nerves which seemed to shine beneath 
 the epidermis, or of the constant burning of an in- 
 ward light which illumined Seraphitus as an alabaster 
 lamp is illumined by the light within it. Although 
 his hands, from which he had removed the gloves 
 in order to unfasten Minna's snow-shoes, were slen- 
 der and tapering, they seemed to possess strength 
 equal to that which the Creator has bestowed on the 
 transparent claws of the crab. The golden flames 
 that flashed from his eyes contended for supremacy 
 with the rays of the sun, and he seemed not to re- 
 ceive light from it, but to give it light. His body, 
 slender and fragile as a woman's, denoted one of 
 those natures apparently feeble, whose power is al- 
 ways on a level with their desires, and who are 
 always strong at the right moment. 
 
 Seraphitus was of medium height, but seemed to 
 grow taller when he turned his face to you, as if 
 he were about to soar aloft. His hair, curled by 
 a fairy's hand, and seemingly ruffled by a breath 
 of wind, added to the illusion produced by his 
 ethereal bearing; but that bearing, entirely free 
 from effort, resulted from a mental phenomenon 
 rather than from a physical habit. Minna's imag- 
 ination was accessory to that constant hallucination, 
 to which anyone would have fallen a victim, and 
 which gave to Seraphitus the appearance of the 
 faces we see in a pleasant dream. No known type
 
 166 SERAPHITA 
 
 could convey an adequate impression of that face, 
 so majestically virile in Minna's eyes, but, in the 
 eyes of a man, capable of eclipsing by its feminine 
 charm the loveliest faces that we owe to Raphael's 
 brush. That divine painter constantly portrayed a 
 sort of placid joy, an amorous sweetness in the lines 
 of his angelic beauties; but was ever imagination so 
 rich that, without looking upon Seraphitus himself, 
 it could portray the melancholy blended with hope 
 which half concealed the ineffable sentiments stamped 
 upon his features? Who could conceive, even in an 
 artistic rhapsody, when everything is possible, the 
 shadows cast by a mysterious awe upon that too in- 
 telligent brow which seemed to question the skies and 
 always to have pity on the earth? That head soared 
 disdainfully aloft, like a sublime bird of prey whose 
 cries rend the air, and yet was as resigned as the 
 turtle-dove whose voice pours forth its song of affec- 
 tion in the heart of the silent forest. Seraphitus's 
 complexion was unusually light, and its fairness was 
 heightened by red lips, dark-brown eyebrows and 
 silky lashes, the only details that marred the pallor 
 of a face whose perfect regularity of feature inter- 
 fered in no wise with the vivid expression of the 
 feelings; they were reflected therein without strain 
 or violence, but with the natural and majestic gravity 
 which we love to attribute to beings of a superior 
 type. Everything in that marble-like face expressed 
 strength and repose. 
 
 Minna rose to take Seraphitus's hand, hoping that 
 she might in that way draw him toward her and lay
 
 SERAPHITA 167 
 
 upon that fascinating brow a kiss extorted by ad- 
 miration rather than by love; but a glance from the 
 young man, a glance that penetrated her very being 
 as a sunbeam penetrates the prism, froze the poor 
 girl's blood. She was conscious, but without under- 
 standing it, of a gulf between them, she turned her 
 face away and wept. Suddenly a powerful hand 
 grasped her waist, and a voice, overflowing with 
 melody, said to her: 
 
 "Come!" 
 
 She obeyed, and placed her face, suddenly reani- 
 mated, against the young man's heart; and he, 
 adapting his step to hers, with sweet courtesy, 
 led her to a spot from which they could see the 
 gorgeous decorations of the polar landscape. 
 
 " Before I look at you and listen to you, Sera- 
 phitus, tell me why you repulse me? Have I dis- 
 pleased you? tell me how. I would like to have 
 nothing of my own ; I would that all my earthly 
 riches were yours as the riches of my heart are 
 yours; that the light came to me only through your 
 eyes, as my thoughts are derived from your thoughts; 
 then I should no longer fear to offend you by send- 
 ing back to you the reflections of your mind, the 
 words of your heart, the light of your light, as we 
 send back to God the reflections with which He feeds 
 our minds. I would like to be all you!" 
 
 " Ah, well, Minna, a constant desire is a promise 
 made us by the future. Hope on! But if you wish 
 to be pure, always mingle the thought of the Om- 
 nipotent with your earthly affections, then you will
 
 1 68 SERAPHITA 
 
 love all His creatures, and your heart will attain a 
 great height!" 
 
 " I will do whatever you wish," she replied, rais- 
 ing her eyes timidly to his face. 
 
 "I cannot be your companion," said Seraphitus, 
 sadly. 
 
 He forced back certain thoughts that came to his 
 lips, and held out his arms toward Christiania, which 
 was visible, a mere speck on the horizon. 
 
 "Look!" said he. 
 
 " We are very small," she replied. 
 
 " True, but we become great by sentiment and 
 intelligence," replied Seraphitus. "With us alone, 
 Minna, begins the knowledge of things; the little 
 that we learn of the laws of the visible world enables 
 us to discover the vastness of the worlds above. I 
 know not if there is still time to speak thus to you; 
 but I would be so glad to communicate to you the 
 flame of my hopes! Perhaps we shall be together 
 some day in the world where love does not die." 
 
 " Why not now and forever?" she murmured. 
 
 "Nothing is stable here," he scornfully replied. 
 " The ephemeral bliss of earthly loves is a ray 
 of light which indicates to some minds the dawn of 
 more lasting bliss, just as the discovery of a natural 
 law leads some richly endowed minds to infer the 
 existence of a whole system of similar laws. Is not 
 our fragile earthly happiness, then, the proof of 
 another perfect happiness, just as the earth, a frag- 
 ment of the world, is a proof of the existence of 
 the world? We cannot measure the vast orbit of the
 
 SERAPHITA 169 
 
 divine thought, of which we are but an atom, as 
 infinitesimal as God is great, but we can foresee its 
 immensity, and kneel and worship and wait. Men 
 always go astray in their scientific investigations 
 because they do not see that everything on this globe 
 of theirs is relative and implies a general revolution, 
 a constant production which necessarily brings with 
 it progress toward an end. Man himself is not a 
 complete creation; otherwise God would not exist!" 
 
 "How have you found time to learn so many 
 things?" the girl asked him. 
 
 " I remember," was his reply. 
 
 " In my eyes, you are more beautiful than every- 
 thing else that I see." 
 
 "We are among the greatest of God's works. 
 Has He not given us the power to meditate concern- 
 ing nature, to concentrate it in ourselves by the 
 thought, and to make of it a stepping-stone to rise 
 nearer to Him ? We love one another in proportion 
 as our minds contain more or less of Heaven. But 
 do not be unjust, Minna; look at the spectacle spread 
 out at your feet, is it not grand? At your feet the 
 ocean stretches away like a carpet, the mountains 
 are like the walls of a circus, the ether above us is 
 like the rounded curtain of this great theatre, and 
 here we inhale the thought of God like a sweet per- 
 fume. Look! the storms that shatter vessels laden 
 with men seem to us here but gentle breezes, and if 
 you raise your head and look above us, all is blue. 
 See yonder diadem of stars. Here the varying 
 shades of terrestrial expression disappear. Gazing
 
 170 SERAPHITA 
 
 upon this landscape, softened by distance, do you 
 not feel within yourself more profundity of thought 
 than wit? have you not more solemnity than en- 
 thusiasm? more energy than will? are you not con- 
 scious of sensations which we have no power to 
 interpret? Do you not feel that you have wings? 
 Let us pray." 
 
 Seraphitus bent his knee, and crossed his hands on 
 his breast, while Minna fell upon her knees weeping. 
 They remained thus for some moments, during which 
 the blue halo in the sky above their heads grew 
 larger, and beams of light enveloped them without 
 their knowledge. 
 
 "Why do not you weep when I weep?" said 
 Minna in a broken voice. 
 
 "They who are all spirit do not weep," replied 
 Seraphitus, rising. "Why should I weep? I no 
 longer see the misery of mankind. Here, the good 
 shines forth in all its majesty; below, I hear the 
 supplications and the agonizing cries of the harp of 
 sorrows, vibrating under the fingers of the captive 
 spirit. Here, I listen to the concert of the heavenly 
 harps. Below, you have hope, that noble commence- 
 ment of faith; but this is the kingdom of faith, which 
 is hope realized !" 
 
 "You would never love me, I am too imperfect, 
 you despise me," said the girl. 
 
 " Minna, the violet that lies hidden at the foot of 
 the oak says to itself: ' The sun loves me not, it 
 comes not to me.' The sun says to itself: ' Should 
 I shine upon that poor flower, it would perish ! '
 
 SERAPHITA 171 
 
 Being fond of the flower, it filters its rays through 
 the leaves of the oak, and so weakens them in order 
 to color the petals of its beloved. It seems to me 
 that I do not wear veils enough, and I fear lest you 
 see me too clearly: you would shudder if you knew 
 me better. Listen: I have no taste for the fruits of 
 the earth; I have learned to know too well the 
 pleasures you enjoy; and, like the dissolute em- 
 perors of profane Rome, I have reached the point 
 where everything is distasteful to me, for I have 
 acquired the gift of second-sight. Give me up," 
 said Seraphitus, sorrowfully. 
 
 He went and took his seat upon a block of stone, 
 letting his head fall forward on his breast. 
 
 "Why do you drive me to despair thus?" said 
 Minna. 
 
 " Begone!" cried Seraphitus. " I have nothing of 
 what you would have of me. Your love is too 
 earthly for me. Why do you not love Wilfrid? 
 Wilfrid is a man, a man tried by passions, who will 
 know how to embrace you with his nervous arms, 
 who will make you feel the pressure of a broad, 
 strong hand. He has fine, black hair, eyes over- 
 flowing with human thoughts, a heart that pours 
 torrents of lava into the words his lips pronounce. 
 He will crush you with caresses. He will be your 
 well-beloved, your husband. Wilfrid is the man for 
 you!" 
 
 Minna wept hot tears. 
 
 " Do you dare to say that you love him not?" he 
 asked, in a voice that pierced her heart like a dagger.
 
 172 SERAPHITA 
 
 " Mercy, mercy, my Seraphitus!" 
 
 " Love him, poor child of the earth to which your 
 destiny holds you fast," said the terrible Seraphitus, 
 seizing Minna with a violence that forced her to go 
 with him to the edge of the soekr, from which the 
 view was so boundless that an enthusiastic girl could 
 easily believe herself to be above the world. " I 
 desired a companion to go with me to the kingdom 
 of light, I determined to show you this bit of clay, 
 and I see that you still cling to it. Farewell ! Re- 
 main here, enjoy through your senses, obey your 
 nature, turn pale with pale men, blush with women, 
 play with the children, pray with the guilty, raise 
 your eyes to Heaven in your sorrow; tremble, hope, 
 palpitate; you will have a companion, you can still 
 laugh and weep, give and receive. But I am a sort 
 of outcast, far from heaven; a sort of monster, far 
 from earth. My heart no longer beats; I live only 
 in myself and for myself. I feel with my mind, I 
 breathe with my brow, I see with my thought, I am 
 dying of impatience and hopeless longings. No one 
 on earth has the power to gratify my desires, to calm 
 my impatience, and I have forgotten how to weep. 
 I am alone. I am resigned, and I wait." 
 
 Seraphitus glanced at the flower-strewn mound on 
 which he had placed Minna, then turned toward the 
 lofty mountains whose summits were veiled with 
 dense clouds, into which he cast the rest of his 
 thoughts. 
 
 "Do you not hear a delicious concert, Minna?" 
 he continued, in his turtle-dove's voice, for the eagle
 
 SERAPHITA 173 
 
 had cried enough. " Would not one say it was pro- 
 duced by the >olian harps which your poets place 
 in the heart of forests and mountains? Do you see 
 the indistinct figures in yonder clouds? do you see the 
 winged feet of those who are arranging the decora- 
 tions of the sky? Those strains refresh the soul; 
 soon the sky will let fall the flowers of spring, a 
 gleam of light has come from the north. Let us fly, 
 it is time." 
 
 In a moment, their snow-shoes were reattached 
 and they descended the Falberg by the steep slopes 
 that led down into the valley of the Sieg. A miracu- 
 lous intelligence guided their course, or, to speak 
 more accurately, their flight. When a snow-covered 
 crevasse came in their way, Seraphitus grasped 
 Minna and darted swiftly, light as a bird, across the 
 fragile layer of snow that bridged the deep chasm. 
 Often, guiding his companion's steps, he made a 
 slight deviation to avoid a precipice, a tree, a rock 
 which he seemed to see under the snow, as seamen 
 familiar with the ocean divine the presence of reefs 
 by the color, the eddies, or the smoothness of the 
 water. When they reached the Siegdalhen path and 
 could go down almost fearlessly in a straight line to 
 the ice in the Stromfiord, Seraphitus stopped Minna. 
 
 " Have you nothing more to say to me?" he asked 
 her. 
 
 " I thought that you wished to meditate undis- 
 turbed," replied the maiden, respectfully. 
 
 " Let us hurry, sweet one, the night is at hand," 
 he rejoined.
 
 174 SERAPHITA 
 
 Minna started when she heard the voice of her 
 guide, for its tone was new to her; pure as a young 
 girl's, it put to flight the fantastic, luminous mist of 
 the dream through which she had thus far marched. 
 Seraphitus began to lay aside his masculine vigor and 
 to banish from his glances their too keen intelligence. 
 Soon those two fascinating creatures glided out upon 
 the fiord and reached the field of snow that lay be- 
 tween the bank and the first row of houses in the 
 village of Jarvis; then, impelled by the approach of 
 darkness, they ascended hastily toward the rectory, 
 as if they were climbing the steps of a vast staircase. 
 
 " My father must be anxious," said Minna. 
 
 " No," Seraphitus replied. 
 
 At that moment, they reached the porch of the 
 humble dwelling where Monsieur Becker, the pastor 
 of Jarvis, sat reading, awaiting his daughter for the 
 evening meal. 
 
 "Dear Monsieur Becker," said Seraphitus, "I 
 bring Minna back to you safe and sound." 
 
 " Thanks, mademoiselle," replied the old man, 
 laying his spectacles down on the book. " You 
 must be tired." 
 
 " Not at all," said Minna, who at that moment 
 felt her companion's breath on her brow. 
 
 " Will you come to take tea with me, little one, on 
 the day after to-morrow, in the afternoon?" 
 
 " With great pleasure, my dear." 
 
 "You will bring her, will you not, Monsieur 
 Becker?" 
 
 "Yes, mademoiselle."
 
 SERAPHITA 175 
 
 Seraphitus bowed coquettishly, saluted the old 
 man, departed, and a few moments later arrived in 
 the courtyard of the Swedish chateau. An octoge- 
 narian man-servant appeared under the immense 
 penthouse, holding a lantern. Seraphitus removed 
 his snow-shoes with the graceful dexterity of a 
 woman, hastened to the parlor, threw himself on 
 a great couch covered with furs, and lay there at 
 full length. 
 
 " What will you have to eat?" asked the old man, 
 lighting the unconscionably long candles that are 
 used in Norway. 
 
 " Nothing, David, I am too tired." 
 
 He removed his cloak lined with marten fur, rolled 
 himself up in it, and fell asleep. The old servant 
 stood for some moments gazing fondly at the singular 
 being who was reposing under his eyes, and whose 
 sex nobody would have found it easy to determine, 
 not even those most knowing in such matters. To 
 see him lying so, wrapped in his customary garment, 
 which resembled a woman's peignoir quite as much 
 as a man's cloak, it was impossible not to attribute 
 to a young girl the dainty feet which he allowed to 
 hang over the edge of the couch, as if to show with 
 what delicate grace nature had attached them to his 
 legs; but his brow, his profile, would have seemed 
 to denote manly vigor carried to its highest point. 
 
 " She is suffering, and will not tell me," thought 
 the old man; "she is dying like a flower withered 
 by a too fierce sunbeam." 
 
 And the old man wept.
 
 II 
 
 SERAPHITA 
 
 During the evening, David entered the parlor once 
 more. 
 
 " I know whom you have come to announce," 
 said Seraphita, in a sleepy voice. " Wilfrid may 
 come in." 
 
 Overhearing the words, a man suddenly appeared, 
 and sat down by her side. 
 
 " My dear Seraphita, are you ill? You seem paler 
 than usual." 
 
 She turned slowly toward him, after pushing her 
 hair back from her forehead like a pretty woman 
 who is so overdone by headache that she no longer 
 has strength to complain. 
 
 "I committed the folly of crossing the fiord with 
 Minna; we climbed the Falberg." 
 
 " Did you want to kill yourself?" he exclaimed, 
 with the terror of a lover. 
 
 " Have no fear, my good Wilfrid, I took the best 
 care of your Minna." 
 
 Wilfrid struck the table violently with his hand, 
 rose and walked toward the door, uttering a sorrowful 
 
 12 (177)
 
 178 SERAPHITA 
 
 exclamation, then returned, and tried to express his 
 grievance in words. 
 
 " Why this uproar if you think I am ill?" queried 
 Seraphita. 
 
 "Forgive me! have mercy on me!" he replied, 
 kneeling beside her. " Speak harshly to me, demand 
 of me whatever is hardest to endure of all that your 
 pitiless woman's caprice may suggest to you; but, 
 my beloved, do not cast a doubt upon my love. 
 You use Minna for an axe, and rain blows upon me. 
 Mercy!" 
 
 "Why say such words to me, my friend, when 
 you know they are of no avail?" she replied, glan- 
 cing at him with an expression which finally became 
 so soft that Wilfrid no longer saw Seraphita's eyes, 
 but a sort of liquid light, whose trembling resem- 
 bled the last echoes of a melody instinct with Italian 
 sweetness. 
 
 "Ah! one does not die of suffering," he said. 
 
 "Are you in pain?" she asked, in a voice whose 
 vibrations produced an effect upon his heart similar 
 to that produced by her glance. " What can I do 
 for you?" 
 
 " Love me as I love you." 
 
 " Poor Minna!" she replied. 
 
 " 1 never go armed!" cried Wilfrid. 
 
 "You are in a vile mood," said Seraphita, with a 
 smile. " Did I not speak like those Parisian women 
 of whose love-affairs you tell me?" 
 
 Wilfrid resumed his seat, folded his arms, and 
 gazed gloomily at Seraphita.
 
 SERAPHITA 179 
 
 "I forgive you," he said, "for you know not 
 what you do." 
 
 "Oh!" she retorted, "ever since the days of 
 Eve, women have always done both good and evil 
 knowingly." 
 
 " I believe it," he said. 
 
 "I am sure of it, Wilfrid. Our instinct is pre- 
 cisely what makes us. so perfect. What you men 
 learn we women instinctively feel." 
 
 "Then, why do you not feel how dearly I love 
 you?" 
 
 " Because you do not love me." 
 
 " Great God !" 
 
 " Why do you complain so of your suffering?" 
 she asked. i 
 
 " You are terrible to-night, Seraphita. You are a 
 veritable demon." 
 
 " No, I am simply blessed with the faculty of 
 comprehension, and that is frightful. Grief, Wilfrid, 
 is a light that illumines life for us." 
 
 "Why did you climb the Falberg, I pray to 
 know?" 
 
 " Minna will tell you. I am too tired to talk. Do 
 you talk, you who know everything, have learned 
 everything, and forgotten nothing, and have passed 
 through so many social tests. Entertain me, I am 
 listening." 
 
 " What can I say to you that you do not know? 
 Indeed, your very question is a mockery. You 
 admit nothing that exists in the world, you distort its 
 nomenclature, you trample on its laws, its manners,
 
 ISO SERAPHITA 
 
 its feelings, its learning, reducing them to the pro- 
 portions that they seem to possess when one views 
 them from outside the globe." 
 
 " You see, my friend, that I am not a woman. 
 You are wrong to love me. I descend from the 
 ethereal regions of my pretended power, I make 
 myself humbly small, I bow my head after the 
 manner of the poor females of every species, and 
 lo! you at once exalt me again! In a word, I am 
 broken in pieces, shattered, I appeal to you for help, 
 I need your arm, and you repulse me; we do not 
 understand each other." 
 
 "You are more wicked to-night than I have ever 
 seen you." 
 
 " Wicked!" she repeated, flashing a glance at him 
 by which all his sentiments were blended in a divine 
 sensation. " No, I am not well; that is all. So leave 
 me, my friend. Are you not abusing your rights as 
 a man? It is our duty always to please you, to 
 enliven you, to be always gay, and to have no other 
 whims than those that amuse you. What shall I do, 
 my friend? Do you expect me to sing or to dance, 
 when fatigue deprives me of the use of voice and 
 legs? Though we be at our last gasp, my masters, 
 we must still smile upon you! You call that reign- 
 ing, I believe. The poor women! I pity them. Tell 
 me, have they neither heart nor mind, that you 
 abandon them when they grow old? Very well, 
 Wilfrid, I am more than a hundred years old, so 
 begone! go to Minna's feet." 
 
 "Oh! my eternal love!"
 
 SERAPHITA l8l 
 
 " Do you know what eternity is? Hush, Wilfrid. 
 You desire me, but you do not love me. Tell me, 
 do I not remind you of some flirt?" 
 
 " Oh! it is true that I no longer recognize in you 
 the pure young girl whom I saw for the first time in 
 Jarvis church." 
 
 At those words, Seraphita passed her hands across 
 her forehead, and when she uncovered her face, 
 Wilfrid was amazed by the devout and saintlike 
 expression it wore. 
 
 " You are right, my friend. I am always foolish 
 to set my foot on your earth." 
 
 "Yes, dear Seraphita, be my star, and do not 
 leave the place whence you shed such a bright light 
 upon me." 
 
 As he spoke, he put out his hand to take hers, but 
 she withdrew it, with no sign of disdain or anger. 
 Wilfrid rose abruptly and walked to the window, 
 turning his back so that Seraphita might not see the 
 tears that gathered in his eyes. 
 
 " Why do you weep?" she said. "You are no 
 longer a child, Wilfrid. Come, come back to me, I 
 insist upon it. You sulk when I ought to be angry. 
 You see that I am ill, and you compel me, by your 
 absurd doubts, to think, to speak, or to share whims 
 and ideas that weary me. If you had the intelli- 
 gence that is a part of my nature, you would have 
 sung to me, you would have soothed my ennui to 
 sleep; but you love me for yourself and not for me." 
 
 The storm that was raging in Wilfrid's heart was 
 suddenly calmed by these words; he drew near
 
 1 82 SERAPHITA 
 
 slowly, the better to contemplate the ravishing crea- 
 ture who lay stretched out before his eyes, reclining 
 gracefully, leaning on her elbow in a seductive posi- 
 tion, her head on her hand. 
 
 "You think that I do not love you," she con- 
 tinued. " You are, mistaken. Listen to me, Wilfrid. 
 You are beginning to know much, for you have 
 suffered much. Let me tell you your thoughts. 
 Would you like to take my hand?" 
 
 She rose to a sitting position, and in her fascinat- 
 ing movements she seemed to radiate light. 
 
 " Does not a maiden who allows her hand to be 
 taken make a promise, and should she not fulfil it? 
 You know well that I cannot be yours. Two senti- 
 ments govern the passions that captivate earthly 
 women. Either they devote themselves to suffering, 
 degraded, criminal beings, whom they seek to con- 
 sole, to raise from their degradation, to redeem; or 
 they give themselves to beings of superior mould, 
 sublime and strong, whom they seek to understand 
 and to worship, and by whom they are often crushed. 
 You have been degraded, but you have purified 
 yourself in the fire of repentance, and you are great 
 to-day; I feel that I am too weak to be your equal, 
 and I am too religious to humble myself to any power 
 other than that of the Most High. Your life, my 
 friend, may be interpreted thus: we are in the North, 
 among the clouds, where abstractions are current." 
 
 "You kill me, Seraphita, when you talk so," he 
 replied. " It always pains me to see you make use 
 of the abnormal knowledge with which you strip all
 
 SERAPHITA 183 
 
 human things of the properties imparted to them by 
 time, space, and form, to analyze them mathemati- 
 cally by some scientific process or other, as geom- 
 etry treats the bodies whose solidity it abstracts." 
 
 " Very well, Wilfrid, I will obey you. Let us 
 drop the subject. How do you like that bear-skin 
 rug my poor David has placed there?" 
 
 " Why, very much." 
 
 " You did not know that I had this doucha greka, 
 did you?" 
 
 It was a sort of cloak, made of cashmere lined 
 with black fox, the name signifying warm to the 
 heart. 
 
 " Do you believe that any sovereign of any court 
 possesses such a piece of fur?" 
 
 " It is worthy of her who wears it." 
 
 "And whom you consider very fair?" 
 
 " Mere human words are not suited to her, one 
 must speak to her heart to heart." 
 
 " You are very good, Wilfrid, to soothe my weari- 
 ness with sweet words which you have said to 
 others." 
 
 "Farewell!" 
 
 " Stay. I love you well, you and Minna, doubt 
 it not ! But I think of you as blended in a sin- 
 gle being. So united, you are a brother, or, if 
 you please, a sister to me. Marry, so that I may 
 see you happy before leaving this sphere of pain 
 and trials forever. Great Heaven, simple-minded 
 women have obtained everything from their lovers! 
 They have said to them: ' Hold your peace!' And
 
 1 84 SERAPHITA 
 
 they have become mute. They have said to them: 
 'Die!' And they have died. They have said to 
 them: 'Love me from afar!' And they have re- 
 mained at a distance, like courtiers before a king. 
 They have said to them: 'Marry!' And they have 
 married. But I wish you to be happy and you 
 refuse me. Am I, then, powerless? Ah! well, 
 Wilfrid, listen, come nearer to me: yes, I should be 
 sorry to see you marry Minna; but, when I am no 
 longer with you, then promise me that you will be 
 joined to her; Heaven destined you for each other." 
 
 " I have listened to you with delight, Seraphita. 
 Incomprehensible as your words are, they charm 
 the ear. But what do you mean?" 
 
 " You are right, I forget to be foolish, to be the 
 poor creature whose weakness pleases you. I annoy 
 you, and you came to this uncivilized region in 
 search of repose, exhausted as you were by the 
 fierce assaults of an unappreciated genius, overdone 
 by the patient toil of science you who have almost 
 dipped your hands in crime and worn the chains of 
 human justice." 
 
 Wilfrid had fallen half -dead on the floor. But 
 Seraphita breathed on the young man's brow, and 
 he instantly fell asleep quietly at her feet. 
 
 " Sleep and rest," she said, rising from her seat. 
 
 She placed her hands upon Wilfrid's head, and 
 the following sentences followed one another from 
 her lips, each in a different tone from the others, but 
 melodious all, and stamped with a kindliness that 
 seemed to emanate in misty waves like the beams
 
 SERAPHITA 185 
 
 with which the profane goddess chastely envelops 
 the beloved shepherd during his sleep: 
 
 " I may show myself to you as I am, dear Wilfrid, 
 for you are strong. 
 
 " The hour has come, the hour when the brilliant 
 gleams of the future cast their reflections upon men's 
 souls, the hour when the soul bestirs itself in its 
 freedom. 
 
 " Now, I may venture to tell you how dearly I 
 love you. Do you not see what sort of love mine 
 is, a love devoid of any selfish interest, a sentiment 
 concerned with you alone, a love that follows you 
 into the future to illumine the future for you? for 
 such a love is the true light. Now can you compre- 
 hend how ardently I long to know that you are quit 
 of this life which weighs upon you, and to see you 
 even nearer than you are to the world where love en- 
 dures forever? Must not one suffer who loves for a 
 lifetime only? Have you never felt a longing for 
 everlasting love? Do you understand now to what 
 ravishing joy a creature rises, when she has a two- 
 fold nature to love him who never betrays love, him 
 at whose feet men kneel in adoration ? 
 
 " I would that I had wings, Wilfrid, that I might 
 shelter you with them, I would that I had strength 
 to give you to enable you to enter before your time 
 the world where the purest bliss of the purest pas- 
 sion that is known on this earth would be a shadow 
 in the light that constantly illumines and gladdens 
 the heart. 
 
 " Forgive a loving heart for having put before you
 
 1 86 SERAPHITA 
 
 in a word the picture of your faults, with the char- 
 itable purpose of soothing the sharp sting of your 
 remorse! Hearken to the musical strains of pardon! 
 Refresh your heart by breathing the air of the dawn 
 that is breaking for you beyond the darkness of 
 death. Yes, your life lies beyond ! 
 
 " May my words reproduce the radiant forms of 
 your dreams, may they deck themselves with images, 
 blaze forth, and descend upon you. Ascend, ascend 
 to the point where all men can see one another dis- 
 tinctly, although as closely crowded together and as 
 small as the grains of sand on the seashore. Man- 
 kind has unrolled like a piece of ribbon; observe the 
 varying shades of that flower from the celestial 
 gardens. Do you see those who lack intelligence, 
 those who are beginning to acquire it, those who 
 have been tested, those who are in love, those 
 who are wise and who aspire to the world of light? 
 
 " Do you comprehend by this visible thought the 
 destiny of mankind? whence it comes and whither it 
 goes? Continue in your course! When you reach 
 the goal of your journey, you will hear the trumpets 
 of Omnipotence ring out and shouts of victory re- 
 sound, and chords of which a single one would cause 
 the earth to tremble, but which lose themselves in a 
 world without east or west. 
 
 "Do you understand, my poor sorely-tried love, 
 that, were it not for the lethargy, the mists of sleep, 
 such spectacles would rend and whirl away your in- 
 telligence, as a tempest rends and whirls away a 
 feeble sail, and would deprive a man of his reason
 
 SERAPHITA 187 
 
 forever? do you know that the soul alone, when 
 raised to its omnipotence, is hardly able to resist 
 in dreams the devouring communications of the 
 Spirit? 
 
 " Fly on through the radiant and luminous spheres, 
 admiring as you go. Flying thus, you obtain rest, 
 you proceed without fatigue. Like all men, you 
 would like to remain always in those spheres of 
 sweet perfume and of light to which you are going, 
 light as air throughout your unconscious body, and 
 where you will speak by thought! Run, fly, enjoy 
 for a moment the wings you will win, when love is 
 so complete within you that you will cease to have 
 passions, that you will be all intelligence and all love! 
 The higher you ascend, the less you think of preci- 
 pices! there are no precipices in heaven. Observe 
 him who speaks to you, him who supports you above 
 the world in which the precipices are. Look, gaze at 
 me a moment more, for henceforth you will see me 
 only indistinctly as you see me by the light of the 
 pale, earthly sun." 
 
 Seraphita rose to her feet, her head slightly bent, 
 her hair dishevelled, in the ethereal attitude in which 
 all the sublimest painters have represented mes- 
 sengers from on high; the folds of her clothing had 
 the same indefinable charm that forces the artist the 
 man who translates everything by sentiment to 
 pause before the exquisite lines of the veiled an- 
 tique Polyhymnia. Then she held out her hand, 
 and Wilfrid rose. When he looked at Seraphita, the 
 pale young girl was lying on the bear-skin, her head
 
 1 88 SERAPHITA 
 
 resting on her hand, her features tranquil, her eyes 
 gleaming. Wilfrid gazed silently at her, but a re- 
 spectful fear was visible in his face and betrayed 
 itself in his timid manner. 
 
 " Yes, dear one," he said, at last, as if he were 
 answering a question, " we are separated by whole 
 worlds. I am resigned, and I can only worship you. 
 But what will become of poor me, when I am all 
 alone?" 
 
 " Have you not your Minna, Wilfrid?" 
 
 He hung his head. 
 
 " Oh! do not be so disdainful; woman understands 
 everything through love; when she does not under- 
 stand, she feels; when she does not feel, she sees; 
 when she neither sees nor feels nor understands, 
 why, then that terrestrial angel divines your exist- 
 ence in order to protect you, and conceals her pro- 
 tection beneath the fascination of love." 
 
 " Seraphita, am I worthy to belong to a woman?" 
 
 "You have suddenly become very modest; can it 
 be a snare? A woman is always so moved to see 
 her weakness glorified ! But come to drink tea with 
 me on the day after to-morrow, in the afternoon; 
 good Monsieur Becker will be here, and you will see 
 Minna, the most innocent creature whom I know in 
 this world. Now leave me, my friend; I have to 
 pray at great length to expiate my sins." 
 
 "How can you sin?" 
 
 "My poor dear, is it not pride to abuse one's 
 power? I think I have been too proud to-day. 
 Come, away with you. Farewell until to-morrow."
 
 SERAPHITA 189 
 
 " Until to-morrow," echoed Wilfrid in a feeble 
 voice, gazing long at the creature before him, for he 
 wished to carry away an ineffaceable picture of her 
 in his heart. 
 
 Although he intended to go away, he stood for 
 some time outside the Swedish chateau, looking at 
 the light that shone through the windows. 
 
 " What have I seen?" he asked himself. " She 
 is not a mere creature, she is a whole creation. Of 
 this world, dimly seen through mists and clouds, I 
 retain faint echoes, like the memory of a vanished 
 grief, or like the confused state caused by dreams in 
 which we hear the lamentations of bygone genera- 
 tions mingled with the melodious voices from the 
 exalted spheres where all is light and love. Am I 
 awake? Am I still sleeping? Have I rescued my eyes 
 from sleep, those eyes from which luminous spaces 
 recede indefinitely, and which follow the spaces? 
 Despite the cold night air, my head is still on fire. 
 I will go to the parsonage! with the pastor and his 
 daughter, I shall be able to collect my thoughts." 
 
