LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 H. H. Kiliani 
 
UCSB LIBKARlt 
 
H. DE BALZAC 
 
 THE COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
TOWER IN WHICH BALZAC PASSED MOST OF HIS TIME 
 AT COLLEGE. 
 
H. DE BALZAC 
 
 SERAPHITA 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 TRANSLATED BT 
 
 CLARA BELL 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE GEBBIE PUBLISHING Co., Ltd. 
 1899 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 PREFACE . ix 
 
 SERAPHITA 
 
 I. SErAPHITUS 2 
 
 II. SERAPHITA 24 
 
 III. SERAPHITA SERAPHITUS 43 
 
 IV. THE CLOUDS OF THE SANCTUARY . ... 88 
 V. THE FAREWELL I2O 
 
 VI. THE ROAD TO HEAVEN j-.-? 
 
 VII. THE ASSUMPTION I^r 
 
 LOUIS LAMBERT , 5 6 
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 275 
 
 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS 339 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 TOWER IN WHICH BALZAC PASSED MOST OF HIS TIME AT COL- 
 LEGE Frontispiece. 
 
 Drawn by H. Crickmore from an engraving- kindly supplied 
 by M. Le Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE DREADFUL INFLUENCE OF THE VOID HAD SEIZED HER . II 
 "VIOLENCE! VIOLENCE!" HE CRIED 73 
 
 Drawn by D. Murray-Smith. 
 
 A SLIGHT RUSTLING IN THE LEAVES SHOWED THAT MAXIMILIEN 
 
 HAD BEEN WATCHING HER 323 
 
 FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, MME. NOURRISSON ACTUALLY APPEARED 
 
 AT BIXIOU'S ROOMS 360 
 
 Drawn by W. Boucher. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE contents of the present volume stand alone in the 
 Comedie Humaine, or nearly alone ; but they are very closely 
 connected with each other. And to those who care to trace 
 the connection of an author's nature and his work, without 
 which tracing useless as it may be in some cases, and super- 
 fluous in most it will never be possible for any one to appre- 
 ciate Balzac to the full, they have an interest not inferior to 
 that of any other portion. In one of them, moreover, " Sera- 
 phita," we shall find Balzac's most successful and brilliant 
 essays of style as style^essays so different from his general 
 practice, that they have raised some curious speculations. It 
 is known that, in the early thirties, Balzac and Gautier were a 
 good deal together, and even worked in some sort of collabora- 
 tion. In one of his books, "Beatrix," Balzac has printed a 
 passage which, as it happens, is known to be Gautier's, and 
 there is a good deal in "Seraphita" which may be suspected 
 of a similar origin. 
 
 To those who care for the story, or who are attracted to the 
 Comedie as a varied storehouse of observation of ordinary life, 
 this volume must seem, and, I believe, almost invariably does 
 seem, rather dreary and repellent stuff. To others, it yields 
 in interest to no volume of the Comedie, though the interest 
 may be of a peculiar and special kind. As most people who 
 know anything at all about Balzac are aware, Louis Lambert 
 is Balzac himself; the "Traite de la Volonte' " was actually 
 written, and destroyed by an irate schoolmaster; and most of 
 the incidents brought in have more or less foundation in fact. 
 The same, of course, cannot be said of " Les Proscrits "* and 
 "Se'raphita." But the former, while belonging in kind gen- 
 erally to the Etudes Philosophiques, connects itself on another 
 * See preface of volume : " About Catherine de' Medici." 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 side with the "Contes Drolatiques," and with Balzac's not rare 
 studies of the Middle Ages. About these he seems always to 
 have had a hankering to write, which was due partly to his 
 lifelong cult of Sir Walter, and partly to a curious delusion 
 that he was himself a born historical novelist. " Seraphita," 
 on the other hand, has a sort of kinship with other products 
 of the 1830 period. 
 
 But all the books are perhaps most interesting to us, first, as 
 showing Balzac's specially "philosophic" velleities ; and, 
 secondly, as exhibiting a side of him which is apt to be over- 
 looked his character as a reader and a student. 
 
 The " philosophy " has been rather variously judged. It 
 has seldom been taken very seriously ; but attempts have some- 
 times been made to discover in it anticipations of later dis- 
 coveries or, to adopt a much safer word, theories. These 
 anticipation-hunts rarely send the hunter home with an empty 
 bag, but it is as rarely that the game is of certain quality. 
 Indeed, if we remember that even in the widest and vaguest 
 sense, "philosophy" was practically exhausted many hundred 
 years ago that new philosophies are only the old ones with 
 their coats and trousers turned, scoured, dyed, and altered 
 somewhat in fashion it would be very odd if a clever man, 
 even with no regular training or special vocation, did not an- 
 ticipate more or less what others of his contemporaries are 
 going to think. For the rest, Balzac's philosophy is of a 
 distinctly loose sort, and may very well have occurred to him 
 in whole or in part when he was a studious, if irregularly 
 studious, schoolboy. It is, indeed, very much of the kind to 
 which schoolboys of some brains are as prone as men of riper 
 years, and in which they are perhaps as likely to attain a result, 
 or what looks like it. 
 
 The second bearing of these curious books is more tangible. 
 It is certain that Balzac, unlike Dickens, his fellow voyant, 
 and still more unlike most of the " realists" who claim kin- 
 dred with him, was a very great reader. In his period of 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 production, despite the enormous expense of time which his 
 methods of writing imposed on him, he seems to have read a 
 great deal ; in his boyhood and in the ten years of his appren- 
 ticeship he seems to have read enormously. He certainly 
 never attained to exact scientific or scholarly knowledge of 
 any subject by means of books. He did not know literature 
 or history, much less philosophy, as he knew legal procedure 
 and the theory of speculation, the signboards of Paris, and not 
 a little of what went on inside Parisian waistcoats and under 
 Parisian hats. But he had a vast amount of " fine confused " 
 reading, as the Swedenborgian learning of " Seraphita," no 
 less than the not altogether alien lore of " Sur Catherine de 
 Medicis," shows. He was even, as not a few passages in his 
 reviews, in his other miscellaneous writings, and in his letters 
 show, rather inclined to overvalue and plume himself upon 
 this reading. Nor was it without effect, both good and bad, 
 on his work. On the one hand, it added to that slightly un- 
 digested character which, with rare exceptions, is characteristic 
 of him j on the other, it largely helped the appearance of 
 variety, fullness, encyclopaedic knowledge, and interest which 
 is the complement and atonement of this undigestedness. 
 Balzac was really a " full " man in reading as well as thought; 
 and of this reading fullness, the batch of books before us is 
 perhaps the most striking example. 
 
 " Le Bal de Sceaux," with its satire on contempt for trade, 
 is in some ways more like Balzac's young friend and pupil 
 Charles de Bernard than like himself; and I believe it at- 
 tracted English notice pretty early. At least I seem, when 
 quite a boy, and long before I read the Comedie Humaine, to 
 have seen an English version or paraphrase of it. " Le Bal de 
 Sceaux" was an original Scene de la Vie Privee, and seems to 
 have been written as well as published more or less at the same 
 time. It at first had an alternative title, " Ou le Pair de 
 France," which was afterward dropped. 
 
 The more important story, "Les Comediens sans la savoir," 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 which follows, seems to me one of the best and most amusing 
 of what may be called (though it might also be called by a 
 dozen other names) the Bixiou cycle of stories, in which 
 journalism, art, provincials in Paris, young persons of the 
 other sex with more beauty than morals, and so forth, play a 
 somewhat artificial but often amusing series of scenes and 
 characters. In this particular division of the series the satire 
 is happy, the adventures are agreeably Arabian-Nightish with 
 a modern adjustment, the central figure of the Southern 
 Gazonal is good in itself, and an excellent rallying-point for 
 the others, and the good-natured mystification played off on 
 him is a pleasant dream. I think, indeed, that there is little 
 doubt that the late Mr. Stevenson took his idea of " New 
 Arabian Nights" from Balzac, of whom he was an unwearied 
 student, and I do not know that Balzac himself was ever hap- 
 pier in his "Parisian Nights," as we may call them, than 
 here. The artists and the actresses, the corn-cutters and the 
 fortune-tellers, the politicians, the money-lenders, the fur- 
 nishers of garments, and all the rest, appear and disappear in 
 an easy phantasmagoric fashion which Balzac's expression does 
 not always achieve except when his imagination is at a white 
 heat not easily excited by such slight matter as this. The 
 way in which the excellent Gazonal is forced to recognize the 
 majesty of the capital may not be in exact accordance with 
 the views of the grave and precise, but it is a pleasant fairy 
 tale, and there is nothing so good as a fairy tale. 
 
 " Louis Lambert " appeared first (as " Notice Biographique 
 sur L. L.") in 1832, in the " Nouveaux Contes Philosoph- 
 iques ; " then in February, 1833, as a small volume by itself, a 
 good deal enlarged, and entitled, " Histoire intellectuelle de 
 L. L.;" then, with its actual dimensions, in a collection en- 
 titled, "Le Livre Mystique," published by Werdet in 1835. 
 In 1842, with "Seraphita," but apparently (I have not seen 
 the book) not with "Les Proscrits," it was again published 
 by Charpentier; and in 1846 it joined the Comedie. "Les 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 Proscrits" first appeared in the "Revue de Paris" for May, 
 1831, and was almost immediately included in the Romans et 
 Contes Philosophiques. Its fortunes, after it was joined to its 
 companions, have been told, as have those of "Seraphita." 
 This last appeared first in the " Revue de Paris " for June and 
 July, 1834. In 1840 it became an Etude Philosophique with 
 "Les Proscrits," "Gambara," and " Massimilla Doni." 
 
 G. S. 
 
SKRAPHITA. 
 
 To Madame Eveline de Hanska, 
 nee Countess Rzewuska. 
 
 Alaaame : Here is the work you desired of me; 
 tn dedicating it to you I am happy to offer you some 
 token of the respectful affection you allow me to feel for 
 you. If I should be accused of incapacity after trying 
 to extract from the depths of mysticism this book, which 
 demanded the glowing poetry of the East under the 
 transparency of our beautiful language ; the blame be 
 yours / Did you not compel me to the effort such an 
 effort as Jacob' s by telling me that even the most im- 
 perfect outline of the figure dreamed of by you, as it 
 has been by me from my infancy, would still be some- 
 thing in your eyes ? Here, then, is that something. 
 W7iy cannot this book be set apart exclusively for those 
 lofty spirits who, like you, are preserved from worldly 
 pettiness by solitude ! They might impress on it the 
 melodious rhythm which it lacks, and which, in the 
 hands of one of our poets, might have made it the 
 glorious epic for which France still waits. Still, they 
 will accept it from me as one of those balustrades, 
 carved by some artist full of faith, on which the 
 pilgrim leans to meditate on the end of man, while 
 gazing at the choir of a fine church. 
 
 I remain, madame, with respect, your faithful 
 servant, 
 
 DE BALZAC. 
 
 PARIS, August 23, 1835. 
 
 (1) 
 
I. 
 
 SERAPHITUS. 
 
 ON seeing the Norgewian coast as outlined on the map, 
 what imagination can fail to be amazed at its fantastic con- 
 tour long tongues of granite, round which the surges of the 
 North Sea are for ever roaring? Who has not dreamed of 
 the majestic spectacle of these beachless shores, these endless 
 creeks, and inlets, and little bays, no two of which are alike, 
 and each a pathless gulf? Would it not seem as though 
 Nature had amused herself by representing, in an indestruc- 
 tible hieroglyphic, the symbol of life in Norway, by giving 
 its coast the configuration of the bones of an enormous fish ? 
 For fishing is the staple of commerce, and almost the sole 
 article of food to a handful of men who cling, like a tuft of 
 lichen, to those barren rocks. On a land extending over 
 fourteen degrees of longitude there are scarcely seven hundred 
 thousand souls. Owing to the inglorious dangers and the 
 perpetual snow that these Norwegian peaks offer to the 
 traveler the very name of Norway makes one cold their 
 sublime beauty remains inviolate and harmonizes with certain 
 human phenomena, which took place there equally unknown, 
 at least to romance, and of which this is the story. 
 
 When one of these inlets, a mere fissure in the sight of the 
 eider-ducks, is wide enough to prevent the sea from freezing 
 over in the rocky prison it tosses and struggles in, the inhab- 
 itants call such a little gulf a fjord, a word which geogra- 
 phers of every nation have adopted into their respective 
 languages. In spite of the general resemblance of all these 
 channels, each has its own individuality ; the sea penetrates 
 (2) 
 
SERAPHITA. 3 
 
 into all these breaches, but in each the rocks are differently 
 riven, and their contorted precipices defy the terms of ge- 
 ometry : here the crest is toothed like a saw ; there its sides 
 are too perpendicular to allow the snow to rest on them, or 
 the glorious clumps of northern pines to take root ; farther on, 
 the convulsions of the globe have rounded off some soft 
 declivity, a lovely valley furnished with stage on stage of 
 dark-plumed trees. You feel inclined to call this land Marine 
 Switzerland. 
 
 One of these gulfs, lying between Dronthjem and Christiania, 
 is called Strom-fiord. If the Strom-fiord is not the most 
 beautiful of these scenes, it has at least the merit of present- 
 ing the earthly magnificence of Norway, and of having been 
 the background to the scenes of a really heavenly romance. 
 
 The general outline of the Strom-fiord is, at a first glance, 
 that of a funnel forced open by the sea. The entrance made 
 by the waves is the record of a contest between the ocean and 
 the granite, two equally powerful elements one by its inertia, 
 the other by its motion. The proof lies in some half-sunken 
 rocks of fantastic shapes which prohibit the entrance of vessels. 
 The hardy sons of the soil can in some places leap from rock 
 to rock, undismayed by a gulf a hundred fathoms deep and six 
 feet wide which yawns beneath them. Here and there a frail 
 and ill-balanced block of gneiss, thrown across, joins two 
 crags, or hunters or fishermen have flung some pine-trees, by 
 way of a bridge, from one perpendicular cliff to another, where 
 the sea murmurs unceasingly below. 
 
 This dangerous inlet turns to the right with a serpentine 
 twist, where it meets a mountain rising to some twenty-five 
 hundred feet above the surface of the sea, its foot forming a 
 vertical shelf half a league in length, where the unyielding 
 granite does not begin to split into rifts and inequalities till at 
 about two hundred feet above the water. Thus the sea, rush- 
 ing violently in, is no less violently driven back, by the resist- 
 ant inertia of the mountain, toward the opposite shore, which 
 
4 SERAPHITA. 
 
 the rebounding waves have worn into gentle indentations. 
 The fiord is closed at the head by a cliff of gneiss, crowned 
 with forest, whence a stream falls in cascades, forming a river 
 when the snows melt, spreading into a lake of considerable 
 extent, and escaping with a rush, carries down old pine- 
 trees and ancient larches, hardly perceptible in the tumbling 
 torrent. Flung by the fall to the bottom of the abyss, these 
 trees presently come to the surface again, and combine in a 
 tangle, forming islets which are stranded on the left bank, 
 where the inhabitants of the little village built on the Strom- 
 fiord find them splintered, broken, sometimes entire, but 
 always stripped of their leaves and branches. 
 
 The mountain, which thus receives at its feet the assaults of 
 the sea, and on its head the buffeting of the north wind, is the 
 Falberg. Its summit, always wrapped in a mantle of ice and 
 snow, is the highest in Norway, where the vicinity of the Pole 
 produces, at a level of eighteen hundred feet above the sea, 
 such cold as prevails elsewhere on the highest mountains on 
 the globe. The crest of this cliff, perpendicular on the side 
 toward the sea, shelves gradually away to the east down to the 
 falls of the Sieg, by a succession of slopes where the cold 
 allows no vegetation but heath and much-enduring shrubs. 
 That part of the fiord where the waters escape under the thick 
 forests is called Siegdalen, or the valley of the Sieg the name 
 of the river. 
 
 The bay opposite to the cliffs of the Falberg is the valley 
 of Jarvis a pretty spot overlooked by hills covered with fir- 
 trees, larches, and birch, with a few oaks and beeches, the 
 thickest and most variously colored hangings Nature ever 
 affords to this wild northern scenery. The eye can easily 
 distinguish the line where the ground, warmed by the sun's 
 rays, first admits of culture and shows the first signs of the 
 Norwegian flora. At this part the gulf is wide enough to 
 allow the waters flung back by the Falberg to die murmuring 
 on the lowest ledge of the hills, where the strand is softly 
 
SERAPHITA. 5 
 
 fringed with fine sand, mingled with mica, tiny crystals, and 
 pretty pebbles of porphyry and many-colored marbles brought 
 from Sweden by the river, with waifs from the sea, and shells 
 and ocean weeds tossed up by storms from the Pole or from 
 the Tropics. 
 
 At the foot of the Jarvis hills is the village, consisting of 
 about two hundred wooden houses, inhabited by a population 
 that live there, lost, like the swarms of bees in a forest, 
 happily vegetating and extorting a living from the wilderness 
 around them. The unrecognized existence of this village is 
 easily explained. Few of its men were bold enough to ven- 
 ture out among the rocks to reach the open sea and attempt 
 the fishing which the Norwegians carry on to a great extent 
 on less dangerous parts of the coast. The various fish in the 
 fiord partly supplies the food of the inhabitants ; the pasture- 
 land in the valleys affords milk and butter ; a few plots of 
 good land allow them to reap a harvest of rye, of hemp, and 
 vegetables which they manage to protect against the bitter 
 cold and the transient but terrible heat of the sun, showing 
 true Norwegian ingenuity in this twofold conflict. The 
 absence of communications, either by land, where roads are 
 impracticable, or by sea, where only small boats can thread 
 the watery labyrinths of the fiord, hinders them from acquir- 
 ing wealth by the sale of their timber. It would cost an 
 equally enormous sum to clear the channel at the entrance or 
 to open up a road to the interior. 
 
 The roads from Christiania to Dronthjem all make a bend 
 round the Strom-fiord, crossing the Sieg by a bridge several 
 leagues above the falls ; the coast between the Jarvis valley 
 and Dronthjem is covered with impenetrable forest, and the 
 Falberg is divided from Christiania by inaccessible precipices. 
 The village of Jarvis might perhaps have opened communi- 
 cations with Sweden by way of the Sieg, but to bring it into 
 touch with civilization the Strom-fiord needed a man of genius. 
 The genius indeed came : a poef, a pious Swede, who died 
 
6 SERAPHITA. 
 
 admiring and respecting the beauties of the land as being one 
 of the grandest of the Creator's works. 
 
 Those of my readers who have been gifted by study with 
 that "mind's eye," whose rapid perception can throw on the 
 soul, as on a canvas, the most diverse landscapes of the world, 
 may now readily conceive of the general aspect of the Strom- 
 fiord. They alone, perhaps, will be able to thread their 
 tortuous way through the reef of the inlet where the sea 
 fights and foams; to glide on its swell below the shelves of 
 the Falberg, whose white peaks mingle with the misty clouds 
 of a sky that is almost constantly pearl-gray ; to admire the 
 dented margin of the pretty sheet of water; to hear. the falls 
 of the Sieg, which drops in long streamers on to a picturesque 
 medley of large trees tossed in confusion, some upright, some 
 hidden among boulders of gneiss ; and at last to rest on the 
 smiling pictures offered to the eye by the lower hills of Jarvis, 
 whence rise the noblest products of the north in clumps, in 
 myriads : here, birch trees, as graceful as girls and, like them, 
 gently stooping ; there, pillared aisles of beech with centen- 
 nial, mossy trunks ; all the contrast of these various shades 
 of green, of white clouds among black pine-trees, of heath- 
 grown commons in every shade of purple all the colors, all 
 the fragrance, the unknown marvels, in short, of this vege- 
 tation. 
 
 Expand the proportions of this amphitheatre, soar up to the 
 clouds, lose yourself in the caves of the rocks where the wal- 
 ruses hide, still your fancy will never be equal to the wealth 
 of beauty, the poetry of this Norwegian scene. For can your 
 thought ever be as vast as the ocean that bounds the land, as 
 fantastic as the weird forms assumed by the forests, as the 
 clouds, the shadows, the changes of light ? 
 
 Do you see now, above the meadows on the shore, on the 
 farthest fold of the plain that undulates at the foot of the 
 high hills of Jarvis, two or three hundred houses, roofed with 
 " noaver," a kind of thatch of birch bark; frail-looking 
 
SERAPHITA. 7 
 
 dwellings, quite low, and suggesting silkworms flung thereon a 
 mulberry leaf brought by the wind ? Above these humble 
 and peaceful dwellings is a church, built with a simplicity that 
 harmonizes with the poverty of the village. A graveyard 
 lies round the chancel of this church ; the parsonage is seen 
 beyond. A little higher, on a knoll of the mountain, stands 
 a dwelling, the only one built of stone, and for that reason 
 called by the natives the Castle the Swedish Castle. 
 
 In fact, a rich man had come from Sweden thirty years 
 before this story opens and settled at Jarvis, trying to improve 
 its fortunes. This little mansion, erected with a view to 
 tempting the inhabitants to build the like, was remarkable for 
 its substantial character, for a garden wall a rare thing in 
 Norway, where, in spite of the abundance of stone, wood is 
 used for all the fences, even for those that divide the fields. 
 The house, thus protected from snow, stood on a mound in 
 the midst of a vast courtyard. The windows were screened 
 by those verandas of immense depth supported on large squared 
 fir-trunks, which give northern buildings a sort of patriarchal 
 expression. 
 
 From under their shelter the savage bareness of the Falberg 
 could be seen, and the infinitude of the open ocean be com- 
 pared with the drop of water in the foam-flecked gulf: the 
 portentous rush of the Sieg could be heard, though from afar 
 the sheet of water looked motionless, where it threw itself into 
 its granite bowl hedged in for three leagues round with vast 
 glaciers in short, the whole landscape where the scene is laid 
 of the supernatural but simple events of this narrative. 
 
 The winter of 1799-1800 was one of the hardest in the 
 memory of Europe ; the Norwegian sea froze in every fiord, 
 where the violence of the undertow commonly prevents the 
 ice from forming. A wind, in its effects resembling the 
 Spanish desert wind, had swept the ice of the Strom-fiord by 
 drifting the snow to the head of the gulf. It was long since 
 
8 SERAPHITA. 
 
 the good folk of Jarvis had seen the vast mirror of the pool 
 in winter reflecting the sky a curious effect here in the 
 heart of the hills whose curves were effaced under successive 
 layers of snow, the sharpest peaks, like the deepest hollows, 
 forming mere faint undulations under the immense sheet 
 thrown by nature over the landscape now so dolefully dazzling 
 and monotonous. The long hangings of the Sieg, suddenly 
 frozen, described a vast arch, behind which the traveler might 
 have walked sheltered from the storm if any one had been 
 bold enough to venture across country. But the dangers of 
 an expedition kept the boldest hunters within doors, fearing 
 that they might fail to discern under the snow the narrow paths 
 along the edge of the precipices, the ravines, and the cliffs. 
 Not a creature gave life to this white desert reigned over by 
 the Polar blast, whose voice alone was sometimes though rarely 
 heard. 
 
 The sky, always gray, gave the pool a hue of tarnished steel. 
 Now and again an eider-duck might fly across with impunity, 
 thanks to the thick down that shelters the dreams of the 
 wealthy of other lands, who little know the dangers that pur- 
 chase it ; but the bird like the solitary Bedouin who traverses 
 the sands of Africa was neither seen nor heard ; in the torpid 
 air, bereft of electric resonance, the whirr of its wings was 
 noiseless, its joyous cry unheard. What living eye could en- 
 dure the sparkle of that precipice hung with glittering icicles, 
 and the hard reflections from the snows, scarcely tinted on the 
 peaks by the beams of the pallid sun which peeped out now 
 and then like a dying thing anxious to prove that it still lives? 
 Many a time, when the rack of gray clouds, driven in squad- 
 rons over the mountains and pine forests, hid the sky with 
 their dense shroud, the earth, for lack of heavenly lights, had 
 an illumination of its own. 
 
 Here, then, were met all the majestic attributes of the 
 eternal cold that reigns at the Pole, of which the most strik- 
 ing is such royal silence as absolute monarchs dwell in. 
 
SERAPHITA. 9 
 
 Every condition carried to excess has the appearance of nega- 
 tion, or the stamp of apparent death ; is not life the conflict 
 of two forces? Here nothing showed a sign of life. One 
 force alone, the unproductive power of frost, reigned supreme. 
 The beating of the open sea even did not penetrate to this 
 silent hollow, so full of sound during the three brief months 
 when nature hurriedly produces the uncertain harvest needful 
 to support this patient race. A few tall fir-trees protruded 
 their dark pyramids loaded with festoons of snow ; and the 
 droop of their boughs, bending under these heavy beards, 
 gave a finishing touch to the mourning aspect of the heights, 
 where they were seen as black points. 
 
 Every family clung to the fireside in a house carefully 
 closed, with a store of biscuit, run butter, dried fish, and 
 provisions laid in to stand seven months of winter. Even 
 the smoke of these dwellings was scarcely visible ; they were 
 all nearly buried in snow, of which the weight was broken by 
 long planks starting from the roof, and supported at some 
 distance from the walls on strong posts, thus forming a cov- 
 ered way round the house. During these dreadful winters 
 the women weave and dye the stuffs of wool or linen of 
 which the clothes are made ; while the men for the most part 
 read, or else lose themselves in those prodigious meditations 
 which have given birth to the grand theories, the mystic 
 dreams of the North, its beliefs and its studies so thorough 
 on certain points of science that they have probed to the 
 core ; a semi-monastic mode of life, which forces the soul 
 back to feed on itself, and which makes the Norwegian peasant 
 a being apart in the nations of Europe. 
 
 This, then, was the state of things on the Strom-fiord in 
 the first year of the nineteenth century, about the middle of 
 the month of May. 
 
 One morning, when the sun was blazing down into the 
 heart of this landscape, lighting up the flashes of the ephemeral 
 diamonds produced by the crystallized surface of the snow 
 
10 SERAPHITA. 
 
 and ice, two persons crossed the gulf and flew along the 
 shelves of the Falberg, mounting toward the summit from 
 ledge to ledge. Were they two human beings or were they 
 arrows? Any one who should have seen them would have 
 taken them for two eiders soaring with one consent below the 
 clouds. Not the most superstitious fisherman, not the most 
 daring hunter, would have supposed that human creatures 
 could have the power of pursuing a path along the faint lines 
 traced on the granite sides, where this pair were, nevertheless, 
 gliding along with the appalling skill of somnambulists, when, 
 utterly unconscious of the laws of gravity and the perils of the 
 least false step, they run along a roof, preserving their balance 
 under the influence of an unknown power. 
 
 "Stop here, Seraphitus," said a pale girl, "and let me 
 take breath. I would look only at you as we climbed the 
 walls of this abyss; if I had not, what would have become of 
 me ? But, at the same time, I am but a feeble creature. Do 
 I tire you?" 
 
 " No," said the being on whose arm she leaned. " Let us 
 go on, Minna; the spot where we are standing is not firm 
 enough to remain on." 
 
 Once more the snow hissed off from the long boards at- 
 tached to their feet, and they presently reached the first angular 
 crag which chance had thrown out boldly from the face of the 
 precipice. The person whom Minna had addressed as Sera- 
 phitus poised himself on his right heel to raise the lath of 
 about six feet long, and as narrow as a child's shoe, which 
 was fastened to his boot by two straps of walrus skin ; this 
 lath, over an inch thick, had a sole of reindeer skin, and the 
 hair, pressed back against the snow, brought him to a full 
 stop. By turning his left foot, on which this snow-shoe (or 
 ski) was not less than twelve feet in length, he was able to 
 turn nimbly round, he returned to his timid companion, lifted 
 her up in spite of his awkward foot gear, and set her down 
 on a rocky seat, after dusting away the snow with his pelisse. 
 
THE DREADFUL INFLUENCE OF THE VOID HAD SEIZED HER 
 
SERAPHITA. 11 
 
 " You are safe here, Minna, and may tremble at your ease." 
 
 " We have already reached a third of the height of the Ice- 
 Cap," said she, looking at the peak, which she called by its 
 popular Norwegian name. " I do not yet believe " 
 
 But she was too much out of breath to talk ; she smiled at 
 Seraphitus, who, without replying, held her up, his hand on 
 her heart, listening to its palpitations, as rapid as those of a 
 startled fledgling. 
 
 " It often beats as fast as that when I have been running," 
 said she. 
 
 Seraphitus bowed, without any coldness or indifference. In 
 spite of the grace of this reply, which made it almost sweet, 
 it nevertheless betrayed a reserve which in a woman would 
 have been intoxicatingly provoking. Seraphitus clasped the 
 girl to him, and Minna took the caress for an answer, and sat 
 looking at him. As Seraphitus raised his head, tossing back 
 the golden locks of his hair with an almost impatient jerk, he 
 saw happiness in his companion's eyes. 
 
 "Yes, Minna," said he, in a paternal tone that was pecu- 
 liarly charming in a youth scarcely full grown, " look at me. 
 Do not look down." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Do you want to know? Try then." 
 
 Minna gave one hasty glance at her feet, and cried out like 
 a child that has met a tiger. The dreadful influence of the 
 void had seized her, and one look had been enough to give it 
 to her. The fiord, greedy of its prey, had a loud voice, stun- 
 ning her by ringing in her ears, as though to swallow her up 
 more surely by coming between her and life. From her hair 
 to her feet, all down her spine, ran a shudder, at first of cold ; 
 but then it seemed to fire her nerves with intolerable heat, 
 throbbed in her veins, and made her limbs feel weak from 
 electrical shocks, like those caused by touching the electrical 
 eel. Too weak to resist, she felt herself drawn by some un- 
 known force to the bottom of the cliff, where she fancied she 
 
12 SERAPHITA. 
 
 could see a monster spouting venom, a monster whose mag- 
 netic eyes fascinated her, and whose yawning jaws crunched 
 his prey by anticipation. 
 
 " I am dying, my Seraphitus, having loved no one but you," 
 said she, mechanically moving to throw herself down. 
 
 Seraphitus blew softly on her brow and eyes. Suddenly, as 
 a traveler is refreshed by a bath, Minna had forgotten that 
 acute anguish ; it had vanished under that soothing breath, 
 which penetrated her frame and bathed it in balsamic efflu- 
 ence, as swiftly as the breath had passed through the air. 
 
 "Who and what are you?" said she, with an impulse of 
 delicious alarm. "But I know. Thou art my life. How 
 can you look down into the gulf without dying?" she asked 
 after a pause. 
 
 Seraphitus left Minna clinging to the granite, and went as 
 a shadow might have done to stand on the edge of the crag, 
 his eyes sounding the bottom of the fiord, defying its bewil- 
 dering depths ; his figure did not sway, his brow was as white 
 and calm as that of a marble statue deep meeting deep. 
 
 "Seraphitus, if you love me, come back! " cried the girl. 
 " Your danger brings back all my torments. Who who are 
 you to have such superhuman strength at your age ? ' ' she 
 asked, feeling his arms around her once more. 
 
 "Why," said Seraphitus, "you can look into far vaster 
 space without a qualm ; " and, raising his hand, the strange 
 being pointed to the blue halo formed by the clouds round a 
 clear opening just over their heads, in which they could see 
 the stars, though it was daylight, in consequence of some 
 atmospheric laws not yet fully explained. 
 
 " But what a difference ! " she said, smiling. 
 
 "You are right," he replied ; " we are born to aspire sky- 
 ward. Our native home, like a mother's face, never frightens 
 its children." 
 
 His voice found an echo in his companion's soul ; she was 
 silent. 
 
SERAPHITA. 13 
 
 " Come, let us go on," said he. 
 
 They rushed on together by the paths faintly visible along 
 the mountain-side, devouring the distance, flying from shelf 
 to shelf, from ledge to ledge, with the swiftness of the Arab 
 horse, that bird of the desert. In a few minutes they reached 
 a green carpet of grass, moss, and flowers, where no foot had 
 ever trod. 
 
 "What a pretty sceter /" cried Minna, giving the native 
 name to this little meadow; "but how comes it here, so 
 high up?" 
 
 "Here, indeed, the Norwegian vegetation ceases," said 
 Seraphitus; "and if a few plants and flowers thrive on this 
 spot, it is thanks to the shelter of the rock which protects 
 them from the Polar cold. Put this spray in your bosom, 
 Minna," he went on, plucking a flower; "take this sweet 
 creature on which no human eye has yet rested, and keep the 
 unique blossom in memory of this day, unique in your life ! 
 You will never again find a guide to lead you to this safer." 
 
 He hastily gave her a hybrid plant which his eagle eye had 
 discerned among the growth of silene acanlis and saxifrage, a 
 real miracle developed under the breath of angels. Minna 
 seized it with childlike eagerness ; a tuft of green, as trans- 
 parent and vivid as an emerald, composed of tiny leaves 
 curled into cones, light brown at the heart, shaded softly to 
 green at the point, and cut into infinitely delicate teeth. 
 These leaves were so closely set that they seemed to mingle in 
 a dense mass of dainty rosettes. Here and there this cushion 
 was studded with white stars edged with a line of gold, and 
 from the heart of each gjew a bunch of purple stamens with- 
 out a pistil. A scent that seemed to combine that of the rose 
 and of the orange-blossom, but wilder and more ethereal, 
 gave a heavenly charm to this mysterious flower, at which 
 Seraphitus gazed with melancholy, as though its perfume had 
 expressed to him a plaintive thought, which he alone under- 
 stood. To Minna this amazing blossom seemed a caprice of 
 
14 SERAPHITA. 
 
 Nature, who had amused herself by endowing a handful of 
 gems with the freshness, tenderness, and fragrance of a plant. 
 
 "Why should it be unique? Will it never reproduce its 
 kind?" said she to Seraphitus, who colored and changed the 
 subject. 
 
 "Let us sit down turn round look! At such a height 
 you will perhaps not be frightened. The gulfs are so far 
 below that you cannot measure their depth; they have the 
 level perspective of the sea, the indefiniteness of the clouds, 
 the hue of the sky. The ice in the fiord is an exquisite tur- 
 quoise, the pine forests are visible only as dim brown streaks. 
 To us the depths may well be thus disguised." 
 
 Seraphitus spoke these words with that unction of tone and 
 gesture which is known only to those who have attained to 
 the highest places on the mountains of the earth, and which 
 is so involuntarily assumed that the most arrogant master finds 
 himself prompted to treat his guide as a brother, and never 
 feels himself the superior till they have descended into the 
 valleys where men dwell. 
 
 He untied Minna's snow-shoes, kneeling at her feet. The 
 girl did not notice it, so much was she amazed at the imposing 
 spectacle of the Norwegian panorama the long stretch of 
 rocks lying before her at a glance, so much was she struck by 
 the perennial solemnity of those frozen summits, for which 
 words have no expression. 
 
 "We have not come here by unaided human strength!" 
 said she, cbsping her hands. " I must be dreaming ! " 
 
 "You call a fact supernatural, because you do not know its 
 cause," he replied. 
 
 "Your answers are always stamped with some deep mean- 
 ing," said she. " With you I understand everything without 
 an effort. Ah ! I am free ! " 
 
 " Your snow-shoes are off, that is all." 
 
 "Oh!" cried she, "and I would fain have untied yours, 
 and have kissed your feet ! " 
 
SERAPHITA. 15 
 
 "Keep those speeches for Wilfrid," said Seraphitus mildly. 
 
 "Wilfrid! " echoed Minna in a tone of fury, which died 
 away as she looked at her companion. "You are never 
 angry!" said she, trying, but in vain, to take his hand. 
 " You are in all things so desperately perfect ! " 
 
 " Whence you infer that I have no feelings? " 
 
 Minna was startled at a glance so penetratingly thrown into 
 her mind. 
 
 " You prove to me that we understand each other," replied 
 she, with the grace of a loving woman. 
 
 Seraphitus gently shook his head, with a flashing look that 
 was at once sweet and sad. 
 
 "You who know everything," Minna went on, "tell me 
 why the alarm I felt below, by your side, is dissipated now 
 that I am up here ; why I dare for the first time to look you in 
 the face ; whereas, down there, I scarcely dared to steal a 
 furtive glance at you?" 
 
 " Perhaps up here we have cast off the mean things of the 
 earth," said he, pulling off his pelisse. 
 
 "I never saw you so beautiful," said Minna, sitting down 
 on a mossy stone, and gazing in contemplation of the being 
 who had thus brought her to a part of the mountain which 
 from afar seemed inaccessible. 
 
 Never, in fact, had Seraphitus shone with such brilliant 
 splendor the only expression that can do justice to the eager- 
 ness of his face and the aspect of his person. Was this radi- 
 ance due to the effulgence given to the complexion by the pure 
 mountain-air and the reflection from the snow ? Was it the 
 result of an internal impetus which still excites the frame at 
 the moment it is resting after long exertion ? Was it produced 
 by the sudden contrast between the golden glow of sunshine 
 and the gloom of the clouds through which this pretty pair 
 had passed ? 
 
 To all these causes we must, perhaps, add the effects of one 
 of the most beautiful phenomena that human nature can offer. 
 
16 SERAPHITA. 
 
 If some skilled physiologist had studied this being, who, to 
 judge by the boldness of his brow and the light in his eyes at 
 this moment, was a youth of seventeen ; if he had sought the 
 springs of this blooming life under the whitest skin that the 
 North ever bestowed on one of its sons, he would, no doubt, 
 have believed in the existence of a phosphoric fluid in the 
 sinews that seemed to shine through the skin, or in the con- 
 stant presence of an internal glow, which tinted Seraphitus as 
 a light shines through an alabaster vase. Delicately slender 
 as his hands were he had taken off his gloves to loosen 
 Minna's sandals they seemed to have such strength as the 
 Creator has given to the diaphanous joints of a crab. The 
 fire that blazed in his eyes rivaled the rays of the sun ; he 
 seemed not to receive but to give out light. His frame, as 
 slight and fragile as a woman's, was that of a nature feeble 
 in appearance, but whose strength is always adequate to its 
 desires, which are sometimes strong. Seraphitus, though of 
 middle height, seemed taller as seen in front ; he looked as if 
 he fain would spring upward. His hair, with its light curls, 
 as if touched by a fairy hand and tossed by a breeze, added to 
 the illusion produced by his airy attitude ; but this absolutely 
 effortless mien was the outcome rather of a mental state than 
 of physical habit. 
 
 Minna's imagination seconded this constant hallucination ; 
 it would have affected any beholder, for it gave to Seraphitus 
 the appearance of one of the beings we see in our happiest 
 dreams. No familiar type can give any idea of this face, to 
 Minna so majestically manly, though in the sight of a man its 
 feminine grace would have eclipsed the loveliest heads by 
 Raphael. That Painter of Heaven has frequently given a sort 
 of tranquil joy and tender suavity to the lines of his angelic 
 beauties; but without seeing Seraphitus himself, what mind 
 can conceive of the sadness mingled with hope which half 
 clouded the ineffable feelings expressed in his features? Who 
 could picture to himself, even in the artist's dream, where all 
 
SERAPHITA. 17 
 
 things are possible, the shadows c?st by mysterious awe on 
 that too intellectual brow, which seemed to interrogate the 
 skies, and always to pity the earth? That head could tower 
 disdainful, like a noble bird of prey whose cries rend the air, 
 or bow resigned, like the turtle-dove whose voice sheds tender- 
 ness in the depths of the silent forest. 
 
 Seraphitus had a complexion of surprising whiteness, made 
 all the more remarkable by red lips, brown eyebrows, and 
 silky lashes, the only details that broke the pallor of a face 
 whose perfect regularity did not hinder the strong expression 
 of his feelings; they were mirrored there without shock or 
 violence, but with the natural, majestic gravity we like to 
 attribute to superior beings. Everything in those monu- 
 mental features spoke of strength and repose. 
 
 Minna stood up to take the young man's hand, hoping to 
 draw him down to her so as to press on that fascinating brow 
 a kiss of admiration rather than of love; but one look from 
 his eyes, a look that went through her as a sunbeam goes 
 through a glass prism, froze the poor child. She felt the gulf 
 between them without understanding it ; she turned away her 
 head and wept. Suddenly a strong hand was around her 
 waist, and a voice full of kindness said 
 
 "Come." 
 
 She obeyed, resting her head in sudden relief on the young 
 man's heart ; while he, measuring his steps by hers in gentle 
 and attentive conformity, led her to a spot whence they could 
 behold the dazzling beauty of the Polar scenery. 
 
 " But before I look or listen, tell me, Seraphitus, why do 
 you repulse me? Have I displeased you? And how? Tell 
 me. I do not want to call anything my own ; I would that 
 my earthly possessions should be yours, as the riches of my 
 heart already are ; that light should come to me only from 
 your eyes, as my mind is dependent on yours ; then I should 
 have no fear of offending you, since I should but reflect the 
 impulses of your soul, the words of your heart, the light of 
 2 
 
18 SERAPHITA. 
 
 your light, as we send up to God the meditations by which 
 He feeds our spirit. I would be wholly thine ! " 
 
 " Well, Minna, a constant aspiration is a promise made by 
 the future. Hope on ! Still, if you would be pure always, 
 unite the thought of the Almighty to your earthly affections. 
 Thus will you love all creatures, and your heart will soar 
 high!" 
 
 "I will do whatever you desire," said she, looking up at 
 him timidly. 
 
 " I cannot be your companion," said Seraphitus sadly. 
 
 He suppressed some reflections, raised his arms in the 
 direction of Christiania, which was visible as a speck on the 
 horizon, and said 
 
 "Look!" 
 
 " We are indeed small," said she. 
 
 "Yes; but we become great by feeling and intellect," said 
 Seraphitus. " The knowledge of things, Minna, begins with 
 us ; the little we know of the laws of the visible world enables 
 us to conceive of the immensity of higher spheres. I know 
 not whether the time is ripe for talking thus to you ; but I so 
 long to communicate to you the flame of my hopes ! Some 
 day, perhaps, we may meet in the world where love never 
 dies." 
 
 "Why not now and for ever?" said she in a murmur. 
 
 " Here nothing is permanent ! " said he in a tone of scorn. 
 " The transient joys of earthly love are false lights which reveal 
 to some souls the dawn of more durable bliss, just as the dis- 
 covery of a law of nature enables certain privileged minds to 
 deduct a whole system. Is not our perishable happiness here 
 below an earnest of some other more perfect happiness, as the 
 earth, a mere fragment of the universe, testifies to the uni- 
 verse? We cannot measure the orbit of the Divjne mind, 
 of which we are but atoms as minute as God is great ; but we 
 may have our intuitions of its vastness, we may kneel, adore, 
 and wait. Men are constantly mistaken in their science, not 
 
SERAPHITA. 19 
 
 seeing that everything on their globe is relative and subordi- 
 nate to a general cycle, an incessant productiveness which 
 inevitably involves progress, and an aim. Man himself is not 
 the final creation ; if he were, God would not exist." 
 
 "How have you had time to learn so many things? " said 
 the girl. 
 
 "They are memories," replied he. 
 
 "To me you are more beautiful than anything I see." 
 
 " We are one of the greatest works of God. Has He not 
 bestowed on us the faculty of reflecting nature, concentrating 
 it in ourselves by thought, and making it a stepping-stone 
 from which to fly to Him ? We love each other in proportion 
 to what is heavenly in our souls. But do not be unjust, Minna ; 
 look at the scene displayed at our feet ; is it not grand ? 
 The ocean lies spread like a floor, the mountains are like the 
 walls of an amphitheatre, the ether above is like the sus- 
 pended velarium of the theatre, and we can inhale the mino 
 of God as a perfume. 
 
 " Look ! the storms that wreck vessels filled with men from 
 hence appear like mere froth ; if you look above you all is 
 serene ; we see a diadem of stars. The shades of earthly 
 expression are here lost. Thus supported by nature so atten- 
 uated by space, do you not feel your mind to be deep rather than 
 keen? Are you not conscious of more loftiness than en- 
 thusiasm, of more energy than will ? Have you not feelings to 
 which nothing within us can give utterance ? Do you not 
 feel your pinions? Let us pray ! " 
 
 Seraphitus knelt, crossing his hands over his bosom, and 
 Minna fell on her knees weeping. Thus they remained for 
 some minutes, and the blue halo that quivered in the sky 
 above them spread, and rays of light fell round the uncon- 
 scious pair. 
 
 " Why do you not weep when I weep? " said Minna in a 
 broken voice. 
 
 "Those who are pure in spirit shed no tears," replied 
 
20 SERAPHITA. 
 
 Seraphitus, rising. " Why should I weep ? I no longer see 
 human misery. Here all is good and shines in majesty. 
 Below I hear the supplications and the lament of the harp of 
 suffering, sounding under the hands of the spirit held captive. 
 Here I listen to the concert of harmonious harps. Below, 
 you have hope, the beautiful rudiment of faith; but here faith 
 reigns, the realization of hope ! " 
 
 "You can never love me, I am too imperfect; you disdain 
 me," said the girl. 
 
 " Minna, the violet hidden at the foot of the oak says to 
 itself, 'The sun does not love me, he never comes.' The 
 sun says, ' If I fell on her, that poor little flower would 
 perish ! ' Because he is the flower's friend he lets his beams 
 steal through the oak-leaves, subduing them to tint the petals 
 of the blossom he loves. I feel I am not sufficiently shrouded, 
 and fear lest you should see me too clearly ; you would quail 
 if you knew me too well.* -Listen; I have no taste for the 
 fruits of the earth ; I have understood your joys too well ; 
 like the debauched Emperors of Pagan Rome, I am disgusted 
 with all things, for I have the gift of vision. Leave me for 
 ever," added Seraphitussorrowfully. 
 
 He went away to sit down on a projecting rock, his head 
 drooping on his breast. 
 
 " Why thus drive me to despair? " said Minna. 
 
 "Go from me!" cried Seraphitus; "I can give nothing 
 that you want. Your love is too gross for me. Why do you 
 not love Wilfrid? Wilfrid is a man, a man tested by passion, 
 who will clasp you in his sinewy arms and make you feel his 
 broad, strong hand. He has fine black hair, eyes full of 
 human feeling, a heart that fires the words of his lips with a 
 lava torrent. He will crush you with caresses. He will be 
 your lover, your husband. Go to Wilfrid ! " 
 
 Minna was crying bitterly. 
 