 But not yet did he leave the spot from which he 
 could look into Seraphita's salon. That mysterious 
 creature seemed to be the radiating circle of an at- 
 mosphere which formed about her, greater in extent 
 than that of other beings; whoever entered it under- 
 went the influence of an eddying whirl of dazzling 
 beams and consuming thoughts. Forced to struggle 
 against that inexplicable force, Wilfrid did not tri- 
 umph over it without a superhuman effort; but after 
 he had passed beyond the precincts of that house, he
 
 190 SERAPHITA 
 
 recovered his freedom of action, hurried away to the 
 parsonage, and soon found himself beneath the high 
 wooden archway that served as a peristyle to Mon- 
 sieur Becker's dwelling. He opened the first door, 
 sheathed with newer, against which the wind had 
 driven the snow, and knocked hastily at the inner 
 door, saying: 
 
 " Will you allow me to pass the evening with you, 
 Monsieur Becker?" 
 
 " Yes!" cried two voices as one. 
 
 Upon entering the parlor, Wilfrid gradually re- 
 turned to real life. He saluted Minna most affec- 
 tionately, pressed Monsieur Becker's hand, and 
 contemplated a picture whose details calmed the 
 convulsions of his physical nature, in which a phe- 
 nomenon took place comparable to that which some- 
 times takes place in men accustomed to prolonged 
 meditations. If some pregnant thought bears away 
 a scholar or a poet on its chimera's wings and re- 
 moves him from the external circumstances that 
 hedge him in on earth, whirling him through the 
 boundless regions where the vastest collections of 
 fact become abstractions, where the most stupen- 
 dous works of nature are mere images, woe to 
 him, if some sudden sound strikes upon his senses 
 and recalls his adventurous mind to its prison of 
 flesh and blood ! The conflict between those two 
 powers, the body and the mind, one of which par- 
 takes of the property of invisible action possessed by 
 the lightning, while the other shares with sentient 
 nature that yielding resistance which momentarily
 
 SERAPHITA IQI 
 
 defies destruction; that conflict, or, better still, that 
 horrible conjunction, engenders indescribable suffer- 
 ing. The body demands the return of the flame 
 that consumes it, and the flame seizes its prey anew. 
 But that fusion does not take place without the effer- 
 vescence, the explosions, and the torments which 
 we see in chemistry when two antagonistic ele- 
 ments, which it has striven to unite, are separated. 
 For some days past, whenever Wilfrid entered Sera- 
 phita's presence, his body fell into an abyss. By 
 a single glance, that strange creature led him in 
 thought to the sphere to which meditation leads the 
 scholar, to which prayer transports the religious 
 mind, to which his visions entice an artist, to which 
 sleep carries some men; for every man has his voice 
 to beckon him to the higher abysses, every man has 
 his guide to direct his steps thither, and one and 
 all suffer on their return. There only are the veils 
 torn away, there only does Revelation show itself in 
 its nakedness, a dazzling, awful disclosure of an un- 
 known world, of which the mind brings back to earth 
 naught but fragments. To Wilfrid an hour passed 
 with Seraphita often resembled the dreams the theri- 
 akis love, in which each nervous papilla becomes 
 a centre of delirious enjoyment. He left her pres- 
 ence as exhausted as a young girl who had worn 
 herself out following a giant. The cold air began to 
 allay by its stinging blows the morbid excitement 
 caused by the combination of his two violently 
 sundered natures ; then he always went back to 
 the parsonage, drawn to Minna by the thought of the
 
 IQ2 SERAPHITA 
 
 tranquil home life for which he thirsted, as a Euro- 
 pean traveller thirsts for his native land when home- 
 sickness seizes him amid the fairy-like scenes that 
 lured him to the Orient. At that moment, more 
 exhausted than he had ever been, the stranger 
 sank into an armchair, and stared about for some 
 time like a man just waking. Monsieur Becker and 
 his daughter, evidently accustomed to their guest's 
 peculiarities, both continued to work. 
 
 The ornaments of the parlor consisted of a collec- 
 tion of Norwegian insects and shells. Those curiosi- 
 ties, skilfully arranged upon the yellow background 
 of the fir with which the walls were wainscoted, 
 formed a rich tapestry to which tobacco smoke had 
 imparted its dingy tint. At the rear of the room, 
 opposite the doorway, was an enormous wrought- 
 iron stove, which, under the careful rubbing of the 
 maid-servant, shone like polished steel. Seated in a 
 capacious upholstered easy-chair, in front of a table 
 near the stove, with his feet in a sort of foot-bag, 
 Monsieur Becker was reading a huge folio which 
 rested upon a pile of books as upon a desk; at his 
 left were a jug of beer and a glass; at his right was 
 a smoky fish-oil lamp. The clergyman seemed to 
 be a man of some sixty years. His face was of the 
 type familiar to Rembrandt's brush; there were 
 the small, bright eyes, encircled by wrinkles and 
 overhung by thick grizzly eyebrows; the white hair 
 escaping in two fleecy waves from beneath a black 
 velvet cap, the broad, smooth forehead, the peculiar 
 shape of the face, made almost square by the great
 
 SERAPHITA 193 
 
 size of the chin; then there was the profound tran- 
 quillity which indicates to the careful observer power 
 in some direction, either the royalty that wealth be- 
 stows, the magisterial power of the burgomaster, 
 the consciousness of artistic talent, or the cubical 
 strength of happy ignorance. That handsome old 
 man, whose rotundity denoted robust health, was 
 enveloped in a dressing-gown of coarse cloth, simply 
 trimmed with list. He was puffing gravely at a long 
 meerschaum pipe, and at regular intervals emitted a 
 cloud of smoke, following with distraught eye its 
 fantastic wreaths, engaged, doubtless, in assimilating 
 by some process of mental digestion the ideas of the 
 author whose work he had in hand. 
 
 On the other side of the stove, -near a door lead- 
 ing to the kitchen, Minna's form could be vaguely 
 distinguished in the fog produced by the smoke, to 
 which she seemed thoroughly habituated. On a 
 small table before her were the necessary utensils 
 of a housewife: a pile of napkins, stockings to be 
 darned, and a lamp like that which gleamed on the 
 white pages of the book in which her father seemed 
 to be absorbed. Her fresh young face, whose con- 
 tour was of extreme delicacy and purity, harmonized 
 with the innocence written upon her white brow 
 and in her limpid eyes. She sat erect upon her 
 chair, bending toward the light a little in order to 
 see better, and displayed unwittingly the beauty of 
 her figure. She was already dressed for the night 
 in a peignoir of white cotton. A simple lawn cap, 
 with no other ornament than a ruff of the same 
 13
 
 194 SERAPHITA 
 
 material, covered her hair. Although buried in 
 some secret reflection, she counted, without a mis- 
 take, the threads of her napkin or the stitches of 
 her stocking. Thus she presented the truest and 
 most perfect type of the woman destined for house- 
 hold duties, whose glance might pierce the clouds 
 around the sanctuary, but who was held back at 
 man's level by a thought at once humble and chari- 
 table. 
 
 Wilfrid had thrown himself into a chair between 
 the two tables, and gazed with a sort of bewilder- 
 ment at that harmonious picture, with which the 
 clouds of smoke were not out of keeping. 
 
 The single window by which the parlor was 
 lighted during the summer was carefully closed. In 
 lieu of curtains, an old piece of tapestry hung in great 
 folds from a wooden rod. There was nothing pic- 
 turesque, nothing striking, but absolute simplicity, 
 genuine kindliness, the unreserve of nature, and all 
 the customs of domestic life, undisturbed and free 
 from care. Many dwellings have the appearance of 
 a dream, the glitter of the pleasures that are tasted 
 therein seems to conceal ruins beneath the cold 
 smile of luxury; but that parlor was sublime in its 
 reality, harmonious in its coloring, and awoke the 
 patriarchal theory of a busy, meditative life. The 
 silence was broken by the footsteps of the servant 
 as she prepared the supper, and by the sizzling of 
 the dried fish which she was frying in salt butter 
 according to the custom of the country. 
 
 " Will you smoke a pipe?" said the pastor, seizing
 
 SERAPHITA 195 
 
 a moment when he thought that Wilfrid could hear 
 him. 
 
 "Thanks, dear Monsieur Becker." 
 
 "You seem to be feeling worse than usual 
 to-day," said Minna, impressed by the weakness 
 betrayed in the stranger's voice. 
 
 " I am always like this when I come from the 
 chateau." 
 
 Minna started. 
 
 " It is occupied by a strange person, pastor," he 
 continued, after a pause. " During the six months 
 I have been in this village, I have not dared to ask 
 you any questions about her, and I am obliged to do 
 myself violence in order to speak to you of her to- 
 day. I began by regretting very keenly that my 
 journey was interrupted by the coming of winter 
 and that I was compelled to remain here; but, in 
 these last two months, the chains that bind me to 
 Jarvis have been more firmly riveted every day, 
 and I am afraid of ending my days here. You 
 know how I met Seraphita, how great an impression 
 her features and her voice made upon me, and how I 
 was at last admitted to her house, although she will 
 never consent to receive anyone. On the first day, 
 I returned here to ask you to enlighten me concern- 
 ing that mysterious creature. Then began for me 
 the series of enchantments " 
 
 "Enchantments!" cried the pastor, shaking the 
 ashes from his pipe into a common plate filled with 
 sand, which he used as a cuspidor. " Is there such 
 a thing as enchantment?"
 
 IQ6 SERAPHITA 
 
 "Certainly, you who are at this moment read- 
 ing so conscientiously Jean Wier's Incantations, will 
 understand such description as I am able to give 
 you of my sensations," Wilfrid replied, without 
 hesitation. "If one studies nature attentively, in 
 its greatest upheavals as well as in its most trivial 
 works, it is impossible not to recognize the possi- 
 bility of enchantment, giving that word its true 
 meaning. Man does not create forces, he employs 
 the only one which exists and which includes them 
 all, motion, the inexplicable breath of the Sovereign 
 Maker of worlds. The species are too thoroughly 
 separated to be blended by the hand of man; and 
 the only miracle of which that hand was capable 
 was accomplished in the union of two repugnant sub- 
 stances. But powder is germane to lightning! As 
 to the creation of some new thing, and suddenly! 
 why, creation demands time under all circumstances, 
 and time neither advances nor recedes under the 
 finger. And so, outside of ourselves, plastic nature 
 acts in obedience to laws whose order and practice 
 can never be disarranged by any man's hand. But, 
 having thus disposed of material things, it would be 
 unreasonable not to recognize in ourselves the exist- 
 ence of a tremendous power, the effects of which 
 are so immeasurable that generations past have 
 never classified them perfectly. I do not refer to 
 the faculty of separating yourself from your sur- 
 roundings, of constraining nature to confine itself 
 within the limits of the word, the act of a giant, 
 upon which the common herd reflects no more than
 
 SERAPHITA 197 
 
 it thinks of motion, but which had led the Indian 
 Theosophists to explain creation by a word to which 
 they attributed the inverse power. The smallest 
 morsel of their food, a grain of rice, from which a 
 creation goes forth and in which a creation is 
 contained alternately, presented to their minds so 
 perfect an image of the word that creates and 
 the word that abstracts, that it seemed very simple 
 to apply that theory to the creation of worlds. The 
 majority of men were certain to content themselves 
 with the grain of rice sown in the first verse of 
 all geneses. Saint John's saying that the Word 
 was in God served only to complicate the difficulty. 
 But the sowing, the germination, and the blossoming 
 of our ideas are trivial matters, if we compare those 
 properties, common to many men, to the truly in- 
 dividual power of communicating to those properties 
 a more or less vigorous strength by some indefinable 
 process of concentration, of raising them to the third, 
 the ninth, the twenty-seventh power, of making 
 them in that way take hold of the masses, and of 
 obtaining magical results by condensing the effects 
 of nature. 
 
 " Now, I give the name of enchantments to those 
 extraordinary antics played by two membranes on 
 the canvas of our brains. In the unexplored wilds 
 of the spiritual world there are certain beings who 
 are armed with these incredible faculties, which 
 may fitly be compared to the terrible power pos- 
 sessed by gases in the physical world, and who com- 
 bine with other beings, permeate them as an active
 
 198 SERAPHITA 
 
 principle, produce within them effects as of sorcery, 
 against which the poor slaves are defenceless; they 
 bewitch them, rule them, reduce them to a horrible 
 state of serfdom, and impose upon them the grandeur 
 and the sceptre of a superior nature, acting some- 
 times after the manner of the electric eel, which mag- 
 netizes and benumbs the fisherman; sometimes like 
 a dose of phosphorus, which overexcites the faculties 
 or accelerates the currents of life; sometimes like 
 opium, which puts the bodily nature to sleep, re- 
 leases the mind from its bonds, allows it to soar 
 above the world, shows the world to it through a 
 prism, and extracts therefrom the sustenance that 
 most delights it; and sometimes like catalepsy, which 
 deadens all the faculties for the benefit of a single 
 vision. Miracles, enchantments, incantations, sor- 
 cery, in a word, all the acts improperly called super- 
 natural, are possible, and can be explained only as a 
 result of the despotism with which a mind forces us 
 to undergo the effects of a mysterious optical illu- 
 sion, which enlarges, diminishes, exalts the faculty 
 of creation, makes it move within us at its pleasure, 
 disfigures or embellishes it in our eyes, takes us to 
 heaven or plunges us into hell, the two terms 
 by which extreme pleasure and extreme pain are ex- 
 pressed. These phenomena are within us, not out- 
 side. The creature whom we call Seraphita seems to 
 me to be one of those rare and redoubtable demons 
 to whom is given the power to enslave men, to 
 hasten the course of nature, and to share the occult 
 power of God. Her enchantment began in my case
 
 SERAPHITA 199 
 
 with the silence which was imposed upon me. When- 
 ever I dared think of questioning you about her, it 
 seemed to me as if I were on the point of revealing 
 a secret of which I should be an incorruptible de- 
 positary; whenever I attempted to question you, a 
 burning seal was placed upon my lips and I became 
 the involuntary minister of that mysterious prohibi- 
 tion. You see me here now for the one hundredth 
 time, depressed, exhausted, because I have been 
 playing with the world of hallucinations which that 
 girl bears within her a girl who is in the eyes of 
 you two a sweet, fragile creature, but in mine the 
 most cruel of magicians. Yes, she is to me like a 
 sorceress, who carries in her right hand an invisible 
 apparatus for disturbing the equilibrium of the globe, 
 and in her left hand lightning with which to annihi- 
 late everything at her pleasure. At last, the time has 
 come when I cannot look at her brow; it gleams with 
 unendurable brilliancy. For the last few days I have 
 been skirting the precipices of folly too awkwardly 
 to keep silent. Therefore I seize the moment when 
 I have courage to resist that monster who drags me 
 after her, without asking me if I am able to follow her 
 flight. Who is she? Did you know her as a child? 
 Was she ever born? Had she any parents? Was 
 she the offspring of the union of the ice and the sun ? 
 She freezes and burns, she appears and disappears 
 like a jealous truth, she attracts me and repels me, 
 she gives me life and death by turns, I love her and 
 I hate her. I can live no longer thus, I must be 
 altogether in heaven or in hell."
 
 200 SERAPHITA 
 
 Holding in one hand his freshly-filled pipe, and 
 in the other the lid which he did not replace, Mon- 
 sieur Becker listened to Wilfrid with a mysterious 
 expression, glancing now and then at his daugh- 
 ter, who seemed to understand that language, har- 
 monizing as it did with the being who inspired it. 
 Wilfrid was as handsome as Hamlet resisting the 
 appeals of his father's ghost, with whom he con- 
 verses when he appears to him alone among the 
 living. 
 
 " That strongly resembles the harangue of a man 
 in love," said the worthy pastor, ingenuously. 
 
 "In love!" echoed Wilfrid; "yes, according to 
 vulgar ideas. But, my dear Monsieur Becker, no 
 words can describe the frenzy with which I rush 
 toward that wild creature." 
 
 " You love her, then?" said Minna, in a reproach- 
 ful tone. 
 
 " Mademoiselle, I am so strangely agitated when 1 
 see her, and so profoundly sad when I go from her 
 sight, that any man, experiencing similar emotions, 
 would seem to be in love; but that sentiment draws 
 two persons passionately together, whereas between 
 her and myself an abyss constantly yawns, whose 
 cold breath freezes my blood when I am in her pres- 
 ence, but of which I am no longer conscious when I 
 am away from her. I am always more despairing 
 than ever before when I leave her, I always return 
 to her with greater ardor, like a scholar in quest of 
 a secret, whom nature repels; like the painter who 
 seeks to depict life upon his canvas and exhausts his
 
 SERAPHITA 201 
 
 own strength and all the resources of his art in that 
 vain attempt." 
 
 " That all seems very true to me, monsieur," the 
 maiden artlessly replied. 
 
 " How can you know anything about it, Minna?" 
 inquired the old man. 
 
 "Ah! father, if you had gone with us this morn- 
 ing to the summit of the Falberg and had seen her 
 praying, you would not ask me that question! You 
 would say as Monsieur Wilfrid said when he first saw 
 her in our temple: ' She is the genius of prayer.' " 
 
 Her last words were followed by a moment's 
 silence. 
 
 "Ah!" exclaimed Wilfrid, "she certainly has 
 nothing in common with the creatures who swarm 
 in the hollows of this globe." 
 
 " On the Falberg!" cried the old pastor. " How 
 did you succeed in reaching it?" 
 
 " I have no idea," replied Minna. " The walk 
 seems to me now like a dream of which the memory 
 alone remains! Perhaps I should not believe in it 
 without this material testimony." 
 
 She took the flower from her corsage and held it 
 up. They all sat with their eyes fixed on the pretty 
 saxifrage, which was still fresh, and, with the lamps 
 shining brightly upon it, gleamed amid the clouds of 
 smoke like another light. 
 
 " This is truly supernatural," said the old man, at 
 sight of a flower in full bloom in winter. 
 
 "An unfathomable mystery!" cried Wilfrid, ex- 
 cited by the perfume.
 
 202 SERAPHITA 
 
 " This flower gives me the vertigo," rejoined 
 Minna. " I fancy that I still hear his voice, which 
 is the music of thought, as I still see the light of his 
 glance, which is love." 
 
 "In pity's name, my dear Monsieur Becker, tell 
 me the story of Seraphita, that enigmatical human 
 flower whose image we have before us in this mys- 
 terious blossom." 
 
 " My dear guest," the old man replied, emitting a 
 cloud of smoke, "in order to tell you of that crea- 
 ture's birth, it is necessary to clear away the mists 
 from the most obscure of all Christian doctrines; but 
 it is not easy to make one's self clear in speaking of 
 the most incomprehensible of revelations, the last 
 outburst of the faith which has shone upon our 
 heap of mud. Do you know of Swedenborg?" 
 
 " By name only; but I know nothing of the man, 
 of his books, of his religion." 
 
 " Very well, I will tell you the whole history of 
 Swedenborg."
 
 Ill 
 
 SERAPHITA-SERAPHITUS 
 
 After a pause, during which the pastor seemed to 
 be brushing up his memory, he continued in these 
 words: 
 
 "Emmanuel Swedenborg was born at Upsala, in 
 Sweden, in the month of January, 1688, according 
 to some authorities; in 1689, according to his epi- 
 taph. His father was Bishop of Skara. Sweden- 
 borg lived nearly eighty-five years, his death having 
 taken place at London, March 29, 1772. I make 
 use of that expression to denote a change of condition 
 simply. According to his disciples, Swedenborg was 
 seen in Jarvis and in Paris subsequently to that 
 date. I beg your pardon, my dear Monsieur Wil- 
 frid," said the pastor, with a gesture intended to 
 forestall any interruption, " I narrate facts as I have 
 heard them, without affirming or denying their truth. 
 Listen to me, and afterward you may form such 
 opinion of them as you choose. I will tell you when 
 I propose to discuss, criticise, or pass judgment upon 
 doctrines, in order to establish my intellectual neu- 
 trality between reason and HIM ! 
 (203)
 
 2O4 SERAPHITA 
 
 " The life of Emmanuel Swedenborg was divided 
 into two parts," continued the pastor. " From 1688 
 to 1745, Baron Emmanuel Swedenborg appeared to 
 the world as a man of immense learning, esteemed 
 and beloved for his virtues, leading an absolutely 
 irreproachable and constantly useful life. While 
 exercising important public functions in Sweden, he 
 published, between 1709 and 1740, numerous and 
 valuable books, which enlightened the scientific 
 world, upon mineralogy, physics, mathematics, and 
 astronomy. He invented the method of constructing 
 docks to receive vessels. He wrote upon the most 
 important questions, from the rise and fall of tides to 
 the position of the earth in space. He invented at the 
 same time a method of building better locks for 
 canals, and more simple processes for the extraction 
 of metals. In fact, he did not turn his attention to a 
 single science without causing distinct progress to be 
 made therein. During his youth, he studied Hebrew, 
 Greek, Latin, and the Oriental tongues, which be- 
 came so familiar to him that several illustrious pro- 
 fessors frequently consulted him, and he was able 
 to identify in Tartary fragments of the most ancient 
 book of Holy Writ, called the Wars of Jehovah, and 
 the Enunciations, mentioned by Moses in the Book 
 of Numbers, xxi. 14, 15, 27-30, * by Joshua, by 
 Jeremiah, and by Samuel. The Wars of Jehovah 
 would seem to have been the historical part and 
 the Enunciations the prophetic part of that book, 
 which was anterior to Genesis. Swedenborg went 
 
 * These references are to the Douai Bible.
 
 SERAPHITA 205 
 
 so far as to assert that the Jaschar, or the Book of the 
 Just, mentioned by Joshua, existed in Eastern Tar- 
 tary, with the worship of Correspondences. A French- 
 man, they say, has recently confirmed Swedenborg's 
 theories, announcing that he has found in Bagdad 
 several portions of the Bible hitherto unknown in 
 Europe. 
 
 "At the time of the discussion, almost European in 
 extent, to which animal magnetism gave rise, and 
 in which almost all scholars took an active part, in 
 1785, Monsieur le Marquis de Thome avenged 
 Swedenborg's memory by challenging assertions 
 let fall by the commissioners appointed by the King 
 of France to investigate the subject of magnetism. 
 Those gentlemen declared that there was no known 
 theory of the action of the magnet, whereas Sweden- 
 bo rg had evolved such a theory as early as 1720. 
 Monsieur de Thome seized that opportunity to ex- 
 plain the motives of the oblivion in which the most 
 famous men left the learned Swede, in order that 
 they might overhaul his treasures to assist them in 
 their own works. " Some of the most illustrious 
 scholars," said Monsieur de Thome, alluding to Buf- 
 fon's Theorie de la Terre, " are weak enough to 
 array themselves in the peacock's feathers without 
 doing homage to him therefor." And he proved 
 triumphantly, by citations from Swedenborg's en- 
 cyclopaedic works, that that great prophet was sev- 
 eral centuries in advance of the slow progress of the 
 human sciences: indeed, one need only read his phi- 
 losophical and mineralogical works to be convinced
 
 206 SERAPHITA 
 
 of it. In one passage, he shows himself the pre- 
 cursor of the chemistry of to-day, when he asserts 
 that all organic natural products are decomposable 
 and may be reduced to two pure principles; that 
 water, air, and fire are not elements. In another, he 
 goes in a few words to the bottom of the mysteries of 
 magnetism, and thus deprives Mesmer of the honor 
 of having first become acquainted with them. 
 There," said Monsieur Becker, pointing to a long 
 shelf between the stove and the window, upon 
 which stood numerous books of all sizes, "are 
 seventeen different works, a single one of which, 
 the CEumes Philosophiques et Mineralogiques , com- 
 prises three folio volumes. Those productions, 
 which bear witness to Swedenborg's positive knowl- 
 edge, were given to me by his cousin, Monsieur Sera- 
 phitus, Seraphita's father. In 1740, Swedenborg 
 relapsed into absolute silence, from which he emerged 
 only to lay aside his temporal occupations and to 
 devote his thoughts exclusively to the spiritual 
 world. He received his first commands from Heaven 
 in 1745. He described his calling in this way: 
 
 "One evening, in London, after 'he had dined 
 heartily, a dense mist filled his chamber. When 
 it disappeared, a creature who had assumed human 
 form stood in the corner and said to him, in a terrible 
 voice: 
 
 " ' Do not eat so much!' 
 
 " Thereupon he adopted a rigid diet. On the fol- 
 lowing night, the same man came, radiant with light, 
 and said to him:
 
 SERAPHITA 207 
 
 " ' I am sent to you by God, who has chosen you to 
 explain to mankind the meaning of His word and His 
 creations. I will dictate to you what you must write.' 
 
 " The vision lasted a very few moments. The 
 ANGEL was clad in purple, he said. During that 
 night, the eyes of his inner man were opened, and 
 he was able to look into heaven, into the world of 
 spirits and into hell: three distinct spheres, wherein 
 he recognized persons whom he had known, who 
 had perished in their human form, some long before, 
 others within a short time. Thereafter Swedenborg 
 constantly lived a spirit life, and remained in this 
 world as one sent by God. Although his mission 
 was disputed by incredulous minds, his conduct was 
 visibly that of a being superior to mankind. In the 
 first place, although his means required him to con- 
 fine himself to the strict necessaries of life, he gave 
 away immense sums, and in more than one commer- 
 cial centre he was known to have rehabilitated great 
 business houses that had failed or were on the point 
 of failing. No man who ever appealed to his gener- 
 osity failed to depart at once content. An incredulous 
 Englishman set out in pursuit of him, met him in 
 Paris, and reported that the doors of his house were 
 always open. One day, his servant, having deplored 
 his negligence in that particular, which rendered him 
 liable to be suspected of any thefts of which his 
 master might be the victim: 
 
 " ' Let him be easy,' said Swedenborg, smiling, ' I 
 pardon his distrust, for he does not see the watch- 
 man who guards my door.'
 
 208 SERAPHITA 
 
 " It was the fact that, wherever he lived, he never 
 closed his doors, and nothing was ever taken from 
 him. 
 
 "At Gothenburg, sixty miles from Stockholm, he 
 announced, three days before the arrival of the cou- 
 rier with the news, the precise hour of the confla- 
 gration that laid Stockholm in ashes, observing that 
 his own house was not burned; which was true. 
 The Queen of Sweden told the King of Prussia, her 
 brother, at Berlin, that one of her ladies-in-waiting, 
 being sued for a sum of money which she knew that 
 her husband had paid before he died, but for which 
 she could find no receipt, went to Swedenborg, and 
 begged him to ask her husband where the evidence 
 of payment could be found. The next day, Sweden- 
 borg told her where the receipt was; but as, in ac- 
 cordance with the lady's wish, he had requested the 
 deceased to appear to his wife, she saw her husband 
 in a dream, dressed in the robe de chambre he wore 
 just before he died, and he showed her the receipt 
 in the place indicated by Swedenborg, where it really 
 was hidden. One day, as he was leaving London, 
 on Captain Dixon's vessel, he heard a lady asking 
 if they had laid in an ample stock of provisions. 
 
 " ' We do not need so much/ he replied. 'A week 
 from to-day, at two o'clock, we shall be in the harbor 
 of Stockholm.' 
 
 "And so it proved. The visionary state into which 
 Swedenborg threw himself at pleasure, with respect 
 to earthly things, and which astounded by its mar- 
 vellous results all those who came in contact with
 
 SERAPHITA 209 
 
 him, was only a trivial application of his power of 
 seeing beyond the skies. Among these visions, the 
 one in which he describes his travels in the astral 
 regions is not the least interesting, and his descrip- 
 tions inevitably surprise one by the ingenuousness 
 of the details. A man whose vast scientific learning 
 is beyond dispute, who combined in himself concep- 
 tion, will, imagination, would certainly have invented 
 something better if he had invented at all. The 
 fanciful literature of the orientals offers nothing that 
 can afford an idea of that astounding work, overflow- 
 ing with poetic thoughts in germ, if I may venture 
 to compare a work of faith to the productions of the 
 Arabian imagination. The abduction of Sweden- 
 borg by the angel who acted as his guide in his first 
 journey is marked by a sublimity which surpasses, 
 by as great a distance as God has placed between 
 the earth and the sun, that of the great epics of 
 Klopstock, Milton, Tasso, and Dante. That pas- 
 sage, which serves as an introduction to his work 
 on the astral regions, has never been published; it 
 belongs to the traditions bequeathed by Swedenborg 
 to the three disciples who were nearest his heart. 
 Monsieur Silverichm possesses it in writing. Mon- 
 sieur Seraphitus attempted now and then to talk with 
 me about it; but the memory of his cousin's words 
 was so vivid that he would stop at the first word, 
 and fall into a reverie from which nothing could 
 coax him. The speech in which the angel proved 
 to Swedenborg that our bodies were not made to 
 wander about alone, overwhelms all human learning,
 
 210 SERAPHITA 
 
 so the baron told me, beneath the swelling periods 
 of a divine logic. According to the prophet, the 
 inhabitants of Jupiter do not cultivate the sciences, 
 which they call shadows. The inhabitants of Mer- 
 cury abhor the expression of ideas by words, which 
 seem to them too materialistic; they have an ocular 
 language; those of Saturn are constantly tempted 
 by evil spirits; those of the Moon are as small as 
 children six years old, their voices seem to proceed 
 from the abdomen, and they crawl; those of Venus 
 are of gigantic stature, but unintelligent, and live by 
 brigandage; a portion of that planet, however, is oc- 
 cupied by people of a most peaceful disposition, who 
 live in the love of the good. In short, he describes 
 the manners and customs of the peoples inhabiting 
 those globes, and interprets the general significance 
 of their existence with relation to the universe, in 
 terms so precise, he offers explanations which harmo- 
 nize so perfectly with the results of their apparent 
 revolutions in the general system, that it is more 
 than likely that scholars will some day come to 
 drink of those luminous springs. These are the 
 words with which he brings the work to a close," 
 said Monsieur Becker, taking up a book and open- 
 ing it at the place at which the bookmark was in- 
 serted : 
 
 " ' If anyone doubts that I was actually taken to 
 a great number of astral worlds, let him recall my 
 observations concerning distances in the other life; 
 they exist only in reference to the outward con- 
 dition of life; now, inasmuch as I am constituted
 
 SERAPHITA 211 
 
 inwardly like the angelic spirits of those worlds, I 
 was able to become acquainted with them.' 
 
 " The circumstances to which we owed the pres- 
 ence in this canton of Baron Seraphitus, Sweden- 
 borg's beloved cousin, explain my familiarity with 
 all the incidents of that extraordinary life. He was 
 accused of imposture in certain public journals of 
 Europe, which gave currency to the following state- 
 ment based upon a letter of Chevalier Beylon. 
 Sweden borg, it was said, being informed by certain 
 senators of the secret correspondence between the late 
 Queen of Sweden and her brother the Prince of Prussia, 
 revealed its secrets to that princess, and allowed her to 
 believe that he had obtained his information by super- 
 natural means. A man entirely worthy of faith, 
 Monsieur Charles Leonard de Stahlhammer, a cap- 
 tain in the royal guard and a Knight of the Sword, 
 answered the calumny by a letter." 
 
 The pastor looked among a number of papers in 
 his table-drawer, and finally found a newspaper, 
 which he handed to Wilfrid, who read aloud the 
 following letter: 
 
 " STOCKHOLM, May 13, 1788. 
 
 " I have read with amazement the letter relating to the in- 
 terview between the famous Swedenborg and Queen Louise- 
 Ulrique; the alleged facts are entirely false, and I hope that the 
 author will pardon me if I prove to him how far he has gone 
 astray, by a faithful narrative, the truth of which can be attested 
 by several persons of distinction who were present, and who 
 are still living. In 1758, a short time after the death of the 
 Prince of Prussia, Swedenborg came to the court : he was ac- 
 customed to appear there at regular intervals. He was no sooner
 
 212 SERAPHITA 
 
 in the queen's presence than she said to him : ' By the way, 
 Herr Assessor, have you seen my brother?' Swedenborg 
 replied that he had not, and the queen rejoined : ' If you meet 
 him, salute him for me.' In saying that, she had no other 
 purpose than to jest and had not the remotest thought of 
 asking him for any information concerning her brother. A 
 week later, and not twenty-four days, Swedenborg came 
 again to the court so early in the morning that the queen had 
 not left her apartment, called the white chamber, where she 
 was talking with her maids of honor and other ladies of the 
 court. Swedenborg did not wait for the queen to come out, 
 but went at once to her apartment and whispered in her 
 ear, but did not have a private audience. The queen was so 
 thunderstruck that she had an ill turn and required some time 
 to recover. When she came to herself, she said to those about 
 her: ' Nobody but God and my brother could possibly know 
 what he told me ! ' She admitted that he had spoken of her 
 latest correspondence with that prince, the subject of which 
 was known to themselves alone. I cannot explain how 
 Swedenborg became acquainted with that secret; but I am 
 able to assert upon my honor, that neither Count H , as the 
 author of the letter states, nor any other person, intercepted 
 or read the queen's letters. The Senate of those days allowed 
 her to write to her brother with perfect freedom, and looked 
 upon that correspondence as of no concern to the State. It is 
 evident that the author of the letter I have referred to is alto- 
 gether unacquainted with the character of Count H . That 
 venerable nobleman, who has rendered most valuable services 
 to his country, combines great intellectual powers with ex- 
 cellent qualities of the heart, and his advanced age has not 
 impaired those precious gifts. Throughout his whole ad- 
 ministration he displayed the most enlightened political wis- 
 dom in conjunction with the most scrupulous integrity, and 
 proclaimed himself the enemy of secret intrigues and under- 
 hand manoeuvring, which he considered unworthy means of 
 attaining his object. Nor was the author any better acquainted 
 with Swedenborg. The only weakness of that genuinely
 
 SERAPHITA 213 
 
 honest man was a proneness to believe in spiritual appari- 
 tions ; but I knew him for many years, and I can bear witness 
 that he was as firmly persuaded that he had conversed with 
 spirits, as I am persuaded that I am writing these words at 
 this moment. As a citizen and as a friend, he was a man of 
 the utmost integrity, with a horror of imposture, and he led a 
 most exemplary life. Thus the explanation of this incident 
 which Chevalier Beylon has undertaken to give is seen to be 
 entirely without foundation ; and the visit paid to Sweden- 
 borg during the night by Counts H and T is conclusively 
 contradicted. The author of the letter may be assured that 
 I am very far from being a follower of Swedenborg ; only the 
 love of truth has prompted me to give an accurate account of 
 a fact which has been so often described with an entire ab- 
 sence of truth, and I declare that what I have written is the 
 exact truth, and in witness thereof I set my hand to this 
 letter." 
 