 "Dare you tell me that you do not love him?" he added 
 in a voice that pierced her like a dagger. 
 
SERAPHITA. 21 
 
 " Mercy ! Mercy ! My Seraph itus ! " 
 
 "Love him, poor child of earth, to which fate irrevocably 
 rivets you," said the terrible Seraphitus, seizing the girl with 
 such force as dragged her to the brink of the sater, whence 
 the prospect was so extensive that a young creature full of 
 enthusiasm might easily fancy that she was above the world. 
 " I wanted a companion to go with me to the realm of light ; 
 I thought to show her this ball of clay, and I find you still 
 cling to it. Adieu ! Remain as you are, enjoy through your 
 senses, obey your nature ; turn pale with pallid men, blush 
 with women, play with children, pray with sinners, look up 
 to heaven when you are stricken ; tremble, hope, yearn ; you 
 will have a comrade, you still may laugh and weep, give and 
 receive. For me I am an exile far from heaven ; like a 
 monster, far from earth ! My heart beats for none ; I live 
 in myself alone. I feel through my spirit, I breathe by my 
 brain, I see by my mind, I am dying of impatience and long- 
 ing. No one here below can satisfy my wishes or soothe my 
 eagerness ; and I have forgotten how to weep. I am alone. 
 I am resigned, and I wait." 
 
 Seraphitus looked at the flowery knoll on which he had 
 placed Minna, and then turned toward the frowning summits, 
 round whose peaks heavy clouds had gathered, into which he 
 seemed to fling his next thoughts. 
 
 " Do you hear that delightful music, Minna?" said he, in 
 his dove-like tones, for the eagle had ended his cry. "Might 
 one not fancy that it was the harmony of those seolian harps 
 which poets imagine in the midst of forests and mountains? 
 Do you see the shadowy forms moving among those clouds ? 
 Do you discerntthe winged feet of those who deck the sky 
 with such hangings ? Those sounds refresh the soul ; heaven 
 will ere long shed the blossoms of spring, a flash blazes up 
 from the Pole. Let us fly, Minette it is time ! " 
 
 In an instant they had replaced their snow-shoes and were 
 descending the Falberg by the steep slopes down to the valley 
 
22 SERAPHITA. 
 
 of the Sieg. Some miraculous intelligence guided their steps 
 or rather their flight. When a crevasse covered with snow 
 lay before them, Seraphitus seized Minna, and with a swift 
 rush dashed, scarce the weight of a bird, across the frail 
 bridge that covered a chasm. Many a time, by just pushing 
 his companion, he deviated slightly to avoid a cliff or tree, a 
 block of stone which he seemed to see through the snow, as 
 certain mariners, accustomed to the sea, discern a shoal by 
 the color, the eddy, and the recoil of the water. 
 
 When they had reached the roads of the Siegdahl, and they 
 could proceed without hesitation in a straight line down to 
 the ice on the fiord, Seraphitus spoke. 
 
 "You have nothing more to say to me ? " he asked Minna. 
 
 " I fancied," replied the girl respectfully, " that you wished 
 to think in silence." 
 
 11 Make haste, pretty one, the night is falling," said he. 
 
 Minna was startled at hearing the new voice, so to speak, 
 in which her guide spoke. A voice as clear as a girl's dissi- 
 pating the fantastic flashes of the dream in which she had been 
 walking. Seraphitus was abdicating his manly strength, and 
 his looks were losing their too keen insight. Presently the 
 fair couple were gliding across the fiord ; they reached the 
 snowy level that lay between the margin of the bay and the 
 first houses of Jarvis; then, urged by the waning light, they 
 hurried up to the parsonage as if climbing the steps of an enor- 
 mous stairway. 
 
 " My father will be uneasy," said Minna. 
 
 "No," said Seraphitus. 
 
 At this moment they stopped at the porch of the humble 
 dwelling where Pastor Becker, the minister of Jarvis, sat read- 
 ing while awaiting his daughter's return to supper. 
 
 "Dear Pastor Becker," said Seraphitus, "I have brought 
 your daughter back safe and sound." 
 
 "Thank you, mademoiselle," said the old man, laying his 
 spectacles on the book. " You must be tired." 
 
SERAPHITA. 23 
 
 "Not in the least," said Minna, on whose brow her com- 
 panion had just breathed. 
 
 " Dear child, will you come to tea with me the evening 
 after to-morrow?" 
 
 "With pleasure, dear." 
 
 " Monsieur Becker, will you bring her?" 
 
 "Yes, mademoiselle." 
 
 Seraphitus nodded prettily, bowed to the old man, and left, 
 and in a few minutes was in the courtyard of the Swedish 
 Castle. An old servant of eighty came out under the wide 
 veranda, carrying a lantern. Seraphitus slipped off the snow- 
 shoes with the grace of a woman, ran into the sitting-room, 
 dropped on to a large divan covered with skins, and lay 
 down. 
 
 "What will you take?" said the old man, lighting the 
 enormously long tapers that are used in Norway. 
 
 " Nothing, David ; I am too tired." 
 
 Seraphitus threw off the sable-lined pelisse, wrapped it about 
 him, and was asleep. The old servant lingered a few minutes 
 in loving contemplation of the strange being resting under his 
 gaze, and whose sex the most learned man would have been 
 puzzled to pronounce on. Seeing him as he lay, wrapped in 
 his usual formless garment, which was as much like a woman's 
 dressing-gown as a man's overcoat, it was impossible to believe 
 that the slender feet that hung down, as if to display the deli- 
 cacy with which nature had moulded them, were not those of a 
 young girl ; but the brow, the profile, seemed the embodiment 
 of human strength carried to its highest pitch. 
 
 "She is suffering, and will not tell me," thought the old 
 man. "She is dying like a flower scorched by too fierce a 
 sunbeam." 
 
 And the old man wept. 
 
n. 
 
 SERAPHITA. 
 
 In the course of the evening David came into the drawing- 
 room. 
 
 " I know who is coming," said Seraphita in a sleepy voice. 
 " Wilfrid may come in." 
 
 On hearing these words, a man at once appeared, and came 
 to sit down by her. 
 
 "My dear Seraphita, are you ill? You look paler than 
 usual." 
 
 She turned languidly toward him, after tossing back her 
 hair like a pretty woman overpowered by sick-headache and 
 too feeble to complain. 
 
 " I was foolish enough," said she, " to cross the fiord with 
 Minna; we have been up the Falberg." 
 
 "Did you want to kill yourself?" cried he, with a lover's 
 alarm. 
 
 " Do not be uneasy, my good Wilfrid, I took great care of 
 your Minna." 
 
 Wilfrid struck the table violently with his hand, took a few 
 steps toward the door with an exclamation of pain ; then he 
 came back and began to reproach her. 
 
 " Why so much noise if you suppose me to be suffering? " 
 said Seraphita. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, forgive me," said he, kneeling down. 
 " Speak harshly to me, require anything of me that your cruel 
 woman's caprice may suggest to you as hardest to be endured, 
 but, my beloved, do not doubt my love ! You use Minna 
 like a hatchet to hit me with again and again. Have some 
 mercy ! " 
 
 "Why speak thus, my friend, when you know that such 
 (24) 
 
SERAPHITA. 25 
 
 words are useless?" she replied, looking at him with a gaze 
 that became at last so soft that what Wilfrid saw was not 
 Seraphita's eyes, but a fluid light shimmering like the last 
 vibrations of a song full of Italian languor. 
 
 "Ah ! anguish cannot kill ! " cried he. 
 
 "Are you in pain?" said she, in a voice which produced 
 on him the same effect as her look. "What can I do for 
 you ? ' ' 
 
 " Love me, as I love you ! " 
 
 " Poor Minna ! " said she. 
 
 " I never bring any weapons ! " cried Wilfrid. 
 
 "You are in a detestable temper," said Seraphita, smiling. 
 "Have I not spoken nicely, like the Parisian ladies of whom 
 you tell me love stories? " 
 
 Wilfrid sat down, folded his arms, and looked gloomily at 
 Seraphita. 
 
 " I forgive you," said he, " for you know not what you do." 
 
 "Oh ! " retorted she, "every woman from Eve downward 
 knows when she is doing good or evil." 
 
 "I believe it," said he. 
 
 " I am sure of it, Wilfrid. Our intuition is just what makes 
 us so perfect. What you men have to learn, we feel." 
 
 " Why, then, do you not feel how much I love you? " 
 
 "Because you do not love me." 
 
 "Great God!" 
 
 " Why then do you complain of anguish? " 
 
 " You are terrible this evening, Seraphita. You are a per- 
 fect demon ! " 
 
 "No; but I have the gift of understanding, and that is 
 terrifying. Suffering, Wilfrid, is a light thrown on life." 
 
 " Why did you go up the Falberg ? " 
 
 "Minna will tell you; I am too tired to speak. You 
 must talk, you who know everything, who have learnt every- 
 thing and forgotten nothing, and have gone through so many 
 social experiences. Amuse me ; I am listening." 
 
26 SERAPHITA. 
 
 " What can I tell you that you do not know ! Indeed, 
 your request is a mockery. You recognize nothing that is 
 worldly, you analyze its terminology, you demolish its laws, 
 its manners, feelings, sciences, by reducing them to the pro- 
 portions they assume when we take our stand outside the 
 globe." 
 
 "You see, my friend, I am not a woman. You are wrong 
 to love me. What ! I quit the ethereal regions of strength 
 you attribute to me ; I make myself humble and insignificant 
 to stoop after the manner of the poor female of every species 
 and you at once uplift me ! Then, when I am crushed and 
 broken, I crave your help ; I want your arm, and you repulse 
 me ! We do not understand each other." 
 
 "You are more malignant this evening than I have ever 
 known you." 
 
 "Malignant?" said she, with a flashing look that melted 
 every sentiment into one heavenly emotion. "No; I am 
 weary, that is all. Then, leave me, my friend. Will not that 
 be a due exercise of your rights as a man ? We are always to 
 charm you, to recreate you, always to be cheerful, and have 
 no whims but those that amuse you. What shall I do, my 
 friend? Shall I sing or dance, when fatigue has deprived 
 me of voice and of the use of my legs ? Yes, gentlemen, at our 
 last gasp we still must smile on you ! That, I believe, you 
 call your sovereignty ! Poor women ! I pity them. You 
 abandon them when they are old ; tell me, have they then 
 no longer heart or soul ? Well, and I am more than a hun- 
 dred, Wilfrid. Go go to kneel at Minna's feet." 
 
 " Oh, my one, eternal love ! " 
 
 "Do you know what eternity is? Be silent, Wilfrid. 
 You desire me, but you do not love me. Tell me, now, do 
 not I remind you of some coquette you have met ? " 
 
 " I certainly do not see you now as the pure and heavenly 
 maiden I saw for the first time in the church at Jarvis." 
 
 As he spoke Seraphita passed her hands over her brow, and 
 
SERAPHITA. 27 
 
 when she uncovered her face Wilfrid was astonished at the 
 religious and saintly expression it wore. 
 
 " You are right, my friend. I do wrong whenever I set 
 foot upon your earth." 
 
 " Yes, beloved Seraphita, be my star. Never descend from 
 the place whence you shed such glorious light upon me." 
 
 He put out his hand to take the girl's, but she withdrew it, 
 though without disdain or anger. Wilfrid hastily rose and 
 went to stand by the window, turning toward it so that Sera- 
 phita should not see a few tears that filled his eyes. 
 
 "Why these tears?" she asked. "You are no longer a 
 boy, Wilfrid. Come back to me, I insist. You are vexed 
 with me, when it is I who should be angry. You see I am 
 not well, and you compel me by some foolish doubts to think 
 and speak, or participate in whims and ideas that fatigue me. 
 If you at all understood my nature, you would have given me 
 some music ; you would have soothed my weariness ; but you 
 love me for your own sake, not for myself." 
 
 The storm which raged in Wilfrid's soul was stilled by these 
 words ; he came back slowly to contemplate the bewitching 
 creature who reclined under his eyes, softly pillowed, her 
 head resting on her hand, and her elbow in an insinuating 
 attitude. 
 
 "You fancy I do not like you," she went on. "You are 
 mistaken. Listen, Wilfrid. You are beginning to know a 
 great deal, and you have suffered much. Allow me to explain 
 your thoughts. You wanted to take my hand." 
 
 She sat up, and her graceful movement seemed to shed 
 gleams of light. 
 
 " Does not a girl who allows a man to take her hand seem 
 to make a promise, and ought she not to keep it? You know 
 full well that I can never be yours. Two feelings rule the 
 love that attracts the women of this earth : either they devote 
 themselves to suffering creatures, degraded and guilty, whom 
 they desire to comfort, to raise, to redeem ; or they give them- 
 
28 SERAPHITA. 
 
 selves wholly to superior beings, sublime and strong, whom 
 they are fain to worship and understand by whom they are 
 too often crushed. You have been degraded, but you have 
 purified yourself in the fires of repentance, and you now are 
 great ; I feel myself too small to be your equal, and I am too 
 religious to humble myself to any power but that of the Most 
 High. Your life, my friend, may thus be stated ; we are in 
 the North, among the clouds, where abstractions are familiar 
 to our minds." 
 
 "Seraphita, you kill me when you talk so," he replied. 
 "It is always torture to me to see you thus apply the monstrous 
 science which strips all human things of the properties they 
 derive from time, space, form, when you regard them mathe- 
 matically under some ultimate simplest expression, as geometry 
 does with bodies, abstracting dimensions from substance." 
 
 "Well, Wilfrid, I submit. Look at this bearskin rug 
 which my poor David has spread. What do you think of 
 it?" 
 
 "I like it very well." 
 
 "You did not know I had that Doucha greka ? " 
 
 It was a sort of pelisse made of cashmere lined with black 
 fox-skin; the name means, "warm to the soul." 
 
 "Do you suppose/' said she, "that any sovereign in any 
 court possesses a fur wrap to match it ? " 
 
 " It is worthy of her who wears it ? " 
 
 "And whom you think very beautiful?" 
 
 "Human words are inapplicable to her; she must bead- 
 dressed heart to heart." 
 
 " Wilfrid, it is kind of you to soothe my griefs with such 
 sweet words which you have spoken to others." 
 
 "Good-by." 
 
 " Stay. I love you truly, and Minna too, believe me, but 
 to me you two are one being. Thus combined you are as a 
 brother, or, if you will, a sister to me. Marry each other, let 
 me see you happy before quitting forever this sphere of trial 
 
SERAPHITA. 29 
 
 and sorrow. Dear me ! the most ordinary women have made 
 their lovers obey their will. They have said ' Be silent ! ' 
 and their lovers were mute. They have said ' Die ! ' and men 
 have died. They have said ' Love me from afar ! ' the lovers 
 have remained at a distance like courtiers in the presence of a 
 king. They have said ' Go, marry ! ' and the men have 
 married. Now, I want you to be happy, and you refuse. 
 Have I then no power ? Well, Wilfrid come close to me. 
 Yes, I should be sorry to see you married to Minna; but 
 when you see me no more, then promise me to make her 
 your wife, heaven intends you for each other." 
 
 "I have heard you with rapture, Seraphita. Incomprehen- 
 sible as your words are, they are like a charm. But what, 
 indeed, do you mean?" 
 
 "To be sure ; I forget to be foolish, to be the poor creature 
 in whose weakness you delight. I torture you, and you came 
 to this wild country to find rest you who are racked by the 
 fierce throes of misunderstood genius, worn out by the patient 
 labors of science, who have almost stained your hands by 
 crime, and worn the chains of human justice." 
 
 Wilfrid had fallen half-dead on the floor. Seraphita breathed 
 on the young man's brow, and he fell calmly asleep, lying at 
 her feet. 
 
 "Sleep, rest," said she, rising. 
 
 After laying her hands on Wilfrid's forehead, the following 
 phrases fell from her lips, one by one, each in a different tone, 
 but alike melodious and full of a kindly spirit that seemed to 
 emanate from her countenance in misty undulations like the 
 light shed by the heathen goddess on the beloved shepherd in 
 his sleep. 
 
 "I may show myself to you, dear Wilfrid, as I am, to you 
 who are strong. 
 
 " The hour is come, the hour when the shining lights of the 
 future cast their reflections on the soul, the hour when the 
 soul moves, feeling itself free. 
 
30 SERAPHITA. 
 
 "It is granted to me now to tell you how well I love you. 
 Do you not see what my love is, a love devoid of self-interest, 
 a feeling full of you alone, a love which follows you into the 
 future, to light up your future, for such love is the true light. 
 Do you now perceive how ardently I long to see you released 
 from the life that is a burden to you, and nearer to the world 
 where love rules forever? Is not love for a life-time only 
 sheer suffering? Have you not felt a longing for eternal 
 love ? Do you not understand to what ecstasy a being can 
 rise when he is double through loving Him who never betrays 
 his love, Him before whom all bow and worship ? 
 
 " I would I had wings, Wilfrid, to cover you withal ; I 
 would I had strength to give you that you might know the 
 foretaste of the world where the purest joys of the purest 
 union known on earth would cast a shadow in the light that 
 there perennially enlightens and rejoices all hearts ! 
 
 " Forgive a friendly soul for having shown you in one word 
 a vision of your faults with the charitable intention of lulling 
 the acute torments of your remorse. Listen to the choir of 
 forgiveness ! Refresh your spirit by inhaling the dawn that 
 shall rise for you beyond the gloom of death ! Yes, for your 
 life lies there. 
 
 " My words shall wear for you the glorious garb of dreams, 
 and appear as forms of flame descending to visit you. Rise ! 
 Rise to the heights whence men see each other truly, though 
 tiny and crowded as the sands of the seashore. Humanity is 
 unrolled before you as a ribbon : look at the endless hues of 
 that flower of the gardens of heaven. Do you see those who 
 lack intelligence, those who are beginning to be tinged by it, 
 those who have been tried, those who are in the circle of love, 
 and those in wisdom, who aspire to celestial illumination ? 
 
 " Do you understand, through these thoughts made visible, 
 the destination of man whence he comes, whither he is 
 tending ? Keep on your road. When you shall have reached 
 your journey's end, you will hear the trumpet call of omnipo- 
 
SERAPHITA. 31 
 
 tence and loud shouts of victory, and harmonies, only one of 
 which would shake the earth, but which are lost in a world 
 where there is neither East nor West. 
 
 " Do you perceive, dear, much-tried one, that but for the 
 torpor and the veil of sleep, such visions would rend and 
 carry away your intellect, as the wind of a tempest rends and 
 sweeps away a light sail, and would rob a man for ever of his 
 reason ? Do you perceive that the soul alone, raised to its 
 highest power, and even in a dream, can scarce endure the 
 consuming effluence of the Spirit ? 
 
 " Fly, fly again through the realms of light and glory, ad- 
 mire, hurry on. As you fly you are resting, you go forward 
 without fatigue. Like all men, you would fain dwell always 
 thus bathed in these floods of fragrance and light, where you 
 are wandering free of your unconscious body, speaking in 
 thought only. Hurry, fly, rejoice for a moment in the wings 
 you will have earned when love is so perfect in you that you 
 shall cease to have any senses, that you shall be all intellect 
 and all love ! The higher you soar, the less can you conceive 
 of the gulf beneath. Now, gaze at me for a moment, for you 
 will henceforth see me but darkly, as you behold me by the 
 light of the dull sun of the earth ! " 
 
 Seraphita stole up with her head gently bent on one side, 
 her hair flowing about her in the airy pose which the sublimest 
 painters have attributed to messengers from heaven ; the folds 
 of her dress had the indescribable grace which makes the 
 artist, the man to whom everything is an expression of feeling, 
 stop to gaze at the exquisite flowing veil of the antique statue 
 of Polyhymnia. 
 
 Then she extended her hand and Wilfrid rose. 
 
 When he looked at Seraphita, the fair girl was lying on the 
 bearskin, her head resting on her hand, her face calm, her 
 eyes shining. Wilfrid gazed at her in silence, but his features 
 expressed respectful awe, and he looked at her timidly. 
 
 " Yes, dear one," said he at last, as if answering a question, 
 
32 SERAPHITA. 
 
 " whole worlds divide us ! I submit ; I can only adore you. 
 But what is to become of me thus lonely?" 
 
 " Wilfrid, have you not your Minna? " 
 
 He hung his head. 
 
 "Oh, do not be so scornful! a woman can understand 
 everything by love. When she fails to understand, she feels ; 
 when she cannot feel, she sees ; when she can neither see, nor 
 feel, nor understand well, that angel of earth divines your 
 need, to protect you and to hide her protection, under the 
 grace of love." 
 
 " Seraphita, am I worthy to love a woman? " 
 
 "You are suddenly grown very modest ! Is this a snare? 
 A woman is always so much touched to find her weakness 
 glorified! Well, the evening after to-morrow, come to tea. 
 You will find our good Pastor Becker, and you will see Minna, 
 the most guileless creature I ever knew in this world. Now 
 leave me, my friend ; I must say long prayers this evening in 
 expiation of my sins." 
 
 "How can you sin?" 
 
 " My poor, dear friend, is not the abuse of power the sin 
 of pride? I have been, I think, too arrogant to-day. Now 
 away. Till to-morrow." 
 
 " Till to-morrow ! " Wilfrid feebly echoed, with a long look 
 at the being of whom he desired to carry away an indelible 
 memory. 
 
 Though he meant to leave, he remained standing for some 
 moments outside, looking at the lights that beamed from the 
 windows of the Swedish dwelling. 
 
 "What was it that I saw?" he asked himself. "No, it 
 was not a single being, but a whole creation. I retain, of 
 that world seen through veils and mists, a ringing echo like 
 the remembrance of departed pain, or like the dizziness caused 
 by dreams in which we hear the moaning of past generations 
 mingling with the harmonious voices of higher spheres, where 
 all is light and love. Am I awake? Do I still slumber? 
 
SERAPHITA. 33 
 
 Have I not yet opened my sleeping eyes, those eyes before 
 whose sight luminous spaces stretch into infinitude, eyes that 
 can discern those spaces? In spite of the night and the cold, 
 my head is still on fire. I will go to the manse. Between the 
 pastor and his daughter I may recover my balance." 
 
 But he did not yet leave the spot whence he could see into 
 Seraphita's sitting-room. This mysterious being seemed to 
 be the radiant centre of a circle which formed an atmosphere 
 about her rarer than that which surrounds others: he who 
 came within it found himself involved in a vortex of light and 
 of consuming thoughts. Wilfrid, obliged to struggle against 
 this inexplicable force, did not triumph without considerable 
 effort ; when he had gotten out of the precincts of the house, 
 he recovered his freedom of will, walked quickly to the par- 
 sonage, and presently found himself under the lofty wooden 
 porch that served as an entrance hall to Pastor Becker's house. 
 He pushed open the first door, packed with birch bark, against 
 which the snow had drifted ; and knocked eagerly at the inner 
 door, saying 
 
 "Will you allow me to spend the evening with you, Mon- 
 sieur Becker?" 
 
 "Yes," was the answer in two voices speaking as one. 
 
 On entering the parlor, Wilfrid was gradually brought back 
 to real life. He bowed very cordially to Minna, shook hands 
 with the minister, and then looked about him on a scene 
 which soothed the excitement of his physical nature, in which 
 a process was going on resembling that which sometimes takes 
 place in men accustomed to long contemplation. When some 
 powerful conception carries away a man of science or a poet 
 on its chimera-like wings, and isolates him from the external 
 surroundings that hedge him in on earth, soaring with him 
 through those boundless regions where vast masses of fact 
 appear as abstractions and the most stupendous works of 
 nature seem but images, woe to him if some sudden noise 
 rouses his senses and recalls his wandering soul to its prison 
 3 
 
34 SERAPHITA. 
 
 of bone and flesh ! The collision of the two powers : body 
 and spirit, one of which has something of the invisible element 
 of lightning; while the other, like all tangible forms, has a 
 certain soft resistancy which for the moment defies destruction 
 this collision, or, to be accurate, this terrible reunion, gives 
 rise to unspeakable suffering. The body has cried out for the 
 fire that consumes it, and the flame has recaptured its prey. 
 But this fusion cannot take place without the ebullition, the 
 crepitation and convulsions, of which chemistry affords visible 
 examples when two hostile elements are sundered that have 
 been joined by its act. 
 
 For some days past, whenever Wilfrid went to Seraphita's 
 house, his body there fell into an abyss. By a single look 
 this wonderful creature translated him in the spirit to the 
 sphere whither meditation carries the learned, whither prayer 
 transports the pious soul, whither his eye can carry the artist, 
 and sleep can waft some dreamers ; for each there is a call 
 bidding him to that empyrean void, for each a guide to lead 
 him there for all there is anguish in the return. There 
 alone is the veil rent, there alone is Revelation seen without 
 disguise an ardent and awful disclosure of the unknown 
 sphere of which the soul brings back nought but fragments. 
 To Wilfrid, an hour spent with Seraphita was often like the 
 dream so dear to the opium-eater, in which each nerve-fibre 
 becomes the focus of radiating rapture. He came away 
 exhausted, like a girl who should try to keep up with the pace 
 of a giant. 
 
 The sharp, punishing cold began to subdue the agony of 
 trepidation caused by the re-amalgamation of the two elements 
 in his nature thus violently wrenched asunder one shock of 
 which partakes of the unseen qualities of a thunderbolt, 
 while the other shares with sentient nature that soft resist- 
 ant force which defies destruction then he always made his 
 way to the manse, attracted to Minna by his thirst for the 
 scenes of homely life, as a European traveler thirsts for his 
 
SERAPHITA. 35 
 
 native land when home-sickness seizes him in the midst of the 
 fairy splendors that tempted him to the East. 
 
 At this moment the visitor, more exhausted than he had 
 ever been before, dropped into a chair and looked about him 
 for some minutes, like a man aroused from sleep. Pastor 
 Becker and his daughter, accustomed no doubt to their guest's 
 eccentricity, went on with their occupations. 
 
 The room was decorated with a collection of Norwegian 
 insects and shells. These curiosities, ingeniously arranged on 
 the background of yellow pinewood with which the wall was 
 wainscoted, formed a colored ornamentation to which tobacco 
 smoke had imparted a sombre tone. At the farther end, oppo- 
 site the door, was an enormous wrought-iron stove, carefully 
 rubbed by the neat maidservant till it shone brightly like pol- 
 ished steel. 
 
 Pastor Becker was seated in a large armchair, covered with 
 worsted work, near the stove and in front of a table, his feet 
 in a foot-muff, while he read from a folio supported on other 
 books to form a sort of desk. On his right stood a beer-pitcher 
 and a glass ; on his left a smoky lamp fed with fish oil. The 
 minister was a man of about sixty years; his face of the type 
 so often painted by Rembrandt : the small, keen eyes set in 
 circles of fine wrinkles under thick grizzled brows ; white, hair 
 falling in two silky locks from beneath a black velvet cap ; a 
 broad, bald forehead, and the shape of face which a heavy 
 chin made almost square, and, added to this, the self-possessed 
 calm that betrays to the observer some conscious power the 
 sovereignty conferred by wealth, by the judicial authority of 
 the burgomaster, by the conviction of Art, or the stolid 
 tenacity of happy ignorance. The handsome old man, whose 
 substantial build revealed sound health, was wrapped in a 
 dressing-gown of rough cloth with no ornament but the bind- 
 ing. He gravely held a long meerschaum pipe in his mouth, 
 blowing off the tobacco smoke at regular intervals, and watch- 
 ing its fantastic spirals with a speculative eye, while endeavor- 
 
36 SERAPHITA. 
 
 ing, no doubt, to assimilate and digest by meditation the ideas 
 of the author whose work he was studying. 
 
 On the other side of the stove, near the door that led into 
 the kitchen, Minna was dimly visible through the fog of 
 smoke, to which she seemed to be inured. In front of her, 
 on a small table, were the various implements of a needle- 
 woman ; a pile of towels and stockings to be mended, and a 
 lamp like that which shone on the white pages of the book in 
 which her father seemed to be absorbed. Her fresh, young 
 face, delicately pure in outline, harmonized with the innocence 
 that shone on her white brow and in her bright eyes. She sat 
 forward on her chair, leaning a little toward the light to see 
 the better, unconsciously showing the grace of her figure. She 
 was already dressed for the evening in a white calico wrapper; 
 a plain, cambric cap, with no ornament but its frill, covered 
 her hair. Though lost in some secret meditation, she counted 
 without mistake the threads in the towel, or the stitches in her 
 stocking. Thus she presented the most complete and typical 
 image of woman born to earthly duties, whose eye might 
 pierce the clouds of the sanctuary, while a mind at once 
 humble and charitable kept her on the level of man. Wil- 
 frid, from his armchair between the two tables, contemplated 
 the harmonious picture with a sort of rapture ; the clouds of 
 smoke were not out of keeping. 
 
 The single window which gave light to the room in the 
 summer was now carefully closed. For a curtain, an old 
 piece of tapestry hung from a rod in heavy folds. There was 
 no attempt at the picturesque or showy austere simplicity, 
 genuine homeliness, the unpretentiousness of nature, all the 
 habits of domestic life free from troubles and anxieties. 
 Many dwellings leave the impression of a dream ; the daz- 
 zling flash of transient pleasure seems to hide a ruin under the 
 chill smile of luxury ; but this parlor was sublimely real, har- 
 monious in color, and apt to suggest patriarchal ideas of a 
 busy and devout life. 
 
SERAPHITA. 37 
 
 The silence was broken only by the heavy step of the maid 
 preparing the supper, and by the singing in the pan of the 
 dried fish she was frying in salt butter, after the fashion of 
 the country. 
 
 " Will you smoke a pipe ? " said the pastor presently, when 
 he thought that Wilfrid would heed him. 
 
 " No, thank you, dear Pastor Becker," he replied. 
 
 "You seem less well than usual this evening," said Minna, 
 struck by the visitor's weak voice. 
 
 " I am always so when I have been to the castle." 
 
 Minna was startled. 
 
 "A strange creature dwells there, Pastor Becker," he went 
 on after a pause. " I have been six months in the village, 
 and have never dared to question you about her ; and to-night 
 I have to do violence to my feelings even to speak of her. 
 At first I greatly regretted to find my travels interrupted by 
 the winter, and to be obliged to remain here ; for the last two 
 months, however, the chains binding me to Jarvis have been 
 more closely riveted, and I fear I may end my days here. 
 You know how I first met Seraphita, and the impression made 
 on me by her eyes and her voice, and how at last I was admitted 
 to visit her, though she receives nobody. On the very first 
 day I came to you for information concerning that mysterious 
 creature. Then began for me the series of strange enchant- 
 ments " 
 
 " Of enchantments? " exclaimed the pastor, shaking out 
 the ashes of his pipe into a coarse pan of sand that served 
 him as a spittoon. "Are enchantments possible? " 
 
 "You, certainly, who at this very moment are so con- 
 scientiously studying Jean Wier's book of Incantations, will 
 understand the account I can give you of my sensations," 
 Wilfrid replied quickly. " If we study nature attentively, 
 alike in its great revolutions and in its minutest works, it is 
 impossible not to admit the possibility of enchantment 
 giving the word its fullest meaning. Man can create no 
 
38 SERAPHITA. 
 
 force; he can but use the only existing force, which includes 
 all others, namely, Motion the incomprehensible breath of 
 the sovereign Maker of the universe. The elements are too 
 completely separated for the hand of man to combine them ; 
 the only miracle he can work consists in the mingling of two 
 hostile substances. Even so, gunpowder is akin to thunder ! 
 
 "As to effecting an act of creation, and that suddenly ! All 
 creation needs time, and time will neither hurry nor turn back- 
 ward at our bidding. Hence, outside us, plastic nature obeys 
 laws whose order and procedure cannot be reversed by any 
 human effort. 
 
 " But after conceding this to mere matter, it would be un- 
 reasonable to deny the existence, within us, of a vast power, 
 of which the effects are so infinitely various that the known 
 generations of men have not yet completely classified them. 
 I will say nothing of man's faculty of abstracting his mind, of 
 comprehending nature in the limits of speech, a stupendous 
 fact, of which common minds think no more than they think 
 out the act of motion, but which led Indian Theosophists to 
 speak of creation by the Word, to which they also attributed 
 the contrary power. The tiniest item of their daily food a 
 grain of rice, whence proceeds a whole creature, which 
 presently results in a grain of rice again afforded them so 
 complete a symbol of the creative Word and the synthetical 
 Word, that it seemed a simple matter to apply the system to 
 the creation of worlds. 
 
 " Most men would do well to be content with the grain of 
 rice that lies at the origin of every genesis. Saint John, when 
 he said that the Word was God, only complicated the diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 " But the fruition, the germination, and the blossoming of 
 our ideas is but a trifle if we compare this property, which is 
 distributed among so many men, with the wholly personal 
 faculty of communicating to it certain more or less efficient 
 forces by means of concentration, and thus raising it to the 
 
SERAPH1TA. 39 
 
 third, ninth, or twenty-seventh power, giving it a hold on 
 masses, and obtaining magical results by concentrating the 
 action of Nature. What I call enchantments are the stupen- 
 dous dramas played out between two membranes on the canvas 
 of the brain. In the unexplored realms of the spiritual world 
 we meet with certain beings armed with these astounding 
 faculties comparable only to the terrible powers of gases in 
 the physical world beings who can combine with other 
 beings, can enter into them as an active cause, and work 
 magic in them, against which their hapless victims are defense- 
 less ; they cast a spell on them, override them, reduce them to 
 wretched serfdom, and crush them with the weight and mag- 
 nificent sway of a superior nature ; acting, now like the gynv 
 notus which electrifies and numbs the fisherman ; now, again, 
 like a dose of phosphorus which intensifies the sense of life or 
 hastens its projection ; sometimes like opium, which lulls cor- 
 poreal nature, frees the spirit from its bondage, sends it soaring 
 above the world, shows it the universe through a prism, and 
 extracts for it the nourishment that best pleases it ; and some- 
 times like catalepsy, which annuls every faculty to enhance a 
 single vision. 
 
 " Miracles, spells, incantations, witchcrafts, in short all the 
 facts that are incorrectly called supernatural, can only be pos- 
 sible and accounted for by the authority with which some 
 other mind compels us to accept the effects of a mysterious 
 law of optics which magnifies, or diminishes, or exalts crea- 
 tion, enables it to move within us independently of our will, 
 distorts or embellishes it, snatches us up to heaven, or plunges 
 us into hell the two terms by which we express the excess of 
 rapture or of pain. These phenomena are within us, not out- 
 side us. 
 
 "The being we call Seraphita seems to me to be one of 
 those rare and awe-inspiring spirits to whom it is given to con- 
 strain men, to coerce nature, and share the occult powers of 
 God. The course of her enchantments on me began by her 
 
40 SERAPHITA. 
 
 compelling me to silence. Every time I dared wish to ques- 
 tion you about her, it seemed to me that I was about to reveal 
 a secret of which I was bound to be the impeccable guardian ; 
 whenever I was about to speak, a burning seal was set on my 
 lips, and I was the involuntary slave of this mysterious prohi- 
 bition. You see me now, for the hundredth time, crushed, 
 broken, by having played with the world of hallucinations 
 that dwells in that young thing, to you so gentle and frail, to 
 me the most ruthless magician. Yes to me she is a sorceress 
 who bears in her right hand an invisible instrument to stir the 
 world with, and in her left the thunderbolt that dissolves 
 everything at her command. In short, I can no longer behold 
 her face; it is unendurably dazzling. 
 
 "I have for the last few days been wandering round this 
 abyss of madness, too helplessly to keep silence any longer. 
 I have, therefore, seized a moment when I find courage enough 
 to resist the monster that drags me to her presence without 
 asking whether I have strength enough to keep up with his 
 flight. Who is she? Did you know her as a child? Was 
 she ever born? Had she parents? Was she conceived by 
 the union of sun and ice ? She freezes and she burns ; she 
 comes forth and then vanishes like some coy truth ; she at- 
 tracts and repels me ; she alternately kills and vivifies me ; I 
 love her and I hate her ! I cannot live thus. I must be either 
 in heaven altogether or in hell." 
 
 Pastor Becker, his refilled pipe in one hand and in the other 
 the cover which he had forgotten to replace, listened to Wilfrid 
 with a mysterious expression, glancing occasionally at his 
 daughter, who seemed to understand this speech, in harmony 
 with the being it referred to. Wilfrid was as splendid as 
 Hamlet struggling against his father's ghost, to whom he 
 speaks when it rises visible to him alone amid the living. 
 
 "This is very much the tone of a man in love," said the 
 good man simply. 
 
 "In love!" cried Wilfrid; "yes, to ordinary apprehen- 
 
SERAPHITA. 41 
 
 sions ; but, my dear Monsieur Becker, no words can describe 
 the frenzy with which I rush to meet this wild creature." 
 
 "Then you do love her?" said Minna reproachfully. 
 
 " Mademoiselle, I endure such strange agitation when I see 
 her, and such deep dejection when I see her not, that in any 
 other man they would be symptoms of love ; but love draws 
 two beings ardently together, while between her and me a 
 mysterious gulf constantly yawns, which chills me through 
 when I am in her presence, but of which I cease to be 
 conscious when we are apart. I leave her each time in 
 greater despair ; I return each time with greater ardor, like a 
 scientific inquirer seeking for Nature's secrets and for ever 
 baffled ; like a painter who yearns to give life to his canvas, 
 and wrecks himself and every resource of art in the futile 
 attempt." 
 
 "Yes, that strikes me as very true," said the girl. 
 
 " How should you know, Minna? " asked the old man. 
 
 "Ah ! father, if you had been with us this morning to the 
 summit of the Falberg, and had seen her praying, you would 
 not ask me. You would say, as Wilfrid did the first time 
 he saw her in our place of worship : 'It is the Spirit of 
 Prayer!' " 
 
 A few moments of silence ensued. 
 
 "It is true ! " cried Wilfrid. " She has nothing in common 
 with the creatures who writhe in the pits of this world." 
 
 " On the Falberg ! " the old pastor exclaimed. " How did 
 you manage to get there?" 
 
 " I do not know," said Minna. "The expedition is now 
 like a dream to me of which only the remembrance survives. 
 I should not believe in it, perhaps, but for this substantial 
 proof." 
 
 She drew the flower from her bosom and showed it to him. 
 They all three fixed their eyes on the pretty saxifrage, still quite 
 fresh, which, under the gleam of the lamps, shone amid the 
 clouds of smoke like another light. 
 
42 SERAPHITA. 
 
 "This is supernatural," said the old man, seeing a flower 
 in bloom in the winter. 
 
 "A mystery ! " cried Wilfrid, fevered by the perfume. 
 
 "The flower fills me with rapture," said Minna. "I 
 fancy I can still hear his speech, which is the music of the 
 mind, as I still see the light of his gaze, which is love." 
 
 " Let me entreat you, my dear Pastor Becker, to relate the 
 life of Seraphita that enigmatical flower of humanity whose 
 image I see in this mysterious blossom." 
 
 "My dear guest," said the minister, blowing a puff of 
 tobacco-smoke, "to explain the birth of this being, it will 
 be necessary to disentangle for you the obscurest of all Chris- 
 tian creeds ; but it is not easy to be clear when discussing the 
 most incomprehensible of all revelations, the latest flame of 
 faith, they say, that has blazed on our ball of clay. Do you 
 know anything of Swedenborg?" 
 
 " Nothing but his name. Of himself, his writings, his 
 religion, I am wholly ignorant." 
 
 " Well, then, I will tell you all about Swedenborg." 
 
III. 
 
 SERAPHITA SERAPHITUS. 
 
 After a pause, during which the pastor seemed to be collect- 
 ing his thoughts, he went on as follows: 
 
 " Emanuel von Swedenborg was born at Upsala, in Sweden, 
 in the month of January, 1688, as some authors say, or, accord- 
 ing to his epitaph, in 1689. His father was bishop of Skara. 
 Swedenborg lived to the age of eight-five, and died in London 
 on the 29th March, 1772. I use the word 'died' to express 
 a change of condition only. According to his disciples, 
 Swedenborg has been at Jarvis and in Paris since that time. 
 Permit me, my dear Wilfrid," said the pastor, with a gesture 
 to check interruption, " I am relating the tale without affirming 
 or denying the facts. Listen, and when I have done you can 
 think what you choose. I will warn you when I myself 
 judge, criticise, or dispute the doctrines, so as to show my 
 intellectual neutrality between reason and the man himself. 
 
 "Emanuel Swedenborg's life was divided into two distinct 
 phases," Becker went on. "From 1688 till 1745 Baron 
 Emanuel von Swedenborg was known in the world as a man 
 of vast learning, esteemed and beloved for his virtues, always 
 blameless, and invariably helpful. While filling important 
 public posts in Sweden, he published, between 1709 and 1740, 
 several important books on mineralogy, physics, mathematics, 
 and astronomy, which were of value in the scientific world. 
 He invented a method of constructing docks to receive 
 vessels ; he treated many very important questions, from the 
 height of the flood-tide to the position of the earth in space. 
 He discovered the way to construct more efficient locks on 
 canals, as well as simpler methods for the smelting of metals. 
 In short, he never took up a science without advancing it. 
 
 (43) 
 
44 SERAPHITA. 
 
 " In his youth he studied Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and the 
 Oriental languages, and became so familiar with these tongues 
 that several celebrated professors constantly consulted him, and 
 he was enabled to discover in Tartary some traces of the earliest 
 book of God's Word, called the ' Book of the Wars of Jeho- 
 vah,' and of the Judgments mentioned by Moses (Numbers 
 xxi. 14, 15), by Joshua, Jeremiah, and Samuel. The wars of 
 the Lord are said to be the historical portion, and the Judg- 
 ments the prophetic portion, of this book, written prior to 
 Genesis. Swedenborg even asserted that the Book of Jasher, 
 or of the Upright, mentioned by Joshua, existed in Eastern 
 Tartary with the worship by Correspondences. A French- 
 man, I have been told, has recently confirmed Swedenborg's 
 anticipations by announcing the discovery at Bagdad of sev- 
 eral parts of the Bible unknown in Europe. 
 
 "In 1785, on the occasion of the discussion on animal 
 magnetism* started in Paris, and raised almost throughout 
 Europe, in which most men of science took an eager part, 
 Monsieur de Thome defended Swedenborg's memory in a 
 reply to the assertions so rashly made by the commissioners 
 appointed by the King of France to inquire into this subject. 
 These gentlemen stated that there was no theory accounting 
 for the action of the lodestone, whereas Swedenborg had made 
 it his study so early as in 1720. Monsieur de Thome took 
 the opportunity to point out the reasons for the neglect in 
 which the most celebrated savants had left the name of the 
 learned Swede, so as to be free to plunder his volumes and 
 use his treasures in their own works. ' Some of the most 
 illustrious,' said Monsieur de Thome, alluding to Buffon's 
 ' Theory of the Earth,' ' are mean enough to dress in the pea- 
 cock's plumage without giving him the credit.' Finally, by 
 several convincing quotations from Swedenborg's encyclo- 
 paedic writings, he proved that this great prophet had out- 
 stripped by many centuries the slow progress of human learn- 
 * Friedrich Anton Mesmer was the founder, hence Mesmerism. 
 
SERAPHITA, 45 
 
 ing ; and, indeed, to read his works is enough to carry con- 
 viction on this point. 
 
 " In one passage he is the precursor of the present system 
 of chemistry, announcing that the products of organic nature 
 can all be decomposed and resolved into two pure elements ; 
 that water, air, and fire are not elements ; in another he goes 
 in a few words to the heart of magnetic mystery, and thus 
 anticipates Mesmer. In short," said the minister, pointing 
 to a long shelf between the stove and the window, on which 
 were books of various sizes, " there are seventeen works by 
 him; one of them, published in 1734, 'Studies in Philoso- 
 phy and Mineralogy,' consists of three folio volumes. These 
 books, which bear witness to Swedenborg's practical knowl- 
 edge, were given to me by Baron Seraphitus, his cousin, and 
 Seraphita's father. 
 
 "In 1740, Swedenborg sank into complete silence, never 
 relaxing it except to renounce temporal studies and to think 
 exclusively of the spiritual world. 
 
 "He received his first commands from heaven in 1745. 
 This is how he relates his call 
 
 " ' One evening, in London, after he had dined, eating 
 heartily, a thick mist filled the room. When the darkness 
 cleared away, a being that had assumed a human form rose 
 up in a corner of the room and said in a terrible voice, " Do 
 not eat so much." He then fasted completely. Next even- 
 ing the same man was visible, radiant with light, and said to 
 him 
 
 " ' " I am sent by God, who has chosen thee to set forth 
 to men the meaning of His word and His creation. I will 
 dictate what thou shall write." 
 
 " The vision lasted but a few minutes. The angel, he said, 
 was clad in purple. 
 
 " During that night the eyes of his inner man were opened 
 and enabled to see into the heavens, into the world of spirits, 
 and into hell, three different circles, where he met persons he 
 
46 SERAPHITA. 
 
 had known who had perished from their human state, some 
 long ago, and some quite recently. From that time Sweden- 
 borg always lived the spiritual life, and remained in this 
 world as a being sent from God. 
 
 "Though his mission was disputed by the incredulous, his 
 conduct was visibly that of a being superior to human weak- 
 ness. In the first instance, though limited by his means to 
 the strictest necessaries, he gave away immense sums, and was 
 known to be the means of restoring, in various commercial 
 towns, some great houses of business that had failed, or were 
 failing. No one who appealed to his generosity went away 
 without being helped on the spot. An incredulous English- 
 man, going in search of him, met him in Paris, and he has 
 recorded that Swedenborg's doors were always left open. 
 One day his servant complained of this apparent neglect, 
 which exposed him to suspicion if his master should be 
 robbed. 
 
 " ' Let him make his mind easy,' said Swedenborg, smiling; 
 ' I forgive him want of faith ; he cannot see the guardian who 
 keeps watch before my door.' 
 
 "And, in fact, in whatever country he might be living, his 
 doors were never shut, and he never lost anything. 
 