 "The proofs of his mission which Swedenborg 
 supplied to the royal families of Sweden and Prussia 
 doubtless originated the belief entertained by several 
 prominent personages of those two courts," continued 
 Monsieur Becker, replacing the paper in the drawer. 
 " However," he said, " I will not relate all incidents 
 of his material and visible life: his habits made it 
 impossible for them to be fully known. He lived in 
 retirement, having no desire to become rich or to 
 gain celebrity. Indeed, he was remarkable for a 
 sort of repugnance to making converts, he opened 
 his mind to but few persons, and imparted his ex- 
 ternal gifts only to those in whom faith, virtue, and 
 love made themselves clearly manifest. He had the 
 art of detecting at a single glance the mental condi- 
 tion of those who approached him, and transformed
 
 214 SERAPHITA 
 
 to seers those whom he deigned to touch with his 
 inward speech. After the year 1745, his disciples 
 never knew him to do any act from any human mo- 
 tive. A single person, a Swedish priest named 
 Matthesius, accused him of madness. By a strange 
 chance, this Matthesius, who was an enemy of 
 Swedenborg and his writings, went mad a short 
 time after, and was still living at Stockholm a few 
 years ago, with a pension granted by the King of 
 Sweden. Moreover, a eulogy of Swedenborg, com- 
 posed with the most painstaking care so far as the 
 incidents of his life were concerned, was pronounced 
 in the great hall of the Royal Academy of Sciences 
 at Stockholm, in 1786, by Monsieur Sandel, coun- 
 cillor to the College of Mines. Lastly, a statement 
 received by the Lord Mayor of London describes 
 Swedenborg's last illness and death to the smallest 
 details; he was attended at that time by Monsieur 
 Ferelius, a Swedish ecclesiastic of the highest dis- 
 tinction. Those persons who were present bear 
 witness that Swedenborg, far from denying his 
 writings, constantly asserted their truth. 
 
 " 'A hundred years hence/ he said to Ferelius, 
 ' my doctrine will govern the Church.' 
 
 " He predicted with absolute accuracy the day and 
 the hour of his death. On that day, Sunday, March 
 29, 1772, he asked what time it was. 
 
 " ' Five o'clock,' was the reply. 
 
 " ' It is all over,' he said. ' God bless you!' 
 
 " Ten minutes later he tranquilly breathed his last, 
 uttering a faint sigh. Simplicity, modesty, solitude,
 
 SERAPHITA 215 
 
 were the leading features of his life. When he had 
 finished one of his treatises, he would go to London 
 or Holland to have it printed, and he never men- 
 tioned it. He published in that way, one after 
 another, twenty-seven different treatises, all writ- 
 ten, as he said, at the dictation of angels. Whether 
 that be true or not, few men are strong enough to 
 endure their flaming eloquence. There they all 
 are," said the pastor, pointing to a second shelf 
 upon which were some threescore volumes. "The 
 seven treatises upon which the spirit of God has 
 cast its most brilliant beams are: The Delights of 
 Conjugal Love; Heaven and Hell; The Apocalypse 
 Revealed ; The Exposition of the Inward Sense ; Divine 
 Love ; True Christianity ; The Angelic Wisdom of the 
 Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence of those 
 who Share the Eternity, tlie Immensity of God. His 
 interpretation of the Apocalypse begins with these 
 words," continued Monsieur Becker, taking down 
 and opening the volume nearest him: "'In this 
 book I have put nothing of my own, I have spoken 
 according to the Word of the Lord, who said to John 
 by the mouth of the same angel: "Seal not the 
 sayings of the prophecy of this book." ' Apocalypse 
 xxii. 10. 
 
 " My dear monsieur," said the pastor, looking up 
 at Wilfrid, " I have often trembled in every limb, 
 during the long winter nights, reading the awe- 
 inspiring works in which that man asserts the most 
 marvellous things with perfect sincerity. 
 
 " ' I have seen heaven and the angels/ he says.
 
 2l6 SERAPHITA 
 
 ' The spirit man sees the spirit man much more 
 clearly than the earthly man sees the earthly man. 
 In describing the marvels of the heavens and the 
 regions beneath the heavens, I obey the commands 
 of the Lord so to do. People are at liberty to refuse 
 to believe me, I cannot put others in the condition in 
 which God has put me; it is not in my power to 
 allow them to hold converse with angels, nor to per- 
 form the miracle of developing their understanding; 
 they themselves are the only instruments of their 
 elevation to the level of the angels. For twenty- 
 eight years past I have lived in the spirit world with 
 the angels, and on earth with men; for it has seemed 
 good to the Lord to open the eyes of my spirit as he 
 opened those of Paul and Daniel and Elisha.' 
 
 " Nevertheless, certain persons have visions of the 
 spiritual world by reason of the complete severance 
 of their external and internal beings caused by som- 
 nambulism. 
 
 "'In that condition/ says Swedenborg in his 
 Treatise on Angelic Wisdom, No. 257, 'man may be 
 exalted even to the celestial light, because, the cor- 
 poreal senses being nullified, the influence of Heaven 
 acts without opposition upon the inward man.' 
 
 " Many people, who have no doubt that Sweden- 
 borg received revelations from on high, consider, 
 nevertheless, that all his writings are not equally 
 stamped with divine inspiration. Others insist 
 upon absolute assent to Swedenborg's doctrines, 
 while admitting his obscurities; but they believe that 
 the imperfections of earthly language prevented the
 
 SERAPHITA 217 
 
 prophet from describing his spiritual visions, whose 
 obscurities disappear in the eyes of those whom 
 faith has regenerated; for, adopting the sublime ex- 
 pression of his most illustrious disciple, the flesh is 
 an external generation. To poets and writers gen- 
 erally, his marvellous charm is unbounded; to seers, 
 everything in his works is absolutely real. His 
 descriptions have been subjects of scandal to some 
 Christians. Certain critics have cast ridicule upon 
 the divine substance of his temples, his golden 
 palaces, his superb country-houses in which angels 
 disport themselves; others have made merry over 
 his thickets of mysterious trees, his gardens in 
 which the flowers talk, where the air is white, 
 where the mystic jewels, the sardius, the carbuncle, 
 the chrysolite, the chrysoprasus, the cyanite, the 
 chalcedony, the beryl, the Urim and the Thummim, 
 are endowed with motion, are divine truths and can 
 be questioned, for they reply by variations of light 
 True Religion, 219 ; many intelligent minds do not 
 admit the existence of his worlds where the colors 
 give delightful concerts, where speech emits flames, 
 where the Word is written in little horns True Re- 
 ligion, 278. Even in the North, some writers have 
 laughed at his doors of pearls, at the diamonds that 
 adorn the hangings and furniture of the houses of 
 his Jerusalem, where the most trivial utensils are 
 made of the rarest substances of the globe. 
 
 " 'But,' say his disciples, 'because all these ob- 
 jects are scarce in this world, is that any reason 
 why they should not be abundant in the other? On
 
 21 8 SERAPHITA 
 
 earth, they are of earthly substance, whereas, in 
 heaven, they are exposed to the celestial glamour 
 and exist, as it were, in the angelic state.' 
 
 "On this same subject, Swedenborg repeated 
 these great words of Jesus Christ: ' If 1 have told 
 you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall 
 ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?' Saint 
 John iii. 12. 
 
 " I, monsieur, have read Swedenborg from begin- 
 ning to end," resumed Monsieur Becker, with an 
 emphatic gesture. " I say it with pride, because I 
 have retained my reason. In reading him, one must 
 either lose one's mind or become a seer. Although 
 1 have avoided those two forms of madness, I have 
 often experienced unfamiliar ecstasy, profound im- 
 pressions, inward joys, which naught but the fulness 
 of truth, the manifestation of the celestial light, can 
 give. Everything here below seems trivial when 
 the mind is running through the intense pages of 
 these treatises. It is impossible not to be struck 
 with amazement when you consider that, within a 
 period of thirty years, that man published, on the 
 subject of the truths of the spiritual world, twenty- 
 five quarto volumes, written in Latin, the smallest 
 of which contains five hundred pages, and which 
 were all printed in small type. He left twenty 
 others in London, it is said, in the hands of his 
 nephew, Monsieur Silverichm, formerly chaplain to 
 the King of Sweden. Unquestionably, the man who, 
 between his twentieth and sixtieth year, exhausted 
 himself by the publication of a sort of encyclopaedia,
 
 SERAPHITA 2IQ 
 
 must have received some supernatural assistance to 
 enable him to produce these vast treatises at a time 
 of life when man's powers begin to fail. In these 
 works there are tens of thousands of numbered 
 passages, not one of which is inconsistent with any 
 other. In all of them, accuracy, method, clarity of 
 reasoning, stand prominently forth, and are attribu- 
 table to one and the same fact, the existence of the 
 angels. His True Religion, in which his whole doc- 
 trine is summed up, a work instinct with vigorous 
 intelligence, was conceived and executed at the age 
 of eighty-three. Indeed, his universality, his omnis- 
 cience, are denied by none of his critics nor by his 
 enemies. 
 
 "Nevertheless, when I drank of that torrent of 
 celestial knowledge, God did not open my inward 
 eyes, and I judged these writings with the cold rea- 
 soning of an unregenerate man. So that it has fre- 
 quently seemed to me that Swedenborg the INSPIRED 
 must sometimes have misunderstood the angels. I 
 have laughed at several visions, which I should have 
 implicitly believed in and admired, according to the 
 seers. I have been unable to form any conception 
 of the hornlike writing of the angels, or of their 
 girdles, the gold in which is more or less light. For 
 example, although the sentence: There are solitary 
 angels, moved me strangely at first, on reflection I 
 could not see how such solitude was consistent with 
 their marriages. I could not understand why the 
 Virgin Mary should continue to wear white satin 
 garments in heaven. I have ventured to wonder
 
 220 SERAPHITA 
 
 why the gigantic demons Enakim and Hephilim al- 
 ways fought the cherubim in the apocalyptic fields 
 of Armageddon. I am at a loss to know how devils 
 can still dispute with angels. Baron Seraphitus main- 
 tained that those details referred to angels who lived 
 on earth in the human form. The visions of the 
 Swedish prophet are often marred by grotesque 
 figures. One of his Memorabilia, which was the 
 name he gave them, begins with these words: 'I 
 saw an assemblage of spirits, they had hats on their 
 heads.' In another, he receives from heaven a bit 
 of paper upon which he sees, so he says, the letters 
 used by primitive peoples, consisting of curved lines 
 with little rings extending upward. For the better 
 attestation of his communication with heaven, one 
 might wish that he had deposited that paper with 
 the Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden. But 
 perhaps I am wrong, perhaps the material absurdi- 
 ties scattered through his works have some spiritual 
 meaning. Otherwise, how are we to account for 
 the growing influence of his doctrines? His Church 
 to-day numbers more than seven hundred thousand 
 faithful, as well in the United States of America, 
 where different sects coalesce, as in England, where 
 there are seven thousand Swedenborgians in the city 
 of Manchester alone. Men as distinguished by their 
 learning as by their social position, in Germany, in 
 Prussia, and in the North, have publicly announced 
 their conversion to Swedenborg's doctrines, which 
 are more consoling than those of other Christian 
 communions. I would that I were able to set forth
 
 SERAPHITA 221 
 
 in a few succinct words the main points of the 
 doctrine laid down by Swedenborg for his church; 
 but such a summary, made entirely from memory, 
 would necessarily be incomplete. I can only ven- 
 ture, therefore, to speak to you of the myste- 
 ries which have some connection with Seraphita's 
 birth." 
 
 At that point, Monsieur Becker paused and seemed 
 to reflect as if to collect his ideas; then he continued 
 thus: 
 
 " After he has mathematically demonstrated that 
 man lives forever in the infernal as well as in the 
 supernal spheres, Swedenborg gives the name of 
 angelic spirits to the beings who are prepared in this 
 world for heaven, where they become angels. Ac- 
 cording to his theory, God did not create angels 
 as a special race; there are no angels who have not 
 been men on earth. Thus the earth is the nursery 
 of heaven. The angels, therefore, are not angels of 
 themselves Angelic Virtue, 57; they are trans- 
 formed by virtue of an intimate connection with 
 God, which God never refuses, the essence of God 
 being incessantly active, not negative. Angelic 
 spirits pass through three varieties of love, for 
 man can become regenerate only by successive de- 
 grees True Religion. First, LOVE OF SELF: the 
 supreme manifestation of that love is human genius, 
 whose productions call forth enthusiastic admiration. 
 Second, LOVE OF THE WORLD, which produces 
 prophets, the great men whom the world takes for 
 guides and hails by the name of divine. Last, LOVE
 
 222 SERAPHITA 
 
 OF HEAVEN, which produces angelic spirits. Those 
 spirits are, so to speak, the flowers of mankind, 
 which reaches its highest development in them and 
 labors so to develop itself. They must have either 
 the love of heaven or the wisdom of heaven; but 
 they always pass through love to wisdom. Thus 
 the first transformation of man is LOVE. 
 
 " To attain that first step, his previous existences 
 must have known the hope and the charity which 
 fit him for faith and prayer. The ideas acquired by 
 the practice of those virtues are transmitted to each 
 new human envelope beneath which are hidden the 
 metamorphoses of the INWARD BEING; for none of 
 them can be dispensed with, all are essential: hope 
 is of no avail without charity, faith has no efficacy 
 without prayer; the four faces of that square are 
 inseparable. 'For lack of one virtue,' he says, 'the 
 angelic spirit is like a shattered pearl.' Each of 
 those previous existences, therefore, is a circle in 
 which are displayed the celestial treasures of the 
 anterior state. The marvellous perfection of the an- 
 gelic spirits is due to this mysterious progression 
 wherein nothing is Iqst of the qualities successively 
 acquired in order to attain their glorious incarnation; 
 for, at every transformation, they lay aside, by in- 
 sensible degrees, the flesh and its errors. When 
 man lives in love, he has abandoned all his evil pas- 
 sions: hope, charity, faith, prayer, have, to use the 
 expression of Isaiah, fanned his inward being, which 
 can no more be polluted by any earthly affection. 
 Whence those beautiful words of Saint Luke : Lay
 
 SERAPHITA 223 
 
 up for yourselves an imperishable treasure in heaven. 
 And these words of Jesus Christ: Leave this world 
 to men, it is theirs; make yourselves pure and come to 
 my father. The second transformation is WISDOM. 
 Wisdom is the understanding of the divine things to 
 which the spirit attains through love. The spirit of 
 love has overcome force; as a result of its victory 
 over all earthly passions, it loves God blindly; but 
 the spirit of wisdom is intelligent and knows why it 
 loves. The wings of the one are unfolded and carry 
 it away toward God; the wings of the other are held 
 fast to its sides by the terror born of knowledge: 
 it knows God. One constantly longs to see God 
 and rushes toward Him, the other touches Him and 
 trembles. The conjunction of a spirit of love and a 
 spirit of wisdom raises the creature to the divine 
 state during which his mind is WOMAN, and his body 
 is MAN, the supreme development of humanity, in 
 which spirit carries the day over form, in which 
 form still struggles against the divine spirit; for form, 
 that is, the flesh, does not understand, rebels, and 
 prefers to remain immature. That supreme test 
 causes incredible suffering which Heaven alone sees, 
 and which Christ knew on the Mount of Olives. 
 After death, the first heaven is thrown open to this 
 twofold purified nature. Thus men die in despair, 
 while the spirit dies in ecstasy. Thus the NATURAL, 
 the state of unregenerate beings; the SPIRITUAL, the 
 state of angelic spirits; and the DIVINE, the state of 
 the angel before breaking his envelope, are the three 
 degrees of existence by which man attains heaven.
 
 224 SERAPHITA 
 
 A reflection of Swedenborg's will explain to you 
 with marvellous clearness the difference between the 
 NATURAL and the SPIRITUAL. 
 
 " 'With men,' he says, 'the natural passes into 
 the spiritual, they view the world in its visible form, 
 and in an atmosphere of reality adapted to their 
 senses. But with the angelic spirit, the spiritual 
 passes into the natural, it views the world in its 
 inward spirit and not in its form.' 
 
 " In like manner, our human knowledge is simply 
 an analysis of forms. He whom the world considers 
 a learned man is purely exterior, as his learning, his 
 inward being, serves no other purpose than to pre- 
 serve his aptitude for understanding the truth. The 
 angelic spirit goes further than that: its knowledge is 
 the thought of which human knowledge is only the 
 word; it derives its knowledge of things from Holy 
 Writ, by learning the CORRESPONDENCES which 
 bring heaven and earth into accord. The WORD of 
 God was written throughout with reference to these 
 correspondences, it conceals an inward or spiritual 
 meaning which cannot be understood without a 
 knowledge of the correspondences. ' There are,' 
 says Sweden borg, Celestial Doctrine, 26, ' innu- 
 merable ARCANA in the hidden meaning of corre- 
 spondences.' The men who made sport of the books 
 in which the prophets set forth the Word of God were 
 in the same condition of ignorance as those men of 
 the present day who know nothing of a science and 
 make sport of the truths of that science. To be 
 familiar with the correspondences between the Word
 
 SERAPHITA 225 
 
 and the heavens, to be familiar with the correspond- 
 ences that exist between the visible and tangible 
 things of the earthly world and the invisible and 
 intangible things of the spiritual world, is to have 
 heaven in one's understanding. All the objects of 
 the various creations having emanated from God, 
 necessarily intend a hidden meaning, as is said in 
 the words of Isaiah: The earth is a garment. This 
 mysterious bond between the smallest particle of 
 matter and heaven constitutes what Swedenborg 
 calls an Arcanum Ccelestium. His Treatise upon the' 
 Arcana Ccelestia, in which are explained the corre- 
 spondences between the natural and the spiritual 
 and their significance, being designed to give the 
 signature of everything, to employ the expression of 
 Jacob Boehm, contains no less than sixteen volumes 
 and thirteen thousand propositions. 
 
 " ' This marvellous knowledge of correspondences, 
 which God in His goodness allowed Swedenborg to 
 acquire,' says one of his disciples, ' is the secret of 
 the interest aroused by these works.' According to 
 that commentator, ' there everything is derived from 
 heaven, everything reminds one of heaven. The 
 prophet's writings are intelligible and sublime: he 
 speaks in heaven and makes himself heard on earth; 
 one could base a volume on one of his phrases.' 
 
 "And the disciple cites this among a thousand 
 others: 
 
 " ' The kingdom of heaven/ says Swedenborg, 
 Arcana Ccelestia, ' is the kingdom of motives. AC- 
 TION begins in heaven and extends to the earth, and, 
 15
 
 226 SERAPHITA 
 
 by degrees, to the infinitely small things of earth; 
 earthly effects being connected with their heavenly 
 causes, the result is that everything CORRESPONDS 
 and is SIGNIFICANT. Man is the bond of union be- 
 tween the natural and the spiritual.' 
 
 " The angelic spirits, then, are, generally speaking, 
 acquainted with the correspondence between every 
 earthly thing and something in heaven, and know 
 the secret meaning of the prophetic words which 
 tell of earthly revolutions. And so to those spirits 
 everything on earth has its significance. The tiniest 
 flower is a thought, a life, which corresponds to some 
 features of the great whole, of which they have 
 a constant intuitive consciousness. To them the 
 ADULTERY and debauchery mentioned by the Scrip- 
 tures and the prophets, who are often maltreated by 
 self-styled writers, signify the condition of the souls 
 of those who on this earth persist in contaminating 
 themselves with earthly affections, and thus perpet- 
 uate their divorce from heaven. The clouds signify 
 the veil in which God wraps himself. The torches, 
 the shewbread, the horses and the horsemen, the har- 
 lots, the precious stones, everything in the Scripture 
 has to them an exquisite meaning, and discloses the 
 future of earthly things in their relations with heaven. 
 They can all fathom the truth of the ENUNCIATIONS 
 of Saint John, which human science eventually dem- 
 onstrates and proves; as this one, for instance, which 
 is, according to Swedenborg, pregnant with the es- 
 sence of several human sciences: I saw a new heaven 
 and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth
 
 SERAPHITA 227 
 
 had passed away. Apocalypse xxi. i. They are fa- 
 miliar with the feasts at which the flesh of kings, of 
 free men, and of slaves is served, and to which an angel 
 standing in the sunlight bids them come. Apocalypse 
 xix. 11-18. They see the winged woman, clad in the 
 sun's rays, and the man always armed. Apocalypse. 
 The horse of the Apocalypse is, says Swedenborg, 
 the visible image of human intelligence ridden by 
 Death, for it carries the elements of its destruction. 
 Lastly, they recognize the nations concealed under 
 shapes which seem fanciful to the ignorant. When 
 a man is prepared to receive the prophetic insuffla- 
 tion of the theory of correspondences, it awakes in 
 him the spirit of the Word; he understands then that 
 creation is only transformation; it vivifies his intel- 
 lect and arouses in him an ardent thirst for the 
 truth, which can be slaked only in heaven. He 
 comprehends, according to the greater or less degree 
 of perfection which his inward sense has attained, 
 the power of the angelic spirits, and goes forward, 
 guided by desire, the least imperfect condition of un- 
 regenerate man, toward hope, which opens to him 
 the world of spirits; then he arrives at prayer which 
 gives him the key to heaven. What human crea- 
 ture would not long to make himself worthy to enter 
 the sphere of those intellects which live secretly by 
 love or by wisdom ? Here on earth those spirits re- 
 main pure during their lives; they do not see nor 
 think nor speak like other men. There are two 
 kinds of perception: one inward, the other exterior; 
 man is all exterior, the angelic spirit is all inward.
 
 228 SERAPHITA 
 
 The spirit goes to the root of numbers, it under- 
 stands them thoroughly, it knows their meanings. 
 It governs motion at its pleasure and makes itself a 
 part of everything by virtue of its ubiquity. An 
 angel, according to the Swedish prophet, appears 
 to another whenever he desires Sap. Aug. de Div. 
 Am. ; for he has the gift of quitting his body, and 
 sees heaven as the prophets saw it, and as Sweden- 
 borg himself saw it. 
 
 " ' In that condition,' he says, True Religion, 
 136, 'a man's spirit is transported from place to 
 place, the body remaining where it is, a condition 
 in which I lived for twenty-six years.' 
 
 "We should understand in that sense all those 
 passages in the Bible where it is said: The spirit car- 
 ried me away. Angelic wisdom is to human wisdom 
 what the innumerable forces of nature are to its 
 action, which is one. Everything lives, moves, and 
 has its being in the spirit, for it is in God; such is 
 the thought expressed by Saint Paul's words: In Deo 
 sumus, movemur etvivimus. Earth offers no obstacle 
 to the spirit, even as the Word offers no obscurity. 
 Its approaching divinity enables it to see God's 
 thought veiled by the Word; even as the spirit, 
 living by its inward perception, communicates with 
 the secret meaning hidden under all the things of 
 this world. Knowledge is the language of the 
 temporal world, love is the language of the spiritual 
 world. Man describes more than he explains, while 
 the angelic spirit sees and understands. Knowledge 
 saddens man, love exalts the angel. Knowledge is
 
 SERAPHITA 229 
 
 still seeking, love has found. Man judges nature 
 according to his relations with it; the angelic spirit 
 judges it according to its relations with heaven. 
 Moreover, everything speaks to the spirits. The 
 spirits are in the secret of the harmony of the various 
 creations among themselves; they are in accord with 
 the spirit of sound, with the spirit of color, with the 
 spirit of plant-life; they can question the mineral, 
 and the mineral answers their thoughts. What are 
 earthly knowledge and earthly treasures to them, 
 when their eyes embrace them all at every moment, 
 and when the worlds with which the thoughts of 
 so many men are engrossed are to the spirits simply 
 the topmost step from which they are about to dart 
 upward to God? The love of heaven or the wisdom 
 of heaven is indicated in them by the circle of light 
 which surrounds them and which the elect can see. 
 In their innocence, of which the innocence of chil- 
 dren is the outward form, they have a knowledge of 
 things which children have not: they are innocent 
 and learned. 
 
 "'And/ says Swedenborg, 'the innocence of 
 heaven makes such an impression upon the mind, 
 that they who are affected thereby retain an ecstatic 
 memory of it that endures through life, as I have 
 myself experienced. It is sufficient, perhaps,' he 
 says again, 'to have only the slightest perception of 
 it to be changed forever and to long to go to heaven 
 and thus enter the sphere of hope.' 
 
 " His doctrine concerning marriages may be re- 
 duced to these few words:
 
 230 SERAPHITA 
 
 " ' The Lord took the beauty, the refinement, of 
 man's life, and transferred it to woman. When man 
 is not reunited to the beauty and refinement of his 
 life, he is harsh, uncouth, and melancholy; when he 
 is reunited to it, he is joyous and happy, he is com- 
 plete.' 
 
 " The angels are always perfectly beautiful. Their 
 marriages are celebrated by wonderfully impressive 
 ceremonies. In those unions, of which no children 
 are born, the man gives UNDERSTANDING, the woman 
 gives WILL: they become a single being, ONE FLESH 
 here on earth; then they go to heaven after assum- 
 ing the celestial form. On earth, in the natural 
 state of man, the natural inclination of the sexes, for 
 each other is an EFFECT which brings weariness and 
 distaste in its train; but in their celestial guise, the 
 two who have become the same spirit find in them- 
 selves a never-failing source of pleasure. Sweden- 
 borg witnessed this marriage of spirits, which, 
 according to Saint Luke, is no marriage, xx. 35, 
 and inspires only spiritual enjoyment. An angel 
 offered to allow him to witness a marriage, and bore 
 him away upon his wings: the wings are a symbol, 
 not a terrestrial reality. He dressed him in his 
 festal robe, and when Swedenborg found himself 
 clothed in light, he asked why it was. 
 
 "'On these occasions,' the angel replied, 'our 
 robes become radiant and shine and become nup- 
 tial robes.' Delights of Conjugal Love. 
 
 " Thereupon he saw two angels, one of whom 
 came from the south, the other from the east; the
 
 SERAPHITA 231 
 
 angel from the south rode in a chariot drawn by two 
 white horses whose reins were of the color and bril- 
 liancy of the dawn; but when they were close by 
 him, in the sky, chariot and horses vanished. The 
 angel from the east, clad in purple, and the angel 
 from the south, clad in hyacinth, rushed together 
 like two breezes and were indistinguishably blended: 
 one was an angel of love, the other an angel of wis- 
 dom. Swedenborg's guide informed him that those 
 two angels had been connected on earth by a close 
 friendship and had always continued united although 
 separated by space. Consent, which is the essen- 
 tial of lawful marriages on earth, is the normal 
 state of the angels in heaven. Love is the light of 
 their world. The everlasting bliss of the angels is 
 due to the faculty God bestows upon them of giving 
 back to Him the joy that they feel. This infinite 
 mutuality of pleasure is their life. In heaven they 
 become infinite by partaking the essence of God 
 which is born of itself. The immensity of the 
 heavens where the angels live is such, that, if man 
 were endowed with vision as swift as the light that 
 comes from the sun to the earth, and if he should 
 gaze throughout all eternity, his eyes would never 
 reach a horizon upon which they could rest. The 
 light alone suffices to explain the felicity that reigns 
 in heaven. It is, he says, Angelic Wisdom, 7, 25, 
 26, 27, a vapor of the virtue of God, a pure emana- 
 tion of His radiance, in comparison with which our 
 bright sunlight is darkness. It can accomplish any- 
 thing, it revivifies everything, and is not absorbed;
 
 232 SERAPHITA 
 
 it envelops the angel and places him in touch with 
 God by means of the infinite delights which multi- 
 ply endlessly of themselves. That light destroys 
 every man who is not prepared to receive it. No 
 one on earth, nor even in heaven, can look upon 
 God and live. That is why, it is said, Exodus 
 xix. 12, 13, 21, 22, 23, that bounds should be set 
 about the mountain whereon Moses spake with the 
 Lord, lest anyone should touch it and therefore be 
 put to death. And again, Exodus xxxiv. 29-35, 
 that, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with 
 the two tables of testimony in his hand, his face 
 shone so that he was obliged to cover it with a veil, 
 so that no one might die while he was speaking to 
 the people. The transfiguration of Jesus Christ 
 typifies both the radiance shed abroad by a mes- 
 senger from heaven and the ineffable bliss that the 
 angels experience from being constantly flooded with 
 it. His face, says Saint Matthew, xvii. 1-5, shone 
 like the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. 
 And a bright cloud overshadowed his disciples. And 
 so, when a planet contains only beings who deny 
 God, when His Word is neglected, when the angelic 
 spirits have been summoned from the four corners of 
 space, God sends an exterminating angel to trans- 
 form the substance of the refractory world which 
 is to Him, in the immensity of the universe, what 
 an unfruitful seed is in nature. As he approaches 
 the globe, the exterminating angel, riding on a 
 comet, makes it turn upon its axis: thereupon the 
 continents become the bottoms of seas, the loftiest
 
 SERAPHITA 233 
 
 mountains become islands, and countries formerly 
 covered with the waters of the sea reappear in their 
 brilliant garb, obeying the laws of Genesis; then the 
 Word of God reasserts its power over a new earth 
 which retains everywhere the effects of the earthly 
 water and the heavenly fire. The light brought by 
 the angel from on high makes the sun's light seem 
 pale. Thereupon, as Isaiah says, the men enter into 
 the clefts of the rocks, they hide their faces in the 
 dust. They cry to the mountains: ' Fall upon us!' 
 To the sea: 'Take us!' To the air: ' Hide us from 
 the fury of the Lamb!' The Lamb is the favorite 
 image of the angels who are slighted and persecuted 
 on earth. And so Christ said: ' Blessed are they who 
 suffer! Blessed are the pure in heart! Blessed are 
 they who love!' The whole of Swedenborg's doc- 
 trine is found in those words: To suffer, to have 
 faith, to love. To love truly, must not one have suf- 
 fered, and must not one have faith? Love engenders 
 strength, and strength gives wisdom; thence is de- 
 rived intelligence; for force and wisdom import will. 
 To be intelligent is to have knowledge, wisdom, and 
 power, the three attributes of the angelic spirit. 
 
 " ' If the universe has a meaning, it is the mean- 
 ing most worthy of God,' said Monsieur Saint-Martin 
 to me, when I saw him during his travels in Sweden. 
 
 " But, monsieur," continued Monsieur Becker, 
 after a pause, " what significance have these frag- 
 ments culled here and there from a work of which 
 one can give no idea, save by comparing it to a 
 flood of light, to billows of flame? When a man
 
 234 SERAPHITA 
 
 plunges into it, he is carried away by a terrible cur- 
 rent. Dante Alighieri's poem seems a mere speck 
 to him who plunges into the innumerable verses in 
 which Swedenborg brings the celestial worlds before 
 us, as Beethoven built his palaces of harmony with 
 myriads of notes, as architects erect their cathedrals 
 with myriads of stone. You wander about in bot- 
 tomless abysses, where your mind does not always 
 sustain you. Surely it is necessary to have a power- 
 ful intellect in order to return thence to our social 
 ideas, safe and sound. 
 
 "Swedenborg," continued the pastor, "was par- 
 ticularly attached to the Baron de Seraphitz, whose 
 name, according to an ancient Swedish custom, had 
 been written from time immemorial with the Latin 
 termination us. The baron was the most ardent 
 disciple of the Swedish prophet, who had opened the 
 eyes of his inward man, and had formed him for a 
 life consistent with the commands from on high. He 
 sought an angelic spirit among women, and Sweden- 
 borg found such a one for him in a vision. His be- 
 trothed was the daughter of a cobbler in London, in 
 whom, so said Swedenborg, heavenly life was most 
 brilliantly exemplified, and who had passed the pre- 
 liminary tests. After the prophet's transformation, 
 the baron came to Jarvis to consummate his celestial 
 nuptials by prayer. For my own part, monsieur, as 
 I am not a seer, I saw only the earthly works of that 
 couple: their life was in very truth the life of the 
 saints whose virtues are the glory of the Roman 
 Church. They both devoted themselves to relieving
 
 SERAPHITA 235 
 
 the poverty of the people, and supplied them, one 
 and all, with such sums as did not indeed enable 
 them to live without a little work, but sufficed for 
 their absolute needs; the servants who lived with 
 them never knew them to exhibit anger or impa- 
 tience; they were invariably beneficent and gentle, 
 overflowing with amiability, grace, and true good- 
 ness; their marriage was the harmonious union of 
 two souls never disunited. Two eider-ducks flying 
 in company, sound and its echo, thought and its ver- 
 bal expression, are, perhaps, imperfect symbols of 
 that union. In this place, everyone loved them with 
 an affection which can be described only by com- 
 paring it to the love of the plant for the sun. The 
 woman was simple in her manners, lovely in form 
 and feature, and of a noble bearing like that of the 
 most august personages. In 1783, in the twenty- 
 sixth year of her age, that woman gave birth to a 
 child; its coming into the world was an occasion 
 of solemn rejoicing. Thus the husband and wife 
 bade farewell to the world, for they told me that 
 they should undoubtedly be transformed when their 
 child should have laid aside the garment of flesh, 
 which required their care until the moment when the 
 strength to exist by itself should be bestowed upon 
 it. The child was born, and was this same Sera- 
 phita who is in our minds at this moment; after her 
 birth, her father and mother led a more solitary 
 life than before, raising themselves heavenward by 
 prayer. Their one hope was to see Swedenborg, 
 and their faith brought the fulfilment of their hope.
 