 " When he was at Gothenburg, a town sixty miles from 
 Stockholm, three days before the news arrived of the great 
 fire that raged at Stockholm, he had announced the hour at 
 which it had begun, adding that his house was unharmed 
 which was true.* 
 
 " The Queen of Sweden, when at Berlin, told the King, her 
 brother, that one of her ladies being summoned to repay a 
 sum of money which she knew that her husband had returned 
 before his death, being unable to find the receipt, had gone to 
 Swedenborg and begged him to inquire of her husband where 
 the proof of payment could be. On the following day 
 Swedenborg told her the place where the receipt was ; then, 
 * Kant, who was skeptical, admits this as proven. 
 
SERAPHITA. 47 
 
 in accordance with the lady's desire, he called upon the dead 
 man to appear to his wife, and she saw her husband, in a 
 dream, in the dressing-gown he had worn before his death, 
 and he showed her the document in the place mentioned by 
 Swedenborg, where in fact it lay hidden. 
 
 " One day, on sailing from London in the ship of a Captain 
 Dixon, he heard a lady asking if there were a good stock of 
 provisions on board. 
 
 " ' You will not need a very large quantity,' said he. ' In 
 a week, at two o'clock, we shall be in the port of Stockholm,' 
 and so it was. 
 
 " The state of second-sight, into which Swedenborg could 
 pass at will in relation to earthly things, astonishing as it was 
 to all who knew him, by its marvelous results, was no more 
 than a weaker development of his power of seeing into the 
 skies. 
 
 " Of all his visions, those in which he traveled to the astral 
 worlds are not the least curious, and his descriptions are no 
 doubt surprisingly artless in their details. A man whose great 
 scientific acquirements are beyond question, who combined in 
 his brain conception, will, and imagination, would certainly 
 have invented something better if he had invented at all. 
 Nor does the fantastic literature of the East contain anything 
 that can have suggested the idea of this bewildering narrative 
 full of poetic germs, if we may compare a work of faith to 
 the writings of Arabian fancy. 
 
 "The account of his being snatched up by the angel who 
 guided him in his first voyage is sublime to a degree as far 
 beyond the poems of Klopstock, Milton, Tasso, and Dante, 
 as the earth, by God's will, is from the sun. This chapter, 
 which forms the introduction to his ' Treatise on the Astral 
 Worlds,' has never been published ; it remains among the oral 
 traditions left by Swedenborg to the three disciples who were 
 dearest to him. Monsieur Silverichm has it in writing. Baron 
 Seraphitus sometimes tried to tell me of it ; but his memory 
 
48 SERAPHITA. 
 
 of his cousin was so vivid that he stopped after a few words, 
 and fell into a reverie from which nothing could rouse him. 
 
 " The discourse in which the angel proved to Swedenborg 
 that those planets are not created to wander uninhabited, 
 crushes all human science, the baron assured me, under the 
 grandeur of its divine logic. 
 
 "According to the Seer, the inhabitants of Jupiter do not 
 affect the sciences, which they call Shades ; those of Mercury 
 object to the expression of ideas by words, which they think 
 too material, and they have a language of the eye ; those of 
 Saturn are persistently tormented by evil spirits; those of the 
 Moon are as small as children of six years old, their voice 
 proceeds from the stomach, and they creep about ; those of 
 Venus are of gigantic stature, but very stupid, and live by 
 robbery ; part of that planet, however, is inhabited by beings 
 of great gentleness, who live loving to do good. Finally, 
 he describes the customs of the people who dwell on those 
 globes, and gives an account of the general purpose of their 
 existence as part of the universe in terms so precise, adding 
 explanations which agree so well with the effects of their ap- 
 parent motion in the system of the universe, that some day, 
 perhaps, scientific men will drink of these luminous waters. 
 Here," said the pastor, taking down the volume and opening 
 it at a page where a marker was placed, '' these are the words 
 which conclude this great work : ' If any one should doubt 
 my having been transported to so many astral regions, let him 
 remember my remarks as to distances in the other life. They 
 exist only in relation to the external form of man ; now I, 
 having been inwardly constituted like the angelic spirits of 
 those globes, have been enabled to know them.' 
 
 "The circumstances to which we owed the residence in 
 this district of Baron Seraphitus, Swedenborg's dearly loved 
 cousin, made me intimately familiar with every fact of the 
 life of that extraordinary man. 
 
 " Not long since he was accused of imposture in some 
 
SERAPHITA. 49 
 
 European newspapers, which reported the following facts as 
 related in a letter from the Chevalier Beylon. Swedenborg, 
 ' informed,' it was said, ' by some senators of a secret corre- 
 pondence between the late Queen of Sweden and her brother, 
 the Prince of Prussia, revealed the contents to that princess, 
 leaving her to believe that he had acquired the information 
 by supernatural means. A man of the highest credit, Mon- 
 sieur Charles-Leonard von Stahlhammer, captain of the King's 
 Guard and Knight of the Sword, refuted this calumny in a 
 letter.'" 
 
 The pastor hunted through some papers in his table-drawer, 
 found a newspaper, and handed it to Wilfrid, who read aloud 
 the following letter : 
 
 "STOCKHOLM, May 13, 1788. 
 
 "I have read with astonishment the letter reporting the 
 interview between the famous Swedenborg and Queen Louisa- 
 Ulrica. All the circumstances are falsified; and I hope the 
 writer will pardon me if I show him how greatly he is mis- 
 taken, by giving here an exact account, of which the truth can 
 be attested by several personages of distinction who were 
 present, and who are still living. 
 
 "In 1758, not long after the Prince of Prussia's death, 
 Swedenborg came to court ; he was in the habit of doing so 
 very regularly. No sooner did the Queen see him than she 
 asked, ' By the way, Baron Assessor, have you seen my 
 brother ? ' Swedenborg said he had not, and the Queen re- 
 plied, ' If you should see him, greet him from me.' 
 
 "She had no idea in saying this but of a jest; it did not 
 occur to her to ask for any information concerning her brother. 
 
 "A week later not twenty-four days, nor for a private 
 audience Swedenborg came again, but so early that the 
 Queen had not yet left her own apartment, known as the 
 White Room, where she was chatting with her ladies of honor 
 and other ladies about the court. Swedenborg did not wait 
 for the Queen to come out. He went into her private room 
 4 
 
60 SERAPHITA. 
 
 and spoke in her ear. The Queen, quite astounded, turned 
 faint, and it took some time to revive her. When she had 
 recovered herself, she said to those about her, ' God alone and 
 my brother could know what he has just told me ! ' And she 
 said he had spoken of her last correspondence with the prince, 
 of which the subject had been known to themselves only. 
 
 "I cannot explain how Swedenborg gained his knowledge 
 of this secret ; but what I can aver on my honor is that neither 
 
 Count H , as the author of the letter states, nor any one 
 
 else, had intercepted or read the Queen's letters. The Senate 
 had at that time allowed her to write to her brother in the 
 strictest confidence, regarding the correspondence as a matter 
 perfectly indifferent to the State. It is evident that the writer 
 
 of that letter knew nothing of Count H 's character. 
 
 That distinguished gentleman, who did his country important 
 service, combines with intellectual talent fine qualities of the 
 heart, and his advanced years have not deteriorated his noble 
 gifts. Throughout his official career he has been equally re- 
 markable for enlightened political views and the most scrupu- 
 lous integrity, and he was always the declared enemy of secret 
 intrigues and covert devices, which he regarded as the basest 
 means to any end. 
 
 " Nor did the writer know Swedenborg the Assessor ; the 
 only weak point in this thoroughly honest man was his belief 
 in apparitions and spirits ; but I knew him for a long time, and 
 I can positively state that he was as well assured that he cer- 
 tainly did talk and mingle with spirits as I am at this moment 
 of writing these lines. As a citizen and as a friend, he was a 
 man of absolute integrity, with a horror of imposture, and he 
 led an exemplary life. 
 
 " Hence the account given of the incident by the Chevalier 
 de Beylon is without foundation ; and the visit said to have 
 
 been paid to Swedenborg, at night, by Counts H and 
 
 T is a pure invention. 
 
 " The writer of the letter may rest assured that I am any- 
 
SERAPH IT A. 51 
 
 thing rather than a follower of Swedenborg ; nothing but the 
 love of truth has moved me to relate with accuracy a fact that 
 has often been told with details that are incorrect; and I affirm 
 what I have here written to be the truth, and sign it with my 
 name." 
 
 "The proofs of his mission given by Swedenborg to the 
 families of Prussia and Sweden no doubt formed a basis for the 
 belief he inspired in several personages of the two courts," the 
 pastor went on, replacing the newspaper in his drawer. "At 
 the same time, I cannot tell you all the facts of his material 
 and visible life; his habits precluded their beingexactly known. 
 He lived in strict retirement, never trying to grow rich or to 
 rise to fame. He was even remarkable for a sort of repug- 
 nance to proselytizing ; he spoke freely to very few persons, 
 and never communicated those gifts but to those who were 
 conspicuous for faith, wisdom, and love. He could read at a 
 glance the frame of mind in which each one approached him, 
 and could make seers of those whom he desired to touch with 
 his inward Word. 
 
 "After the year 1745 his disciples never saw him do a single 
 thing from a merely human motive. 
 
 "One man only, a Swedish priest named Matthesius, ac- 
 cused him of madness. By a singular coincidence this Mat- 
 thesius, the enemy of Swedenborg and his writings, went mad 
 not long after, and was living a few years since at Stockholm 
 on a pension allowed him by the King of Sweden. 
 
 "A discourse in honor of Swedenborg was composed with 
 great care as to the details of his life, and read at a general 
 meeting in the hall of the Royal Academy of Sciences at 
 Stockholm, by Monsieur de Sandel, councilor to the College 
 of Mines, in 1786. Finally, a deposition laid before the Lord 
 Mayor of London testifies to the smallest circumstances of 
 Swedenborg's last illness and death under the ministrations 
 of Pastor Ferelius, a Swedish ecclesiastic of the highest respect- 
 
52 SERAPHITA. 
 
 ability. The persons attesting declared that, far from recant- 
 ing, Swedenborg always averred the truth of his writings. 
 
 " ' In a hundred years' time,' said he, ' my doctrines will 
 govern the church.' 
 
 " He foretold precisely the day and hour of his death. On 
 that day, Sunday, March 29, 1772, he asked what o'clock it 
 was. 
 
 " ' Five o'clock,' was the answer. 
 
 " 'It is all over,' said he. ' God bless you ! ' 
 
 "And ten minutes after he died quite calmly with a gentle 
 sigh. Thus moderation, simplicity, and solitude were the 
 features of his life. 
 
 " Whenever he had finished writing a treatise, he took ship 
 to have it printed in London or in Holland, and never talked 
 about it. He thus published twenty-seven works in all, 
 written, as he declared, at the dictation of angels. Whether 
 or not this be true, few men are capable of enduring this 
 flaming language. 
 
 "Here they all are," said the minister, pointing to an 
 upper shelf on which stood about sixty volumes. "The 
 seven books on which the Spirit of God had shed its brightest 
 lights are : ' The Delights of Wisdom in Conjugal Love ; ' 
 ' Heaven and Hell ; ' ' The Apocalypse Explained ; ' ' An Ex- 
 position of the Inward Sense ; ' ' On the Divine Love ; ' ' The 
 True Christian Religion ; ' ' The Angelic Wisdom of the 
 Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence of those who 
 share the Eternity and Immensity of God.' 
 
 " His explanation of the Apocalypse begins with these 
 words," said the pastor, opening the volume that was lying 
 near him : " ' Herein I have written nothing of my own ; I 
 have spoken at the bidding of the Lord, who said to John, by 
 the same angel, " Thou shall not seal the words of this 
 prophecy." ' 
 
 " My dear sir," the good man went on, looking at Wilfrid, 
 " many a winter night have I quaked in every limb while read- 
 
SERAPHITA. 53 
 
 ing the tremendous works in which this man sets forth the 
 greatest marvels in perfect good faith. 
 
 " ' I have seen,' says he, ' the heavens and the angels. The 
 spiritual man sees spiritual man far more clearly than the 
 earthly man sees earthly man. I obey the command of the 
 Lord who hath given it to me to do. Men are free not to 
 believe me ; I cannot put others into the state into which 
 God hath put me. It is not in my power to make them 
 hold conversation with the angels, nor to work a miracle 
 in predisposing their understanding ; they themselves must 
 be the agents of their angelical exaltation. For twenty-eight 
 years now I have dwelt in the spiritual world with the 
 angels, and yet on earth with men ; for it hath pleased the 
 Lord to open the eyes of my spirit as he opened the eyes of 
 Paul, of Daniel, and of Elisha.' 
 
 " Certain persons, however, have had visions of the spiritual 
 world through the complete severance of their external body 
 and their inner man by somnambulism. In that state, Swe- 
 denborg tells us in his treatise on 'Angelic Wisdom,' man 
 may be raised to celestial light, because, the physical senses 
 being in abeyance, heavenly influences act on the inner man 
 without interference. 
 
 "A good many persons who do not doubt that Sweden- 
 borg had celestial revelations, still do not regard all his writ- 
 ings as equally stamped with Divine inspiration. Others insist 
 on a complete acceptance of Swedenborg, while confessing 
 his obscurities; but they think that it was the imperfection of 
 earthly language that hindered the prophet in expressing his 
 spiritual visions, so that such obscurities disappear before the 
 eyes of those who are regenerate by faith ; to use a striking 
 expression of his favorite disciple's, * the flesh is begotten 
 externally.' 
 
 " To poets and writers he is infinitely marvelous ; to seers 
 it is all absolute truth. His descriptions have been a matter of 
 scandal to some Christians; critics have laughed at the 
 
54 SERAPHITA. 
 
 ' celestial substance ' of his temples, his golden palaces, his 
 magnificent mansions where angels flutter and play ; others 
 have ridiculed his groves of mystical trees, and gardens where 
 flowers have speech, where the air is white, and mystical 
 gems sardonyx, carbuncle, chrysolite, chrysoprase, cyanite, 
 chalcedony, and beryl, the Urim and Thummin are endowed 
 with motion, express celestial truths, and may be questioned, 
 since they reply by variations of light (' True Religion,' 217, ' 
 218). Some very good men will not recognize his worlds 
 where colors are heard in delicious concerts, where words are 
 flames, and the Word is written in inflected letters (' True 
 Religion,' 278). Even in the North some writers have made 
 fun of his gates of pearl, of the diamonds with which the 
 houses of his New Jerusalem are paved and furnished, where 
 the humblest utensils are made of the rarest materials. 
 
 "'But,' his disciples argue, 'though such substances are 
 sparsely distributed in this world, is that any reason why they 
 should not be abundant in another ? On earth they are but 
 earthly, while in heaven they are seen under celestial aspects 
 in relation to the angelic state.' And Swedenborg would 
 quote on such points the great words of Jesus Christ, ' If I 
 have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye 
 believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?' (John iii. 12.) 
 
 " I, sir, have read Swedenborg from beginning to end," the 
 pastor went on, with an emphatic gesture. "I may say it 
 with pride, since I have preserved my reason. As you read 
 you must either lose your wits or become a seer. Though I 
 have escaped both forms of madness, I have often felt un- 
 known raptures, deep amazement, inward joy such as can only 
 come of the fullness of truth, the evidence of heavenly illumi- 
 nation. Everything here below shrinks, dwindles, as the 
 soul studies the burning pages of those writings. It is im- 
 possible not to be struck with astonishment on reflecting that 
 within the space of thirty years this man published twenty-five 
 quarto volumes on the truths of the spirtual world, written in 
 
SERAPHITA. 55 
 
 Latin, the shortest containing five hundred pages, and all in 
 small print. He left twenty more, it is said, in London, in 
 the care of his nephew, Monsieur Silverichm, formerly chap- 
 lain to the King of Sweden. Certainly the man who, between 
 twenty and sixty, spent himself in publishing a sort of ency- 
 clopaedia, must have had supernatural help to enable him to 
 compose these prodigious treatises, at an age when the powers 
 of man are beginning to fail. 
 
 " In these works there are thousands of propositions, all 
 numbered, none of them contradictory. Method, preciseness, 
 and a collected mind are everywhere conspicuous, all based on 
 the one fact of the existence of angels. His 'True Religion,' 
 in which his whole dogma is summed up, is a work of power- 
 ful lucidity, and was conceived and carried out when he was 
 eighty-three years of age. His ubiquity, his omniscience, 
 have indeed never been disproved by his critics or his enemies. 
 
 " Nevertheless, even when I was soaked, so to speak, in this 
 torrent of celestial illumination, God did not open my inward 
 eye ; I judged of these writings by the reason of an unregen- 
 erate man. I have often been of opinion that Swedenborg, 
 the inspired, must have misunderstood the angels. I laughed 
 at many visions, which, according to the seers, I ought rever- 
 ently to believe in. I could not, for instance, appreciate the 
 spiral writing of the angels, nor their belts of thicker or thinner 
 gold. Though the statement, 'There are solitary angels/ at 
 first struck me as singularly pathetic, I could not reconcile 
 this loneliness with their manner of marriage. I did not see 
 why the Virgin Mary should wear white satin robes in heaven. 
 I dared question why the giant demons Enakim and Hephilim 
 came again and again to fight with the Cherubim on the Apoc- 
 alyptic plains of Armageddon. I fail to see how the Satanic 
 and heavenly angels can still hold discussions. Baron Sera- 
 phitus replied to me that these details referred to the angels 
 who are yet on earth in human form. 
 
 "The visions of the Swedish prophet are often disfigured 
 
56 SERAPHITA. 
 
 by grotesque touches. One of his ' Memorabilia ' the name 
 he gives them begins with these words : ' I saw the spirits 
 met together, and they had hats on their heads.' In another 
 of these Memorable relations he received from heaven a small 
 paper on which, he says, he saw the letters used by primitive 
 races, composed of curved lines with little rings curling up- 
 ward. For clearer proof of this communication from heaven 
 I should have liked him to deposit this document with the 
 Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm. 
 
 "After all, I may be wrong; the material absurdities that 
 are scattered throughout his works have spiritual meanings 
 perhaps. Otherwise, how can we account for the growing in- 
 fluence of his doctrine ? His followers now number more 
 than seven hundred thousand souls, partly in the United 
 States of America, where many sects have joined them in a 
 body, and partly in England, where there are seven thousand 
 Swedenborgians in the city of Manchester alone. Men no less 
 distinguished by their learning than by their worldly rank 
 some in Germany and some in Prussia and the North have 
 publicly adopted Swedenborg's beliefs, which indeed are more 
 consolatory than those of all other Christian communions. 
 
 " I should now like to expound to you in a few short words 
 the capital points of the doctrines set forth by Swedenborg to 
 his church ; but such an abridgement, from memory, would 
 necessarily be defective. I can, therefore, only enlarge on 
 the arcana connected with the birth of Seraphita." 
 
 Here the pastor paused while meditating apparently to col- 
 lect his reminiscences, and then he went on 
 
 " Having proved mathematically that man shall live for 
 ever in an upper or a lower sphere, Swedenborg gives the title 
 of angelic spirits to such beings as, in this world, are prepared 
 for heaven, where they become angels. According to him, 
 God did not create angels independently ; there are none but 
 those who have been human beings on earth. Thus the earth 
 is the nursery ground for heaven. The angels are not angels 
 
SERAPHITA. 57 
 
 by original nature; they are transformed into angels by an 
 intimate union with God which God never refuses, the very 
 essence of God being never negative, but always active (' An- 
 gelic Wisdom '). 
 
 "Angelic spirits, then, go through three natures of love, 
 for man can only be regenerate by stages (' True Religion '). 
 First, LOVE OF SELF: the supreme expression of it is human 
 genius, of which the works are worshiped. Next, LOVE OF 
 THE WORLD at large, which produces prophets and those great 
 men whom the earth accepts as guides and hails as divine. 
 Finally, LOVE OF HEAVEN, which forms angelic spirits. These 
 spirits are, so to speak, the flowers of humanity, which cul- 
 minates, and strives to be epitomized, in them. They must 
 have either the love or the wisdom of heaven ; but they must 
 dwell in that love before they dwell in wisdom. Thus the 
 first transformation of man is to love. To achieve this first 
 grade, in his previous existences he must have gone through 
 hope and charity, which engender in him the gifts of faith 
 and prayer. The ideas gained by the exercise of these virtues 
 are transmitted to each new human embodiment within which 
 the metamorphoses of the inner man are hidden. Nothing 
 avails separately ; hope is inseparable from charity, faith from 
 prayer; the four faces of this figure are equally important. 
 ' For lack of one virtue,' says he, ' the angelic spirit is as 
 a flawed pearl.' Thus each existence is a sphere into which 
 are absorbed the celestial treasures of the former one. The 
 great perfection of the angelic spirits comes of this mysterious 
 progress, by which nothing is lost of the qualities successively 
 acquired till they attain to their most glorious incarnation ; for, 
 at every fresh transformation, they unconsciously lose some- 
 thing of the flesh and its works. 
 
 "When he lives in love man has thrown off all his evil 
 passions ; hope, charity, faith, and prayer have, to use the 
 word of Isaiah, winnowed his inner man, which can never 
 more be polluted by any earthly affection. Hence the great 
 
68 SERAPHITA. 
 
 lesson in Saint Luke : ' Lay up for yourselves treasures in 
 heaven where neither moth nor rust do corrupt,' and the 
 teaching of Jesus Christ that we should leave this world to 
 men, for it is theirs, and purify ourselves and go to our Father 
 in heaven who is perfect. 
 
 " The second transformation is to wisdom. Wisdom is that 
 apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises 
 through love. The spirit of love has triumphed over force ; as 
 a result of having conquered every earthly passion, he loves 
 God blindly ; but the spirit of wisdom has intelligence and 
 knowledge of why he loves. The wings of the first are spread 
 and bear him up to God ', the wings of the second are folded 
 in awe derived from knowledge : he knows God. One inces- 
 santly desires to see God and soars up to Him; the other 
 stands near Him and trembles. 
 
 "The union of a spirit of love with a spirit of wisdom lifts 
 the creature into the divine state in which the soul is WOMAN 
 and the body MAN the final expression of humanity, in which 
 the spirit is supreme over the form, and the form still con- 
 tends with the divine spirit ; for the form, which is the flesh, 
 is ignorant and rebellious, and would fain remain gross. It is 
 this supreme conflict which gives rise to the inexpressible an- 
 guish which the heavens alone can see the agony of Christ 
 in the Garden of Olives. After death, the first heaven opens 
 to receive this purified compound human nature. Thus men 
 die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy. Hence the natural 
 state, in which are all unregenerate beings ; the spiritual state, 
 in which are the angelic spirits ; and the divine state, in which 
 the angel dwells before bursting its husk, are the three degrees 
 of existence by which man attains heaven. 
 
 "A sentence of Swedenborg's will admirably explain to you 
 the difference between the natural and the spiritual states : 
 ' To men,' says he, ' the natural passes into the spiritual ; they 
 regard the world under its visible forms, and perceive it in a 
 reality adjusted to their senses. But to the angelic spirit the 
 
SERAPH1TA. 59 
 
 spiritual passes into the natural ; he 'regards the world in its 
 inmost spirit, not under its outer form.' 
 