 236 SERAPHITA 
 
 On the day of Seraphita's birth, Swedenborg ap- 
 peared in Jarvis and filled with a flood of light the 
 room in which the child lay. His words, it is said, 
 were these: 
 
 " ' The work is accomplished, the heavens re- 
 joice!' 
 
 " The servants in the house heard strangely me- 
 lodious sounds which, they said, seemed to be borne 
 on the winds from all points of the compass. Sweden- 
 borg's spirit beckoned the father from the house and 
 led him to the fiord, where it left him. Some of 
 the natives of Jarvis, approaching the barn at that 
 moment, heard him pronounce these beautiful words 
 of Scripture: 
 
 " ' How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet 
 of the angel who bringeth good tidings!' 
 
 " I was on my way from the rectory to the cha- 
 teau, to baptize the child, christen her, and perform 
 the duties which the laws impose upon me, when I 
 met the baron. 
 
 "'Your services are not needed,' he said; 'our 
 child will have no name on this earth. You shall 
 not baptize with the water of the earthly Church 
 the child who has been immersed in the flames of 
 heaven. That child will remain a flower; you will 
 not see it grow old, you will see it pass away; you 
 have existence, it has life; you have outward senses, 
 it has none; it is all inward.' 
 
 "These words were uttered in a supernatural 
 voice by which I was even more deeply affected 
 than by the radiance stamped upon his face, which
 
 SERAPHITA 237 
 
 exuded light. His appearance realized the fantastic 
 images we conceive of the inspired prophets, as we 
 read the prophetic books of the Bible. But such 
 effects are not rare among our mountains, where the 
 nitrogen contained in the everlasting snow produces 
 extraordinary phenomena in our organizations. I 
 asked him the cause of his excitement. 
 
 " ' Swedenborg has been with me, I have just left 
 him, I have breathed the air of heaven/ he replied. 
 
 " ' In what shape did he appear to you?' I asked. 
 
 '"In his mortal shape, dressed as he was the last 
 time I saw him, in London, at Richard Shearsmith's 
 house, in the district called Coldbath Fields, in July, 
 1771. He wore his ratteen coat of changeable color, 
 with steel buttons, his waistcoat buttoned to the 
 throat, his white cravat, and the same magisterial 
 wig with powdered rolls at the sides and the hair 
 brushed back in front in such way as to display that 
 noble, luminous brow, so fully in harmony with his 
 great square face, in which all is power and tranquil- 
 lity. I recognized that nose with its broad nostrils 
 breathing fire; I saw once more that mouth which 
 always smiled, that angelic mouth, whence these 
 words issued, fraught with happiness for me: "We 
 shall soon meet again!" And I felt the splendor of 
 the celestial love.' 
 
 "The conviction that shone in the baron's face 
 forbade all argument, and I listened to him in 
 silence; his voice had a contagious warmth which 
 made my entrails glow, his fanaticism stirred my 
 heart as another's anger makes one's nerves tingle.
 
 238 SERAPHITA 
 
 I followed him in silence to his house, where I saw 
 the nameless child lying upon her mother, who held 
 her in a mysterious embrace. Seraphita heard me 
 enter, and raised her head to look at me; her eyes 
 were not like those of an ordinary child; I cannot 
 describe the impression they made upon me better 
 than by saying that they seemed to see and think 
 already. That predestined child's infancy was ac- 
 companied by climatic conditions most extraordinary 
 in our latitude. For nine years our winters were 
 milder and our summers longer than usual. That 
 phenomenon caused much discussion among scientific 
 men; but, although their explanations may have 
 seemed convincing to the members of the Academy, 
 the baron smiled when I reported them to him. 
 Seraphita was never seen naked as children some- 
 times are; she was never touched by man or woman; 
 she lived upon her mother's breast and never cried. 
 Old David will confirm these statements if you ques- 
 tion him concerning his mistress, for whom he has 
 an adoration like that which the king whose name 
 he bears had for the Ark of the Covenant. At the 
 age of nine, the child began to devote herself to 
 prayer: prayer is her life; you saw her in our little 
 temple at Christmas, the only day she comes there; 
 she stands at some distance from the other Christians 
 there. If there is not that distance between herself 
 and her fellow-men, she suffers. For that reason 
 she remains at the chateau most of the time. The 
 incidents of her life are not known; she rarely shows 
 herself; her faculties, her sensations all are inward;
 
 SERAPHITA 239 
 
 she passes the greater part of the time in the state 
 of mystic meditation usual, say the popish writers, 
 among the early Christian hermits, in whom the 
 tradition of the Word of Christ still lived. Her 
 understanding, her soul, her body, everything about 
 her is as spotless as the snow upon our mountains. 
 At ten years of age, she was just as you see her now. 
 When she was but nine, her father and mother died 
 together, painlessly, without apparent disease, having 
 foretold the hour at which they should cease to live. 
 Standing at their feet, she looked at them with a calm 
 eye, with no indication of sadness or grief or joy or 
 curiosity; her father and mother smiled upon her. 
 When we came to take away the bodies, she said: 
 
 " ' Take them away!' 
 
 " ' Seraphita,' I said, for we have always called 
 her so, ' pray, are you not grieved by the death of 
 father and mother? they loved you so dearly!' 
 
 " ' Death?' said she. 'Why, no; they are in me 
 forever. These are nothing,' she added, pointing 
 without the slightest emotion to the bodies that were 
 being removed. 
 
 " That was the third time I had seen her since 
 her birth. It is difficult to distinguish her in the 
 temple, for she stands beside the pillar which sup- 
 ports the pulpit, in a shadow which makes it impos- 
 sible to see her features. Of those who had been 
 servants in the family, the only one remaining at the 
 time of that event was old David, who, despite his 
 eighty-two years, sufficed for his mistress's needs. 
 Some of the Jarvis people have told marvellous
 
 240 SERAPHITA 
 
 stories about this girl. As their tales have acquired 
 a certain currency in a country essentially fond of 
 mysteries, I have undertaken to study Wier's Trea- 
 tise upon Incantations, and works relating to demon- 
 ology, in which are narrated alleged supernatural 
 effects in man, trying to find some facts analogous 
 to those which are attributed to her." 
 
 " Then you do not believe in her?" queried Wil- 
 frid. 
 
 " Indeed, no," replied the pastor good-humoredly; 
 "in my eyes she is an extremely capricious girl, 
 spoiled by her parents, who turned her head with 
 the religious ideas I have just sketched." 
 
 Minna made a motion with her head expressive of 
 mild negation. 
 
 "Poor girl!" continued the pastor, "her parents 
 bequeathed to her the deplorable mental exaltation 
 which leads persons of a mystical turn astray and 
 makes them more or less mad. She restricts herself 
 to a diet that drives poor David to despair. That 
 excellent old man resembles a fragile plant which 
 sways in the slightest breeze, which blooms in the 
 slightest ray of sunlight. His mistress, whose in- 
 comprehensible language he has adopted, is his wind 
 and his son; in his eyes, her feet are of diamonds and 
 her brow is studded with stars; she walks encircled 
 by a luminous white atmosphere; her words are ac- 
 companied by music; she has the power of making 
 herself invisible. Ask to see her: he will tell you 
 that she is travelling among the stars. It is diffi- 
 cult to believe in such fables. As you know, every
 
 SERAPHITA 241 
 
 miracle resembles more or less the story of the 
 Golden Tooth. We have a golden tooth in Jarvis, 
 that's the whole of it. For instance, Duncker the 
 fisherman declares that he has sometimes seen her 
 dive into the fiord and come out in the form of an 
 eider-duck, and sometimes walking on the waves 
 during a storm. Fergus, who drives the flocks to 
 the soekrs, says that he has noticed that, in rainy 
 weather, the sky is always bright above the Swe- 
 dish chateau, and always blue over Seraphita's head 
 when she comes out. Many women hear the notes 
 of an immense organ when Seraphita comes into the 
 temple, and ask their neighbors in all seriousness if 
 they do not hear them too. But my daughter, of 
 whom Seraphita has seemed very fond for two years 
 past, has heard no music, nor has she smelt the 
 heavenly perfumes with which they say the air is 
 laden when she goes out to walk. Minna has often 
 returned home overflowing with artless girlish ad- 
 miration of the beauties of our spring; she has 
 seemed intoxicated by the fragrance exhaled by the 
 first buds of the larches, pines, or flowers, which they 
 had breathed together; but, after such a long winter, 
 nothing can be more natural than that excessive en- 
 joyment. There is nothing very extraordinary in 
 this demon's society, is there, my child?" 
 
 "His secrets are not mine," replied Minna. 
 "With him, I know everything; away from him, I 
 know nothing: with him, I cease to be myself; away 
 from him, I entirely forget that blissful life. To see 
 him is a dream, the memory of which abides with 
 16
 
 242 SERAPHITA 
 
 x 
 
 me or not, as he pleases. I have heard when with 
 him, but forgotten when away from him, the music 
 to which Bancker's wife and Erikson's refer; with 
 him, I have smelt celestial perfumes and seen mar- 
 vellous things, and I lose all remembrance of them 
 here." 
 
 "The thing that has surprised me most since I 
 have known her," said the pastor, addressing Wil- 
 frid, " is her allowing you to be with her." 
 
 " With her!" said the young man; " she has never 
 let me kiss her, or even touch her hand. When she 
 saw me for the first time, her glance cowed me; she 
 said to me: ' Welcome to this place, for you were 
 destined to come.' She seemed to know me. I 
 trembled. Fear made me believe in her." 
 
 "And love made me," said Minna, without a 
 blush. 
 
 "Are you not laughing at me?" said Monsieur 
 Becker, laughing good-naturedly; "you, my daugh- 
 ter, in claiming to be a spirit of love, and you, mon- 
 sieur, in making yourself out a spirit of wisdom?" 
 
 He drank a glass of beer, and did not notice the 
 singular glance Wilfrid bestowed upon Minna. 
 
 " Joking aside," the minister resumed, " I was 
 very greatly surprised to learn that to-day, for the 
 first time, these two madcaps have been to the sum- 
 mit of the Falberg; is it anything more than the 
 exaggeration of a couple of girls who have climbed 
 some little hill? It is impossible to reach the sum- 
 mit of the Falberg." 
 
 "Father," said Minna, in a voice denoting deep
 
 SERAPHITA 243 
 
 emotion, "then I must have been in the demon's 
 power, for I climbed the Falberg with him." 
 
 " This is becoming serious," said Monsieur Becker; 
 "Minna has never told a falsehood." 
 
 " Monsieur Becker," rejoined Wilfrid, " I give you 
 my word that Seraphita exerts such extraordinary 
 power over me that I know of no words that will 
 convey an idea of it. She has told me things that 
 nobody but myself could possibly know." 
 
 " Somnambulism!" rejoined the old man. " Sev- 
 eral occurrences of that nature are reported by Wier 
 as phenomena readily explainable, and observed long 
 ago in Egypt." 
 
 "Lend me Swedenborg's theosophical works," 
 said Wilfrid; " I am anxious to plunge into those 
 abysses of light, you have given me a thirst for 
 them." 
 
 Monsieur Becker handed a volume to Wilfrid, who 
 at once began to read. It was about nine o'clock. 
 The servant appeared to serve supper. Minna made 
 the tea. The repast at an end, all three became 
 deeply engrossed, the pastor reading the Treatise 
 upon Incantations, Wilfrid imbibing the spirit of 
 Swedenborg and Minna sewing, lost in her mem- 
 ories. It was a true Norwegian evening party, 
 peaceful, studious, full of thought, of flowers under 
 the snow. As he devoured the pages of the prophet, 
 Wilfrid ceased to live by his external senses. Now 
 and then the pastor, with a half-serious, half-laugh- 
 ing expression, called Minna's attention to him, 
 whereupon she smiled with a sort of sadness.
 
 244 SERAPHITA 
 
 Meanwhile, Seraphitus's face, hovering over the 
 cloud of smoke that enveloped all three of them, 
 smiled upon Minna. 
 
 The clock struck twelve. The outer door was 
 violently thrown open. Heavy, precipitate steps, 
 the steps of a terrified old man, were heard in the 
 narrow anteroom between the two doors. Then 
 David abruptly appeared in the parlor. 
 
 "Violence! violence!" he cried. "Come! come all! 
 The demons are unloosed ! they have mitres of fire 
 on their heads! There are Adonises, Vertumnuses, 
 sirens! they are tempting him as Jesus was tempted 
 on the mountain. Come and drive them away!" 
 
 " Do you recognize Swedenborg's language? there 
 you have it unadulterated," laughed the pastor. 
 
 But Minna and Wilfrid gazed in terror at old David, 
 who, his white hair flying, wild-eyed, his legs trem- 
 bling and covered with snow, for he had come with- 
 out snow-shoes, stood there swaying to and fro as 
 if a mighty wind were blowing upon him. 
 
 " What has happened?" Minna asked him. 
 
 " Why, the devils hope and intend to reconquer 
 him." 
 
 Those words made Wilfrid's heart beat fast. 
 
 "For nearly five hours she has been standing with 
 her eyes raised to heaven and arms outstretched; 
 she suffers, she cries out to God. I cannot pass the 
 bounds of the circle, hell has stationed Vertumnuses 
 as sentinels. They have built walls of fire between 
 her and her old David. If she needs me, what shall 
 I do? Help me! come and pray!"
 
 SERAPHITA 245 
 
 The poor old man's despair was horrible to see. 
 
 " The radiance of God defends her; but suppose 
 she should yield to violence?" he continued, with 
 fascinating good faith. 
 
 " Silence! David, do not talk nonsense! This is a 
 statement to be verified. We will accompany you," 
 said the pastor, " and you will see that there are 
 neither Vertumnuses, nor devils, nor sirens in your 
 house." 
 
 "Your father is blind," said David to Minna in 
 an undertone. 
 
 Wilfrid, upon whom the reading of one of Sweden- 
 borg's earlier treatises, which he had rapidly run 
 through, had produced a most prodigious effect, was 
 already in the corridor, engaged in putting on his 
 snow-shoes. Minna was ready in a moment. They 
 left the two old men behind and hurried away toward 
 the Swedish chateau. 
 
 " Do you hear that cracking?" said Wilfrid. 
 
 "The ice in the fiord is moving," replied Minna; 
 " but the spring will soon be here." 
 
 Wilfrid was silent. When they were both in the 
 courtyard, they did not feel that they had either 
 the ability or the strength to enter the house. 
 
 " What do you think of her?" asked Wilfrid. 
 
 "What a brilliant light!" cried Minna, as she 
 took her place in front of the window of the salon. 
 " There he is! my God, how handsome he is! O my 
 Seraphitus, take me!" 
 
 The girl's exclamation was entirely mental. She 
 saw Seraphitus standing, lightly enveloped in an
 
 246 SERAPHITA 
 
 opal-colored mist which escaped from that almost 
 phosphoric body. 
 
 " How lovely she is!" cried Wilfrid, also mentally. 
 
 At that moment, Monsieur Becker arrived, followed 
 by David; he saw his daughter and the stranger 
 standing in front of the window, stood beside them, 
 looked into the salon, and said: 
 
 "Well, David, she is saying her prayers." 
 
 " But just try to go in, monsieur." 
 
 "Why disturb those who are praying?" replied 
 the pastor. 
 
 At that moment, the moon rose over the Falberg 
 and its beams fell upon the window. They all 
 turned, impressed by that natural phenomenon, 
 which startled them; but when they turned again 
 to look at Seraphita, she had disappeared. 
 
 "That is very strange!" said Wilfrid in surprise. 
 
 "I heard entrancing sounds!" said Minna. 
 
 "Well, what of it?" said the pastor; "she has 
 gone to bed, no doubt." 
 
 David had entered the house. They returned 
 to the rectory in silence; no two of them understood 
 the meaning of that vision in the same way: Mon- 
 sieur Becker was sceptical, Minna adored, Wilfrid 
 desired. 
 
 Wilfrid was a man of thirty-six. Although very 
 fully developed, his proportions were not inhar- 
 monious. He was of medium height, like almost all 
 men who raise themselves above their fellow-men; 
 his chest and shoulders were broad and his neck 
 was short, like that of a man whose heart seems to
 
 SERAPHITA 247 
 
 be near his head; his hair was black and thick and 
 fine; his eyes, of a light-brown shade, possessed a 
 sunlike brilliancy which showed how eagerly his 
 nature longed for the light. Although his virile, ex- 
 cited features were lacking in the inward calmness 
 imparted by a life without storms, they indicated 
 the inexhaustible resources of impetuous feelings 
 and the appetites of instinct; just as his motions 
 indicated the perfection of physical conformation, 
 the flexibility of the muscles and the fidelity of their 
 play. That man might contend with the savage, 
 hear like him the step of a foe far away in the forest, 
 scent his presence in the air, and detect a friend's 
 signal on the horizon. He slept lightly, like all crea- 
 tures who do not wish to be surprised. His body 
 speedily placed itself in harmony with the climate of 
 the countries to which his adventurous life led him. 
 Art and science would have admired that man's 
 organization as a model for mankind; in him all 
 things were in equilibrium: impulse and heart, intel- 
 lect and will. 
 
 At first, it seemed as if he should be classed among 
 the purely instinctive beings who abandon them- 
 selves blindly to their material needs; but, in the 
 morning of his life, he had found his way into 
 the social circle to which his feelings guided him; 
 study had broadened his intelligence, meditation had 
 sharpened his thought, the sciences had enlarged his 
 understanding. He had studied human laws, the 
 action of selfish interests brought into play by 
 passions, and seemed to have made himself familiar
 
 248 SERAPHITA 
 
 early in life with the abstract ideas upon which so- 
 cieties rest. He had grown pale over books, which 
 are the dead acts of mankind; then he had passed 
 sleepless nights in European capitals amid festivals; 
 he had awakened in more beds than one; he had 
 slept, it may be, upon the battle-field during the 
 night preceding the combat and the night following 
 the victory; it may be that, in his stormy youth, he 
 had sailed to the most strikingly contrasted por- 
 tions of the globe on the deck of a corsair; thus he 
 was familiar with the living acts of mankind. He 
 knew the present and the past, the history of an- 
 cient times and of to-day. Many men have been, 
 like Wilfrid, equally strong in hand and heart and 
 head; like him, the majority of them have abused 
 their threefold power. But, even if that man were 
 still allied to the degraded portion of humanity by 
 his outer envelope, he certainly belonged in equal 
 degree to the sphere where force is intelligent. 
 Despite the veils in which his mind enveloped itself, 
 there were to be seen in him those indescribable 
 symptoms that are visible to the eye of pure crea- 
 tures, of children whose innocence has felt the 
 breath of no evil passion, of the old man who has 
 regained his innocence; those marks denoted a Cain 
 who still retained some hope, and who seemed to be 
 seeking absolution in some form at the ends of the 
 earth. Minna suspected in that man the galley- 
 slave of renown, and Seraphita knew him to be 
 such; both admired and pitied him. Whence came 
 their prescience? Nothing could be more simple and
 
 AN EVENING AT THE PASTOR'S 
 
 The repast at an end, all three became deeply 
 engrossed, the pastor reading the Treatise upon In- 
 cantations, Wilfrid imbibing the spirit of Swedenborg 
 and Minna sewing, lost in her memories. It was a 
 true Norwegian evening party.
 
 I
 
 SERAPHITA 249 
 
 at the same time more extraordinary. As soon as 
 man attempts to fathom the secrets of nature, where 
 nothing is secret, where it is simply a question of 
 seeing, he discovers that there the simple produces 
 the marvellous. 
 
 " Seraphitus," said Minna one evening, a few 
 days after Wilfrid's arrival at Jarvis, " you read this 
 stranger's mind, while I receive only vague im- 
 pressions from him. He either freezes me or warms 
 me; but you seem to know the cause of that cold or 
 warmth; you can tell me what it is, for you know 
 everything about him." 
 
 "Yes, 1 have seen the causes," said Seraphitus, 
 lowering his broad lids over his eyes. 
 
 " By what power?" asked the inquisitive Minna. 
 
 "I have the gift of specialization," he replied. 
 "Specialization constitutes a sort of inward sight 
 which penetrates everything; you can understand 
 its extent only by a comparison. In the great cities 
 of Europe, from which come works in which the 
 hand of man strives to represent the effects of 
 the moral nature as well as those of the physical 
 nature, there are men of sublime talent who express 
 ideas with marble. The sculptor works upon the 
 marble: he shapes it, and expresses a world of 
 thoughts therein. There are statues upon which 
 the hand of man has bestowed the power to repre- 
 sent an entire sublime or evil side of humanity; 
 most men see therein a human figure and nothing 
 more; others, occupying a position somewhat higher 
 on the ladder of human beings, detect a portion of the
 
 250 SERAPHITA 
 
 thoughts translated by the sculptor, they admire 
 the shape of the figure; but they who are initiated 
 in the secrets of the art all fully understand the 
 sculptor: when they look upon his work, they rec- 
 ognize the whole world of his thoughts. They are 
 the princes of art, they bear within themselves a 
 mirror in which nature is reflected in its most mi- 
 nute details. Even so there is within me a mirror in 
 which the moral nature, with its causes and effects, 
 is reflected. I divine the future and the past by 
 thus penetrating the mind. How? you will ask me 
 again. Let the marble statue be the body of a man, 
 let the sculptor be sentiment, passion, vice or crime, 
 virtue, sin, or repentance; then you will understand 
 how I have been able to read the stranger's mind, 
 without, however, being able to explain specializa- 
 tion to you; for, to understand that gift, one must 
 possess it." 
 
 Although Wilfrid was allied to the first two branches 
 of mankind, utterly distinct as they are, to the men 
 of force and the men of thought, his excesses, his 
 restless life and his errors, had often led him in 
 the direction of faith; for doubt has two sides, the 
 side of light and the side of darkness. Wilfrid had 
 pressed the world too close in its two forms, mind 
 and matter, not to suffer from the thirst for the un- 
 known, from the desire to go beyond, with which all 
 men are attacked who have knowledge, power, and 
 will. But his knowledge, his acts, his will, were 
 without any guidance. He had shunned social life 
 from necessity, as the great culprit seeks the cloister.
 
 SERAPHITA 251 
 
 Remorse, that virtue of the weak, did not assail 
 him. Remorse is a species of helplessness, it will sin 
 again. Repentance alone is a force, it puts an end to 
 everything. But Wilfrid, while travelling over the 
 world which he had taken for his cloister, had found 
 balm for his wounds nowhere; he had seen nowhere 
 a nature to which he could cling. In him despair had 
 dried up the springs of desire. He was one of those 
 men who, having fallen out with the passions and 
 found themselves the stronger, have nothing more 
 to squeeze in their gripe; who, in default of an op- 
 portunity to place themselves at the head of some 
 of their equals to trample entire peoples under their 
 horses' feet, would purchase at the price of a horrible 
 martyrdom the power to ruin themselves for a belief: 
 sublime cliffs, so to speak, awaiting the touch of a 
 magic wand which would make their far-off springs 
 gush forth anew, but which does not come. 
 
 Led by a scheme of his restless, inquisitive life 
 among the roads of Norway, winter had surprised 
 him at Jarvis. On the day when he first saw Sera- 
 phita, that meeting caused him to forget his past life. 
 The girl awoke intense sensations which he believed 
 to be beyond resuscitation. The ashes emitted one 
 last flame, and blew away at the first sound of that 
 voice. Who has ever experienced the sensation of 
 becoming young and pure once more after he had 
 grown cold in old age and defiled himself in impurity? 
 Suddenly, Wilfrid loved as he had never loved before; 
 he loved secretly, with intense faith, with terror, 
 with secret frenzy. His life was stirred to its very
 
 252 SERAPHITA 
 
 source at the mere thought of seeing Seraphita. 
 When he heard her voice, he was transported to 
 unfamiliar worlds; he was dumb in her presence, 
 she fascinated him. In that desolate spot, under 
 the snow, among the fields of ice, that celestial 
 flower had grown to maturity upon its slender stalk; 
 that flower which was the goal of all his aspiration, 
 hitherto ungratified, and the sight of which aroused 
 the fresh ideas, the hopes, the feelings, that cluster 
 about us to bear us away to higher regions, as the 
 angels bear the elect away to heaven in the symbolic 
 pictures suggested to painters by some familiar genius. 
 A divine perfume softened the granite of that rock, a 
 light endowed with speech shed upon him the divine 
 melodies that accompany the traveller in his heaven- 
 ward journey. Having drained to the dregs the cup 
 of earthly love which his teeth had broken, he saw 
 before him the chosen vessel in which gleamed limpid 
 waves and which makes one thirst for joys that are 
 never-ending for him who can touch it with lips suf- 
 ficiently imbued with faith to avoid shattering the 
 crystal. He had found that wall of brass to be sur- 
 mounted which he had sought throughout the world. 
 He went impulsively to Seraphita, with the purpose 
 of describing to her the bearing of a passion beneath 
 which he was as restive as the horse in the fable 
 beneath the bronze rider whom nothing disturbs, 
 who sits firmly in his saddle, and whom the efforts 
 of the fiery beast serve only to make more burden- 
 some and heavier. He went to her to depict the 
 grandeur of his soul by the grandeur of his errors,
 
 SERAPHITA 253 
 
 to show her the ruins of his desert places; but, when 
 he had passed the outer walls of the chateau and 
 found himself within the vast zone embraced by 
 those eyes, whose sparkling azure encountered no 
 limits to their vision, he became as calm and submis- 
 sive as the lion who, as he rushes upon his prey in 
 an African desert, receives a love-message on the 
 wings of the wind and stops. He opened for him- 
 self an abyss into which the words of his frenzy fell, 
 and from which issued a voice which changed his 
 nature: he was a child again, a child of sixteen, 
 timid and fearful before that girl with the tranquil 
 brow, before that white figure whose unalterable 
 calmness resembled the cruel impassiveness of hu- 
 man justice. And the battle had never ceased until 
 that evening, when she had at last overthrown him 
 with a single glance, as a hawk, after describing a 
 series of bewildering spirals around its prey, lets it 
 fall stupefied to the ground before carrying it away 
 to its nest. Long conflicts take place within us, 
 ending in one of our acts, and forming a sort of re- 
 verse side of man's nature. That reverse side is 
 turned toward God, the other toward men. 
 
 More than once, Seraphita had amused herself by 
 proving to Wilfrid that she was acquainted with 
 that reverse side, different in different individuals, 
 which constitutes a second life with most men. She 
 had often said to him, in her turtle-dove voice: 
 " Why all this anger?" when Wilfrid had registered 
 a vow to carry her away in order to make her his 
 own property. Wilfrid alone was strong enough
 
 254 SERAPHITA 
 
 to utter the cry of rebellion to which he had given 
 vent at Monsieur Becker's, and which the old man's 
 narrative had quieted. That mocking, insolent man 
 saw at last the dawn of a starlike faith breaking upon 
 his darkness; he asked himself if Seraphita were 
 not an exile from higher spheres returning to her 
 native country. He did not simply decree the honor 
 of deification, which lovers abuse in all countries, to 
 this Norwegian lily, he believed in her. Why did 
 she remain on the shore of that fiord ? what was she 
 doing there? Questions that were left unanswered 
 abounded in his mind. Above all, what would come 
 to pass between them? What fate had guided him 
 thither? To him Seraphita was the marble statue, 
 motionless but light as a shadow, which Minna had 
 seen standing on the brink of the chasm: so Sera- 
 phita stood on the brink of every chasm, unmoved, 
 without the quiver of an eyelid, without the slight- 
 est fear in her eye. Thus his was a love without 
 hope, but not devoid of curiosity. From the moment 
 that Wilfrid suspected the ethereal nature of the 
 sorceress who had told him the secret of her life 
 in blissful dreams, he determined to try to subdue 
 her, to keep her, to steal her from heaven where 
 perhaps her coming was awaited. He would repre- 
 sent the human race, the earth resuming possession 
 of its prey. His pride, the only sentiment whereby 
 man can be exalted for long, would make him happy, 
 because of that triumph, for the rest of his life. At 
 that thought, his blood boiled in his veins, his heart 
 swelled. If he did not succeed, he would tear her
 
 SERAPHITA 255 
 
 to pieces. It is so natural to destroy what one 
 cannot possess, to deny what one does not under- 
 stand, to decry what one envies! ' 
 
 The next day, Wilfrid, his mind filled by the 
 thoughts certain to be suggested by the extraordi- 
 nary spectacle he had witnessed the preceding night, 
 determined to question David, and went to see him, 
 on the pretext of asking for news of Seraphita. 
 Although Monsieur Becker believed that the poor 
 man was in his dotage, the stranger trusted to his 
 own perspicacity to detect the morsels of truth that 
 would be poured forth by the old servant in the 
 torrent of his divagations. 
 
 David had the stolid, weak face of the octogena- 
 rian: below his gray hair was a brow upon which 
 the wrinkles formed long ruined hummocks; his 
 face was hollowed out like the dry bed of a moun- 
 tain torrent. His life seemed to have taken refuge 
 entirely in the eyes, wherein a ray of light still 
 gleamed; but that gleam was veiled by clouds, as it 
 were, and suggested the restless wildness as well as 
 the stupid fixity of intoxication. His slow, heavy 
 movements indicated the frosts of age and communi- 
 cated them to anyone who looked steadfastly at him 
 for a long while, for he possessed the force of torpor. 
 His limited intelligence awoke only at the sound 
 of his mistress's voice, or at the sight or thought of 
 her. She was the soul of that wholly material frag- 
 ment. Seeing David alone, you would have said 
 that he was a corpse: but if Seraphita appeared or 
 spoke or were mentioned then the dead came forth
 
 256 SERAPHITA 
 
 from his tomb, he recovered motion and speech. 
 Never was the apocalyptic image of the dried bones 
 restored to life in the valley of Jehosaphat more fully 
 realized than by that Lazarus constantly recalled to 
 life from the grave by the girl's voice. His language, 
 always figurative, often incomprehensible, prevented 
 the natives from talking with him; but they felt the 
 instinctive reverence of the common people for one 
 who had wandered so far from the beaten track. 
 
 Wilfrid found him in the outer room, apparently 
 asleep by the stove. Like a dog who knows the 
 friends of the family, the old man raised his eyes, 
 recognized the stranger, and did not stir. 
 
 "Well, where is she?" Wilfrid inquired, taking a 
 seat beside the old man. 
 
 David moved his fingers in the air, as if to de- 
 scribe the flight of a bird. 
 
 " Is her suffering at an end?" asked Wilfrid. 
 
 " Only those creatures who are promised to heaven 
 know how to suffer without their love being dimin- 
 ished by suffering; that is the sign of true faith," re- 
 plied the old man, gravely, as a musical instrument 
 gives forth a note when touched at random. 
 
 "Who told you that?" 
 
 "The Spirit." 
 
 "What happened to her last night? Did you 
 force your way by the Vertumnuses who acted as 
 sentries? did you glide in among the Mammons?" 
 
 " Yes," replied David, as if waking from a dream. 
 
 The confused vapor of his eyes melted away 
 before a ray of light that came from his mind and
 
 SERAPHITA 257 
 
 gradually made them as bright as an eagle's, as 
 intelligent as a poet's. 
 
 " What did you see?" queried Wilfrid, amazed by 
 that sudden transformation. 
 
 " I saw Species and Forms, I heard the Spirit of 
 Things, I saw the rebellion of the Bad, I listened to 
 the speech of the Good ! There were seven demons 
 and seven archangels come down from heaven. 
 The archangels were at a distance, they looked on 
 with veils over their faces. The demons were near 
 at hand, they were brilliantly arrayed and active. 
 Mammon came on his mother-of-pearl shell, in the 
 shape of a lovely nude woman; his body was daz- 
 zling in its snowy whiteness, no human form will 
 ever be so perfect, and he said: ' I am Pleasure, and 
 thou shalt possess me!' Lucifer, the prince of ser- 
 pents, came in his regal garb, the man in him was 
 as beautiful as an angel, and he said: 'Mankind shall 
 wait upon thee!' The queen of misers, she who 
 never gives up anything she has received, the Sea, 
 arrived, wrapped in her green cloak; she bared her 
 bosom, she showed her casket of precious stones, 
 she vomited forth her treasures and offered them; 
 she summoned waves of sapphires and emeralds; 
 her products bestirred themselves, they came forth 
 from their hiding-places, they spoke; the fairest 
 among the pearls unfolded her butterfly wings, gave 
 forth a bright light, and sang her music of the sea; 
 she said: ' Daughters of suffering both, we are 
 sisters; wait for me! we will go together, I have but 
 to become a woman.' The bird with the wings of 
 17
 
 258 SERAPHITA 
 
 the eagle and the claws of the lion, a woman's head, 
 and the rump of a horse, the Animal, stooped and 
 licked her feet, promising seven hundred years of 
 abundance to his beloved daughter. The most to be 
 feared of all, the Child, crawled to her knees, weep- 
 ing and saying to her: ' Wilt thou leave me, weak 
 and ill as I am? stay with me, mother!' He played 
 with the others, he diffused sloth through the air, 
 and heaven itself would have listened to his lament. 
 The sweet-voiced Virgin warbled her melodies that 
 relax the soul. The kings of the East came with 
 their slaves, their armies, and their wives; the 
 Wounded appealed to her for help, the Unfortunate 
 held out their hands to her: ' Do not leave us! do not 
 leave us!' Even I myself cried: 'Do not leave us! 
 we adore you, stay!' The flowers came forth from 
 their seeds, surrounding her with their perfumes, 
 which said: 'Stay!' The giant Enakim came from 
 Jupiter, bringing Gold and his friends, bringing the 
 spirits from the astral worlds that are connected with 
 him, and one and all said to her: ' We will be thine 
 for seven hundred years.' Lastly, Death alighted 
 from his white horse, and said: 'I will obey thee!' 
 They all prostrated themselves at her feet, and if 
 you could have seen them! they filled the vast plain, 
 and all cried out to her: ' We reared thee; thou art 
 our child, do not desert us!' Life came forth from 
 its red waters, and said: ' I will never leave thee!' 
 And then, as Seraphita remained silent, it gleamed 
 like the sun, crying: ' I am the light!' 'The light is 
 there!' cried Seraphita, pointing to the clouds where
 
 SERAPHITA 259 
 
 the archangels were waving their arms; but she was 
 tired, Desire had shattered her nerves, she could 
 only cry: ' O my God!' How many angelic spirits, 
 as they climbed the mountain and were almost at the 
 summit, have trodden upon a pebble which threw 
 them down and hurled them back into the abyss! 
 All those fallen spirits admired her steadfastness; 
 they stood there, a motionless chorus, and one and 
 all, weeping, said to her: ' Have courage!' At last, 
 she conquered the Desire by which she had been 
 beset in all shapes and in every guise. She knelt 
 in prayer, and when she raised her eyes, she saw 
 the feet of the angels flying back to heaven." 
 
 " She saw the feet of the angels?" repeated Wil- 
 frid. 
 
 " Yes," said the old man. 
 
 " Has she been describing a dream to you?" 
 
 "A dream as real as the dream of your life," re- 
 plied David; " I was there." 
 
 The old servant's calm manner impressed Wilfrid, 
 who went away wondering if such visions were less 
 extraordinary than those described in the writings of 
 Swedenborg, which he had read the night before. 
 
 "If spirits really exist, they must act," he said 
 to himself, entering the parsonage, where he found 
 Monsieur Becker alone. 
 
 " Dear pastor," said Wilfrid, " Seraphita is allied 
 to us only in form, and her form is impenetrable. 
 Do not look upon me as a lunatic or a man in love: 
 it is of no use to discuss a conviction. Transform 
 my faith and scientific conjectures, and let us seek
 
 260 SERAPH1TA 
 
 enlightenment. To-morrow we will both call upon 
 her." 
 
 " Well?" said Monsieur Becker. 
 
 " If her eye knows nothing of space," continued 
 Wilfrid, "if her thought is a faculty of intelligent 
 insight which enables her to embrace all things in 
 their essence and to connect them with the general 
 evolution of worlds; if, in a word, she knows and 
 sees everything, let us seat the pythoness upon her 
 tripod, let us compel that inexorable eagle to unfold 
 her wings by threatening her! Assist me! I am 
 breathing a fire which consumes me, I am determined 
 either to extinguish it or to allow myself to be con- 
 sumed. In short, I have discovered a victim, I pro- 
 pose to have her." 
 
 " It would be a very difficult conquest to accom- 
 plish," said the minister, "for the poor girl is " 
 
 "Is?" queried Wilfrid. 
 
 " Mad," said the minister. 
 
 " I do not deny her madness, do not you deny her 
 superiority. Dear Monsieur Becker, she has often 
 confounded me by her erudition. Has she trav- 
 elled?" 
 
 " From her house to the fiord." 
 
 " She has not been away from the place!" cried 
 Wilfrid; "then she must have read a great deal?" 
 
 " Not a leaf, not a word ! I am the only person in 
 Jarvis who has books. The works of Swedenborg, 
 the only books in the village, are here. She has 
 never borrowed one of them." 
 
 " Have you ever tried to talk with her?"
 
 SERAPHITA 26l 
 
 " What would be the use?" 
 
 " Has no one ever lived under her roof?" 
 
 " She has had no other friends than you and 
 Minna, no other servant than David." 
 
 " Has she never heard of the sciences, the arts?" 
 
 " From whom?" queried the pastor. 
 
 " If she talks intelligently of all these things, as she 
 has often talked with me, what do you think of it?" 
 
 " That the child has perhaps acquired, during sev- 
 eral years of silence, the faculties enjoyed by Apol- 
 lonius of Tyana and many alleged sorcerers who 
 were burned by the Inquisition, as it refused to 
 admit the existence of second-sight." 
 
 " If she can talk Arabic, what would you think?" 
 
 " The history of medical science records several 
 instances of girls who have spoken languages un- 
 known to them." 
 
 " What is to be done?" said Wilfrid. " She knows 
 things in my past, the secret of which was known 
 to myself alone." 
 
 " We shall see if she can tell me certain thoughts 
 which I have not whispered to anyone," said the 
 pastor. 
 
 Minna entered the room. 
 
 "Well, my child, what has become of your de- 
 mon?" 
 
 "He is suffering, father," she replied, nodding 
 to Wilfrid. " Human passions, clad in their false 
 splendor, encompassed him during the night and 
 dazzled him with the incredible magnificence of their 
 display. But you treat such things as fables."
 
 262 SERAPHITA 
 
 " Fables as fascinating to him who reads them in 
 his brain as the Thousand and One Nights to the 
 ordinary mind," said the pastor, smiling. 
 
 "Did not Satan," she continued, "carry the 
 Saviour to the summit of the Temple and show him 
 the nations at his feet?" 
 
 " The evangelists," replied the pastor, " did not 
 correct their proofs so well that there are not several 
 versions of the incident in existence." 
 
 " Do you believe in the reality of these visions?" 
 Wilfrid asked Minna. 
 
 " Who can doubt when he describes them?" 
 
 "He?" queried Wilfrid. " Who?" 
 
 " He who is over yonder," Minna replied, pointing 
 to the chateau. 
 
 "Are you speaking of Seraphita?" said the stran- 
 ger in amazement. 
 
 The girl hung her head, casting a mildly mis- 
 chievous glance at him. 
 
 " So you also take pleasure in confusing my ideas," 
 said Wilfrid. "Who is she? what do you think of 
 her?" 
 
 "What I feel is inexplicable," replied Minna, 
 blushing. 
 
 "You are both mad!" cried the pastor. 
 
 "Until to-morrow!" said Wilfrid.
 
 IV 
 
 THE CLOUDS OF THE SANCTUARY 
 
 There are spectacles in which all the material 
 splendors which man has at his disposal co-operate. 
 Nations of slaves and divers have sought in the sands 
 of the sea, in the bowels of high cliffs, the pearls and 
 diamonds which adorn the audience. Handed down 
 from generation to generation, those splendors have 
 gleamed upon all crowned heads in succession, and 
 could tell the most truthful of histories if they could 
 speak. Do they not know the joys and sorrows of 
 the great as well as the small? They hive been 
 worn everywhere: they have been worn with pride 
 at high festivals, carried in despair to the money- 
 lender, carried away in blood and pillage, trans- 
 ported into the masterpieces produced by art in order 
 to immortalize them. Save Cleopatra's pearl, not 
 one of them has ever been lost. The great and 
 the fortunate are assembled to witness the corona- 
 tion of a king, whose robes are the product of man's 
 industry, but who in all his glory is clad in a pur- 
 ple less perfect than that of a humble wild-flower. 
 These festivals, gorgeous with light, girt about with 
 (263)
 
 264 SERAPHITA 
 
 music, where man's voice strives to drown the up- 
 roar, all these triumphs of his hand are made as 
 naught by a thought, a sentiment. The mind can 
 assemble around man and in man more brilliant 
 lights, can assail his ears with more melodious 
 strains, can seat him upon the clouds of gleaming 
 constellations which he questions: the heart can do 
 even more! Man may meet face to face a single 
 creature and find in a single word, in a single glance, 
 a burden so heavy to bear, a light so dazzling, a 
 sound so penetrating, that he gives way and kneels. 
 The most real splendors are not in things, they are 
 in ourselves. To the scholar a secret of science is a 
 whole world of wonders. But is his festival accom- 
 panied by the trumpets of power, the parade of 
 wealth, the music of joy, and an immense concourse 
 of men? No; he goes to some dark corner, where 
 frequently a pale and sickly man whispers a single 
 word in his ear. That word, like a torch thrown 
 into an underground passage, illumines the sciences 
 for him. All human ideas, dressed in the most 
 alluring forms mystery has invented, surrounded a 
 blind man seated in the filth by a roadside. The 
 three worlds, the natural, the spiritual, and the 
 divine, with all their divisions, made themselves 
 manifest to a poor Florentine exile: wherever he 
 went, he was attended by the happy and the suffer- 
 ing, by those who prayed and those who wept, by 
 angels and by the damned. When the messenger of 
 God, omniscient and omnipotent, appeared to three 
 of his disciples, it was at the common table of the
 
 SERAPHITA 265 
 
 meanest of taverns, on a certain evening; at that 
 moment, the light burst forth, blurred all material 
 outlines, illumined the spiritual faculties; they beheld 
 him in all his glory, and already the earth had no 
 more hold upon their feet than a loosened sandal. 
 Monsieur Becker, Wilfrid, and Minna were con- 
 scious of a feeling of dread as they walked toward 
 the abode of the extraordinary being whom they had 
 agreed to interrogate. In the eyes of each of them, 
 the Swedish chateau, increased in size by their 
 imaginations, resembled a gigantean spectacle, like 
 those in which the materials and colors are so 
 cunningly, so harmoniously arranged by poets, and 
 the characters, imaginary personages in the eyes of 
 ordinary mortals, are real to those who are begin- 
 ning to acquire an insight into the spiritual world. 
 On the benches of that coliseum, Monsieur Becker 
 placed the gray legions of doubt, its gloomy ideas, 
 its vicious formulas for disputation; he summoned 
 thither the different philosophical and religious worlds 
 which are at odds with one another, and all of which 
 appear in the guise of a gaunt and fleshless system, 
 as Time is represented by man, an old man who 
 holds the scythe in one hand, and in the other carries 
 a weak and fragile world, the human world. Wilfrid 
 summoned thither his earliest illusions and his latest 
 hopes; he installed there human destiny and its con- 
 flicts, religion and its triumphant domination. Minna 
 had an indistinct vision of heaven through a cleft, 
 love raised for her a curtain adorned with mysteri- 
 ous images, and the melodious strains that reached
 
 266 SERAPHITA 
 
 her ears redoubled her curiosity. Thus, to these 
 three, that evening was what the supper was to 
 the three pilgrims in Emmaus, what a vision was 
 to Dante, an inspiration to Homer; to them the three 
 forms of the world were revealed, veils torn away, 
 uncertainties banished, dark places made light. 
 Humanity in all its phases, awaiting the light, could 
 have been no more fully represented than by that 
 maiden, that young man, and those two old men, 
 one of whom was learned enough to doubt, the other 
 ignorant enough to believe. Never was any scene 
 more simple in appearance, more far-reaching in 
 reality. 
 
 When they entered, ushered in by old David, they 
 found Seraphita standing by the table, upon which 
 were the different articles composing "a tea," a 
 refection which, in the North, takes the place of the 
 joys of wine, more appropriate to southern countries. 
 Certainly nothing in his, or her, appearance denoted 
 a being who possessed the strange power to appear 
 in two distinct shapes, nor was there anything to 
 indicate the various powers which she had at her 
 disposal. Giving her attention in the most conven- 
 tional way to the comfort of her guests, she ordered 
 David to put wood in the stove. 
 
 " Good-evening, neighbors," she said. " My dear 
 Monsieur Becker, I am very glad that you have come; 
 you see me really alive for the first time, perhaps. 
 This winter has killed me. Pray be seated, mon- 
 sieur," she said to Wilfrid. "And do you, Minna, 
 sit there," he continued, pointing to an easy-chair
 
 SERAPHITA 267 
 
 beside the young man. "I see you have brought 
 your embroidery; have you learned the stitch? The 
 pattern is very pretty. For whom is it? your father 
 or monsieur?" she said, turning to Wilfrid. "Shall 
 we not give him, before he goes, a souvenir of the 
 girls of Norway?" 
 
 " Were you ill again yesterday?" Wilfrid asked. 
 
 " It is nothing," was the reply. " I enjoy the 
 suffering; it is necessary before one can leave life 
 behind." 
 
 " Then the thought of death does not terrify 
 you?" said Monsieur Becker, with a smile, for he did 
 not believe that she was ill. 
 
 " No, dear pastor. There are two ways of dying: 
 to some, death is a victory; to others, a defeat." 
 
 " Do you think that you have won the victory?" 
 asked Minna. 
 
 " I do not know," she replied; " perhaps it will 
 be only a step further." 
 
 The milk-white splendor of her forehead darkened, 
 her eyes vanished behind the slowly drooping lids. 
 The movement, simple as it was, touched and awed 
 the three curious guests. Monsieur Becker was the 
 boldest. 
 
 "My dear girl," he said, "you are innocence 
 itself; but you are also endowed with divine kindli- 
 ness; I would ask of you this evening something 
 more than the delicacies of your tea-table. If we are 
 to believe certain persons, you know some extraor- 
 dinary things; now, if that be so, would it not be 
 charitable in you to dissolve some of our doubts?"
 
 268 SERAPHITA 
 
 "Ah!" she rejoined, with a smile, "I walk upon 
 the clouds, I am on the best of terms with the preci- 
 pices along the fiord, the sea is a steed which I have 
 broken to harness, I know where the flower grows 
 that sings, where the light shines that speaks, where 
 the flowers live and bloom that perfume the air; I 
 have Solomon's ring, I am a fairy; I toss my com- 
 mands to the wind, which executes them like a 
 humble slave; I discover treasures underground; 
 I am the virgin whom the pearls fly to meet, 
 and" 
 
 "And we climb the Falberg without danger," said 
 Minna, interrupting her. 
 
 "And you, too!" replied the strange being, with 
 a piercing glance at the girl, which filled her heart 
 with vague anxiety. "If I had not the power to 
 read behind your brows the desire that brings you 
 here, should I be what you believe me to be?" she 
 said, enveloping them all three in her all-pervading 
 glance, to the intense satisfaction of David, who 
 rubbed his hands as he went from the room. "Ah!" 
 she continued, after a pause, " you are all impelled 
 by a childlike curiosity. You asked yourself, my 
 poor Monsieur Becker, if it were possible for a girl 
 of seventeen to know one of the numberless secrets 
 which scientists seek to discover, with their noses to 
 the ground, instead of raising their eyes to heaven! 
 If I should tell you how and by what the plant is 
 connected with the animal, you would begin to doubt 
 your own doubts. You have formed a plot to question 
 me, have you not?"
 
 SERAPH1TA 269 
 
 "Yes, dear Seraphita," replied Wilfrid; " but is it 
 not a natural desire for men to feel?" 
 
 "Do you want to weary this child, pray?" she 
 said, laying her hand caressingly on Minna's hair. 
 
 The girl raised her eyes, and seemed to long to 
 blend her whole being with Seraphita's. 
 
 "Speech is the gift of all mankind," said the 
 mysterious creature, gravely. " Woe to him who 
 should remain silent in the midst of the desert, 
 thinking that no one could hear him: everything 
 speaks and everything listens here below. Speech 
 moves worlds. I wish, Monsieur Becker, to say 
 nothing in vain. I know the difficulties which most 
 engross your thoughts: would it not be a miracle to 
 begin by describing the whole past of your con- 
 science? Be it so; the miracle is about to be per- 
 formed. Listen. You have never acknowledged 
 your doubts in their full extent; I alone, steadfast in 
 my faith, can describe them to you and make you 
 afraid of yourself. You are on the darkest side of 
 doubt; you do not believe in God, and everything on 
 this earth becomes of secondary importance to him 
 who attacks the foundation of things. Let us 
 abandon the fruitless discussions inaugurated by 
 false systems of philosophy. The spiritualistic gen- 
 erations have made no less vain efforts to deny 
 matter than the materialistic generations have made 
 to deny the spirit. Why these disputes? Does not 
 man offer irrefutable proofs of both systems? are 
 not things material and things spiritual blended in 
 him? Only an idiot can refuse to see a fragment of
 
 2/0 SERAPHITA 
 
 matter in the human body; upon analyzing it, your 
 natural sciences find few differences between its 
 organism and that of other animals. The idea to 
 which the comparison of several objects gives birth 
 in man no longer seems to anyone to be within the 
 domain of matter. I am not now giving my own 
 views your doubts, not my certainties, are my sub- 
 ject. To you, as to most thinkers, the relations 
 that you are enabled to discover between objects 
 whose reality is attested by your sensations do not 
 seem to you to be material. 
 
 " Thus the natural world of things and persons is 
 bounded in man by the supernatural world of the 
 similarities or distinctions which he detects between 
 the innumerable shapes of nature relations so mul- 
 tiplied that they seem to be infinite; for if no man 
 hitherto has been able even to enumerate terrestrial 
 creations, who could enumerate their interrelations? 
 Is not the small fraction of them with which you are 
 acquainted to their sum total as a finite number is to 
 infinity? At that point, you already obtain a glimpse 
 of the infinite, which must surely enable you to con- 
 ceive a purely spiritual world. Thus mankind pre- 
 sents a sufficient proof of the two forms, matter and 
 spirit. In man, a visible, finite world attains com- 
 pletion; in him, an invisible, infinite world begins, 
 two worlds that do not know each other: have the 
 stones in the fiord any knowledge of their combina- 
 tions, of the colors they present to man's eyes? do 
 they hear the music of the waves that caress them? 
 Let us cross, without measuring its depth, the abyss
 
 SERAPHITA 271 
 
 presented by the union of a material universe and 
 a spiritual universe, a visible, substantial, tangible 
 creation, bounded by an invisible, unsubstantial, in- 
 tangible creation; utterly unlike, separated by the 
 great void, united by undeniable bonds of sympathy, 
 and found in conjunction in a being who partakes 
 of the nature of both! Let us blend together in a 
 single world these two worlds which your philosoph- 
 ical systems cannot reconcile, but which are recon- 
 ciled by the fact. However abstract man may deem 
 it to be, a relation between two things necessarily 
 implies a stamp. Where? upon what? We have 
 not reached the point of inquiry as to how far matter 
 may be refined. If such were the question, I do not 
 see why He who, to make a veil for Himself, bound 
 together by physical resemblances the stars that lie 
 immeasurably distant from one another, could not 
 have created thinking substances, nor why you 
 should deny Him the power to give a body to 
 thought! 
 
 " Thus your invisible moral universe and your 
 visible physical universe constitute one single body. 
 We do not separate bodies and their properties, nor 
 objects and their relations. Whatever exists, what- 
 ever presses upon us and overwhelms us, above, 
 below, before, or within us, whatever our eyes 
 and our minds perceive, all those things, named 
 and unnamed, constitute, in order that the problem 
 of the creation may be adapted to the measure of 
 your logic, a finite mass of matter; if it were infinite, 
 God would no longer be the master. According to
 
 272 SERAPHITA 
 
 your view, dear pastor, however one may seek to 
 reconcile an infinite God with that finite mass of 
 matter, God could not exist with the attributes with 
 which He is invested by man; if you seek Him in 
 facts, He is of no consequence; if you seek Him 
 in the reason, He will still be of no consequence; 
 spiritually and materially, God becomes impossible. 
 Let us listen to the words of human wisdom carried 
 to their final consequences. 
 
 " When we bring God face to face with this great 
 whole, there are but two possible methods of viewing 
 their relations to each other. Either God and matter 
 are contemporaneous, or God alone existed before 
 matter. Assuming all the knowledge that has en- 
 lightened the human race since it came upon the 
 earth to be collected in a single brain, even that 
 gigantic brain could not conceive a third relationship 
 unless by suppressing both God and matter. Let 
 human philosophy pile up mountains of words and 
 ideas, let religions accumulate images and creeds, 
 revelations and mysteries, they must come at last 
 to this terrible dilemma and choose between the 
 two propositions of which it is composed; but you 
 have not to choose: both alike lead the human 
 mind to doubt. The problem being thus stated, of 
 what account are spirit and matter? what matters 
 the progress of the two worlds in one direction or 
 the other, from the moment that the being who 
 guides them is convicted of absurdity? What prof- 
 its it to inquire whether man is advancing toward 
 heaven or receding from it, whether creation is
 
 SERAPHITA 273 
 
 ascending toward the spirit or descending toward 
 matter, when the worlds that we question make 
 no reply? What do theogonies and their armies 
 signify, or theologies and their dogmas, when, no 
 matter which of the two aspects of the problem 
 man may choose, his God is no more? Let us 
 glance at the first hypothesis, let us suppose God 
 to be contemporaneous with matter. Is nothing 
 more necessary to be God than to submit to the 
 action or the coexistence of a substance foreign to 
 its own ? In such a system does not God become a 
 mere secondary agent, compelled to organize matter? 
 Who compelled Him? Who was the arbiter between 
 His vulgar companion and Himself? Who paid that 
 Great Artist his wages for the six days' labor attrib- 
 uted to Him? If there should be discovered some 
 decisive force which was neither God nor matter, 
 seeing that God is required to manufacture the ma- 
 chinery that moves the world, it would be as absurd 
 to call that force God as to call the humble slave 
 sent to turn a grindstone a Roman citizen. 
 
 " Moreover, we encounter a difficulty as insoluble 
 to that supreme intellect as it is to God. To go back 
 a little further, are we not like the Hindoos, who 
 place the world on a tortoise and the tortoise on an 
 elephant, but cannot tell us what the elephant's feet 
 rest upon? Can that supreme will, resulting from 
 the combat between God and matter, can that God 
 greater than God have bided an eternity without de- 
 creeing what He at last decreed, assuming that eter- 
 nity can be divided into two periods? No matter 
 18
 
 2/4 SERAPHITA 
 
 where God may be, if He did not know what His 
 subsequent thought would be, is not His intuitive 
 intelligence an impossibility? Which of these two 
 eternities, then, will triumph? will it be the un- 
 created eternity, or the created eternity? If He 
 decreed that the world should be for all time as it 
 is, that fresh necessity, which is quite in harmony 
 with the conception of a sovereign intelligence, im- 
 plies the coeternity of matter. Whether matter be 
 coeternal by virtue of a divine power necessarily the 
 same at all times, or whether it be coeternal in itself, 
 the power of God, since it must be absolute, dies 
 with His free will; it would find always in Him a 
 convincing force of reasoning that would dominate 
 it. Is nothing more necessary to be God than to be 
 no better able to differentiate one's self from one's 
 creation in a subsequent than in an antecedent 
 eternity? Is that aspect of the problem insoluble 
 as to its cause? Let us examine it in its effects. 
 "If it is impossible to understand God as being 
 forced to make the world for all eternity, it is quite 
 as impossible to understand Him in His perpetual co- 
 hesion with His work. God, compelled to live forever 
 with His creation, is quite as degraded as in His first 
 state of workman. Can you imagine a God who can 
 no more be independent of His work than dependent 
 upon it? Can He destroy it without casting reproach 
 upon Himself? Consider, choose. If He does destroy 
 it some day, if He never destroys it, either horn of 
 the dilemma is fatal to the attributes without which 
 He could not exist. Is the world an experiment, a
 
 SERAPHITA 275 
 
 perishable shadow which will some day be destroyed? 
 In that case, would not God be inconsistent and im- 
 potent? Inconsistent: for must He not have known 
 the result before making the experiment, and why 
 does He delay to crush what He is determined to 
 crush? Impotent: for would He have created an 
 imperfect world? If an imperfect creation negatives 
 God's possession of the faculties mankind attributes 
 to Him, let us return to the question: assume the 
 creation to be perfect. The idea is in harmony with 
 that of a God of sovereign intelligence who cannot 
 have erred in anything; but in that case why the 
 degradation ? why the regeneration ? 
 
 "Again, the perfect world is necessarily inde- 
 structible, it can never perish; the world neither 
 goes forward nor recedes, it revolves in an eternal 
 circle from which it will never deviate. Therefore 
 God will be dependent on His work; therefore it 
 is coeternal with Him; which brings us back to one 
 of the propositions which attack the idea of God 
 with the greatest force. Imperfect, the world may be 
 supposed to advance, to improve; but, if perfect, it is 
 stationary. If it is impossible to conceive a progres- 
 sive God, who does not know the history of His 
 creation for all time to come, is there a stationary 
 God? is not that the triumph of matter? is it not 
 the most momentous of all negations? In the first 
 hypothesis, God perishes through weakness; in the 
 second, He perishes through the vis inertice. Thus, 
 in the conception as well as in the construction of 
 worlds, to every straightforward mind the assumption
 
 276 SERAPHITA 
 
 that matter is contemporaneous with God is equiv- 
 alent to a denial of God. Compelled to choose 
 between the two branches of this problem in con- 
 nection with the government of peoples, whole gen- 
 erations of great thinkers have chosen this. Hence 
 the dogma of the two tenets of Magianism, which 
 passed from Asia into Europe in the form of Satan 
 contending with the Eternal Father. But do not 
 that religious formula and the innumerable deifica- 
 tions that owe their origin to it constitute the crime 
 of divine 'lese-majeste ? By what other name can 
 we call the belief that puts forward as a rival to 
 God the personification of Evil struggling forever be- 
 hind the efforts of His omnipotent intelligence, with 
 no possibility of triumph? Your statics tells you that 
 two forces in that relative position neutralize each 
 other. 
 
 ''Will you turn to the second branch of the prob- 
 lem? God first existed, absolutely alone. 
 
 "Let us not repeat the foregoing arguments, 
 which recur in all their force in connection with the 
 division of eternity into two periods, uncreated time 
 and created time. Let us also lay aside the questions 
 suggested by the progress or immobility of worlds; 
 let us be content with the difficulties inherent in this 
 second theme. If God existed first, alone, then the 
 world emanated from Him, then matter was produced 
 from His essence. Let us hear no more of matter, 
 therefore! all material forms are veils behind which 
 the Divine Spirit lies hidden. But in that case, the 
 world is everlasting, in that case the world is God !
 
 SERAPHITA 277 
 
 Is not that proposition even more fatal than the 
 preceding one to the attributes imputed to God by 
 human knowledge? Can the present state of matter 
 be explained if it came forth from God's bosom and 
 is joined to Him forever? How can we believe that 
 the Omnipotent, sovereignly kind in His essence and 
 His faculties, has given birth to things which do not 
 resemble Him, that He does not everywhere and in 
 all respects resemble Himself? Can it be that there 
 were some vile portions of His being which He cast 
 off one day? a conjecture less insulting and absurd 
 than terrible in its consequences, because it brings 
 us back to the two principles which the preceding 
 argument proves to be untenable. God must be 
 ONE, He cannot be divided without renouncing the 
 most important of His powers. 
 
 " It is impossible, therefore, to conceive a fraction 
 of God which is not God. That hypothesis seemed 
 so criminal to the Church of Rome that it made 
 the presence of God in the smallest morsel of the 
 Eucharist an article of its faith. How, then, can one 
 conceive an omnipotent intelligence which does not 
 triumph? How attach it, without instant triumph, 
 to nature? And that nature searches, plans, re- 
 stores, dies, and is born again; it is even more per- 
 turbed when it creates than when everything is in 
 a state of fusion; it suffers, groans, shuts its eyes, 
 does evil, goes astray, blots itself out, disappears, 
 begins anew. How can we justify the almost uni- 
 versal misapprehension of the divine principle? Why 
 does death exist? why was the genius of Evil, that
 
 278 SERAPHITA 
 
 monarch of the earth, brought forth by a God of sov- 
 ereign kindliness in His essence and His faculties, who 
 should have produced nothing that is not in conform- 
 ity with Himself? But if, from this irreconcilable re- 
 sult, which leads us, first of all, to an absurdity, we 
 pass to details, what end can we assign to the world? 
 If everything is God, everything is both effect and 
 cause; or rather there is no cause and no effect: 
 everything is ONE like God, and you can discover 
 no point of departure or of arrival. Can the real 
 end be a rotation of matter in the constant process 
 of refinement? In whatever direction it might take 
 place, would it not be the merest child's play, the 
 evolution of that matter that came forth from God 
 returning to God again? Why should He vulgarize 
 Himself? In what shape is God most godlike? Which 
 is in the right, matter or spirit, when neither of the 
 two can be in the wrong? Who can recognize God 
 in that incessant toil in which He must divide Him- 
 self into two natures, one of which knows nothing, 
 the other everything? Can you imagine God amus- 
 ing Himself in human shape with His own perform- 
 ances, laughing at his own efforts, dying on Friday 
 to be born again on Sunday, and continuing the jest 
 from century to century, knowing from all eternity 
 what the end of all things is to be? telling Himself as 
 the creature nothing of what He does as Creator? 
 
 " The God of the second hypothesis, powerless by 
 the force of His inertia, seems more possible, if we 
 must choose between impossibilities, than this idiot- 
 ically jesting God who fires upon Himself when two
 
 SERAPHITA 279 
 
 bodies of men confront each other with arms in their 
 hands. However absurd this extreme application of 
 the second branch of the problem, it was adopted by 
 half of the human race, among the nations who wor- 
 shipped smiling gods. Those amorous nations were 
 consistent: with them everything was God, even 
 fear and its dastardly consequences, even crime and 
 its bacchanalia. If we accept pantheism, the re- 
 ligion of some great human intellects, who knows 
 where the right is then to be found? Is it with the 
 free savage in the desert, clad in his nakedness, sub- 
 lime and always just in his acts whatever they may 
 be, listening to the sun, talking with the sea? Or 
 is it with the civilized man who owes his greatest 
 pleasures to falsehoods, who twists and crowds na- 
 ture in order to throw a musket over his shoulder, 
 who has abused his intellect in order to hasten the 
 hour of his death and to invent diseases in all his 
 pleasures? When the rake of pestilence or the 
 ploughshare of war, when the genius of the deserts 
 passed over a corner of the globe, destroying every- 
 thing in its path, which triumphed, the Nubian 
 savage, or the patrician of Thebes? Your doubts 
 descend from top to bottom. They embrace every- 
 thing, the end as well as the means. If the physical 
 world seems inexplicable, the moral world proves 
 even more against God. 
 
 " Where, then, is progress? If everything is pro- 
 gressing toward perfection, why do we die when chil- 
 dren? why do not nations, at least, live forever? Is 
 the world, the issue of God and contained in God,
 
 280 SERAPHITA 
 
 stationary? Do we live but once? do we live al- 
 ways? If we live but once, hurried onward by the 
 march of the Great Whole, knowledge of which has 
 not been vouchsafed to us, let us live as we please! 
 If we are immortal, let us swim with the tide! Can 
 the creature be blameworthy for existing at the mo- 
 ment when transitions occur? If it sins at the 
 moment of a great transformation, will it be pun- 
 ished after having been its victim? What are we to 
 think of the divine goodness which does not set us 
 down at once in the realms of happiness, if there be 
 any such? What of God's prescience if He does 
 not know the results of the tests to which He sub- 
 jects us? What is this alternative presented to man 
 by all religions, between boiling in an everlasting cal- 
 dron and walking about in a white robe, with a palm- 
 branch in one's hand and a halo about one's head? 
 Can it be that that heathen invention is the last word 
 of a true God? Moreover, what generous mind does 
 not deem virtue prompted by self-interest unworthy 
 of man and of God, the virtue that looks forward 
 to an eternity of pleasure promised by all religions to 
 him who complies for a few hours of his life with 
 certain fantastic and often unnatural conditions? Is 
 it not absurd to endow a man with fierce passions 
 and to forbid him to gratify them? But of what use 
 are these feeble objections when good and evil are 
 equally annulled? Does evil exist? If matter in all 
 its forms is God, then evil is God. The reasoning 
 faculty, as well as the sentient faculty, being given 
 to man to use, nothing can be more natural than to
 
 SERAPHITA 28l 
 
 seek a meaning for human sorrows and to question 
 the future; if this straightforward, strict reasoning 
 leads to such a conclusion, what confusion results! 
 
 " So this world has no stability: nothing goes 
 forward, nothing pauses, everything changes and 
 nothing is destroyed, everything returns after being 
 restored; for, if your mind does not point out to you 
 a definite end, it is equally impossible to point to 
 the annihilation of the smallest particle of matter: 
 it can change its form, but cannot destroy itself. If 
 blind force gives the victory to the atheist, intelli- 
 gent force is inexplicable; for, emanating from God, 
 should not its triumph be instantaneous if it en- 
 counters obstacles? Where is God? If the living 
 do not see Him, will the dead find Him? Crumble, 
 idolatries and religions! Fall, ye too weak key- 
 stones of all the social arches that have failed to 
 delay either the downfall, the death, or the oblivion 
 of all nations of past time, however firmly they may 
 have been established ! Fall, ye codes of morals 
 and of laws! our crimes are purely relative, they are 
 divine results whose causes are unknown to us! 
 Everything is God. Either we are God, or God is 
 not! Old man, child of an age whose every year 
 has placed upon your brow the hoar-frost of its in- 
 credulity, this is the sum of your learning and your 
 long meditations. Dear Monsieur Becker, you have 
 laid your head on the pillow of doubt, finding there 
 the most convenient of all solutions of the problem, 
 acting in harmony with the majority of the human 
 race, who say to themselves: ' Let us think no more
 
 282 SERAPHITA 
 
 of the problem, inasmuch as God has not vouchsafed 
 to grant us an algebraic formula for its solution, 
 whereas He has granted us so many to enable us 
 to find our way surely from the earth to the stars.' 
 Are not those your secret thoughts? Have I evaded 
 them? Have I not, on the contrary, set them 
 forth clearly? Whether it be the dogma of the two 
 basic principles, an antagonism wherein God be- 
 comes impossible from the very fact that, being 
 all-powerful, He condescends to contend for the 
 supremacy, or the absurd pantheism wherein God 
 ceases to exist because everything is God, those 
 two sources whence are derived the religions for 
 whose triumph the earth has put forth its energies 
 are equally pernicious. Thus is the two-edged axe 
 cast between us, the axe with which you cut off the 
 head of that white-haired old man enthroned by you 
 upon painted clouds. Now, the axe is mine!" 
 