 " Hence our human sciences are but the analysis of form. 
 The learned of this world are purely superficial, as their 
 knowledge is ; their inner man is of no avail except to pre- 
 serve an aptitude for apprehension and truth. The angelic 
 spirit goes far beyond this. His knowledge is the thought of 
 which human science is the mere utterance ; he derives a 
 knowledge of things from the Word by studying the cor- 
 respondences by which the worlds are harmonized with the 
 heavens. The Word of God was written entirely by such cor- 
 respondences ; it contains a hidden or spiritual meaning which 
 cannot be understood without the study of correspondences. 
 'There are,' says Swedenborg ('Celestial Doctrine'), 'in- 
 numerable arcana in the inward meaning of the correspond- 
 ences.' 
 
 " Those men who have laughed to scorn the books in which 
 the prophets have treasured the Word were in such a state of 
 ignorance as men are in who, in this world, knowing nothing 
 of a science, mock the truths of that science. To know the 
 correspondences of the Word with heavenly things, to know 
 the correspondences that exist between the visible and ponder- 
 able things of the earthly globe and invisible and imponderable 
 things of the spiritual world, is to ' have the heavens in your 
 understanding.' 
 
 " Every object of every creation proceeded from the hand 
 of God, and has, therefore, necessarily a hidden meaning, as 
 we see in those grand words of Isaiah, ' The earth is as a gar- 
 ment ' (Isaiah li. 6). This mysterious tie between the smallest 
 atoms of matter and the heavens constitutes what Swedenborg 
 calls a Celestial Arcanum. Indeed, his treatise on the ' Ce- 
 lestial Arcana, in which he explains the correspondences or 
 symbolism of the natural and spiritual, containing, as Jacob 
 Boehm has it, the 'sign and seal of all things,' contains no 
 less than thirteen thousand propositions, filling sixteen vol- 
 
60 SERAPHITA. 
 
 umes. 'This wonderful apprehension of correspondences 
 which the grace of God vouchsafed to Swedenborg,' says one 
 of his disciples, ' is the secret of the interest taken in his 
 works.' According to this commentator, 'everything is de- 
 rived from heaven, everything returns to heaven. The pro- 
 phet's words are sublime and lucid ; he speaks in the heavens, 
 and is understood on earth. A volume might be written on 
 any one of his phrases.' And, among a thousand others, he 
 quotes this text : ' The realm of heaven,' says Swedenborg 
 ('Arcana Celestia'), 'is the realm of impulsion. Action takes 
 form in heaven, and thence in the world, and by degrees in 
 the minutest details of earthly life ; earthly effects being thus 
 continuous with heavenly causes, the result in every case is 
 correspondent and symbolical. Man is the link of union be- 
 tween the Natural and the Spiritual.' 
 
 " Angelic spirits, then, inevitably know the correspondences 
 that link each earthly thing to heaven, and they know the in- 
 most sense of the prophetic words which foretell their evolu- 
 tion. Thus, to these spirits everything here below has its 
 hidden meaning. The smallest flower is a thought, a life an- 
 swering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they 
 have a persistent intuition. To them the adulteries and de- 
 bauchery of which the Scriptures and the Prophets speak, and 
 which are often misapprehended by self-styled scribes, signify 
 the state of the souls who in this world persist in debasing 
 themselves with earthly affections, and so confirm their divorce 
 from heaven. Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God. 
 The candlesticks, the shew-bread, the horses and riders, the 
 whores, the jewels everything in the Scriptures has for them 
 a super-sensual meaning, and reveals the future of earthly his- 
 tory in its relation to heaven. They can all enter into the 
 truth of the declarations of Saint John, which human science 
 demonstrates, and substantially proves at a later time, such 
 as this, 'pregnant,' says Swedenborg, 'with many human 
 sciences : I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first 
 
SERAPHITA. 61 
 
 heaven and the first earth were passed away' (Rev. xxi. i). 
 They know the suppers where ' they eat the flesh of kings, and 
 the flesh of captives, and the flesh of mighty men,' to which 
 [the fowls] are bidden by an angel standing in the sun (Rev. 
 xix. 17, 1 8). They see the woman with wings, clothed with 
 the sun, and the man always armed. ' The horse of the 
 Apocalypse,' says Swedenborg, ' is the visible image of the 
 human intellect ridden by death, because it bears in itself the 
 element of its own destruction.' Finally, they recognize the 
 nations hidden under forms which, to the ignorant, seem 
 grotesque. 
 
 " When a man is prepared to receive the prophetical insuffla- 
 tion of correspondences, the Spirit of the Word moves within 
 him ; he then sees that creations are but transformations ; it 
 gives vitality to his intellect, and a burning thirst for truth 
 which can only be quenched in heaven. In proportion to the 
 greater or less perfection of his inner man he can conceive of 
 the power of the angelic spirit ; and guided by desire, the least 
 perfect state of unregenerate man, he proceeds to hope, which 
 opens before him the world of spirits, and thence to prayer, 
 which is the key of heaven. 
 
 " What human creature could fail to desire to become 
 worthy of passing into the sphere of those intellects that live 
 in secret by love or wisdom? During their life on earth those 
 spirits remain pure ; they neither see, nor think, nor speak as 
 other men do. 
 
 " There are two modes of perception the external and the 
 internal. Man is wholly external ; the angelic spirit is wholly 
 internal. The spirit penetrates the sense of numbers ; it 
 masters them all and knows their meanings. It is lord of mo- 
 tion, and is one with everything by ubiquity: 'One angel is 
 present to another whenever he will,' says the Swedish Seer 
 ('Angelic Wisdom concerning Divine Love'), for he has the 
 power of escaping from the body, and sees the heavens as the 
 prophets saw them, and as Swedenborg himself saw them. 
 
62 SERAPHITA. 
 
 "'In this state,' he says, in the 'True Religion,' 'the 
 spirit of a man is borne from one place to another, his body 
 remaining where it is, a state in which I lived for twenty-six 
 years. ' This is the meaning to be given to the Bible phrase, 
 * The Spirit carried me.' 
 
 "Angelic wisdom is to human wisdom what the numberless 
 forces of Nature are to its action, which is single. Every- 
 thing lives again, moves, and exists in the spirit, for it is in 
 God, as it is expressed in these words of Saint Paul, In Deo 
 sumus, movemur et vivimus (In God we live and move and 
 have our being, Acts xvii. 28). Earth offers no obstacle to it, 
 as the Word offers no difficulties. Its nearness to the divine 
 state enables it to see the thought of God veiled by the Word, 
 just as the spirit dwelling inwardly can communicate with the 
 hidden meaning of all the things of this world. Science is the 
 language of the temporal world ; love is that of the spiritual 
 world. Man, indeed, describes more than he explains; while 
 the angelic spirit sees and understands. Science saddens 
 man ; love enraptures the angel ; science is still seeking, love 
 has found. Man judges of Nature in relation to itself; the 
 angelic spirit judges of it in relation to heaven. In short, to 
 the spirits everything speaks. 
 
 " The spirits are in the secret of the reciprocal harmony of 
 creations ; they are in accord with the spirit of sounds, with 
 the spirit of colors, with the spirit of vegetable life ; they can 
 question minerals, and minerals reply to their thoughts. 
 What, to them, are the learning and the treasures of earth 
 when they can constantly command them by their sight, and 
 when the worlds of which men think so much are for the 
 spirits no more than the topmost step whence they will fly up 
 to God ? Heavenly love and heavenly wisdom are visibly with 
 them, seen by the elect in a halo of light that envelops them. 
 Their innocence, of which a child's innocence is the external 
 image, has knowledge which children have not ; they are 
 innocent, and they know. 
 
SERAPHITA. 63 
 
 "'And,' says Swedenborg, 'the innocence of heaven 
 makes so deep an impression on the soul, that those who 
 enjoy it feel a rapture which goes with them all through life, 
 as I myself have experienced. It is enough, perhaps,' he 
 says elsewhere, ' to have the smallest inkling of it to trans- 
 form one for ever, and, by desiring to go to heaven, to enter 
 into the sphere of hope.' 
 
 " His doctrine of marriage may be summed up in a few 
 words : 
 
 " ' The Lord took the beauty and grace of man's life and 
 infused them into woman. When man is disunited from this 
 beauty and elegance of life, he is austere, sad, or savage ; 
 when he is reunited to them, he is happy, he is complete.' 
 
 " The angels are for ever in the perfection of beauty. Their 
 marriages take place with miraculous ceremonies. To such 
 union, from which no children are born, man brings Under- 
 standing, woman brings Will ; they become one being one 
 flesh on earth ; then, after putting on the heavenly body, they 
 go to heaven. On earth, in the natural state, the mutual 
 attraction of the two sexes leads to lust, which is an effect, 
 producing fatigue and disgust ; but in their heavenly form, 
 the pair, having become one spirit, finds in itself a cause of 
 perpetual joys. Swedenborg had seen such a union of spirits, 
 who, as Saint Luke has written, ' neither marry nor are given 
 in marriage,' and this union leads to none but spiritual pleas- 
 ures. An angel offered to take him to witness such a marriage, 
 and bore him away on his wings ; the wings are only sym- 
 bolical, and not an earthly reality. He clothed him in his 
 festal garment ; and Swedenborg, seeing himself arrayed in 
 light, asked the reason. 
 
 " ' On such occasions,' replied the angel, ' our robes light 
 up and shine and are nuptial garments ' (' The Delight of 
 Wisdom in Conjugal Love '). 
 
 " He then saw two angels who came one from the South 
 and the other from the East. The angel from the South rode 
 
64 SERAPHITA. 
 
 in a chariot drawn by two white horses, whose reins were of 
 the color and the radiance of the morning ; but when they 
 came near him in heaven, he saw no more of the chariot or 
 horses. The angel from the East, clothed in purple, and the 
 angel from the South, in hyacinth color, rushed together like 
 two breaths of wind, and were one ; one was an angel of Love, 
 and the other an angel of Wisdom. Swedenborg's guide told 
 him that on earth these two angels had been bound by an 
 inward sympathy, and constantly united, though divided by 
 space. Consent, which is the essence of happy marriage on 
 earth, is the habitual condition of angels in heaven. Love is 
 the light of their world. They become infinite by partici- 
 pating of the essence of God, who generates Himself by Him- 
 self. 
 
 " The perpetual ecstasy of the angefs is produced by the 
 faculty, bestowed on them by God, of giving back to Him the 
 joy they have in Him. This reciprocity of the infinite con- 
 stitutes their life. In heaven they, too, become infinite by 
 partaking of the essential nature of God, who is self-subsistent. 
 Such is the vastness of the heavens where the angels dwell, 
 that if man were endowed with vision as constantly rapid as 
 the transmission of light from the sun to the earth, and if he 
 gazed through all eternity, his eyes would find no horizon to 
 rest on. Light alone can be an emblem of the joys of heaven. 
 'It is,' says he ('Angelic Wisdom'), 'an effluence of the 
 virtue of God, a pure emanation from His glory, compared to 
 which our most brilliant day is dark. It is omnipotent, it 
 renews everything, and cannot be absorbed ; it surrounds the 
 angel, putting him into contact with God by infinite joys 
 which are felt to multiply and reproduce themselves to infinity. 
 This light kills the man who is not prepared to receive it. No 
 one on earth, or indeed in the heavens, can look on God and 
 live. This is why it is written (Exodus xix. 12, 21-23), 'Set 
 
 bounds unto the people round about [the Mount] lest 
 
 they break through and many of them perish.' And 
 
SERAPHITA. 65 
 
 again (Exodus xxxiv. 29-35), 'When Moses came down with 
 the two Tables of Testimony, the skin of his face shone, and 
 Moses put a veil upon his face till he had done speaking with 
 the people.' The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ also testifies 
 to the light shed by a messenger from heaven and the extreme 
 joy of the angels in being for ever bathed in it. ' His face,' 
 says Saint Matthew (xvii. 2), ' did shine as the sun, and His 
 raiment was white as the light and a bright cloud over- 
 shadowed them.' 
 
 "When a planet is inhabited only by beings who reject the 
 Lord and misprize His Word, when the angelic spirits have 
 gathered from the four winds, God sends a destroying angel 
 to alter the whole mass of that rebellious world, which, in the 
 vast spaces of the universe, is to Him what an infertile seed is 
 in the natural world. As he approaches that globe, the de- 
 stroying angel, riding on a comet, reverses it on its axis and 
 makes the continents become the bottom of the sea, the 
 highest mountains then are islands, and the lands hitherto 
 covered by the seas reappear in all their freshness, obeying the 
 laws of Genesis ; thus the Word of God is in power once more 
 on a new earth which everywhere shows the effects of terres- 
 trial waters and celestial fires. The light the angel brings 
 down from heaven makes the sun pale. Then, as Isaiah saith 
 (ii. 10, 19), men will enter into the holes of the rocks and 
 hide themselves in the dust : 'And said to the mountains 
 
 and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the wrath of the 
 
 Lamb.' The Lamb is the great emblem of the angels who 
 are unrecognized and persecuted on earth. 
 
 " Christ himself hath said : ' Blessed are they that mourn ! 
 Blessed are the meek ! Blessed are the peacemakers.' All 
 Swedenborg is there : Suffer, believe, and love. To love 
 truly, must we not have suffered; must we not believe? 
 Love begets strength, and strength gives wisdom ; this is in- 
 telligence, for strength and wisdom include will. Is not true 
 
 * Rev. vi. 16. 
 5 
 
66 SERAPHITA. 
 
 intellect composed of knowledge, will, and wisdom, the three 
 attributes of the angelic spirit ? 
 
 " ' If the universe has a meaning, that surely is the worthiest 
 of God,' said Monsieur Saint-Martin to me when I saw him 
 during his visit to Sweden. 
 
 " But," the minister went on, after a pause, "of what value 
 can these shreds be, snatched from a work so vast that the 
 only way to give you an idea of it is to compare it to a river 
 of light, a torrent of flame? When a man plunges into it, he 
 is carried away by an overwhelming flood. Dante Alighieri's 
 poem seems a mere speck to the reader who will dive into the 
 innumerable passages in which Swedenborg has given actuality 
 to the heavenly spheres, just as Beethoven builds up palaces 
 of harmony out of thousands of notes, and architects construct 
 cathedrals of thousands of stones. He flings you to infinite 
 heights, where your mind sometimes fails to bear you up. It 
 is necessary certainly to have a powerful brain if you are to 
 come back sane and safe to our social notions. 
 
 ''Swedenborg was especially attached to Baron Seraphitz, 
 whose name, according to an old Swedish custom, had from 
 time immemorial taken the Latin suffix us. The baron was 
 the Swedish prophet's most zealous disciple; the eyes of his 
 inner man had been opened by the Seer, who had prepared him 
 to live in conformity with commands from on high. He was 
 in search of a woman with the angelic spirit, and Swedenborg 
 showed her to him in a vision. His bride was the daughter 
 of a shoemaker in London ; in her, said Swedenborg, the life 
 of heaven shone brightly, and she had gone through the first 
 tests. After the prophet was translated, the baron came to 
 Jarvis to solemnize his heavenly nuptials in the practice of 
 prayer. For my part, sir, I, who am no seer, could only note 
 the earthly life of the couple, and it was undoubtedly that of 
 the saints whose virtues are the glory of the Roman Church. 
 They alleviated the sufferings of our people, giving them a 
 portion which does not suffice to live on without work, but 
 
SERAPHITA. 67 
 
 which is then sufficient for their needs j those who lived with 
 them never saw them moved to anger or impatience ; they 
 were invariably gentle and beneficent, full of amiability, gra- 
 ciousness, and true kindness ; their marriage was the harmony 
 of two souls in constant union. Two eider-ducks in equal 
 flight, a sound and its echo, the thought and the word, are 
 but imperfect images of that union. Here they were loved 
 by everybody with an affection which can only be compared 
 to the love of plants for the sun. 
 
 "The wife was simple in her manners and beautiful to 
 behold ; her face was lovely, and her dignity worthy of the 
 most august personage. 
 
 "In 1783, in the twenty-sixth year of her age, this woman 
 bore a child ; it was a time of solemn rejoicing. The husband 
 and wife took leave of the world, telling me that they had no 
 doubt that they should be transformed when the child should 
 have shed the garb of flesh, which would need their care until 
 she "should have received strength to live by herself. The 
 child was born, and was this Seraphita with whom we are just 
 now concerned ; for the nine months before her birth her 
 father and mother lived in greater retirement than before, up- 
 lifting themselves to heaven by prayer. Their hope was that 
 they might see Swedenborg, and faith procured its fulfillment. 
 On the day of Seraphita's birth, Swedenborg appeared in 
 Jarvis, and filled the room where the babe was born with light. 
 His words, it is said, were : 
 
 " ' The work is accomplished ; the heavens rejoice ! ' 
 
 " The servants in the house heard strange sounds of music, 
 brought, they declared, by the winds from the four points of 
 the compass. 
 
 "The spirit of Swedenborg led the father out of the house 
 and out on the fiord, where it left him. Some men of Jarvis, 
 going up to the baron, heard him repeating these soothing 
 words from Scripture : ' How beautiful upon the mountains 
 are the feet of him that bringeth good-tidings ! ' 
 
68 SERAPHITA. 
 
 " I was setting out from the manse to go to the castle, in- 
 tending to baptize the child, and carry out the duties enjoined 
 on me by law, when I met the baron. 
 
 " 'Your ministrations are superfluous,' said he; ' our child 
 is to be nameless on earth. You will not baptize with earthly 
 waters one who has been bathed in fires from heaven. This 
 child will always be a flower ; you will not see it grow old ; 
 you will see it pass away. You have existence, it has life ; 
 you have external senses, it has not; it is wholly inward.' 
 The words were uttered in a supernatural voice, which im- 
 pressed me even more than the brightness of his face, which 
 shed a radiance. His whole appearance was a realization of 
 the fantastic ideas we form of inspired men, as we read the 
 prophecies in the Bible. Still, such effects are not rare in 
 our mountains, where the nitre formed in the perpetual snows 
 produces singular effects on our persons. 
 
 " I asked him the cause of his agitation. 
 
 " ' Swedenborg has appeared ; I have just parted from him ; 
 I have breathed the air of heaven,' said he. 
 
 " ' Under what form did he appear to you ? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' Under his mortal aspect, dressed as he was the last time 
 I saw him in London with Richard Shearsmith, near Coldbath 
 Fields, in July, 1771. He had on his shot velveteen coat 
 with steel buttons, a high vest, a white cravat, and the same 
 imposing wig, with heavy, powdered curls at the side, and 
 the hair combed back from the forehead, showing that broad 
 and luminous brow in harmony with his large, square face, so 
 full of calm power. I recognized his nose with its open, 
 ardent nostrils ; the mouth that always smiled an angel's 
 mouth, from which fell these words of promised happiness, 
 "We meet again, soon ! " And I felt the glory of heavenly 
 love.' 
 
 "The conviction stamped on the baron's face prohibited 
 any discussion ; I listened in silence ; his voice had an in- 
 fectious fervor that warmed me to the core ; his enthusiasm 
 
SERAPHITA. 69 
 
 stirred my heart, as another man's anger can thrill one's 
 nerves. I followed him, without speaking, home to his house, 
 where I saw the nameless child lying mysteriously wrapped on 
 her mother's bosom. Seraphita heard me come in and raised 
 her head toward me ; her eyes were not those of an ordinary 
 infant ; to express the impression they produced on me, I can 
 only say they already saw and understood. 
 
 "The childhood of this predestined being was marked by 
 some extraordinary circumstances of climate. For nine years 
 our winters were milder and our summers longer than usual. 
 This phenomenon gave rise to much discussion among the 
 learned ; but their explanations, which seemed inadequate to 
 the doctors of the Academy, made the baron smile when I 
 repeated them to him. 
 
 " Seraphita was never seen perfectly nude, as children are 
 sometimes ; she was never touched by the hand of man or 
 woman ; she lay spotless on her mother's breast, and she 
 never cried. Old David will confirm these facts if you ques- 
 tion him about his mistress, for whom he feels such veneration 
 as the king whose name he bears had for the Ark of God. 
 
 "At the age of nine the child began to be absorbed in 
 prayer. Prayer is her life ; you saw her in our church on 
 Christmas Day, the only day she ever comes there. She is 
 placed apart from the other worshipers by a considerable dis- 
 tance. If this space is not left about her, she suffers. Indeed, 
 she spends most of her time indoors. The details of her life 
 are, however, unknown ; she never shows herself; her facul- 
 ties, her feelings are essentially inward ; she is commonly in 
 the state of mystical contemplation, which, as papist writers 
 tell us, was familiar to the first Christian recluses, in whom 
 dwelt the tradition of Christ's teaching. Her understanding, 
 her soul, her body, everything about her. is as virginal as the 
 snow on our mountains. At ten years old she was what you 
 see her now. 
 
 " When she was nine her father and mother died at the 
 
70 SERAPHITA. 
 
 same instant without pain, without any visible malady, after 
 naming the hour at which they should cease to breathe. She, 
 standing at their feet, looked on them with a calm eye, dis- 
 playing neither grief, nor pain, nor joy, nor curiosity; her 
 father and mother smiled at her. 
 
 "When we went in to carry away the two bodies, she 
 said 
 
 " ' Take them away ! ' 
 
 " ' Seraphita,' said I, for we called her by that name, 'are 
 you not grieved by your father's and mother's death ? They 
 loved you so well.' 
 
 "'Dead?' said she. 'No, they are still in me. This is 
 nothing,' she added, pointing to the bodies they were taking 
 away. 
 
 "This was the third time I had seen her since her birth. 
 It is difficult to see her in church ; she stands near the pillar 
 that supports the pulpit, in such a dark corner that it is hardly 
 possible to discern her features. 
 
 "Of all the servants of the house, none were left at the 
 time of that event but old David, who, though he is eighty- 
 two years old, manages to do all his mistress needs. Some of 
 the people of Jarvis have strange tales about the girl. Their 
 stories having assumed some consistency in a land that is 
 greatly addicted to mysteries, I set to work to study Jean 
 Wier's 'Treatise on Sorcery,' and other works on demon- 
 ology, in which the effects on man of the supernatural (so- 
 called) are recorded, in search of facts analogous to what are 
 ascribed to her " 
 
 " Then you do not believe in her? " asked Wilfrid. 
 
 "Indeed, yes," said the pastor with simplicity, "in so far 
 that I regard her as a most fantastic creature, spoilt by her 
 parents, who have turned her brain by the religious notions I 
 have set forth to you." 
 
 Minna shook her head in a gentle expression of negation. 
 
 " Poor girl ! " the pastor went on, " she has inherited from 
 
SERAPHITA. 71 
 
 her parents the fatal enthusiasm which misleads mystics and 
 makes them more or less crazy. She fasts in a way that drives 
 poor David to despair. The good old man is like some frail 
 plant that trembles at a breath of wind and basks in the 
 smallest gleam of sunshine. His mistress, whose incompre- 
 hensible language he has adopted, is to him the breeze and 
 sunshine ; to him her feet are diamonds, her forehead crowned 
 with stars; she moves environed by a white and luminous 
 halo ; her voice has an accompaniment of music ; she has the 
 gift of becoming invisible. Ask to see her ; he will tell you 
 that she is wandering through astral worlds. It is difficult to 
 believe such fables. Every such miracle, you know, is more 
 or less like the story of the Golden Tooth: we have our 
 golden tooth at Jarvis, that is all. 
 
 " For instance, Duncker, the fisherman, declares that he has 
 seen her plunging into the fiord and coming to the surface in 
 the form of an eider-duck, or walking on the waves during a 
 storm. Fergus, who tends the herds on the safer, says that, 
 in rainy weather, he has seen the sky always clear over the 
 Swedish castle, and always blue over Seraphita's head if she 
 goes out. Several women hear the chords of an immense 
 organ when Seraphita comes to church, and ask their neigh- 
 bors quite seriously if they do not also hear it. 
 
 " However, my daughter, to whom Seraphita has taken a 
 great fancy these two years past, has heard no music, and has 
 not perceived the heavenly perfumes which embalm the air, 
 they say, wherever she goes. Minna has often come home 
 full of a simple girl's admiration for the beauties of the spring; 
 she is enraptured by the fragrance of the first tender larch 
 shoots, the fir-trees, and the flowers they have enjoyed to- 
 gether ; but after our long winter nothing can be more natural 
 than such intense delight. There is nothing very remarkable 
 in the conversation of that being, is there, my child?" 
 
 "His secrets are not mine," replied Minna. "When I 
 am with him, I know all things; away from him, I know 
 
72 SERAPHITA. 
 
 nothing; with him, I cease to be myself; away from him, I 
 forget that more perfect life. Seeing him is as a dream, of 
 which my remembrance depends on his will. I may have 
 heard, when with him, the music of which Bancker's wife and 
 Erikson's speak, and forget it when we are apart ; I may have 
 perceived those celestial perfumes and have beheld marvels, 
 and yet know nothing of them here." 
 
 "What has most surprised me since I first knew her," said 
 the pastor to Wilfrid, "is that she should allow you to ap- 
 proach her." 
 
 "To approach her! " said the stranger. "She has never 
 allowed me to kiss nor even to touch her hand. The first 
 time I saw her she abashed me by her look, and said, ' You 
 are welcome here ; you were due to come. ' It was as though 
 she knew me. I trembled. My fear makes me believe in 
 her." 
 
 "And my love," said Minna, without a blush. 
 
 "Are you making fun of me?" said the pastor, laughing 
 with good-humor; "you, my child, in calling yourself a 
 Spirit of Love ; and you, sir, in making yourself out to be a 
 Spirit of Wisdom?" 
 
 He drank off a glass of beer, and did not observe a singular 
 look which Wilfrid gave to Minna. 
 
 "Jesting apart," Becker went on, "I was greatly amazed 
 to hear that those two crazy girls had gone to-day for the first 
 time to the top of the Falberg ; but is not that some exaggera- 
 tion ? The girls must have simply climbed some hill ; the 
 summit of the Falberg is inaccessible." 
 
 "Father," said Minna, in some agitation, "I must then 
 have been in the power of the demon ; for we reached the 
 summit of the Ice-Cap." 
 
 " This is a serious matter," said the pastor. " Minna has 
 never told a lie." 
 
 "My dear sir," said Wilfrid, "I can assure you, Seraphita 
 exerts the most extraordinary power over me ; I know not 
 
"VIOLENCE! VIOLENCE!" HE CRIED. 
 
SERAPHITA. 73 
 
 what words can give any idea of it. She has told me things 
 which no one but I could know." 
 
 "Somnambulism!" cried the old man. "Various cases 
 of that kind are reported by Jean Wier as phenomena easy to 
 account for, and known of old in Egypt." 
 
 "Lend me the theosophical works of Swedenborg," said 
 Wilfrid. "I long to plunge into those lakes of light; you 
 have made me thirst for them." 
 
 Pastor Becker handed a volume to Wilfrid, who immedi- 
 ately began to read. It was about nine o'clock in the evening. 
 The maid had just brought in the supper, and Minna made 
 the tea. The meal ended, all three sat silently occupied ; the 
 pastor read Jean Wier's " Treatise on Demonology; " Wilfrid 
 lost himself in the study of Swedenborg; Minna sewed and 
 dreamed over her recollections. It was a thoroughly Norwe- 
 gian scene, a peaceful, studious evening, full of thought a 
 flower under the snow. Wilfrid, as he read the writings of 
 the prophet, was alive only to his inward senses. Now and 
 again the pastor, with a half-serious, half-ironical gesture, 
 pointed him out to Minna, who smiled rather sadly. To 
 Minna, Seraphitus smiled down upon them, floating above 
 the cloud of tobacco smoke in which they were wrapped. 
 
 Midnight struck. Suddenly the outer door was violently 
 pushed open ; heavy but hasty steps, the steps of a terrified 
 old man, were heard in the sort of small hall between the two 
 doors. Then David burst into the room. 
 
 "Violence! Violence !" he cried. "Come! all of you, 
 come ! The satans are unchained ; they wear mitres of flame ! 
 Adonis, Vertumnus, the sirens ! They are tempting her as 
 Jesus was tempted on the mountain. Come and drive them 
 out." 
 
 " Do you recognize the language of Swedenborg, pure and 
 unmixed?" said the pastor, laughing. 
 
 But Wilfrid and Minna were gazing in terror at old David, 
 who, with streaming hair and wild eyes, his legs trembling, 
 
74 SERAPHITA. 
 
 and covered with snow, stood shaking as if he were buffeted 
 by a stormy wind. 
 
 "What has happened?" asked Minna. 
 
 " Well, the satans purpose and hope to conquer her." 
 
 The words made Wilfrid's heart beat. 
 
 " For nearly five hours she has been standing up with her 
 eyes raised to heaven, her arms uplifted ; she is in torment ; 
 she calls upon God. I cannot cross the line ; hell has set 
 Vertumni to guard it. They have raised a barrier of iron be- 
 tween her and her old David. If she wants me, what can I 
 do? Help me ! Come and pray !" 
 
 The poor old man's despair was terrible to behold. 
 
 " The glory of God protects her ; but if she were to yield 
 to violence?" he said, with persuasive good faith. 
 
 " Silence, David, do not talk so wildly. These are facts to 
 be verified. We will go with you," said the pastor, "and 
 you will see that there are neither Vertumni in the house, nor 
 satans, nor sirens." 
 
 "Your father is blind," David whispered to Minna. 
 
 Wilfrid, on whom his first reading of a treatise by Sweden- 
 borg, hasty as it had been, had produced a powerful effect, was 
 already in the passage putting on his snow-shoes. Minna was 
 ready in a moment. They rushed off to the Swedish Castle, 
 leaving the two old men to follow. 
 
 " Do you hear that cracking? " said Wilfrid. 
 
 " The ice is moving in the fiord," said Minna ; " the spring 
 will soon be here." 
 
 Wilfrid said no more. When they were in the courtyard, 
 they both felt that they had no right, no strength, to enter 
 the house. 
 
 " What do you think of her? " asked Wilfrid. 
 
 " What a blaze of light ! " cried Minna, standing in front 
 of the drawing-room window. "There he is great God! 
 and how beautiful ! Oh, my Seraphitus, take me to thee ! " 
 
 The girl's outcry was inward and inaudible. She saw Sera- 
 
SERAPHITA. 75 
 
 phitus standing lightly shrouded in an opal-tinted mist, which 
 was diffused for a short distance all about the apparently phos- 
 phorescent body. 
 
 " How lovely she is ! " was Wilfrid's mental exclamation. 
 
 Pastor Becker now came up with David ; he saw his daughter 
 and the stranger in front of the window, came close to them, 
 looked into the room, and said 
 
 "Well, David, she is saying her prayers." 
 
 "But try to go in, sir." 
 
 "Why disturb her when she is praying?" replied the 
 pastor. 
 
 At this moment a ray of moonlight from beyond the Falberg 
 fell on the window. They all looked round, startled by this 
 natural phenomenon ; but when they turned again to look at 
 Seraphita, she had vanished. 
 
 " That is strange ! " said Wilfrid in surprise. 
 
 "But I hear exquisite strains," said Minna. 
 
 " Well, what next ? " said the pastor ; " she is going to bed, 
 no doubt." 
 
 David had gone in. They walked home in silence; all 
 three interpreted this vision in a different sense. Pastor Becker 
 felt doubt; Minna felt adoration ; Wilfrid, desire. 
 
 Wilfrid was a man of six-and-thirty. Though built on a 
 large scale, he was not ill proportioned. He was of a middle 
 height, like most men who are superior to the common herd ; 
 his chest and shoulders were broad and his neck was short, as 
 in men whose heart is near their head ; he had thick, fine 
 black hair, and his eyes, of a tawny brown, had a sunny 
 sparkle in them that showed how eagerly his nature absorbed 
 light. If his strong and irregular features were lacking in 
 that internal calm which is given by a life free from storms, 
 they revealed the inexhaustible forces of ardent senses and in- 
 stinctive appetites; just as his movements showed the perfec- 
 tion of physical structure, adaptability of nature, and respon- 
 
76 SERAPHITA. 
 
 sive actioij. This man might hold his own with the savage ; 
 might hear, as he does, the footfall of the enemy in the depths 
 of the forest, scent his trail in the air, and see a friendly sig- 
 nal on the remote horizon. His sleep was light, like that of 
 creatures alert against surprise. His frame quickly adapted 
 itself to the climate of any country whither his stormy life 
 might lead him. Art and Science alike would have admired 
 this organization as a sort of human model ; everything was 
 truly balanced, heart and movement, intelligence and will. 
 
 At first sight he might seem to be classed with those purely 
 instinctive beings who abandon themselves wholly to material 
 needs; but, early in life, he had made his way in the social 
 world to which his feelings had committed him ; reading had 
 raised his intelligence, meditation had improved his mind, 
 science had expanded his understanding. He had studied the 
 laws of humanity, and the play of interests moved to action 
 by the passions, and he seemed to have been long familiar 
 with the abstract notions on which society is founded. He 
 had grown pale over books, which are human actions in death; 
 he had kept late hours in the midst of festivities in many a 
 European capital ; he had waked up in many strange beds ; he 
 had slept, perhaps, on a battlefield on the night before the fight 
 and the night after a victory ; his tempestuous youth might 
 have tossed him on to the deck of a pirate ship in the most 
 dissimilar quarters of the globe ; thus he was experienced in 
 living human action. So he knew the present and the past; 
 both chapters of history that of to-day and that of other 
 days. 
 
 Many men have been, like Wilfrid, equally strong of hand, 
 heart, and brain ; and, like him, they have generally misused 
 this threefold power. 
 
 But though this man's outward husk was still akin to the 
 scum of humanity, he certainly belonged no less to the sphere 
 where force is intelligent. Notwithstanding the wrappers in 
 which his soul was shrouded, there were in him those inde- 
 
SERAPHITA. 77 
 
 scribable symptoms visible to the eye of the pure-hearted, of 
 children whose innocence has never felt the blighting breath 
 of evil passions, of old men who have triumphed over theirs ; 
 and these signs revealed a Cain to whom hope yet remained, 
 and who seemed to be seeking absolution at the ends of the 
 earth. Minna suspected the slave of glory in this man ; 
 Seraphita recognized it ; both admired and pitied him. 
 Whence had they this intuition ? Nothing can be simpler or, 
 at the same time, more extraordinary. As soon as man de- 
 sires to penetrate the secrets of nature, where there is no real 
 secret, all that is needed is sight ; he can see that the mar- 
 velous is the outcome of the simple. 
 
 " Seraphitus," said Minna, one evening a few days after 
 Wilfrid's arrival at Jarvis, " you read this stranger's soul, 
 while I have only a vague impression of him. He freezes or 
 he warms me ; but you seem to know the reason of this frost 
 and this heat ; you can tell me, for you know all about him." 
 
 "Yes, I have seen the causes," said Seraphitus, his heavy 
 eyelids closing over his eyes. 
 
 "By what power? " asked the inquisitive Minna. 
 
 "I have the gift of specialism," he replied. "Specialism 
 constitutes a sort of inward vision which penetrates all things, 
 and you can understand its processes only by a comparison. 
 In the great cities of Europe, where works of art are produced 
 by which the human hand endeavors to represent the effects 
 of moral nature as well as those of physical nature, there are 
 some sublime geniuses who express their ideas in marble. The 
 sculptor works on the marble ; he shapes it, and puts into it a 
 world of thought. There are such marbles to which the 
 hand of man has given the power of representing a wholly 
 sublime or a wholly evil aspect of humanity; most beholders 
 see in these a human figure and nothing more ; others, a little 
 higher in the scale of human beings, discern some part of the 
 thoughts rendered by the sculptor, and admire the form; but 
 those who are initiated into the secrets of Art are in sympathy 
 
78 SERAPHITA. 
 
 with the sculptor; when they see his work they recognize in 
 it the whole world of his thoughts. These are the princes of 
 Art ; they bear in themselves a mirror in which nature is re- 
 flected with all its most trifling details. 
 
 " Well, in me there is a mirror in which moral nature is 
 reflected with all its causes and effects. I can read the past 
 and the future by thus looking into the conscience. You still 
 ask me how ? Suppose the marble to be a man's body, and 
 the sculptor to be feeling passion, vice, or crime, virtue, error, 
 or repentance ; then you will understand how I could read 
 the stranger's soul, though you will not understand specialism; 
 to imagine what that gift is you must possess it." 
 
 Though Wilfrid was akin to both the primitive and widely 
 different types of men men of might and men of mind his 
 excesses, his stormy life, and his sins had often shown him the 
 way of faith ; for doubt has two sides the side of light and 
 the side of darkness. Wilfrid had too thoroughly squeezed 
 the world in both its aspects matter and spirit not to have 
 felt the thirst for the unknown, the longing for the Beyond 
 which comes to most men who have knowledge, power, and 
 will. But neither his knowledge, nor his actions, nor his will 
 had due guidance. He had escaped from social life from ne- 
 cessity, as a criminal flies to the cloister. Remorse, the virtue 
 of the weak, could not touch him. Remorse is impotence ; 
 it will sin again. Only repentance is strong; it can end 
 everything. But Wilfrid, in traveling through the world, 
 which he had made his sanctuary, nowhere found balm for his 
 wounds ; nowhere had he found a nature to which he could 
 attach himself. Despair had dried up in him the well-spring 
 of desire. His was one of those spirits which, having come 
 to a conflict with passion, have proved themselves the stronger, 
 and so have nothing left to clutch in their talons; spirits 
 which, the opportunity failing them for putting themselves at 
 the head of their peers to trample a whole people under their 
 horse's hoofs, would pay the price of a dreadful martyrdom 
 
SERAPHITA. 79 
 
 for the gift of a faith to be wrecked upon ; like lofty rocks 
 waiting for the touch of a staff which never comes, to enable 
 them to shed springs of running water. 
 
 Tossed among the snows of Norway by one of the purposes 
 of his restless and inquiring life, the winter had taken him by 
 surprise at Jarvis. On the day when he first saw Seraphita, 
 the meeting wiped out all memories of his past life. This 
 girl gave him such intense agitation as he had fancied was 
 dead for ever. The ashes burst into flame again, and were 
 blown away by the first breath of that voice. Who has known 
 what it is to become young and pure again after growing cold 
 with age and foul with impurities? Wilfrid loved suddenly, 
 as he had never loved ; he loved in secret, with faith and awe 
 and hidden frenzies. His life was disturbed to its very source 
 at the mere thought of seeing Seraphita. When he heard her 
 speak, he was borne away to unknown worlds; he was dumb 
 in her presence she bewitched him. 
 
 Here, under the snows, amid the ice-fields, this heavenly 
 flower had blossomed on the stem the flower to which his 
 hopes went up, till now deceived, whose mere presence gave 
 rise to the new aspirations, the ideas, the feelings, that crowd 
 around us to lift us up to higher realms, as angels transport the 
 elect to heaven in the symbolical pictures suggested to painters 
 by some familiar spirit. Celestial odors softened the granite 
 of this rock, light endowed with language poured forth the 
 divine melodies which escort the pilgrim on his way to heaven. 
 Having drained the cup of earthly love and crushed it with 
 his teeth, he now saw the cup of election, sparkling with 
 limpid waters, the chalice that gives a thrist for unfading joys 
 to all who approach it with lips of faith so ardent that the 
 crystal does not break at their touch. He had met with the 
 walls of brass he had been seeking throughout the world 
 that he might climb them. 
 
 He flew to Seraphita, intending to express to her the vehe- 
 mence of a passion under which he was plunging, like the horse 
 
fO SERAPHITA. 
 
 in the story under the bronze rider whom nothing can move, 
 who sits firm, and whose weight grows greater as the fiery 
 steed tries to throw him. He went to tell her his life, to dis- 
 play the greatness of his soul by the greatness of his sins, to 
 show her the rains in his desert. Bat as soon as he had 
 entered the precincts, and fonnd himself in the vast domain 
 surveyed by those eyes whose heavenly bloc knew no li- 
 the present or in the past, he became as calm and submissive 
 as a lion when, rushing on his prey on the African plain, he 
 scents a love message on the wings of the breeze, and stands 
 still. A golf opened before him in which the words of his 
 delirium were lost, and whence a voice came up that trans- 
 formed him : he was a boy again, a boy of sixteen, shy and 
 bashful before this maiden of the tranquil brow, this white 
 creature whose immovable calm was like the stern impassibility 
 of human justice. And the straggle had never ceased till this 
 evening when, with a single look, she had at length stricken 
 him down like a hawk, which, after describing bewildering 
 spirals round its prey, makes it drop stunned before carrying 
 it off to its eyrie. 
 
 We have long straggles with oarself, of which the outcome 
 is one of oar actions ; they are, as it were, the inner side of 
 human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side 
 belongs to men. 
 
 More than once had Seraphita chosen to show Wilfrid that 
 she knew that motley inner part which forms the second life 
 of most men. She had often said to him, in her dov 
 tone, when Wilfrid had vowed on the way op that he would 
 carry her off to be his own possession : " Why so much 
 vehemence?" Wilfrid, when alone, was strong enough to 
 otter the cry of rebellion he had given vent to at Pastor 
 Becker's, to be soothed by the old man's narrative, 
 man a mocker, a scorner at last saw the light of a starlike 
 belief rising in his darkness : he wondered whether Seraphita 
 were not an exile from the upper spheres on her homeward 
 
SERAPHITA. 81 
 
 road. He did not offer this Norwegian lily the homage of 
 such idealization as lovers of every land are apt to squander; 
 he really believed in her divinity. 
 
 Vv~;-;y was she buried in the depths of this fiord? What was 
 she doing there? Unanswerable questions crowded on his 
 mind. What could happen between him and her? What 
 fate had led him hither? 
 
 To him Seraphita was the motionless statue, as light as a 
 shade, that Minna had just seen standing on the brink of the 
 abyss. Seraphita could thus confront every abyss, and nothing 
 could hurt her ; the line of her brow would be unmoved, the 
 light in her eye would never tremble. His love, then, was 
 without hope, but not without curiosity. 
 
 From the first moment when Wilfrid suspected the ethereal 
 nature in this sorceress, who had told him the secret of his 
 life in harmonious dreams, he resolved to try to subjugate her, 
 to keep her, to steal her from heaven, where, perhaps, they 
 awaited her. He would be the representative of humanity, 
 is earth, recapturing their prey. His pride, the only 
 sentiment which can uplift a man for any length of time, 
 would make him rejoice in that triumph for the rest of his 
 life. At the mere thought his blood boiled in his veins, his 
 heart swelled. If he could not succeed, he would crush her. 
 It is so natural to destroy what you cannot get possession of, 
 to deny what you do not understand, to insult what you 
 covet. 
 
 Next day Wilfrid, full of the ideas to which the extraordi- 
 nary spectacle he had witnessed had naturally given rise, 
 wanted to cross-question David, and came to see him, making 
 a pretext of his wish for news of Seraphita. Though Pastor 
 Becker thought the poor old man was childish, the stranger 
 trusted to his own perspicacity to guide him in discovering 
 the drops of truth the old serving-man might let fall in the 
 torrent of his wandering talk. 
 
 David had the rigid but undecided expression of a man of 
 6 
 
82 SERAPHITA. 
 
 eighty ; under his white hair his brow showed deep wrinkles, 
 forming broken stratifications, and his whole face was fur- 
 rowed like the dry bed of a torrent. All his vitality seemed 
 to be concentrated in his eyes, where a spark still gleamed ; 
 but even that light was hidden behind clouds, and might be 
 either the fitful activity of a feeble mind or the stupid glare 
 of intoxication. His slow, heavy movements betrayed the 
 chill of old age, and seemed to communicate it to any one 
 who gazed at him for long, for he had the strength of inertia. 
 His narrow intelligence awoke only at the sound of his mis- 
 tress' voice, at the sight or the thought of her. She was the 
 soul of this merely material wreck. When David was alone 
 you would have thought him a corpse ; if Seraphita appeared, 
 or spoke, or was spoken of, the dead rose from the grave and 
 recovered motion and speech. 
 
 Never were the dry bones that the breath of God shall re- 
 vive in the valley of Jehoshaphat never was that Apocalyptic 
 parable more vividly realized than in this Lazarus perennially 
 called forth from the sepulchre by the voice of this young 
 girl. His mode of speech, always highly figurative and often 
 incomprehensible, kept the villagers from talking to him; but 
 they greatly respected a mind so far removed from the vulgar 
 routine ; it commands the instinctive reverence of common 
 folk. 
 
 Wilfrid found David in the outer room apparently asleep, 
 close to the stove. Like a dog recognizing a friend's ap- 
 proach, the old man opened his eyes, saw the stranger, and 
 did not stir. 
 
 "Well, where is she?" asked Wilfrid, sitting down by the 
 old man. 
 
 David fluttered his fingers in the air to represent the flight 
 of a bird. 
 
 " She is not still in pain ? " asked Wilfrid. 
 
 " None but those beings who are plighted to heaven can 
 suffer without any diminution of their love ; that is the seal 
 
SERAPHITA. 83 
 
 of the true faith," said the old man gravely, like an instrument 
 responding to a chance touch. 
 
 " Who tells you to say that ? " 
 
 "The spirit." 
 
 "What happened, after all, last evening? Did you force 
 your way past the Vertumni on guard? Did you steal in 
 between the Mammons ? " 
 
 "Yes/' replied David, waking as if from a dream. 
 
 The mist before his eye cleared off under a flash that came 
 from within, and which made it grow gradually as bright as 
 an eagle's, as intelligent as a poet's. 
 
 " What, then, did you see ? " asked Wilfrid, amazed at this 
 sudden change. 
 
 " I saw Species and Shapes, I heard the Spirit of all things; 
 I saw the rebellion of the Evil Ones, I listened to the words 
 of the Good. Seven devils appeared, seven archangels came 
 down to them. The archangels stood afar, they were veiled, 
 and looked on. The devils were close at hand, they glittered 
 and moved. Mammon was there in a shell of pearl, in the 
 guise of a beautiful naked woman ; his body was as dazzling 
 as the snow, no human form can be so perfect ; and he said, 
 ' I am all pleasure, and thou shalt possess me ! ' Lucifer, 
 the Prince of Serpents, came in his royal attire; he was as a 
 man, as beautiful as an angel, and he said, 'The human race 
 shall serve thee ! ' The Queen of the Covetous, she who never 
 restores that which she has taken the Sea herself appeared in 
 her mantle of green ; she opened her bosom and showed her 
 store of gems, she vomited treasures and offered them as a 
 gift ; she tossed up waves of sapphire and emerald ; her crea- 
 tures were disturbed, they came forth from their hiding-places 
 and spoke ; the fairest of the pearls spread butterflies' wings, 
 she glistened, and spoke in sea-melodies, saying, ' We are 
 both daughters of suffering, we are sisters ; wait for me ; we 
 will fly together; I have only to be changed into a woman.' 
 The bird that has the talons of an eagle and the legs of a lion, 
 
84 SERAPHITA. 
 
 the head of a woman and a horse's quarters the ANIMAL 
 crouched before her and licked her feet, and promised seven 
 hundred years of plenty to this well-beloved daughter. 
 