 Monsieur Becker and Wilfrid glanced at each 
 other with a sort of terror. 
 
 "Faith," continued Seraphita, in her woman's 
 voice, for the man had spoken hitherto, "faith is 
 a gift! To believe is to feel. To believe in God one 
 must feel God. That feeling is a faculty slowly ac- 
 quired by a mortal, as the marvellous powers are 
 acquired which you admire in great men, warriors, 
 artists, and scholars, those who know, those who 
 produce, those who act. Thought, a union of the 
 relations you observe between things, is a mental 
 language which must be learned, is it not? Faith, 
 a union of divine truths, is also a language, but
 
 SERAPHITA 283 
 
 as superior to thought as thought is to instinct. 
 That language, too, must be learned. The believer 
 answers by a single cry, a single gesture ; faith, 
 places in his hands a flaming sword with which 
 he severs, illumines everything. The seer is not 
 one who has come back to earth from heaven; he 
 gazes at the sky and holds his peace. There is a 
 creature who believes and sees, who has knowledge 
 and power, who loves and prays and waits. Re- 
 signed, aspiring to the realms of light, that creature 
 has neither the disdain of the believer nor the silence 
 of the seer; it listens and replies. To it, the doubt of 
 the dark ages is not a deadly weapon, but a guiding 
 thread; it accepts the battle in all its forms; it adapts 
 its tongue to all languages ; it does not fly out in 
 anger, it pities; it neither condemns nor kills any- 
 one, it saves and comforts; it has not the bitterness 
 of the aggressor, but the gentleness and modesty of 
 the light that penetrates, warms, and illumines every- 
 thing. In its eyes, doubt is neither impiety, blas- 
 phemy, nor a crime, but a state of transition from 
 which man either retraces his steps toward the 
 darkness or goes forward toward the light. Let us 
 reason, therefore, dear pastor. 
 
 "You do not believe in God. Why? God, in 
 your opinion, is incomprehensible, inexplicable. 
 Agreed. I will not say to you that to understand 
 God in His entirety would be to be God; I will not 
 remind you that you deny what seems inexplicable 
 to you, in order that I may claim the right to affirm 
 the truth of what seems to me worthy of faith. It
 
 284 SERAPHITA 
 
 is to you a self-evident fact of which you find the 
 proof in yourself. In you, matter ends in knowl- 
 edge; and do you think that human knowledge 
 should end in darkness, doubt, negation? Even if 
 God seems incomprehensible, inexplicable to you, 
 you will at least confess that you detect in every- 
 thing purely physical the hand of a consistent and 
 sublime workman. Why should His logic stop at 
 man, His most finished creation? If this question is 
 not convincing, it certainly calls for some reflection. 
 If you deny God, luckily, in order to establish your 
 doubts, you must recognize certain double-edged 
 facts which destroy your arguments quite as effec- 
 tually as your arguments destroy God. 
 
 "We have both admitted that matter and spirit 
 are two distinct creations which do not include each 
 other, that the spiritual world is made up of an 
 infinite number of abstract relations to which the 
 finite material world gives birth; that, if no one on 
 earth had ever been able to identify himself, by 
 virtue of the overshadowing power of his mind, 
 with the sum total of earthly creations, so much 
 the more certain is it that no one could rise so high 
 as to understand the relations which the mind ob- 
 serves between those creations. For instance, we 
 might put an end to the discussion in a moment by 
 denying you the power to understand God, just as 
 you deny the stones in the fiord the power to see 
 and to count themselves. Can you say that those 
 very stones do not deny man, although he takes 
 them to build his houses? It is a fact that crushes
 
 SERAPHITA 285 
 
 you, the infinite ; if you feel it within you, how 
 can you fail to admit its consequences? can the 
 finite have a thorough knowledge of the infinite? If 
 you cannot grasp the relations which, by your own 
 admission, are infinite, how will you grasp the dis- 
 tant purpose to which they all tend? Order, the 
 revelation of which is one of your requirements, 
 being infinite, can your limited reason understand it? 
 And do not ask why man cannot understand what 
 he can see, for he also sees what he does not 
 understand. If I prove to you that your mind is 
 ignorant of everything within its range, will you 
 grant me that it is impossible for it to grasp what 
 is beyond its range? Shall I not in that case have 
 the right to say to you: ' One of the conditions 
 under which God loses His cause before the tribunal 
 of your reason must be true, the other is false; as 
 creation exists, you feel the necessity of an end for 
 which it exists; must not that end be a noble one? 
 
 " ' Now, if matter in man ends in intelligence, why 
 will you not be content with the knowledge that the 
 goal of human intelligence is the light of the upper 
 spheres for which is reserved the intuitive compre- 
 hension of that God who seems to you to be an in- 
 soluble problem? The animal species below you in 
 the scale of creation do not understand the distinction 
 between the material and spiritual worlds, and you 
 do; why should there not be other species above you 
 more intelligent than yours? Before employing his 
 energies in taking God's measure, should not man 
 be better informed than he is about himself? Before
 
 286 SERAPHITA 
 
 threatening the stars that give him light, before at- 
 tacking certainties that are beyond his understand- 
 ing, should he not establish the certainties that 
 directly concern him?' But to the negations of 
 doubt I ought to reply by negations. Now, there- 
 fore, 1 ask you if there is anything here on earth 
 sufficiently evident in itself for me to put faith in it? 
 In a moment, I propose to prove to you that you 
 believe implicitly in things which act but are not hu- 
 man beings, which engender thought but are not 
 minds, in living abstractions which the understanding 
 cannot grasp in any shape, which are nowhere, but 
 which you find everywhere; which have no possi- 
 ble name, but which you have named; which, like 
 the fleshly God whom you imagine, perish before the 
 incomprehensible, the inexplicable, and the absurd. 
 And I will ask you how it is that you accept these 
 things, and reserve all your doubts for God. You 
 believe in number, the foundation upon which you 
 rest the edifice of those sciences which you call 
 exact. Without number, no more mathematics. 
 
 " Very well; what mysterious being, even though 
 he should be accorded the privilege of living forever, 
 could finish naming, in what language could he name 
 with sufficient speed, the number which would con- 
 tain the infinite numbers whose existence is demon- 
 strated to you by your mind? Ask the greatest of 
 all human geniuses, and what reply would he make 
 after sitting beside a table for a thousand years with 
 his head in his hands ? You know neither where num- 
 ber begins, nor where it stops, nor when it will end.
 
 SERAPHITA 287 
 
 Here you call it time; there you call it space; nothing 
 exists except by it; without it all creation would be 
 a single uniform substance, for it alone differentiates 
 and modifies. Number is to your mind what it is to 
 matter, an incomprehensible agent. Will you make 
 it a god? is it a human being? is it a breath ema- 
 nating from God to organize the material universe, 
 where nothing obtains its form except by virtue of 
 the divisibility which is an effect of number? Are 
 not the smallest as well as the vastest creations dis- 
 tinguished from one another by their quantities, 
 their qualities, their dimensions, their forces, all of 
 which are attributes to which number gives birth? 
 The infinitude of numbers is a fact proved to your 
 satisfaction, but of which no material proof can be 
 given. The mathematician will tell you that in- 
 finitude of numbers exists, that it is not proved. 
 God, dear pastor, is a number endowed with move- 
 ment, which is felt, not proved, so the believer will 
 tell you. Like unity, He is the beginning of a series 
 of numbers with which He has nothing in common. 
 The existence of number depends upon unity, which, 
 while not itself a number, engenders all numbers. 
 God, dear pastor, is a glorious unity who has noth- 
 ing in common with His creations, and who, never- 
 theless, engenders them all. Confess, therefore, 
 that you are as ignorant of the beginning and end 
 of created eternity as of the beginning and end of 
 number. Why, if you believe in number, do you 
 deny God? Does not creation stand between the 
 infinity of inorganic substances and the infinity of
 
 288 SERAPHITA 
 
 divine spheres, just as unity stands between the 
 infinity of fractions which you have lately begun 
 to call decimal, and the infinity of numbers which 
 you call integers? You alone upon earth understand 
 number, that first step of the staircase that leads to 
 God, and already your mind stumbles. What! you 
 can neither measure the first abstract idea that God 
 submits to you, nor grasp it, and yet you propose 
 to apply your measure to God's purposes? What 
 would happen, pray, if I should plunge you into the 
 abyss of motion, the force that organizes number? 
 For instance, if I say to you that the universe is 
 nothing but number and motion, you see that we are 
 already speaking a different language. I understand 
 them both, and you do not understand them. What 
 would result, then, if 1 should add that motion and 
 number are engendered by the Word ? Of that Word, 
 the supreme argument of the seers and prophets who 
 heard long ago that breath from God beneath which 
 Saint Paul fell, of that Word you men make sport, al- 
 though all your visible works, societies, monuments, 
 deeds, and passions proceed from your feeble word, 
 and although, without speech, you would resemble 
 that species of animal that so closely resembles the 
 negro, the man-ape. Thus you firmly believe in mo- 
 tion and in number, an inexplicable, incomprehensi- 
 ble force and result, as to the existence of which I 
 can propound the same dilemma which just now was 
 your excuse for not believing in God. Will not you, 
 powerful reasoner that you are, excuse me from 
 proving to you that the infinite must be always like
 
 SERAPHITA 289 
 
 itself, and that it is necessarily one? God alone is 
 infinite, for surely there cannot be two infinities. 
 If, to employ the words of men, anything whose ex- 
 istence is proved to you here on earth seems to you 
 to be infinite, be certain that you are face to face 
 with some phase of God. Let us pass on. 
 
 " You have appropriated to yourself a place in 
 the infinity of number, you have adapted it to your 
 measure by creating, assuming that you can create 
 anything, arithmetic, the foundation upon which 
 everything rests, even your social systems. Just 
 as number, the only thing in which your so-called 
 atheists believe, organizes the physical creations, so 
 does arithmetic, the handmaid of number, organize 
 the moral world. This numeration must be abso- 
 lute, like everything that is true in itself; but it is 
 purely relative, it has no absolute existence, you 
 can bring forward no proof of its reality. In the 
 first place, although this numeration is clever in 
 computing organized substances, it is impotent so far 
 as the organizing forces are concerned, the former 
 being finite, the latter infinite. Man, who by virtue 
 of his intelligence conceives the existence of the in- 
 finite, could not handle it in its entirety; could he 
 do so, he would be God. Your numeration, there- 
 fore, applied to finite things and not to infinity, is 
 true with relation to the details, which you see, but 
 false with relation to the whole, which you do not 
 see. 
 
 " If nature always resembles itself in its organiz- 
 ing forces or in its principles of action, which are 
 19
 
 2QO SERAPHITA 
 
 infinite, it never does in its finite effects; thus, you 
 will never find in all nature two identical objects; in 
 the natural order, therefore, two and two can never 
 make four, for, to attain that result, we must com- 
 bine units that are exactly alike, and you know that 
 it is impossible to find two leaves alike on the same 
 tree, or two identical individuals in the same species 
 of tree. That axiom of your numeration, false in 
 visible nature, is false likewise in the invisible uni- 
 verse of your abstractions, where the same variety 
 is found in your ideas, which are the objects of the 
 visible world extended by their interrelations; in- 
 deed, the differences are more striking there than 
 elsewhere. In fine, as everything there is depend- 
 ent upon the temperament, the force, the morals, 
 the habits, of individuals who never resemble one 
 another, the slightest objects represent individual 
 feelings. Assuredly, if man has been able to create 
 units, he has done it by giving equal value to bits of 
 gold of equal weight. Very well; you can add the 
 poor man's ducat to the rich man's ducat, and say to 
 yourself at the public treasury, that they are two 
 equal quantities; but, in the eyes of the thinker, one 
 of them is surely more considerable from a moral 
 standpoint than the other; one represents a month 
 of happiness, the other represents the most ephem- 
 eral whim. Two and two make four, therefore, 
 only by a false and monstrous abstraction. Nor 
 do fractions exist in nature, where what you call a 
 fragment is a thing complete in itself; but it fre- 
 quently happens, and you have proof of it, that the
 
 SERAPHITA 291 
 
 hundredth part of a substance is stronger than what 
 you would call the whole substance. If the fraction 
 does not exist in the natural order, still less does it 
 exist in the moral order, where ideas and feelings 
 may be varied like the species of the vegetable 
 order, but are always entire. The theory of frac- 
 tions, therefore, is a notable instance of the obliging 
 nature of your mind. Thus, number, with its infin- 
 itely small divisions and its infinite expansions, is a 
 power of which but a small part is known to you, 
 and of which the full scope escapes you. You have 
 built yourself a cottage in the infinity of numbers, 
 you have decorated it with hieroglyphics scien- 
 tifically arranged and painted, and you exclaim: 
 ' Everything is there!' From pure number let us 
 pass to the symbolized applications of number. 
 
 "Your geometry demonstrates that the straight 
 line is the shortest distance between two points, but 
 your astronomy demonstrates that God proceeds by 
 curved lines alone. Thus we have two truths proved 
 in the same science: one by the testimony of your 
 senses sharpened by the telescope, the other by the 
 testimony of your mind: but of these one contradicts 
 the other. Man, who is prone to err, affirms the 
 first, and the Maker of worlds, whom you have 
 never detected in error, denies it. Who shall decide, 
 then, between rectilinear geometry and curvilinear 
 geometry? between the theory of the straight line 
 and the theory of the curve? If, in his work, the 
 mysterious artist, who knows how to attain his ends 
 with marvellous celerity, employs the straight line
 
 292 SERAPHITA 
 
 only to cut it at a right angle in order to obtain a 
 curve, man himself can never rely upon it: the 
 bullet, which man seeks to propel in a straight line, 
 travels in a curve, and when you wish to reach a 
 point in space with absolute certainty, you command 
 the missile to follow its fatal parabola. Not one of 
 your scholars has ever drawn the simple deduction 
 that the curve is the law of the material world, the 
 straight line of the spiritual world: that one is the 
 theory of finite creations, the other is the theory of 
 the infinite. Man, who alone on earth has knowl- 
 edge of the infinite, alone can know the straight 
 line; he alone has the idea of verticality in a special 
 organ. Would not an attachment to the curve in 
 certain men be an indication of an impurity of their 
 nature, still wedded to the material substances which 
 engender us; and would not the love of great minds 
 for the straight line seem to denote in them a pre- 
 sentiment of heaven? Between those two lines 
 there is an abyss, as there is between the finite and 
 the infinite, between mind and matter, between man 
 and the idea, between motion and the object moved, 
 between the creature and the Creator. Ask the 
 divine love for its wings and you may cross that 
 abyss! Beyond, the revelation of the Word begins. 
 Nowhere are the things you call material without 
 depth; lines are the boundaries of solids which imply 
 a force of action suppressed by you in your theorems, 
 which suppression makes those theorems false as re- 
 lating to bodies taken in their entirety; hence the 
 constant destruction of all human monuments, which
 
 SERAPHITA 293 
 
 you unwittingly arm with active properties. Nature 
 deals only with bodies, your learning is simply a 
 combining of appearances. 
 
 "So it is that nature at every step gives the lie 
 to all your laws; can you name a single one which 
 is not disproved by some fact? The laws of your 
 science of statics are belabored by numberless inci- 
 dents of physics, for a fluid overthrows the most solid 
 mountains, and thus proves to you that the heaviest 
 substances may be upraised by imponderable sub- 
 stances. Your laws concerning acoustics and optics 
 are contradicted by the sounds you hear within your- 
 selves during sleep and by the light of an electrical 
 sun whose beams often blind you. You have no 
 more knowledge of how light becomes intelligence 
 in you than of the simple and natural process which 
 changes it to ruby or sapphire or opal or emerald 
 on the neck of an East Indian bird, while it remains 
 gray and brown on the neck of the same bird when 
 living under the cloudy skies of Europe, and while it 
 remains white here, in the heart of the polar region. 
 You cannot determine whether color is a faculty with 
 which bodies are endowed, or whether it is an effect 
 produced by the affusion of light. You admit the 
 saltness of the sea without ascertaining whether the 
 sea is salt in its whole depth. You have acknowl- 
 edged the existence of several substances which trav- 
 erse what you believe to be the void; substances 
 which are not palpable in any of the shapes affected 
 by matter, but which place themselves in harmony 
 with it despite all obstacles. That being so, you
 
 294 SERAPHITA 
 
 believe in the results attained by chemistry, although 
 it has as yet discovered no method of estimating the 
 changes caused by the ebb or flow of the substances 
 which come and go through your crystals and your 
 machines on the intangible threads of heat or light, 
 guided, controlled by the affinities of the metal or of 
 the vitrified silica. You obtain only dead substances 
 from which you have expelled the unknown force 
 which opposes all forms of decomposition on this 
 earth, and of which the power of attraction and 
 cohesion, vibration and polarity, are merely phenom- 
 ena. 
 
 " Life is the thought of bodies; they are simply a 
 means of fixing it, of confining it to its path; if bodies 
 were living beings by themselves, they would be a 
 cause and would not die. When a man sets forth 
 the results of the general movement shared by all 
 created things in proportion to their power of absorp- 
 tion, you proclaim him a scholar par excellence, as if 
 genius consisted in explaining what is. True genius 
 should cast its eyes beyond effects. All your scholars 
 would laugh if you should say to them: ' There 
 might be such a well-defined sympathy between two 
 persons, one at Java, for instance, and the other 
 here, that they would feel the same sensation at the 
 same instant, be conscious of it, question each other, 
 and reply without an error!' And yet there are 
 mineral substances which exhibit sympathy for one 
 another at as great a distance as in the case I men- 
 tion. You believe in the power of the electricity 
 that is confined in the magnet, and you deny the
 
 SERAPHITA 295 
 
 power of that which the soul sets free. According 
 to your theory, the moon, whose influence over the 
 tides seems to be established to your satisfaction, 
 has no influence over the winds or vegetation or 
 mankind; it moves the sea and eats into glass, but 
 it must respect the sick; it has certain relations with 
 one moiety of humanity but has no influence over 
 the other moiety. There are your richest certainties. 
 Let us go a little further. Do you believe in physics? 
 But your physics begins, like the Catholic religion, 
 with an act of faith. Does it not recognize an ex- 
 ternal force, distinct from matter, to which it com- 
 municates motion? You see its effects, but what is 
 it? where is it? what is its essence, its life? has it 
 any limits? And you deny God! 
 
 " Thus the majority of your scientific axioms, 
 true with relation to man, are false with relation to 
 the great whole. Science is indivisible, and you 
 have divided it. To ascertain the real meaning of 
 phenomenal laws, must not one know the correla- 
 tions existing between phenomena and the law of 
 totality? In everything there is an external appear- 
 ance which impresses itself upon your senses; be- 
 neath that appearance a mind is stirring; there is 
 body and mental faculty. Where do you study 
 the relations that bind things together? Nowhere? 
 Have you nothing absolute, then? Your most cer- 
 tain theses rest upon the analysis of material forms 
 whose spirit is constantly neglected by you. There 
 is a lofty branch of knowledge which certain men 
 discover too late and dare not admit it. Such men
 
 296 SERAPHITA 
 
 have realized the necessity of considering bodies not 
 only with relation to their mathematical properties, 
 but also in their hidden affinities, in short, as a 
 whole. The greatest man among you divined, to- 
 ward the close of his life, that everything was cause 
 and effect reciprocally; that the visible worlds bore 
 a fixed relation to one another, and were subordinate 
 to the invisible worlds. He deplored his previous 
 attempt to establish absolute precepts! Counting up 
 his worlds, like grape-seed sown in space, he ex- 
 plained their cohesion by the laws of planetary and 
 molecular attraction; you did homage to that man. 
 Ah! I tell you that he died in despair. Assuming the 
 centrifugal and centripetal forces, which he invented 
 to account for the existence of the universe, to be 
 equal, the universe would stop, and yet he admitted 
 the existence of motion in an indeterminate sense; 
 but, assuming those forces to be unequal, the con- 
 fusion of worlds ensued at once. So that his laws 
 were not absolute, there was a problem still more 
 exalted than the principle upon which his false glory 
 rests. Thus, the interrelations of the stars and the 
 centripetal force of their internal motion prevented 
 him from seeking the branch upon which his bunch 
 of grapes hung. Unhappy man! the more he mag- 
 nified space, the heavier his burden grew. He has 
 told you equilibrium was established between the 
 parts; but what became of the whole? He contem- 
 plated the vast expanse, infinite in the eyes of man, 
 filled by those groups of worlds of which only the 
 most minute portion is disclosed by our telescopes,
 
 SERAPHITA 297 
 
 but whose immensity is made manifest by the rapid 
 movement of light. 
 
 " That sublime contemplation enabled him to 
 perceive infinite worlds which, planted in that ex- 
 panse like flowers in a field, are born like infants, 
 grow like youths, die like old men, live by assimi- 
 lating those elements of their atmosphere which are 
 adapted to nourish them, worlds which have a centre 
 and a principle of life, which are protected from each 
 other by their orbits, which, like plants, absorb and 
 are absorbed, which compose a whole endowed with 
 life, and having a destiny of its own. At that sight, 
 that man trembled ! He knew that life is produced 
 by the union of the thing with its active principle, 
 that death or inertia, weight, in short, is produced by 
 a rupture between the thing and the motion which 
 is peculiar to it; thereupon, he foresaw the rending 
 asunder of those worlds if God should withdraw his 
 Word from them. He began to search the Apocalypse 
 for traces of that Word. You believed him mad, so 
 mark this: he was seeking pardon for his genius. 
 You came, Wilfrid, to beg me to solve equations, 
 to walk upon a rain-cloud, to plunge into the fiord 
 and reappear as a swan. If science or miracles 
 were the sole aim of humanity, Moses would have 
 bequeathed to you the method of calculating fluxions, 
 Jesus Christ would have illumined the obscurities of 
 your sciences, His apostles would have told you the 
 source of those endless trains of gases or metals in 
 a state of fusion, attached to nuclei, which whirl 
 about in order to solidify, seeking a resting-place in
 
 298 SERAPHITA 
 
 the ether, and which sometimes force their way vio- 
 lently into a planetary system when they come in 
 contact with a star, turn it from its course, and shat- 
 ter it by the shock, or destroy it by the infiltration 
 of their deadly gases. Instead of helping you to live 
 in God, Saint Paul would have explained that food 
 is the secret bond of all forms of creation and the 
 visible bond of all animate beings. 
 
 "To-day, the greatest miracle would be to find 
 the square equal to the circle, a problem which you 
 deem impossible, but which is undoubtedly solved in 
 the onward march of worlds by the intersection of 
 some mathematical line whose involutions are visible 
 to the eye of spirits who have reached the upper 
 spheres. Believe me, miracles are within us, not 
 without. Thus did the natural facts come to pass 
 which the peoples of old thought supernatural. 
 Would not God have been unfair to manifest His 
 power to some generations and withhold its mani- 
 festations from others? The rod of brass belongs 
 to one and all. Neither Moses, nor Jacob, nor Zoro- 
 aster, nor Paul, nor Pythagoras, nor Swedenborg, 
 nor the most obscure messengers, nor the most 
 glorious prophets of God attained a greater height 
 than you may attain. But for nations there are 
 hours when they have faith. If material knowledge 
 is to be the goal of human efforts, tell me, would 
 societies, those great homes where men have been 
 wont to assemble, be always providentially dis- 
 persed? If civilization were the aim of the human 
 race, would intelligence perish? would it remain
 
 SERAPH1TA 299 
 
 purely an individual attribute? The grandeur of 
 all nations that have been great was based upon 
 exceptions; when there ceased to be exceptions, 
 the grandeur vanished. Would not the seers, the 
 prophets, the messengers of God, have turned their 
 hands to knowledge, instead of resting them on faith? 
 would they not have knocked at the door of your 
 brains, instead of appealing to your hearts? They 
 all came to urge the nations toward God; they all 
 proclaimed the blessed path by saying to you the 
 simple words that lead to the kingdom in the skies; 
 all, aflame with love and faith, all, inspired by that 
 Word which hovers over nations, encompasses them, 
 revivifies them, and lifts them up, employed it to 
 serve no human interest. Your great geniuses, 
 poets, kings, scholars, have been swallowed up with 
 their cities, and the desert has wrapped them once 
 more in its cloaks of sand; while the names of those 
 good shepherds are still blessed and survive every 
 disaster. We cannot agree upon any point. We 
 are separated by yawning chasms; you are on the 
 side of darkness, and 1 live in the true light. Are 
 these the words that you wished to hear? I say 
 them joyfully, for they may work a change in you. 
 Understand that there are sciences of mind as well 
 as sciences of matter. Where you see bodies, I see 
 forces which tend toward one another by virtue of 
 an impulse of generation. To my mind, the char- 
 acter of a body is the index to its elements and the 
 symbol of its properties. Those elements give birth 
 to affinities which escape your notice, but which
 
 300 SERAPHITA 
 
 are connected with certain centres. The different 
 species among which life is distributed are never- 
 failing sources which correspond among themselves. 
 To each its special product. Man is effect and cause; 
 he is nourished, but he also nourishes. 
 
 " By calling God the Creator, you belittle Him; 
 He did not create, as you believe, either the plants 
 or the animals or the stars; could He proceed by 
 diverse methods? did He not act on the sole princi- 
 ple of unity of composition? Thus He created ele- 
 ments which should develop according to His general 
 law, at the pleasure of the surroundings in which 
 they happened to be placed. Thus a single sub- 
 stance, and motion; a single plant, a single animal, 
 but constant relations. In fine, all the affinities are 
 connected by points of similarity, and the life of the 
 worlds is drawn toward fixed centres by a famished 
 aspiration, just as you are all impelled by hunger to 
 seek food. To give you an example of affinities con- 
 nected by similarities, a secondary law upon which 
 all creations of your thought repose, music, a celes- 
 tial art, is an application of that principle; is it not a 
 blending of sounds harmonized by number? Is not 
 sound a modification of the air, by compression, ex- 
 pansion, reverberation? You know the composition 
 of the air: nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon. As you 
 can obtain no sound in a vacuum, it is clear that 
 music and the human voice are the result of the 
 union of organized chemical substances with the 
 same substances prepared within you by your mind, 
 and harmonized by means of light, the great source
 
 SERAPHITA 301 
 
 of nutriment to your globe; have you ever contem- 
 plated the masses of nitre deposited by the snow, 
 have you ever looked upon the lightning-flash and 
 the plants inhaling the metals which they assimilate, 
 without forming the conclusion that the sun melts 
 and distributes the subtle essence that nourishes 
 everything on this earth? As Swedenborg said: 
 The earth is a man! Your present-day learning, 
 which makes you great in your own eyes, is paltry 
 stuff compared with the floods of light with which 
 the seers are surrounded. Cease, cease to question 
 me, our languages are not the same. I have used 
 yours for a moment in order to cast a gleam of faith 
 into your souls, to give you a skirt of my cloak, and 
 lead you to the beautiful regions of prayer. Is it 
 for God to stoop to your level ? is it not your duty 
 to rise to Him? If human reason has so soon ex- 
 hausted its strength, placing God at the top of its 
 ladder so that it might see Him, but failing to 
 reach Him, is it not evident that we must seek 
 some other path to obtain a knowledge of Him? 
 That path is in ourselves. The seer and the 
 believer find within them eyes more piercing 
 than the eyes they apply to earthly things, and 
 they descry the dawn. Listen to this truth : 
 your most exact sciences, your boldest medita- 
 tions, your brightest gleams of intelligence, are 
 clouds. Above is the sanctuary whence the true 
 light gushes forth." 
 
 She sat down and ceased to speak, but her placid 
 features gave not the slightest indication of the
 
 302 SERAPHITA 
 
 excitement orators feel after their least vehement 
 extempore harangues. 
 
 "Who told her all that?" Wilfrid whispered in 
 Monsieur Becker's ear. 
 
 " I do not know," he replied. 
 
 " He was pleasanter on the Falberg," said Minna 
 to herself. 
 
 Seraphita passed her hand over her eyes, and said 
 with a smile: 
 
 " You are very thoughtful this evening, gentle- 
 men. You treat Minna and myself like men to 
 whom you can talk politics and business, whereas 
 we are two girls to whom you ought to tell pretty 
 stories while we drink our tea, as the custom is in 
 Norway. Come, Monsieur Becker, tell me some of 
 the saga that I don't know. Tell me the saga of 
 Frithiof, that story which you believe so implicitly, 
 and which you promised to tell me. Tell us about 
 the peasant's son who owned a ship that had a 
 soul and could talk. 1 dream of the frigate Ellidal 
 Wasn't that the name of the fairy with sails upon 
 which young girls were supposed to sail?" 
 
 "As we have come back to Jarvis once more," 
 said Wilfrid, whose eyes were fixed upon Seraphita 
 as the eyes of a robber crouching in the shadow 
 glare at the spot where the treasure lies, "tell me 
 why you do not marry?" 
 
 " You are all born widows or widowers," she re- 
 plied ; " but my marriage was arranged when I was 
 born, and I am betrothed " 
 
 " To whom?" they all asked at once.
 
 SERAPHITA 303 
 
 " Let me keep my secret," said she. " I promise, 
 if our father is willing, to invite you to my myste- 
 rious nuptials." 
 
 " Will they be soon?" 
 
 " I am waiting." 
 
 A long silence followed her last words. 
 
 " The springtime has come," said Seraphita; "the 
 uproar of the rushing waters and the breaking ice 
 is beginning ; will you not come and salute the first 
 springtime of a new century?" 
 
 She rose, followed by Wilfrid, and they walked 
 together to a window which David had opened. 
 After the long silence of winter, the mighty waters 
 were stirring beneath the ice and roaring in the fiord 
 like loud music; for there are sounds which distance 
 purifies, and which reach the ear like waves of light 
 and of refreshing coolness. 
 
 " Cease, Wilfrid, cease to give utterance to evil 
 thoughts whose triumph would be a heavy burden 
 for you to bear. Who could not read your desires 
 in the gleam of your eyes? Be noble, bend your 
 steps toward the good! is it not going far beyond 
 the love of men to sacrifice one's self entirely to the 
 happiness of the person whom one loves? Obey me 
 and I will lead you into a path where you will obtain 
 all the grandeurs of which you dream, and where love 
 will be truly infinite." 
 
 She left Wilfrid lost in thought. 
 
 " Is this sweet creature really the prophetess 
 whose eyes a moment since shot fire, who talked 
 in thunder tones about the different worlds, whose
 
 304 SERAPHITA 
 
 hand brandished the axe of doubt against our 
 sciences? Have we just waked up?" he said to 
 himself. 
 
 "Minna," said Seraphitus, returning to the min- 
 ister's daughter, " the eagles fly where the dead 
 bodies are, the doves to the living springs, to the 
 green and peaceful shade. The eagle soars aloft, 
 the dove descends. Cease to risk your welfare in 
 a region where you will find neither springs nor 
 shade. If, but recently, you were unable to look 
 into the abyss without being overcome, keep your 
 strength for the man who will love you. My poor 
 girl, I have my own betrothed, as you know." 
 
 Minna rose and went with Seraphitus to the win- 
 dow where Wilfrid was. All three listened to the 
 Sieg rushing down under the pressure of the higher 
 streams which were already uprooting trees caught 
 in the ice. The fiord had recovered its voice. The 
 illusions were dissipated. They all gazed in admi- 
 ration at the spectacle of nature throwing off her 
 fetters, and, as it were, replying with a sublime out- 
 burst of melody to the spirit whose voice had just 
 awakened her. 
 
 When the mysterious creature's three guests left 
 her, they were filled with that vague sensation which 
 is neither somnolence nor torpor nor amazement, 
 but which resembles all of these; which is neither 
 the twilight nor the dawn, but which makes one 
 thirsty for light. All were thinking deeply. 
 
 " I begin to believe that she is a spirit disguised in 
 human form," said Monsieur Becker.
 
 SERAPHITA 305 
 
 Wilfrid, once more in his own apartment, in calm 
 and determined mood, did not know how to contend 
 with forces of such majesty and diversity. 
 
 Minna said to herself : 
 
 " Why will he not let me love him?"
 
 THE FAREWELLS 
 
 There is in man a phenomenon perplexing beyond 
 measure to the meditative minds which seek to dis- 
 cover a meaning in the onward march of societies 
 and to establish laws of progression for the move- 
 ment of the human intellect. However momentous 
 a fact may be, and if supernatural facts could ex- 
 ist however solemn and impressive a miracle per- 
 formed in public might be, the lightning-flash of that 
 fact, the thunder of that miracle, would be swallowed 
 up in the moral ocean, whose surface, hardly rough- 
 ened by a swiftly passing commotion, would at once 
 resume the level of its usual fluctuations. 
 
 Does the voice pass through the animal's jaws to 
 make itself heard more distinctly? Does the hand 
 write upon the walls of the banqueting-hall where 
 the court disports itself? Does the eye illumine the 
 king's sleep? Does the prophet come to explain 
 dreams? Does death, when summoned, rear its 
 head in the luminous regions where the faculties live 
 again? Does the spirit stamp out matter at the foot 
 of the mystic ladder of the seven spiritual worlds 
 which rest one upon another in space and make 
 (307)
 
 308 SERAPHITA 
 
 themselves manifest by the waves of light which fall 
 in cascades upon the steps of the celestial court? 
 However deep the interior revelation, however visi- 
 ble the exterior revelation, on the morrow Balaam 
 doubts his ass and himself; Balthazar and Pharaoh 
 require the Word to be explained by two prophets, 
 Moses and Daniel. The spirit comes, bears man 
 away above the earth, divides seas for him, and 
 lets him see their depths, shows him the places 
 that have disappeared, reanimates for him the dried 
 bones which fill the great valley with their powder: 
 the Apostle writes the Apocalypse! Twenty cen- 
 turies later human knowledge confirms the Apostle 
 and translates his images into axioms. What mat- 
 ters it! the mass continues to live as it lived yester- 
 day, as it lived in the first Olympiad, as it lived on 
 the day after the Creation or the day before the 
 great catastrophe. Doubt covers everything with 
 its waves. The same waves beat with the same 
 movement upon the human granite that acts as the 
 boundary of the ocean of intelligence. After asking 
 himself if he saw what he saw, if he heard aright 
 the words that were spoken, if the fact were a fact, 
 if the idea were an idea, man resumes his former 
 course, turns his mind to his business, obeys some 
 slave or other who follows death, yields to forgetful- 
 ness, which covers with its black cloak a former 
 race of which the new race has no remembrance. 
 Man does not cease to move, to go forward, to grow 
 like a vegetable, until the day when the axe strikes 
 him down. If that power of the waves, if that
 
 SERAPHITA 309 
 
 constant pressure of the bitter waters prevents all 
 progress, doubtless it forestalls death also. Among 
 men of superior mould, only those minds which are 
 prepared for faith descry Jacob's mystic ladder. 
 
 After listening to the words in which Seraphita, 
 being questioned with such solemnity, had set forth 
 the vast compass of the divine power, as an organ 
 fills a church with its moaning and discloses the 
 musical universe, bathing the most inaccessible 
 arches in its solemn sounds, playing, like the light, 
 among the most graceful decorations of the capitals, 
 Wilfrid betook himself to his own apartment, dis- 
 mayed by having seen the world in ruins, and above 
 those ruins waves of light of strange brilliancy 
 pouring from the hands of that girl. The next day, 
 his mind was still filled with the subject, but his 
 terror was allayed ; he did not feel that he was him- 
 self destroyed or changed: his passions, his ideas, 
 awoke refreshed and vigorous. He went to break- 
 fast with Monsieur Becker, and found him seriously 
 absorbed in the Treatise upon Incantations, which he 
 had been looking over all the morning in order that 
 he might be able to reassure his guest. With the 
 childlike good faith of the student, the minister had 
 turned down the pages on which Jean Wier cited 
 authentic instances which demonstrated the possi- 
 bility of the events of the preceding night ; for, in 
 the eyes of learned doctors, an idea is an event, just 
 as the most momentous events hardly attain the 
 dignity of an idea. At the fifth cup of tea that 
 the two philosophers drank together, the mysterious
 
 310 SERAPHITA 
 
 evening became quite natural. The celestial truths 
 were arguments of greater or less strength, and 
 susceptible of examination. Seraphita seemed to 
 them to be a young woman of considerable orator- 
 ical power; due credit must be given to her fasci- 
 nating voice, to her seductive beauty, to her graceful 
 gestures, to all those oratorical arts by the use of 
 which an actor expresses in a single sentence a 
 whole world of sentiments and thoughts, while in 
 reality the sentence is often most commonplace. 
 
 "Bah!" said the worthy minister, with a philo- 
 sophical grimace, as he spread a layer of butter on 
 his bread, " the solution of such lovely enigmas is 
 six feet underground." 
 
 "Nevertheless," said Wilfrid, sugaring his tea, 
 " I cannot understand how a girl of sixteen can 
 know so many things, for her speech bristles with 
 facts tightly compressed as in a vise." 
 
 " Why," said the minister, " just read the story of 
 this young Italian girl, who knew forty-two lan- 
 guages, ancient and modern, at the age of twelve; 
 and the story of this monk who could divine people's 
 thoughts by the sense of smell ! In Jean Wier and 
 a dozen other treatises which I will give you to read, 
 there are a thousand proofs for one." 
 
 " Even so, dear pastor; but to my mind Seraphita 
 would be a divine creature to have for one's own." 
 
 "She is all intellect," replied Monsieur Becker, 
 doubtfully. 
 
 Several days passed, during which the snow in 
 the valleys melted by slow degrees; the green leaves
 
 SERAPHITA 311 
 
 in the forest peeped out like new grass, the Nor- 
 wegian landscape prepared its finery for its nuptials 
 of a day. During that brief period when the mild- 
 ness of the air made life possible out-of-doors, Sera- 
 phita remained in solitude. Wilfrid's passion was 
 intensified by the irritation caused by the proximity 
 of a beloved woman who does not appear. When 
 that indescribable creature received Minna, Minna 
 detected the ravages of an internal fire: her voice 
 had become hollow, her complexion was beginning 
 to fade; and, whereas poets would hitherto have 
 compared its dazzling whiteness to the brilliancy of 
 the diamond, it had now the splendor of the topaz. 
 
 " Have you seen her?" said Wilfrid, who was 
 prowling around the Swedish chateau awaiting 
 Minna's return. 
 
 " We are going to lose him," replied the girl, and 
 her eyes filled with tears. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," cried the stranger, restraining 
 the volume of voice to which anger impels one, "do 
 not make sport of me! You can love Seraphita only 
 as one girl loves another, not with the love with 
 which she inspires me. You do not know what 
 danger you would incur if my jealousy were justly 
 aroused. Why can I not go to her? Is it you who 
 invent obstacles?" 
 
 " I do not know by what right you probe my heart 
 thus," replied Minna, calm externally, but in reality 
 terribly frightened. "Yes, I love him," she con- 
 tinued, recovering the courage of her convictions in 
 order to confess the religion of her heart. "But
 
 312 SERAPHITA 
 
 my jealousy, the natural attendant of love, fears no 
 one here. Alas! I am jealous of a hidden senti- 
 ment which engrosses his thoughts. Between him 
 and me there is a space which I know not how to 
 cross. I would that I knew whether the stars or I 
 love him the more dearly, which of us would endure 
 self-sacrifice more speedily for his happiness? Why 
 should I not be at liberty to declare my affection? 
 In presence of death, we can avow our preferences, 
 and, monsieur, Seraphitus is dying!" 
 
 " You are mistaken, Minna; the siren whom I have 
 so often bathed with my desires, who submitted to 
 my admiration as she reclined coquettishly upon 
 her divan, graceful, weak, and melancholy, is not a 
 young man." 
 
 " Monsieur," replied Minna, wistfully, " he whose 
 powerful hand guided me over the Falberg to the 
 soeler yonder, sheltered by the Ice-Cap," she said, 
 pointing to the highest point of the mountain, " is 
 surely not a weak girl. Ah! if you had heard him 
 prophesying! His poetry was the music of thought. 
 A young girl could not have commanded the deep 
 tones of voice that moved my very soul." 
 
 " But what certainty have you " said Wilfrid. 
 
 " None, save that of the heart," replied Minna in 
 confusion, hastily interrupting him. 
 
 " Well, I," cried Wilfrid, darting at Minna the ter- 
 rifying glance of the desire and passion that kill 
 " I, who know how powerful is my self-control, will 
 prove your error to you." 
 
 At the moment when words were thronging to
 
 SERAPHITA 313 
 
 Wilfrid's tongue as rapidly as ideas were massing 
 in his brain, he saw Seraphita coming from the 
 Swedish chateau, followed by David. Her appear- 
 ance allayed his excitement. 
 
 " Look," he said, " only a woman can show such 
 grace, such pliancy of movement." 
 
 "He is ill, he is walking out for the last time," 
 said Minna. 
 
 David withdrew at a sign from his mistress, as 
 Wilfrid and Minna went to meet her. 
 
 "Let us go to the falls of the Sieg," she said to 
 them, voicing an invalid's longing of the sort that 
 one hastens to gratify. 
 
 A light white mist shrouded the valleys and the 
 mountains; the peaks, gleaming like stars, pierced it 
 and gave it the aspect of a moving milky-way. The 
 sun appeared through that earthly smoke like a globe 
 of red-hot iron. Despite these last gambols of winter, 
 occasional puffs of warm air, laden with the perfume 
 of the birch, already arrayed in its white buds, and 
 with the odors exhaled by the larches whose silken 
 tufts appeared once more breezes heated by the in- 
 cense and sighing of the earth announced the beau- 
 tiful springtime of the North, a brief outburst of joy 
 on the part of the most melancholy of natures. The 
 wind was beginning to raise the veil of clouds that 
 partly concealed the gulf. The birds were singing. 
 The bark on the trees, where the sun had not yet 
 dried the paths made by the frost, which trickled 
 down in murmuring streams, enlivened the land- 
 scape with its fantastic appearance. They walked
 
 314 SERAPHITA 
 
 in silence along the shore. Wilfrid and Minna alone 
 gazed at that spectacle, magic in its beauty to them 
 who had grown weary of the monotonous picture of 
 that country-side in winter. Their companion was 
 pensive, as if he were trying to distinguish some one 
 voice in that concert of nature. They reached the 
 verge of the cliffs between which the Sieg empties 
 into the fiord, at the end of the long avenue lined 
 with venerable firs which the torrent had cut for 
 itself in an undulating line through the forest, a path 
 with an arched ceiling strongly ribbed, as in cathe- 
 drals. From that point, the fiord was visible in its 
 entire length, and the open sea sparkled on the hori- 
 zon like a steel blade. 
 
 At that moment, the mist vanished, and disclosed 
 the blue sky. On all sides, in the valleys, around the 
 trees, glistening particles still flew hither and thither, 
 like diamond-dust swept up by a fresh breeze, superb 
 catkins of drops hanging in pyramids at the ends of 
 twigs. The mountain torrent roared above them. 
 From its surface arose a vapor tinged with all the 
 diverse shades of light by the sun, whose rays, dis- 
 solved into their elements, formed shafts of light 
 in the seven colors, sending forth the flames of in- 
 numerable prisms whose reflections crossed and re- 
 crossed in every direction. That wild quay was 
 carpeted by several varieties of lichen, a lovely 
 material made lustrous by the dampness, and figured 
 like a magnificent silk hanging. Heather already in 
 flower crowned the cliffs with its artfully blended 
 garlands. All the slender branches, attracted by the
 
 SERAPHITA 315 
 
 cool vapor from the stream, drooped their head- 
 dresses of foliage; the larches waved their lacelike 
 leaves, caressing the pines, which stood as motion- 
 less as thought-worn old men. That luxuriant array 
 had a fitting contrast in the solemnity of the ven- 
 erable colonnades presented by the forests on the 
 mountains and in the broad expanse of the fiord, 
 spread out at the feet of the three spectators, in 
 which the torrent drowned its frenzy. And last of 
 all, the sea was the frame of that page written by 
 the greatest of poets, Chance, to whom we owe the 
 lack of order in the creation, which seems to have 
 been left to its own devices. Jar vis was a mere 
 speck in that landscape, in that immensity, sublime 
 like everything which, having but an ephemeral life, 
 presents a swiftly-passing image of perfection; for in 
 accordance with a law, fatal in our eyes only, crea- 
 tions which seem finished, the favorites of our hearts 
 and our glances, have only a springtime here. On 
 the summit of that cliff, those three might justly 
 believe themselves alone in the world. 
 
 " What a gorgeous sight!" cried Wilfrid. 
 
 "Nature has her hymns," said Seraphita. "Is 
 not this music delicious? Confess, Wilfrid, that none 
 of the women you have known has ever created 
 such a beautiful retreat as this. Here I am conscious 
 of a feeling rarely inspired by the sight of cities, a 
 feeling that would lead me to lie for an indefinite 
 time amid this grass that grows so rapidly. Lying 
 there, with eyes fixed on the sky, with open heart, 
 lost in the bosom of the boundless expanse, I would
 
 316 SERAPHITA 
 
 listen to the sigh of the flower which is no sooner 
 free from its primitive covering than it would try to 
 run, and to the cries of the eider-duck, impatient for 
 naught but wings, remembering the longings of man, 
 who resembles them all, and who, like them, desires! 
 But this is woman's poetry, Wilfrid ! You descry a 
 voluptuous suggestion in that misty liquid expanse, 
 in those embroidered veils in which nature disports 
 herself like a coquettish bride, and in this atmos- 
 phere wherein she perfumes her green tresses for 
 her nuptials. You would like to distinguish the 
 shape of a naiad in yonder vapory gauze, and, in 
 your view, I ought to listen to the masculine voice 
 of the torrent." 
 
 " Is not love there, like a bee among the petals of 
 a flower?" replied Wilfrid, who, detecting traces 
 of an earthly feeling in her for the first time, deemed 
 the moment favorable to give expression to his effer- 
 vescent passion. 
 
 "Again?" laughed Seraph ita, whom Minna had 
 left alone. 
 
 She was climbing a cliff on which she had spied 
 blue saxifrage. 
 
 "Again!" echoed Wilfrid. "Listen to me,'* he 
 said, with an uncompromising glance which en- 
 countered a sort of adamantine armor, "you know 
 not what I am, what my power is, and what my 
 will. Do not reject my last prayer! Be mine for 
 the welfare of the world, which is so dear to your 
 heart! Be mine, that I may have a pure conscience, 
 that a divine voice may ring in my ear inspiring me
 
 SERAPH1TA 317 
 
 aright in the vast enterprise which I have resolved 
 to undertake, impelled by my hatred of the nations 
 of the earth, but which I would accomplish for their 
 good if you bear me company. What more noble 
 mission could you give to love? of what nobler r61e 
 can a woman dream? I came to this country medi- 
 tating a momentous project." 
 
 "And you will sacrifice its grandeurs," she said, 
 "to an innocent maiden, whom you will love, and 
 who will lead you into the paths of peace." 
 
 "What do I care? I want none but you!" he re- 
 plied, resuming his discourse. " This is my secret. 
 I have travelled through the whole North, that great 
 workshop where the new races are forged which 
 spread over the earth like human streams whose 
 function it is to revivify superannuated civilization. 
 I wished to commence my work at some point in 
 these latitudes, to win for myself there the empire 
 which force and intelligence enable one to obtain over 
 a wandering tribe, to train it to fight, to make war, 
 to spread it abroad like a conflagration, to swallow 
 up Europe, crying liberty here, pillage there, glory 
 to one, pleasure to another; but meanwhile I myself, 
 like the figure of Destiny, implacable and cruel, 
 would stalk onward like the tempest which assimi- 
 lates all the elements in the atmosphere of which 
 the lightning is composed, and fatten myself upon 
 mankind like an insatiable scourge. Thus I should 
 have conquered Europe at a time when it is awaiting 
 the new Messiah who is to lay waste the world in 
 order to reconstruct its social systems. Europe will
 
 3l8 SERAPHITA 
 
 no longer believe in anybody save the man who 
 tramples her under his feet. Some day poets and 
 historians would have justified my life, would have 
 magnified my fame, would have imputed exalted 
 ideas to me, me to whom that immense jest, 
 written in blood, is vengeance pure and simple. 
 But, dear Seraphita, what I have seen has disgusted 
 me with the North, strength here is too blind, and 
 I thirst for the Indies! A duel with a conceited, 
 cowardly, mercenary government is far more attrac- 
 tive to me. And then, too, it is easier to excite the 
 imagination of nations sitting at the foot of the Cau- 
 casus than to convince the mind of the ice-bound 
 countries where we are. I am tempted, therefore, 
 to cross the Russian steppes, to reach the borders 
 of Asia, to sweep over it as far as the Ganges with 
 my triumphant human inundation, and there I will 
 overthrow the English power. Seven men have 
 already carried out this scheme at different times. 
 I will renew the triumphs of art as the Saracens did 
 when Mahomet turned them loose on Europe. I will 
 be no paltry king like those who to-day govern the 
 former provinces of the Roman Empire, disputing 
 with their subjects over tariffs. No, nothing shall 
 arrest the lightning of my glances or the tempest of 
 my speech! My feet shall cover a third of the globe, 
 like those of Genghis-Khan; my hand shall grasp Asia 
 as Aurungzebe's once grasped it. Be my companion, 
 take your seat, O fair and lovely creature, on a 
 throne. I have never felt a doubt of my success 
 be thou in my heart and I shall be sure of it!"
 
 SERAPHITA 319 
 
 " I have already reigned," said Seraphita. 
 
 Those words were like the blow of an axe dealt 
 by a skilful woodsman at the foot of a sapling which 
 instantly falls. Only men can understand the frenzy 
 a woman arouses in a man's heart, when, as he 
 strives to demonstrate to her his strength or his 
 power, his talents or his superior genius, the capri- 
 cious creature puts her head on one side and says: 
 " That is nothing!" when she smiles with a blast 
 air and says: " I know all that!" when, to her mind, 
 strength is pettiness. 
 
 " What!" cried Wilfrid in desperation, " the glories 
 of art, the treasures of the world, the splendors of a 
 court " 
 
 She stopped him by a single movement of her lips, 
 and said: 
 
 " Beings more powerful than you are have offered 
 me more." 
 
 " Then you can have no heart, if you are not 
 attracted by the prospect of being the solace of a 
 great man who will sacrifice everything to live with 
 you in a little house on the shore of a lake." 
 
 " But," said she, "I am loved with a love that 
 knows no bounds." 
 
 "By whom?" cried Wilfrid, rushing frantically 
 toward Seraphita, to hurl her into the foamy cas- 
 cade of the Sieg. 
 
 She looked at him, his arm fell by his side; she 
 pointed to Minna, who was running toward them, all 
 pink and white, and pretty as the flowers she held 
 in her hand.
 
 320 SERAPHITA 
 
 " Child!" said Seraphitus, going to meet her. 
 
 Wilfrid remained at the summit of the cliff, motion- 
 less as a statue, lost in his thoughts, longing to be 
 whirled away by the rushing waters of the Sieg like 
 one of the uprooted trees that passed before his eyes 
 and disappeared in the bosom of the gulf. 
 
 "I picked them for you," said Minna, presenting 
 her nosegay to the adored one. "One of them, this 
 one," she continued, selecting a flower, " is like the 
 one we found on the Falberg." 
 
 Seraphitus gazed at the flower and at Minna in 
 turn. 
 
 " Why do you say that to me? do you doubt me?" 
 
 " No," said the girl, " my trust in you is infinite. 
 While you are in my eyes lovelier than this lovely 
 scene, you also seem to me more learned than the 
 whole human race. When I saw you, I thought that 
 I had been praying to God. I would like " 
 
 "What?" said Seraphitus, glancing at the girl 
 with an expression which disclosed to her the vast 
 gulf that lay between them. 
 
 " I would like to suffer in your stead." 
 
 " This is the most dangerous of mortal creatures," 
 said Seraphitus to himself. " O my God, can it be a 
 criminal thought to long to present her to thee? 
 Have you forgotten already what I told you up 
 yonder?" he said aloud, addressing the maiden and 
 pointing to the peak of the Ice-Cap. 
 
 " Now he has become terrible again," said Minna 
 to herself, shuddering with dread. 
 
 The voice of the Sieg accompanied the thoughts of
 
 SERAPHITA 321 
 
 the three, who remained for some moments on a 
 jutting platform of rock, together in the flesh, but 
 separated by fathomless abysses in the spiritual 
 world. 
 
 "Oh! Seraphitus, teach me," said Minna in a 
 voice as silvery as a pearl, and as timid as the move- 
 ment of sensitive plants. " Teach me what I must 
 do in order not to love you. Who would not admire 
 you? love is admiration which never grows weary." 
 
 " Poor child!" said Seraphitus, turning pale, "one 
 can love only a single being in that way." 
 
 "Who?" demanded Minna. 
 
 "You shall know," he replied in the feeble voice 
 of a man about to lie down and die. 
 
 " Help! he is dying!" cried Minna. 
 
 Wilfrid ran to them, and, seeing that strange being 
 lying gracefully on a fragment of gneiss, whereon 
 time had cast its cloak of velvet, its glossy lichens, 
 its yellow mosses which shone like satin in the sun, 
 he said: 
 
 " She is very lovely!" 
 
 " This is the last glance I shall be able to bestow 
 upon nature in travail," she said, summoning all her 
 strength to rise. 
 
 She walked to the edge of the cliff from which she 
 could embrace the whole of that grand and sublime 
 landscape, but lately buried beneath a tunic of snow, 
 now bedecked with flowers, verdant and full of life. 
 
 "Farewell," she said, "dear spot, burning with 
 love, where everything rushes ardently from centre 
 to extremities, and whose extremities assemble like 
 
 21
 
 322 SERAPHITA 
 
 the hairs upon a woman's head, to form the strange 
 tress by which thou dost attach thyself, in the in- 
 visible ether, to the divine thought! 
 
 " Do you see the man who, bending over a furrow 
 watered with his sweat, rises a moment to question 
 the sky; the woman calling her children to refresh 
 them with her milk; the sailor handling the ropes in 
 the wildest fury of the storm; the woman sitting 
 in the hollow of a rock awaiting the father? do you 
 see all those who stretch out their hands after a life 
 consumed in thankless toil? To all, peace and cour- 
 age! to all, farewell ! 
 
 "Do you hear the cry of the soldier dying un- 
 known, the outcry of the man betrayed, weeping in 
 the desert? To all, peace and courage! to all, fare- 
 well! Farewell, ye who die for the kings of earth! 
 But farewell, too, ye peoples without a fatherland, ye 
 lands without peoples, who long each for the other! 
 Above all, farewell to thee, O sublime exile, who 
 knowest not where to rest thy head ! Farewell, dear 
 innocents, drawn by wild horses for having loved 
 too well ! Farewell, ye mothers sitting beside your 
 dying sons! Farewell, ye sainted wounded women! 
 Farewell, ye poor! Farewell, ye small and weak 
 and sickly, whose sorrows I have so often made 
 mine own! Farewell, all ye who wander in the 
 sphere of instinct, suffering for others! 
 
 " Farewell, ye navigators who seek the east 
 through the dense shadows of your abstractions, 
 vast as elemental principles! Farewell, ye mar- 
 tyrs of thought, whom thought leads to the true
 
 SERAPHITA 323 
 
 light ! Farewell, ye studious spheres where I hear 
 the lament of the insulted genius, the sigh of the 
 scholar whose knowledge comes too late! 
 
 "This is the angelic concert, the perfume-laden 
 breeze, the incense of the heart exhaled by those 
 who go about praying, comforting, instilling the 
 divine light and the celestial balm into depressed 
 souls. Courage, choir of love! Ye, to whom the 
 nations cry: 'Comfort us! defend us!' courage and 
 farewell ! 
 
 " Farewell, granite, thou shalt become a flower; 
 farewell, flower, thou shalt become a dove; farewell, 
 dove, thou shalt be woman; farewell, woman, thou 
 shalt be suffering; farewell, man, thou shalt be 
 faith; farewell, ye who shall be all love and prayer!" 
 
 Prostrated by fatigue, the mysterious being leaned 
 for the first time upon Wilfrid and Minna to return 
 home. Thereupon, Wilfrid and Minna felt that they 
 were attacked by a strange contagion. They had 
 taken but a few steps when David appeared, weep- 
 ing: 
 
 "She is dying, why did you bring her so far?" 
 he cried in the distance. 
 
 The old man, renewing his youthful strength, 
 took Seraphita in his arms and flew to the gate of 
 the Swedish chateau, like an eagle carrying a snow- 
 white lamb to his eyrie.
 
 VI 
 
 THE PATH TO HEAVEN 
 
 On the day following that on which Seraphita 
 foretold her own death and bade farewell to earth 
 as a prisoner looks about his dungeon before leaving 
 it forever, she suffered pains that compelled her to 
 remain in the state of absolute rest imposed upon 
 those who are afflicted with the most grievous ills. 
 Wilfrid and Minna went to see her, and found her 
 reclining on her fur-covered divan. Her soul, still 
 veiled by the flesh, shone through that veil, making it 
 whiter and whiter day by day. The onward march 
 of the spirit, undermining the last barrier that sepa- 
 rated it from the infinite, was called a disease, the 
 hour of true life was named death. David wept to 
 see his mistress suffer, refusing to listen to her words 
 of consolation; the old man was as unreasonable as 
 a child. Monsieur Becker urged Seraphita to take 
 medicine; but- his efforts were fruitless. 
 
 One morning, she asked for the two beings whom 
 she had loved, sending word to them that that day was 
 the last of her bad days. Wilfrid and Minna came 
 in deadly alarm; they knew that they were about to 
 lose her. Seraphita smiled on them after the manner 
 (325)
 
 326 SERAPHITA 
 
 of those who are going to a better world, she bent 
 her head like a flower too heavily laden with dew, 
 showing its petals for the last time and giving to 
 the air its last fragrance; she gazed at them with 
 a feeling of melancholy inspired by them, she no 
 longer thought of herself, and they were conscious 
 of it but were unable to express their sorrow, with 
 which gratitude was blended. Wilfrid stood silent, 
 motionless, absorbed in one of those reveries in- 
 duced by things whose vast scope enables us to 
 comprehend the existence of supreme immensity 
 even on earth. Emboldened by the weakness of 
 that powerful creature, or perhaps by the fear of 
 losing her forever, Minna stooped over her and 
 said : 
 
 " Seraphitus, let me go with you?" 
 
 "Can I for bid you?" 
 
 " Why do you not love me enough to remain?" 
 
 " I could not love anybody here on earth." 
 
 " Whom do you love?" 
 
 "Heaven." 
 
 " Are you worthy of heaven when you thus de- 
 spise God's creatures?" 
 
 "Minna, can we love two persons at once? 
 Would your beloved be your beloved if he did not 
 fill your heart? Must he not be the first, the last, 
 the only one? Does not she who is all love leave the 
 world for her well-beloved? Her entire family be- 
 comes a memory, she has but one relative, him! 
 Her heart is no longer hers, but his! If she keeps 
 in her heart anything that is not his, she does not
 
 SERAPHITA 327 
 
 love; no, she does not love! Is it to love at all, to love 
 feebly? The words of her well-beloved fill her soul 
 with joy and flow through her veins in a purple flood 
 of a richer hue than blood; his glance is a light 
 which penetrates her being, she becomes one with 
 him; where he is, there everything is beautiful. He 
 warms the heart, he illumines everything; by his 
 side is it ever cold or dark? he is never absent, he 
 is always in us, we think in him, of him, for him. 
 That is how 1 love, Minna." 
 
 "Love whom?" said Minna, attacked by a con- 
 suming jealousy. 
 
 " God," replied Seraphitus, whose voice shone 
 bright in their souls like beacon-fires glowing from 
 mountain to mountain. "God, who never betrays 
 us! God, who does not abandon us and constantly 
 fulfils our desires, who alone can always slake the 
 thirst of His creature with infinite, unalloyed joy! 
 God, who is never weary and does naught but 
 smile! God, who, always new, casts His treasures 
 into the soul, who purifies and knows not bitterness, 
 who is all harmony and all flame! God, who places 
 Himself within our hearts to blossom there, grants 
 all our desires, does not parley with us when we 
 are His, but gives Himself absolutely, gives us new 
 life, amplifies us, multiplies us in Himself! In fine, 
 GOD! Minna, I love you because you may be His! 
 I love you, because, if you come to Him, you will 
 be mine." 
 
 " Then lead me," she replied, kneeling. " Take 
 my hand, I will never leave you."
 
 328 SERAPHITA 
 
 " Lead us, Seraphita!" cried Wilfrid, kneeling im- 
 petuously at Minna's side. " Yes, you have made 
 me thirsty for the light and thirsty for the Word ; 
 I am parched with the love you have planted in 
 my heart, I will preserve your soul in mine; let 
 me know your will, I will do what you bid me do. 
 If I cannot obtain you, I wish to retain all the senti- 
 ments which you may communicate to me! If I can 
 bind myself to you only by my unaided strength, I 
 will cling to you as the fire clings to what it con- 
 sumes. Speak!" 
 
 "Angel !" cried the incomprehensible creature, en- 
 veloping them both in a glance which was like a 
 cloak of azure, " Angel, heaven shall be thy heri- 
 tage!" 
 
 A long silence followed that exclamation, which 
 echoed in Wilfrid's soul and Minna's like the first 
 strain of some celestial melody. 
 
 " If you would accustom your feet to walk in the 
 path that leads to heaven, understand that its early 
 stages are hard," said that suffering soul. "God 
 wishes to be sought for Himself. In that sense He 
 is jealous, He wishes you to be absolutely His; but, 
 when you have given yourself to Him, He never 
 abandons you. I purpose to leave with you the 
 keys of the kingdom where His light shines, where 
 you will be always in the bosom of the Father, in 
 the heart of the Bridegroom. No sentinel guards 
 the approaches, you can enter at any point; His 
 palace, His treasures, His sceptre, nothing is 
 guarded; He has said to all: 'Take them!' But
 
 SERAPHITA 329 
 
 one must feel the desire to go thither. It is neces- 
 sary to leave one's home as if for a journey, to re- 
 nounce one's plans, to bid farewell to one's friends, 
 one's father, mother, sister, and even to the smallest 
 brother who cries aloud, to bid them all farewell for- 
 ever, for you will no more return than the martyrs 
 who set out for the stake returned to their firesides; 
 in a word, you must cut loose from the sentiments 
 and objects to which men cling; otherwise you would 
 not be wholly devoted to your enterprise. Do for 
 God what you would do for your own ambitious 
 designs, what you do when you devote yourself to 
 an art, what you did when you loved a mortal more 
 dearly than Him, or when you were in pursuit of 
 some secret of human science. Is not God science 
 itself, love itself, the source of all poesy? May not 
 His treasure arouse cupidity? His treasure is inex- 
 haustible, His poesy is infinite, His love is immu- 
 table, His knowledge is infallible and free from 
 mystery! Cling to nothing, therefore, He will give 
 you everything. Yes, you will find in His heart 
 treasures incomparably greater than the earthly treas- 
 ures you may have lost. This that I tell you is cer- 
 tain : you will have His power, you will use it as 
 you use what belongs to your lover or your mis- 
 tress. Alas! the majority of men doubt, lack faith, 
 will, perseverance. Although some may set out, 
 they at once begin to look behind them and retrace 
 their steps. Few mortals know how to choose be- 
 tween those two extremes: to remain or to go, the 
 mire or heaven. Everyone hesitates. Weakness
 
 330 SERAPHITA 
 
 is the beginning of going astray, passion leads man 
 into the crooked path; vice, which is a habit, bemires 
 him there, and he makes no progress toward the 
 better state. 
 
 "All beings live a first life in the sphere of instinct, 
 where they labor to discover the emptiness of earthly 
 treasures after having taken the utmost pains to 
 amass them. How many times does one live in this 
 first world before leaving it prepared to submit to 
 other tests in the sphere of abstractions where the 
 thought expends its energy in false sciences, where 
 the spirit grows weary at last of human speech; 
 for when matter is exhausted, then comes spirit. 
 Through how many forms has the being promised to 
 heaven passed before arriving at an understanding 
 of the price of the silence and solitude whose star- 
 studded plains are the courtyard of the spiritual 
 worlds! His eyes, after a sad experience of the 
 void and nothingness, turn to the straight path. 
 Then there are other lives to be lived in order to 
 reach the path where the light shines. Death is the 
 relay-house of that journey. Then one's experi- 
 ences tend in the other direction; it often requires a 
 whole lifetime to acquire the virtues which are the 
 opposite of the errors in which man has previously 
 lived. Thus, first of all comes the life wherein one 
 suffers, and whose tortures arouse a thirst for love. 
 Then there is the life wherein one loves, wherein 
 devotion to the creature teaches devotion to the 
 Creator, wherein the virtues of love, its countless 
 martyrdoms, its angelic hope, its joys followed by
 
 SERAPHITA 331 
 
 sorrow, its patience, its resignation, excite the appe- 
 tite for things divine. Then comes the life wherein 
 one seeks in the silence the traces of the Word, 
 wherein one becomes humble and charitable. Then 
 the life wherein one desires. Lastly, the life wherein 
 one prays. There is the everlasting South, there 
 are the flowers, there is the harvest! The acquired 
 qualities, which develop slowly within us, are the 
 invisible bonds which bind our existences together, 
 each to all the others, and which the soul alone 
 remembers, for matter can recall nothing that is 
 spiritual. The mind alone retains the tradition of 
 what has gone before. That perpetual legacy of the 
 past to the present and the present to the future is 
 the secret of human geniuses : some have the gift 
 of form, others the gift of number, others the gift of 
 harmony. They are successive steps in the path- 
 way of light. Yes, the man who possesses one of 
 those gifts touches the infinite at one point. The 
 Word, of which I here reveal a few words to you, 
 that Word the earth has divided and subdivided, has 
 ground to dust, and sown in her works, her doctrines, 
 her poems. If some impalpable particle of it glistens 
 upon a work, you say : ' That is great, that is true, 
 that is sublime!' That trivial thing vibrates within 
 you and assails the presentiment of heaven. To 
 some, disease which separates us from the world; 
 to others, solitude which brings us nearer God; to 
 another, poetry in a word, whatever turns you 
 back upon yourselves, smites you and crushes you, 
 exalts or degrades you, is an echo of the divine
 
 332 SERAPHITA 
 
 world. When a human being has drawn his first 
 furrow straight, that suffices to assure the straight- 
 ness of the others; a single thought deeply meditated, 
 a single voice heard, a bitter pang, a single echo 
 awakened by the Word within you, may transform 
 your soul forever. 
 
 "Everything leads to God; therefore there are 
 many opportunities to find Him by walking straight 
 before Him. When the blessed day arrives on which 
 you set your feet upon the path and begin your 
 pilgrimage, the earth will know nothing of it; it no 
 longer understands you, you no longer understand 
 each other, the earth is you. Men who attain a 
 knowledge of these things, and who utter a few frag- 
 ments of the true Word, find no place to rest their 
 heads; they are hunted like wild beasts, and fre- 
 quently perish on the scaffold to the great joy of the 
 assembled populace, while the angels are opening 
 the gates of heaven to them. Your destination, there- 
 fore, will be a secret between you and God, as love 
 is a secret between two hearts. You will be the 
 buried treasure over which men hurrying for gold 
 pass to and fro, not knowing that you are there. 
 Thereupon, your existence becomes full of ceaseless 
 activity, each of your acts has a meaning which bears 
 some relation to God, just as in love your acts and 
 your thoughts are full of the loved one; but love 
 with its joys, love with its pleasures, limited by the 
 senses, is an imperfect image of the infinite love that 
 unites you to the celestial lover. All earthly joy is 
 followed by sorrow, by discontent; if love is to be
 
 SERAPHITA 333 
 
 unmarred by satiety, death must end it when it is 
 most intense, and then you know nothing of its 
 ashes; but on high God transforms our misery to 
 ecstasy, joy multiplies by itself, it grows ever greater 
 and knows no bounds. So, in the earthly life, 
 ephemeral love is brought to an end by constant 
 tribulations; whereas, in the spiritual life, the tribu- 
 lations of a day are brought to an end by infinite 
 joy. Your soul ceaselessly overflows with joy. You 
 feel that God is near you, in you; He gives to all 
 things a savor of holiness, He shines in your soul, He 
 stamps you with His gentleness, He destroys your 
 interest in the world for your own sake, and arouses 
 your interest in it for His sake, giving you His power 
 to wield. You do in His name the works which 
 He inspires; you wipe away tears, you act for Him, 
 you no longer have anything of your own, like 
 Him, you love all creatures with unquenchable love; 
 you would like them all to be moving toward Him, 
 as a truly loving woman would like all the nations 
 on earth to obey her well-beloved. 
 
 " The last life, which is the summing-up of all the 
 others, wherein all the powers are put forth and 
 whose meritorious deeds are destined to open the 
 sacred portal to the perfect being, is the life of 
 prayer. Who can make you comprehend the gran- 
 deur, the majesty, the might of prayer? May my 
 voice find an echo in your hearts and change them! 
 Be instantly what you will be after you have under- 
 gone the tests! There have been privileged creatures, 
 prophets, seers, messengers of God, martyrs, all those
 
 334 SERAPHITA 
 
 who have suffered for the Word or proclaimed it; the 
 souls of such men pass through the human spheres 
 at a bound, and rise at once to prayer. So, too, with 
 those who are devoured by the fire of faith. Be 
 of the number of those brave souls. God suffers 
 temerity, He loves to be taken by force, He never 
 repels him who can find his way to Him. Be sure 
 that desire, that torrent of your will, is so powerful 
 in man, that a single tiny stream therefrom, emitted 
 with force, may obtain everything, a single cry is 
 often enough under the pressure of faith. Be of 
 those beings, filled with force and will and love! Be 
 of the victorious ones of earth! May the hunger 
 and thirst for God seize upon you! Run to Him as 
 the thirsty stag runs to the fountain; desire will 
 provide you with its wings; tears, those flowers of 
 repentance, will be like a celestial baptism from 
 which your natures will come forth purified. Rise 
 from the bosom of these waves to prayer. Silence 
 and meditation are the efficient means to lead men 
 to that path. God always makes Himself mani- 
 fest to the solitary, meditative man. Thus will be 
 brought to pass the necessary separation between 
 the matter which has so long encompassed you in 
 its darkness, and the spirit which is born in you and 
 illumines you, for then it will shine with a clear 
 light in your souls. Then your broken hearts will 
 receive the light, will be inundated with it. You 
 will no longer feel mere convictions but glorious cer- 
 tainties. The poet expresses his thoughts, the wise 
 man meditates, the just man acts; but he who takes
 
 SERAPHITA 335 
 
 his stand on the brink of the divine world, prays; 
 and his prayer is speech, thought, action, all in one! 
 Yes, his prayer comprises everything, it contains 
 everything, it perfects your natures by discovering 
 the spirit and its progress within you. O fair and 
 luminous daughter of all the human virtues, ark of 
 the covenant between heaven and earth, sweet 
 creature, in whom the lion and the dove are united, 
 prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and 
 pure as innocence, strong like all that is single 
 and simple, this lovely, unconquerable queen rests 
 upon the material world, she has taken possession 
 of it ; for, like the sun, she encompasses it with a 
 circle of light. The universe belongs to him who 
 wills, to him who knows, to him who can pray; but 
 he must will and know and be able, in a word, pos- 
 sess strength, wisdom, and faith. Thus the prayer 
 that results from so many tests is the consummation 
 of all truths, of all powers, of all sentiments. Fruit of 
 the laborious, progressive, constant development of 
 all the natural properties quickened by the divine 
 breath of the Word, it possesses a seductive activity, 
 it is the supreme worship: not the material worship 
 of images, nor the spiritual worship of formulas, but 
 the worship of the divine world. We no longer 
 utter prayers, prayer kindles within us, it is a fac- 
 ulty which works by itself ; it has acquired that 
 property of activity which raises it above mere 
 forms : it binds the soul to God, with whom you 
 unite as the roots of trees unite with the earth; 
 your veins draw their supplies from the principles
 
 336 SERAPHITA 
 
 of things, and you live the life of the worlds them- 
 selves. Prayer imparts external conviction by en- 
 abling you to penetrate the material world by virtue 
 of the cohesion of all your faculties with elementary 
 substances; it imparts internal conviction by devel- 
 oping your essence and blending it with that of the 
 spiritual worlds. 
 
 "In order to command prayer of this sort, you 
 must cast aside the flesh, acquire the purity of the 
 diamond in the heat of the crucible, for this complete 
 communication is attained only by absolute repose, 
 by allaying all tempests. Yes, prayer, the veritable 
 aspiration of the soul when wholly separated from 
 the body, seizes upon all the forces and applies them 
 to the constant and persistent union of the visible 
 and the invisible. Possessing the faculty of praying 
 without weariness, with love, with force, with con- 
 viction, with intelligence, your spiritualized nature is 
 soon endowed with power. Like a violent wind, or 
 like the lightning, it traverses everything and shares 
 the power of God. You have the quickness of mo- 
 tion of the spirit ; in an instant you may be present 
 in any country; you are transported, like the Word 
 itself, from one end of the world to the other. There 
 is harmony, and you contribute to it ; there is a 
 light, and you see it ; there is a melody, and its 
 accords find an echo within you. In that state, you 
 will feel your intellect broaden and expand, and its 
 insight reach to immense distances; in truth the 
 spirit knows neither time nor space. Space and 
 time are proportions created for matter; spirit and
 
 SERAPHITA 337 
 
 matter have nothing in common. Although these 
 processes are accomplished calmly and silently, 
 without disturbance, without exterior movement, 
 nevertheless, in prayer all is action, but earnest 
 action, devoid of all substantiality, and reduced, like 
 the motion of the worlds in space, to an invisible, 
 pure force. It descends everywhere like the light, 
 and gives life to souls which happen to be beneath 
 its rays, as nature is beneath the sun. It revivifies 
 virtue everywhere, purifies and sanctifies every act, 
 peoples the solitude, affords a foretaste of everlast- 
 ing bliss. When you have once known the ecstasy 
 of divine intoxication engendered by your inward 
 labors, then all is said ! when you once hold the 
 lyre whereon men hymn to God, you will never lay 
 it down. Hence the solitude in which the angelic 
 spirits live, and their disdain for the things that 
 afford joy to mortals. I say to you, they are 
 stricken from the number of those who are to die; 
 if they hear their language, they no longer under- 
 stand their ideas; they are amazed at their move- 
 ments, at what is called politics, at their physical 
 and social laws; for them mysteries no longer exist, 
 they know naught but truths. 
 
 " They who have reached the point at which their 
 eyes discern the blessed portal, and who, without a 
 single backward glance, without a single regret, con- 
 template the worlds and penetrate their destinies 
 they hold their peace, wait, and endure their final 
 trials; the most difficult is the last, the supreme 
 virtue is resignation: to be in exile and to utter no 
 
 22
 
 338 SERAPHITA 
 
 complaint, to have lost all taste for the things of earth 
 and to smile, to belong to God and to remain among 
 men! Plainly you hear the voice crying: ' Onward ! 
 onward !' Often in celestial visions angels descend 
 and envelop you with their singing. Without a tear 
 or a murmur you must watch them flying back to the 
 hive. To complain would be to fall. Resignation is 
 the fruit that ripens at the gate of heaven. How 
 noble and lovely are the calm smile and untroubled 
 brow of the resigned one ! Radiant is the light that 
 adorns her forehead ! Whoever breathes the same 
 air with her becomes a better man ! Her glance is 
 penetrating and moves the heart. More eloquent in 
 her silence than the prophet in his speech, she tri- 
 umphs by her presence alone. She pricks up her 
 ear like the faithful dog awaiting his master's coming. 
 Stronger than love, more ardent than hope, greater 
 than faith, she is the adorable maiden who lies there 
 on the ground, guarding for a moment the palm she 
 has won, and leaving there the imprint of her pure, 
 white feet; and, when she is no longer there, men 
 throng to the spot, and say: 'Look!' God keeps 
 her as a figure at whose feet the forms and species 
 of animality crouch to seek their path. At inter- 
 vals, she scatters the light that streams from her 
 hair, and men see; she speaks, and men hear, and 
 all say to one another: 'A miracle!' Often she 
 triumphs in the name of God; terrified men deny her 
 and put her to death; she sheathes her sword and 
 goes smiling to the stake, after saving nations. How 
 many pardoned angels have passed from martyrdom
 
 SERAPHITA 339 
 
 to heaven! Sinai, Golgotha, are neither in this place 
 nor in that; the angel is crucified in all places, in all 
 spheres. Sighs reach God's ears from every side. 
 The earth on which we are is one of the ears of the 
 harvest, mankind is one of the species planted in 
 the vast field in which the flowers of heaven are cul- 
 tivated. In fine, God is everywhere the same, and, 
 by prayer, it is easy to reach Him." 
 
 With these words, which fell as from the lips of 
 another Hagar in the desert, but which, upon reach- 
 ing the soul, stirred it to its depths like arrows dis- 
 charged by the burning words of Isaiah, the strange 
 being paused abruptly to collect her last remaining 
 strength. Neither Wilfrid nor Minna dared to speak. 
 Suddenly HE drew himself up to die. 
 
 " O my God, thou soul of all things, whom I love 
 for Thyself ! Judge and Father, measure an ardent 
 love which has no measure save Thine infinite loving- 
 kindness! Lend me Thine essence and Thy faculties 
 that I may be more wholly Thine! Take me that I 
 may no longer be myself. If I be not sufficiently 
 pure, plunge me anew in the fiery furnace! If I be 
 not of true metal, then make of me a nourishing 
 ploughshare or a triumphant sword ! Vouchsafe me 
 some glorious martyrdom wherein I may proclaim 
 thy Word ! Reject my prayer, still will I bless Thy 
 justness. If excess of love obtains in an instant that 
 which is denied to patient, wearing toil, bear me 
 away upon Thy chariot of fire! Whether Thou dost 
 grant me the triumph or condemn me to fresh sor- 
 rows, blessed be Thy name! But to suffer for Thee
 
 340 SERAPHITA 
 
 is not that, too, a triumph? Take, seize, ravish, 
 carry me away! Reject me, if Thou wilt! Thou 
 art the Adored One, who can do nothing ill. Ah!" 
 he exclaimed, after a pause, "the bonds are break- 
 ing. Spotless spirits, sanctified flock, come forth 
 from the abysses, fly over the surface of the waves 
 of light! The hour has struck, come, assemble! 
 Let us sing at the doors of the sanctuary, our sing- 
 ing will drive away the last-remaining clouds. Let 
 us unite our voices to hail the dawn of the day that 
 knows no end. Behold the breaking of the true 
 light ! Why may I not take my friends? Farewell, 
 poor earth, farewell !"
 
 VII 
 
 THE ASSUMPTION 
 
 These last invocations were expressed neither by 
 word, nor by glance, nor by gesture, nor by any 
 of the signs which men use to communicate their 
 thoughts, but as the soul speaks to itself; for, when 
 Seraphita exhibited herself in her real nature, on the 
 instant, her ideas ceased to be the slaves of human 
 words. The vehemence of her last prayer had 
 broken the bonds. Like a white dove, her soul 
 remained for a moment perched upon that body 
 whose exhausted substance was on the verge of 
 annihilation. 
 
 The aspiration of the soul heavenward was so con- 
 tagious that Wilfrid and Minna did not discern death, 
 so engrossed were they by the radiant sparks of life. 
 
 They had fallen on their knees when he drew him- 
 self up to turn toward his East, and they shared his 
 ecstasy. 
 
 The fear of the Lord, which creates man anew 
 and cleanses him of his filth, had consumed their 
 hearts. 
 
 Their eyes were blind to earthly things, and were 
 opened to the bright light from heaven. 
 (34i)
 
 342 SERAPHITA 
 
 Although trembling with awe at the thought of 
 God, like some of those seers whom men call 
 prophets, they held their ground like them when 
 they found themselves within the ray, wherein the 
 glory of the SPIRIT shone. 
 
 The veil of flesh which had hidden it from them 
 hitherto, insensibly faded away and allowed them to 
 see the divine substance. 
 
 They remained in the half-light of the breaking 
 day whose feeble gleams prepared them to see the 
 True Light, to hear the Living Word, and still to live. 
 
 In that state, both of them began to realize the 
 immeasurable distance that separates the things of 
 earth from the things of heaven. 
 
 LIFE, on whose brink they stood, pressing close 
 to each other, trembling and illuminated, as two 
 children stand in a sheltered spot, in the full glare 
 of a conflagration, life offered no attraction to the 
 senses. 
 
 The ideas which they made use of to describe 
 their vision to each other were to the things they 
 saw what man's external senses may be to his soul, 
 the material envelope of a divine essence. 
 
 The SPIRIT was above them, he perfumed the air 
 without odor, he was melodious without the aid 
 of sounds; where they were, were neither surfaces 
 nor angles nor air. 
 
 They dared no longer question him or gaze upon 
 him, and remained in his shadow as one stands in 
 the burning rays of a tropical sun, fearing to raise 
 one's eyes lest the sight be destroyed.
 
 SERAPHITA 343 
 
 They knew that they were near him, but could 
 not explain by what chance they were seated there, 
 as if in a dream, on the frontier between the visible 
 and the invisible, nor how it was that they could 
 no longer see the visible but were able to see the 
 invisible. 
 
 They said to themselves: "If he touches us, we 
 shall die!" But the SPIRIT was in the Infinite, and 
 they knew not that neither time nor space exists 
 in the Infinite, that they were separated from him 
 by impassable chasms, although apparently he was 
 close at hand. 
 
 Their souls not being ready to receive in its en- 
 tirety the knowledge of the faculties of that life, 
 they had only confused perceptions of it, appro- 
 priate to their weakness. 
 
 Had it been otherwise, when the Living Word 
 came, whose far-off sounds rang in their ears and 
 whose meaning entered their soul as life is knit to 
 the body, a single whisper of that Word would have 
 absorbed them as a whirlwind of fire sweeps up a 
 slender straw. 
 
 They saw, therefore, only what their nature, sus- 
 tained by the power of the Spirit, permitted them 
 to see; they heard only that which they could safely 
 hear. 
 
 Despite those limitations, they shuddered when 
 the voice of the suffering soul rang out, the hymn of 
 the SPIRIT, awaiting life and imploring it with a cry. 
 
 That cry froze them to the very marrow of their 
 bones.
 
 344 SERAPHITA 
 
 The SPIRIT knocked at the SACRED PORTAL. 
 
 "What dost thou wish?" answered a CHOIR, 
 whose question echoed through space. 
 
 "To go to God." 
 
 "Hast thou conquered?" 
 
 " I have conquered the flesh by abstinence, I 
 have conquered the false word by silence, I have 
 conquered false knowledge by humility, I have con- 
 quered pride by charity, I have conquered the earth 
 by love, I have paid my tribute by suffering, I have 
 purified myself in the fire of faith, I have longed 
 for life by prayer: I wait in adoration, and I am 
 resigned." 
 
 No reply was heard. 
 
 " Blessed be God!" exclaimed the SPIRIT, believ- 
 ing that he was to be cast out. 
 
 Tears flowed from his eyes and fell like a shower 
 of dew on the two kneeling witnesses, who shud- 
 dered before the justice of God. 
 
 Suddenly the trumpets rang out for the victory 
 won by the ANGEL in that last test, the triumphant 
 strains rolled through space like an echo, filled it 
 and shook the universe, which Wilfrid and Minna 
 felt to be small beneath their feet. They trembled, 
 suffering agony in their apprehension of the mystery 
 about to be performed. 
 
 In truth, a great commotion took place as if the 
 eternal legions were putting themselves in motion, 
 arranged in spiral columns. The worlds flew round 
 and round like clouds whirled away by a fierce wind. 
 It was very rapid.
 
 SERAPHITA 345 
 
 Suddenly the veils were torn aside, they saw on 
 high something like a star, incomparably more bril- 
 liant than the brightest of material stars, which 
 left its place, descended like a thunderbolt, still 
 gleaming like the lightning-flash, and caused what 
 they had hitherto taken for the LIGHT to grow pale. 
 
 It was the messenger who brought the glad 
 tidings, and whose helmet bore a flame of life for 
 a plume. 
 
 He left in his wake furrows which were instantly 
 filled by the flood of individual rays through which 
 he passed. 
 
 He bore a palm-branch and a sword, he touched 
 the SPIRIT with the palm. The SPIRIT was trans- 
 figured, his white wings unfolded noiselessly. 
 
 The communication of the LIGHT which trans- 
 formed the SPIRIT into a SERAPH, the putting on of 
 his glorious form, a celestial armor, were accom- 
 panied by such dazzling rays that the two witnesses 
 were paralyzed. 
 
 Like the three apostles to whom Jesus appeared, 
 Wilfrid and Minna felt that the weight of their bodies 
 forbade a complete and cloudless intuition of the 
 WORD and the TRUE LIFE. 
 
 They realized the bareness of their souls and 
 could measure the insignificance of their light by 
 comparing it with the halo of the seraph in which 
 they found themselves involved like a degrading 
 blot upon its splendor. 
 
 They were seized with an ardent desire to plunge 
 once more into the mire of the earth to undergo the
 
 346 SERAPHITA 
 
 necessary trials there, in order that they might some 
 day offer triumphantly at the SACRED PORTAL the 
 words uttered by the radiant seraph. 
 
 That angel knelt before the SANCTUARY which he 
 was able at last to behold, face to face, and said, 
 indicating them: 
 
 " Permit them to see more. They love the Lord 
 and will proclaim his Word." 
 
 In response to that prayer a veil fell. Whether 
 the unknown force which weighed upon the wit- 
 nesses momentarily blotted out their corporeal 
 forms, or caused their spirits to rise above and 
 without them, certain it is that they felt inwardly 
 something like a separation of the pure from the 
 impure. 
 
 The seraph's tears rose about them in the shape 
 of a vapor which concealed the lower worlds from 
 them, enveloped them, bore them on, caused them 
 to forget all earthly meanings, and gave them the 
 power to comprehend the meaning of divine things. 
 
 The True Light appeared, it illumined all creation, 
 which seemed a barren waste to them when they 
 saw the spring from which the terrestrial, spiritual, 
 and divine worlds derive motion. 
 
 Each world had a centre to which all points upon 
 its surface converged. The worlds themselves were 
 points converging to the centre of their systems. 
 Each system had its centre in the direction of vast 
 celestial regions which communicated with the flam- 
 ing inexhaustible motive power of all that is. 
 
 Thus, from the greatest to the smallest worlds,
 
 SERAPHITA 347 
 
 and from the smallest of worlds to the smallest frac- 
 tion of the beings who composed it, everything had 
 its own individuality, and yet all were one. 
 
 What was the design of that Being, unchangeable 
 in His essence and His attributes, who transmitted 
 them without losing them, who manifested them 
 outside of Himself without separating from them, 
 who rendered all those creations outside of Himself 
 immutable in their essence and mutable in their 
 forms? The two guests summoned to that festival 
 could see only the order and arrangement of beings 
 and admire only the immediate end. None but the 
 angels could go beyond, become acquainted with the 
 means, and understand the final end. 
 
 But that which those two elect were allowed to con- 
 template, that of which they brought back testimony 
 that illumined their souls forever, was the proof of 
 the action of worlds and beings, the knowledge of the 
 efforts which they put forth to attain the result. 
 
 They heard the different parts of the Infinite com- 
 posing one living melody; and each time that the 
 melody made itself felt like a mighty respiration, 
 the worlds, impelled by that unanimous movement, 
 inclined toward the gigantic Being who, from His 
 impenetrable centre, sent everything forth and drew 
 everything back to Him. 
 
 This incessant alternation of voices and silence 
 seemed to be the measure of the sacred hymn which 
 resounded and was prolonged in secula seculorum. 
 
 Thereupon Wilfrid and Minna understood some of 
 the mysterious words of the being who had appeared
 
 348 SERAPHITA 
 
 to each of them on earth in the form that made him 
 comprehensible to that one, to Minna Seraphitus, to 
 Wilfrid Seraphita, when they saw that everything 
 there was homogeneous. 
 
 Light gave birth to melody, melody gave birth 
 to light, colors were light and melody, motion was 
 number endowed with speech; in a word, everything 
 was resonant, diaphanous, and mobile; so that as 
 each thing penetrated every other thing, the vast 
 expanse was unobstructed, and the angels could 
 fly whithersoever they would in the depths of the 
 Infinite. 
 
 They realized the puerility of the human sciences 
 concerning which he had spoken to them. 
 
 It was to their eyes a landscape with no horizon 
 line, an abyss into which a consuming desire forced 
 them to plunge; but, fast bound to their wretched 
 bodies, they had the desire without the power. 
 
 The seraph lightly spread his wings to take his 
 flight, and no longer turned his face toward them: 
 he had nothing more in common with the earth. 
 
 He flew upward: the vast spread of his gleaming 
 plumage covered the two seers as with a kindly 
 shadow, which enabled them to raise their eyes and 
 see him borne away in his glory, attended by the 
 joyous archangel. 
 
 He ascended like a radiant sun coming forth from 
 the bosom of the waves; but, more majestic than the 
 planet, and reserved for a nobler destiny, he was not 
 to be confined, like creatures of inferior mould, to a 
 circular life; he followed the line of the Infinite, and
 
 SERAPHITA 349 
 
 held on his way without deviation toward a fixed 
 centre, there to plunge into his everlasting life, there 
 to receive in his faculties and in his essence the 
 power to enjoy through love, and the gift of under- 
 standing through wisdom. 
 
 The spectacle suddenly disclosed to the eyes of 
 the two seers crushed them beneath its immensity, 
 for they felt that they were specks whose insignifi- 
 cance could be compared only to the smallest fraction 
 which the infinity of divisibility permits man to con- 
 ceive, side by side with the infinity of numbers which 
 God alone can look upon, as He looks upon Himself. 
 
 What abasement and what grandeur in those two 
 points, strength and love, which the seraph's first 
 desire placed like two rings to unite the immensity 
 of the lower spheres with the immensity of the 
 higher spheres! 
 
 They understood the invisible bonds by which the 
 material worlds are attached to the spiritual worlds. 
 Recalling the sublime efforts of the noblest human 
 geniuses, they recognized the elemental principle of 
 melody, as they listened to the songs of heaven 
 which imparted the sensations of colors, of per- 
 fumes, of thought, and which recalled the innumera- 
 ble details of all creations, as earthly music revives 
 an infinity of memories of love. 
 
 Having reached, by virtue of an incredible quick- 
 ening of their faculties, a point for which language 
 has no name, they were able to cast their eyes for 
 a moment upon the divine world. There was the 
 carnival.
 
 350 SERAPHITA 
 
 Myriads of angels flew about in unison, without 
 confusion, all alike, all different, simple as the rose 
 of the field, immense as worlds. 
 
 Wilfrid and Minna could not see them come or take 
 flight; they suddenly studded infinite space with their 
 presence, as stars shine out in the invisible ether. 
 
 The sparkling of their united diadems flooded 
 the void with light, like the flames in the sky at the 
 moment when day is breaking among our mountains. 
 
 Waves of light flowed from their hair, and their 
 motions caused trembling undulations like the ripples 
 of a phosphorescent sea. 
 
 The two seers descried the seraph indistinctly 
 amid the immortal legions whose wings were like 
 the immense plumage of a forest swayed by the 
 breeze. 
 
 Instantly, as if all the arrows from a quiver were 
 discharged at once, the spirits swept away with 
 a breath all vestiges of his former shape; as the 
 seraph ascended, he became purer; soon he seemed 
 to them no more than a faint outline of what they 
 had seen when he was transfigured : an outline of 
 fire casting no shadow. 
 
 As he rose, from circle to circle he received a new 
 gift; then the symbol of his election was transmitted 
 to the superior sphere, toward which he ascended, 
 growing ever purer. 
 
 None of the voices were silent, the hymn was 
 diffused through space in all its variations. 
 
 " Hail to him who ascends living! Come hither, 
 flower of the worlds! diamond purged by the fire of
 
 SERAPHITA 351 
 
 sorrow! spotless pearl, chaste desire, a new bond 
 between heaven and earth, be thou light! O con- 
 quering spirit, queen of the world, fly to thy crown! 
 Thou who hast triumphed over earth, receive thy 
 diadem! Be ours!" 
 
 The virtues of the angel reappeared in their 
 beauty. 
 
 His first longing for heaven reappeared, graceful 
 as blooming childhood. 
 
 His acts, like constellations, adorned him with 
 their splendor. 
 
 His acts of faith shone forth resplendent, like the 
 hyacinth of heaven, the color of the stars' fire. 
 
 Charity tossed him its oriental pearls, lovely gar- 
 nered tears. 
 
 The divine love surrounded him with its roses, 
 and his pious resignation, by virtue of its snowy 
 whiteness, took from him every vestige of earth. 
 
 In the eyes of Wilfrid and Minna he soon became 
 a mere speck of flame which glowed brightly, while 
 its movement was lost in the melodious acclamation 
 that welcomed his entrance into heaven. 
 
 The celestial strains brought tears to the eyes of 
 the two outcasts. 
 
 Suddenly a deathly silence, which spread like a 
 dark veil from the first to the last sphere, threw 
 Wilfrid and Minna into a state of indescribable sus- 
 pense. 
 
 At that moment, the seraph disappeared in the 
 bosom of the Sanctuary, where he received the gift 
 of life everlasting.
 
 352 SERAPHITA 
 
 There was a movement of profound adoration 
 which filled the hearts of the two seers with ecstasy 
 mingled with terror. 
 
 They felt that everyone fell prostrate in the divine 
 spheres, in the spiritual spheres, and in the worlds 
 of darkness. 
 
 The angels bent the knee in honor of his glory, 
 the spirits bent the knee in testimony of their im- 
 patience; the denizens of the dark abysses bent the 
 knee, shuddering with terror. 
 
 A loud shout of joy gushed forth as from a spring 
 that has been choked up and begins anew to send 
 forth its myriads of sparkling sheaf-like jets, wherein 
 the sun plays, studding the luminous waves with 
 diamonds and with pearls; and at the same moment, 
 the seraph reappeared, blazing with light, and cried: 
 
 "ETERNAL! ETERNAL! ETERNAL!" 
 
 The worlds heard him and recognized him; he 
 pierced them as God pierces them, and took pos- 
 session of the Infinite. 
 
 The seven divine worlds were stirred by his voice 
 and answered him. 
 
 At that moment, there was a great commotion as 
 if whole stars, purified, were ascending in clouds of 
 dazzling light to become eternal. 
 
 Mayhap the seraph had received for his first 
 mission the duty of calling to God the creations 
 reached by the Word. 
 
 But already the sublime ALLELUIA rang in Wil- 
 frid's and Minna's ears like the last echo of a 
 melody that is ended.
 
 SERAPHITA 353 
 
 Already the celestial beams were fading like the 
 brilliant tints of the sun when he sinks to rest in 
 his swaddling-clothes of purple and gold. 
 
 Impurity and death seized their prey once more. 
 
 Returning to the bonds of the flesh from which 
 their spirits had been momentarily set free by a 
 sublime slumber, the two mortals felt as one feels 
 in the morning following a night crowded with bril- 
 liant dreams, the memory of which still hovers in the 
 soul, although the body is not conscious of them, 
 and human language is powerless to describe them. 
 
 The profound darkness in which they then found 
 themselves was the sphere in which the sun of the 
 visible worlds revolves. 
 
 " Let us descend," said Wilfrid to Minna. 
 
 " Let us do what he bade us do," she replied. 
 "After seeing whole worlds in motion toward God, 
 we know the straight path. Our starry diadems 
 are above." 
 
 They went down into the dark depths, re-entered 
 the dust of the inferior worlds, and suddenly es- 
 pied the Earth like a subterranean mass, illuminated 
 by the light which they bore in their souls, and which 
 still surrounded them with a cloud wherein were re- 
 flected dimly the fading harmonies of heaven. The 
 spectacle was the same that long ago met the inward 
 eyes of the prophets. Ministers of diverse creeds, 
 all alleged to be true, kings all consecrated by power 
 and dread, warriors and great men portioned out the 
 nations by mutual consent, learned and rich tower- 
 ing above the suffering, tumultuous populace, and 
 23
 
 354 SERAPHITA 
 
 crushing them beneath their feet: all were attended 
 by their wives and servants, all were clad in robes 
 of gold, silver, or azure, bedecked with pearls and 
 precious stones torn from the bowels of the earth, 
 from the depths of ocean, for which mankind had 
 long spent its energies, sweating and blaspheming. 
 But all that wealth and splendor built with blood 
 were like old rags and tatters in the eyes of the two 
 outcasts. 
 
 " Why stand ye there, in motionless lines?" cried 
 Wilfrid. 
 
 They made no reply. 
 
 " Why stand ye there, in motionless lines?" 
 
 They made no reply. 
 
 Wilfred laid his hands upon them and cried: 
 
 "Why stand ye there, in motionless lines?" 
 
 With a simultaneous movement they all put aside 
 their robes and displayed their withered bodies, 
 eaten by worms, corrupt, crumbling to dust, ravaged 
 by horrible diseases. 
 
 "You lead the nations to death," said Wilfrid to 
 them. " You have debased the earth, perverted 
 the Word, prostituted justice. Having eaten the 
 grass in the pastures, you turn now upon the lambs 
 and slaughter them! Do you deem yourselves justi- 
 fied in displaying your sores? I shall warn those of 
 my brethren who can still hear the Voice, so that 
 they may go and allay their thirst at the springs 
 which you have hidden." 
 
 "Let us reserve our strength for prayer," said 
 Minna; " your mission is not that of the prophets,
 
 SERAPHITA 355 
 
 nor of the righter of wrongs, nor of God's mes- 
 senger. As yet, we are only upon the borders of 
 the first sphere, let us try to cross the intervening 
 space upon the wings of prayer." 
 
 " You shall be all my love!" 
 
 " You shall be all my strength!" 
 
 " We have been vouchsafed a glimpse of the ex- 
 alted mysteries; we are, each to the other, the only 
 beings on earth to whom joy and sorrow are compre- 
 hensible; therefore let us pray; we know the road, 
 let us walk in it." 
 
 " Give me your hand," said the maiden; " if we 
 walk always together, the way will be less hard and 
 less long to me." 
 
 "With none but you," replied the man, "can I 
 pass through the vast solitude without indulging 
 myself in a complaint." 
 
 "And we will go to heaven together," said she. 
 
 The clouds gathered and formed a dark canopy. 
 Suddenly the two lovers found themselves kneeling 
 beside a body which old David was guarding against 
 all curious eyes, and which he was determined to 
 bury with his own hands. 
 
 Without, the first summer of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury was bursting forth in its magnificence. The 
 two lovers fancied that they heard a voice in the 
 sunbeams. They inhaled the perfume of a celes- 
 tial spirit in the new-born flowers, and said to each 
 other, hand in hand : 
 
 " That boundless ocean gleaming below us in the 
 sunlight is an image of what we saw above."
 
 356 SERAPHITA 
 
 "Where are you going?" Monsieur Becker asked 
 them. 
 
 "We are going to God," they replied: "Come 
 with us, father." 
 
 Geneva and Paris, December i833-November 1835.
 
 LIST OF ETCHINGS 
 
 VOLUME XLII 
 
 MM 
 
 THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE Fronts. 
 
 JESUS CHRIST IN FLANDERS 16 
 
 IN AQUILINA'S DRESSING-ROOM 72 
 
 AT THE FOOT OF THE FALBERG 145 
 
 AN EVENING AT THE PASTOR'S 248 
 
 42 C. H ., J. C., etc., N. & R. 357
 
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