 " The most formidable of all, the Child, came to her very 
 knee, weeping, and saying, ' Can you forsake me, so feeble 
 and helpless? Mother, stay with me ! ' He played with the 
 others, he shed idleness in the air; heaven itself might have 
 yielded to his lament. The Virgin of pure song brought 
 music that debauches the soul. The Kings of the East passed 
 by with their slaves, their armies, and their women ; the 
 Wounded clamored for help, the Wretched held out their 
 hands : ' Do not leave us, do not leave us ! ' was their cry. 
 
 " I too cried, ' Do not leave us ; we will worship you only 
 stay ! ' 
 
 "Flowers burst from their seeds and wrapped her in per- 
 fume, which said, ' Stay ! ' The Giant Anakim came down 
 from Jupiter, bringing Gold and his comrades, and all the 
 Spirits of the astral worlds who had followed him, and they 
 all said, ' We will be thine for seven hundred years.' At last 
 Death got off his pale horse and said, ' I will obey thee ! ' 
 And they all fell on their faces at her feet ; if you could but 
 have seen them ! They filled a vast plain, and all cried to 
 her, ' We have fed thee ; thou art our child ; do not forsake 
 us!' 
 
 "At length Life came up from her ruby waters and said, ' I 
 will not desert thee ! ' Then, finding Seraphita speechless, 
 she suddenly blazed like the sun, and exclaimed, 'I am the 
 Light ! ' ' THE LIGHT is there ! ' replied Seraphita, pointing 
 to clouds where the archangels were astir. But she was worn 
 out ; Desire had broken her on the rack ; she could only cry 
 aloud, ' My God ! my God ! ' 
 
 " How many Angelic Spirits who have climbed the hill, 
 and are on the point of reaching the summit, have stumbled 
 on a stone that has made them fall and roll back into the 
 depths ! All these fallen Spirits marveled at her constancy ; 
 
SERAPHITA. 85 
 
 they stood there a motionless chorus, weeping, and saying, 
 ' Courage ! ' At last she had triumphed over Desire, un- 
 chained to rend her in every Shape and Species. She re- 
 mained praying ; 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 Wilfrid. 
 
 "Yes," said the old man. 
 
 " This was a dream that she told you? " asked Wilfrid. 
 
 "A dream as real as that you are alive," replied David. 
 "I was there." 
 
 The old servant's calm conviction struck Wilfrid, who went 
 away, wondering whether these visions were at all less extra- 
 ordinary than those of which Swedenborg wrote, and of which 
 he had read the evening before. 
 
 " If spirits exist, they must surely act," said he to himself 
 as he went into the manse, where he found the pastor alone. 
 
 "My dear pastor," said he, " Seraphita is human onry in 
 form, and her form is unaccountable. Do not regard me as 
 mad or in love : conviction cannot be argued away. Convert 
 my belief into a scientific hypothesis, and let us try to under- 
 stand all this. To-morrow we will go together to see her." 
 
 " And then ? " said the minister. 
 
 " If her eye knows no limitation of space, if her thought 
 is the sight of the intellect, allowing her to apprehend the 
 essence of things and to connect them with the general evolution 
 of the universe ; if, in a word, she knows and sees everything, 
 let us get the Pythoness on to her tripod, and compel the eagle 
 to spread its wings, by threats. Help me ! I breathe a con- 
 suming fire; I must extinguish it, or be devoured by it. In 
 short, I see my prey ; I will have it." 
 
 "It will be a conquest difficult of achievement," said the 
 minister, " for the poor girl is " 
 
 "Is? " said Wilfrid. 
 
 "Mad," said the pastor. 
 
 "I will not dispute her madness," said Wilfrid, "so long 
 
86 SERAPHITA. 
 
 as you do not dispute her superiority. Dear Pastor Becker, she 
 has often put me to the blush by her learning. Has she 
 traveled much? " 
 
 "From her house to the fiord." 
 
 " She has never been away ! " cried Wilfrid. "Then she 
 must have read a great deal? " 
 
 "Not a page, not a jot. I am the only person in Jarvis 
 who has any books. Swedenborg's writings, the only works ' 
 in the hamlet, are here; she has never borrowed a single 
 volume." 
 
 " Have you ever tried to converse with her? " 
 
 " Of what use would it be ? " 
 
 " No one has dwelt under her roof? " 
 
 "She has no friends but you and Minna; no servant but 
 old David." 
 
 "And she has never learned anything of Science or Art?" 
 
 ''From whom?" said the pastor. 
 
 "Then, when she discusses such matters very pertinently, 
 as'she has often done with me, what would you infer? " 
 
 "That the girl may, perhaps, during all these years of 
 silence, have acquired such faculties as were possessed by 
 Apollonius of Tyana, and by certain so-called wizards, who 
 were burned by the Inquisition, which rejected the idea of 
 second-sight." 
 
 " When she talks Arabic, what can you say? " 
 
 "The history of medicine contains many accredited 
 instances of women who spoke languages they did not under- 
 stand." 
 
 "What can I do?" said Wilfrid. "She knows things 
 concerning my past life of which the secret lay in me." 
 
 "We will see if she can tell me any thoughts that I have 
 never spoken to any one," said Pastor Becker. 
 
 Minna came into the room. 
 
 "Well, my child, and how is your Spirit-friend ?" 
 
 "He is suffering, father," said she, bowing to Wilfrid. 
 
SERAPHITA. 87 
 
 " The passions of humanity, trickled out in' their false 
 splendor, tortured him in the night, and spread incredible 
 pomp before his eyes. But you treat all these things as mere 
 fables." 
 
 " Fables as delightful to him who reads them in his brain 
 as those of the 'Arabian Nights' are to ordinary minds," 
 said her father, smiling. 
 
 "Then, did not Satan," she retorted, "transport the 
 Saviour to the summit of the Temple and show Him the 
 kingdoms at His feet ? " 
 
 "The Evangelists," replied Becker, "did not so effectually 
 correct their text but that several versions exist." 
 
 "You, then, believe in the reality of these apparitions?" 
 Wilfrid asked of Minna. 
 
 "Who can doubt that hears him tell of them?" 
 
 " Him? Who?" asked Wilfrid. 
 
 "He who dwells there," said Minna, pointing to the 
 castle. 
 
 "You speak of Seraphita?" said Wilfrid, surprised. 
 
 The girl hung her head, with a gentle but mischievous 
 glance at him. 
 
 " Yes, you too take pleasure in confusing my mind. Who 
 is she? What is your idea of her?" 
 
 " What I feel is inexplicable," said Minna, coloring. 
 
 "You are both mad?" said the pastor. 
 
 "Then we meet to-morrow evening," said Wilfrid, as he 
 left. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE CLOUDS OF THE SANCTUARY. 
 
 There are spectacles to which all the material magnifi- 
 cence at man's command is made to contribute. Whole 
 tribes of slaves or divers go forth to seek in the sands of 
 ocean, in the bowels of the rocks, the pearls and diamonds 
 that adorn the spectators. These treasures, handed down 
 from heir to heir, have blazed on crowned heads, and might be 
 the most veracious historians of humanity if they could but 
 speak. Have they not seen the joys and woes of the greatest 
 as well as of the humblest ? They have been everywhere 
 worn with pride at high festivals ; carried in despair to the 
 money-lender ; stolen amid blood and pillage ; treasured in 
 miracles of artistic workmanship, contrived for their safe 
 keeping. Excepting Cleopatra's pearl, not one has perished. 
 
 The great and the rich are assembled to see a king crowned 
 a monarch whose raiment is the work of men's hands, but who, 
 in all his glory, is arrayed in purple less exquisite than that of 
 a humble flower. These festivities, blazing with light, bathed 
 in music through which the words of men strive to be heard 
 in thunder all these works of man can be crushed by a 
 thought, a feeling. The mind of man can bring to his ken 
 light more glorious, can make him hear more tuneful harmo- 
 nies, show him among clouds the glittering constellations he 
 may question ; and the heart can do yet more ! Man may 
 stand face to face with a single being and find in a single 
 word, a single look, a burden so heavy to be borne, a light so 
 intense, a sound so piercing, that he can but yield and kneel. 
 The truest splendors are not in outward things, but in our- 
 selves. 
 
 To a learned man, is not some secret of science a whole new 
 (88) 
 
SERAPHITA. 89 
 
 world of wonders ? But do the clarions of force, the gems of 
 wealth, the music of triumph, the concourse of the crowd, do 
 honor to his joy? No. He goes off to some remote nook, 
 where a man, often pale and feeble, whispers a single word in 
 his ear. That word, like a torch in an underground passage, 
 lights up the whole of science. 
 
 Every human conception, arrayed in the most attractive 
 forms that mystery can invent, once gathered round a blind 
 man sitting in the mud by the roadside. The three worlds 
 the Natural, the Spiritual, and Divine were revealed to an 
 unhappy Florentine exile ; as he went he was escorted by the 
 happy and by the suffering, by those who prayed and those 
 who cursed, by angels and by the damned. When He who 
 came from God, who knew and could do all things, appeared 
 to three of His disciples, it was one evening at the common 
 table of a poor little inn ; there and then the Light broke 
 forth, bursting material husks, and showing its spiritual power. 
 They saw Him in His glory, and the earth clung to their feet 
 no more than the sandals they could slip off them. 
 
 The pastor, Wilfrid, and Minna were all three excited to 
 alarm at going to the house of the extraordinary being they 
 proposed to question. To each of them the Swedish castle 
 was magnified into the theatre of a stupendous spectacle, like 
 those of which the composition and color are so skillfully ar- 
 ranged by poets, where the actors, though imaginary to men, 
 are real to those who are beginning to enter into the spiritual 
 world. On the seats of that amphitheatre the pastor beheld 
 arrayed the dark legions of doubt, his gloomy ideas, his vi- 
 cious syllogisms in argument; he called up the various philo- 
 sophical and religious sects, ever contentious, and all embodied 
 in the shape of a fleshless system, as lean as the figure of Time 
 as imagined by man the old mower who with one hand 
 raises the scythe, and in the other carries a meagre world, the 
 world of human life. 
 
 Wilnid there saw his first illusions and his last hopes; he 
 
90 SERAPHITA. 
 
 imagined human destiny incarnate there and all its struggles ; 
 religion and its triumphant hierarchies. 
 
 Minna vaguely found heaven there, seen through a vista ; 
 love held up a curtain embroidered with mystical figures, and 
 the harmonious sounds that fell on her ears increased her curi- 
 osity. Hence this evening was to them what the supper at 
 Emmaus was to the three travelers, what a vision was to Dante, 
 what an inspiration was to Homer; to them, too, the three 
 aspects of the world were to be revealed, veils rent, doubts 
 dispelled, darkness lightened. Human nature in all its phases, 
 and awaiting illumination, could find no better representatives 
 than this young girl, this man, and these two elders, one of 
 them learned enough to be skeptical, the other ignorant 
 enough to believe. No scene could be simpler in appearance 
 or more stupendous in fact. 
 
 On entering, shown in by old David, they found Seraphita 
 standing by the table, on which were spread the various items 
 constituting a "Tea," a meal which takes the place in the 
 north of the pleasures of wine-drinking, reserved for southern 
 lands. Nothing certainly betrayed in her or in him a won- 
 drous being who had the power of appearing under two dis- 
 tinct forms, nothing that showed the various forces she could 
 command. With a homely desire to make her three guests 
 comfortable, Seraphita bade old David feed the stove with 
 wood. 
 
 "Good-evening, neighbors," said she. "Dear Pastor 
 Becker, you did well to come ; you see me alive, perhaps, for 
 the last time. This winter has killed me. Be seated, pray," 
 she added to Wilfrid. "And you, Minna, sit there," and she 
 pointed to an armchair near the young man. " You have 
 brought your work, I see. Did you find out the stitch. The 
 pattern is very pretty. For whom is it to be? For your 
 father or for this gentleman ? " and she turned to Wilfrid. 
 "We must not allow him to leave without some remembrance 
 of the damsels of Norway." 
 
SERAPHITA. 91 
 
 "Then you were in pain again yesterday?" asked Wilfrid. 
 
 "That is nothing," she replied. "Such pain makes me 
 glad ; it is indispensable to escape from life." 
 
 "Then you are not afraid of dying?" said the minister, 
 smiling, for he did not believe in her illness. 
 
 " No, dear pastor; there are two ways of dying to some 
 death means victory, to some it is defeat." 
 
 "And you think you have won ! " said Minna. 
 
 "I do not know," said she. "Perhaps it is only a step 
 more." 
 
 The milky radiance of her brow seemed to fade, her eyes 
 fell under her lids, which slowly closed. This simple circum- 
 stance distressed the three inquirers, who sat quite still. The 
 pastor was the boldest. 
 
 " My dear girl," said he, " you are candor itself; you are 
 also divinely kind. I want more of you this evening than the 
 dainties of your tea-table. If we may believe what some 
 people say, you know some most wonderful things ; and if so, 
 would it not be an act of charity to clear up some of our 
 doubts?" 
 
 "Oh, yes!" said Seraphita, with a smile. "They say 
 that I walk on the clouds ; I am on familiar terms with the 
 eddies in the fiord ; the sea is a horse I have saddled and 
 bridled ; I know where the singing flower grows, where the 
 talking light shines, where living colors blaze that scent the 
 air ; I have Solomon's ring ; I am a fairy ; I give my orders 
 to the wind, and it obeys me like a submissive slave ; I can 
 see the treasures in the mine ; I am the virgin whom pearls 
 rush to meet, and " 
 
 "And we walk unharmed on the Falberg," Minna put in. 
 
 "What, you too?" replied the Being with a luminous 
 glance at the girl, which quite upset her. " If I had not the 
 power of reading through your brows the wish that has brought 
 you here, should I be what you think I am?" she went on, 
 including them all in her captivating gaze, to David's great 
 
92 SERAPH1TA. 
 
 satisfaction, and he went off rubbing his hands. "Yes," she 
 went on after a pause, " you all came overflowing with child- 
 ish curiosity. You, my dear pastor, wondered whether it 
 were possible that a girl of seventeen should know even one 
 of the thousand secrets which learned men seek diligently 
 with their noses to the ground instead of with their eyes raised 
 to heaven ! Now, if I were to show you how and where plant 
 life and animal life mingle, you would begin to doubt your 
 doubts. You plotted to cross-question me, confess?" 
 
 "Yes, beloved Seraphita," said Wilfrid. " But is not such 
 a desire natural to man ? " 
 
 "And do you want to worry this child?" she said, laying 
 her hand on Minna's hair with a caressing gesture. 
 
 The girl looked up, and seemed to long to be merged in 
 the Being before her. 
 
 " The word is given for all," the mysterious Being went on 
 very gravely. " Woe to him who should keep silence even 
 in the midst of the desert, thinking that none would hear. 
 Everything speaks, everything hears here below. The word 
 moves worlds. I hope, Pastor Becker, not to speak in vain. 
 I know what difficulties trouble you most : would it not be a 
 miracle if I could at once apprehend all the past experiences 
 of your conscience ? Well, that miracle will be accomplished. 
 Listen to me : you have never confessed your doubts in their 
 full extent ; I alone, immovable in my faith, can set them 
 before you, and frighten you at your own image. You are on 
 the darkest declivity of doubt. You do not believe in God, 
 and everything on earth is of secondary importance to the 
 man who attacks the first cause of everything. 
 
 " Let us set aside the discussions thrashed out without 
 result by false philosophers. Generations of Spiritualists have 
 made no less vain efforts to disprove the existence of matter 
 than generations of Materialists have made to disprove the 
 existence of the spirit. Why these contests? Does not man, 
 as he is, afford undeniable proofs of both ? Is he not a 
 
SERAPHITA. 93 
 
 union of matter and spirit ? Only a madman can refuse to 
 find an atom of matter in the human frame ; when it is de- 
 composed, natural science finds no difference between its ele- 
 ments and those of other animals. The idea which is pro- 
 duced in man by the power of comparing several different 
 objects, on the other hand, does not seem to come within the 
 domain of matter. On this I give no opinion ; we have to 
 deal with your doubts, not with my convictions. 
 
 " But to you, as to most thoughtful men, the relations 
 which you have the faculty of discerning between things, of 
 which the real existence is made certain to you through your 
 senses, do not, I suppose, seem material. The natural uni- 
 verse, then, of things and beings meets in man with the 
 supernatural universe of likeness or difference which he can 
 discern between the innumerable forms in nature relations 
 so various that they seem to be infinite ; for if, till the present 
 day, no one has been able to enumerate the created things 
 of this earth only, what man can ever enumerate their relations 
 to each other ? Is not the small fraction with which you 
 are familiar, in regard to the grand total, as the unit to the 
 infinite? 
 
 " Hence here you find yourself already made aware of the 
 existence of the infinite, and this necessarily leads you to con- 
 ceive of a purely spiritual sphere. Hence, too, man is in 
 himself sufficient evidence of these two modes of life : Matter 
 and Spirit. In him ends a finite, visible universe; in him 
 begins an infinite and invisible universe two worlds that do 
 not know each other. Have the pebbles of the fiord any cog- 
 nizance of their relative shapes, are they conscious of the 
 colors seen in them by the eye of man, do they hear the music 
 of the ripples that dance over them ? Let us then leap the 
 gulf we cannot fathom, the unthinkable union of a material 
 with a spiritual universe, the concept of a visible, ponderable, 
 tangible creation, conterminous with an invisible, imponder- 
 able, intangible creation ; absolutely dissimilar, separated by 
 
94 SERAPHITA. 
 
 a void, united by indisputable points of contact, and meeting 
 in a being who belongs to both ! Let us, I say, mingle in one 
 world these two worlds, which, in your philosophy, can never 
 coalesce, but which, in fact, do coalesce. 
 
 " However abstract man may call it, the relation which 
 binds two things together must stamp its mark. Where ? On 
 what ? We have not now to inquire to what degree of rarity 
 matter may be reduced. If that were indeed the question, I 
 do not see why He who has linked the stars together at im- 
 measurable distances by physical laws, to veil His face withal, 
 should not have created substances that could think, nor why 
 you will not allow that He should have given thought a body. 
 
 "To you, then, your invisible, moral, or mental universe, 
 and your visible, physical universe, constitute one and the 
 same matter. We will not divide bodies from their properties, 
 nor objects from their relations. Everything that exists, that 
 weighs upon and overwhelms us from above and beneath us, 
 before us or within us ; all that our eyes or our minds appre- 
 hend, all that is named or nameless, must, to reduce the 
 problem of Creation to the standard of your logic, be a finite 
 mass of matter; if it were infinite, God could not be its 
 master. Thus, according to you, dear pastor, by whatever 
 scheme you propose to introduce God, who is infinite, into 
 this finite mass of matter, God could no longer exist with such 
 attributes as are ascribed to Him by man. If we seek Him 
 through facts, He is not ; if we seek Him through reason, still 
 He is not ; both spiritually and materially God is impossible. 
 Let us hearken to the word of human reason driven to its 
 utmost consequences. 
 
 " If we now conceive of God face to face with this stupen- 
 dous whole, we find only two conditions of relationship pos- 
 sible : Either God and Matter were contemporaneous, or God 
 was alone and preexistent. If all the wisdom that has enlight- 
 ened the human race from the first day of its existence could 
 be collected in one vast brain, that monstrous brain could 
 
SERAPHITA. 95 
 
 invent no third mode of being, short of denying both God 
 and Matter. Human philosophers may pile up mountains of 
 words and ideas ; Religions may accumulate emblems and 
 beliefs, revelations and mysteries, still we are forced on to 
 this terrible dilemma, and must choose one of the two pro- 
 positions it offers. However, you have not much choice, for 
 each leads the human mind to skepticism. 
 
 " The problem being thus stated, what signifies Spirit or 
 Matter? What does it signify which way the worlds are 
 moving if once the Being who guides them is proved to be an 
 absurdity? Of what use is it to inquire whether man is ad- 
 vancing toward heaven or coming back from it, whether crea- 
 tion is tending upward toward the spirit or downward toward 
 matter, if the worlds we question can give no answer? Of 
 what consequence are theogonies and their armies, theologies 
 and their dogmas, when, whichever alternative man chooses 
 in answer to the problem, his God is no more ? 
 
 " Let us examine the first : Suppose God and Matter to 
 have been coexistent from the beginning. Can He be God 
 who suffers the action and coexistence of a substance that is 
 not Himself? On this theory God is but a secondary agent 
 constrained to organize matter. Who constrained Him? 
 And as between that coarser other half and Him, who was to 
 decide? Who paid the Great Workman for the six days' 
 labor attributed to Him? If there were, indeed, some co- 
 ercing force which was neither God nor matter, if God were 
 compelled to make the machinery of the universe, it would be 
 no less absurd to call Him God than to call a slave set to turn 
 a mill a Roman citizen. And, in fact, the difficulty is just as 
 insoluble in the case of that Supreme Intelligence as in that of 
 God Himself. It only carries the problem a step further 
 back ; and is not this like the Indian philosophers,* who place 
 the world on a tortoise, and the tortoise on an elephant, but 
 cannot say on what their elephant's feet rest ? Can we con- 
 * The Buddhists. 
 
96 SERAPHITA. 
 
 ceive that this Supreme Will, evolved from the conflict of God 
 with matter this God greater than God should have existed 
 during eternity without Willing what He Willed, granting 
 that eternity can be divided into two periods ? Wherever God 
 may be, if He knew not what His future Will would be, what 
 becomes of His intuitive perceptions ? And of these two eter- 
 nities, which is the superior uncreated eternity or created 
 eternity ? 
 
 " If God from all eternity willed that the world should be 
 what it is, this fresh view of necessity, which is in harmony 
 no doubt with the notion of a Sovereign Intelligence, implies 
 the coeternity of matter. Whether matter be coeternal by 
 the Divine Will, which must at all times be at one with itself, 
 or whether it be independently coeternal, since the power of 
 God must be absolute, it perishes if He has not His free-will. 
 He would always have found within Himself a supreme reason 
 which would have ruled Him. Is God God if He cannot sep- 
 arate Himself from the works of His creation in subsequent 
 as well as in anterior eternity? 
 
 " This aspect of the problem is then insoluble so far as cause 
 is concerned. Let us examine it in its effects. 
 
 "If God the Creator, under compulsion to create the universe 
 from all eternity, is inconceivable, He is no less so as perpetu- 
 ally one with His work. God, eternally constrained to exist 
 in His creatures, is no less dishonored than in His former 
 position as a workman. Can you conceive of a God who can 
 no more be independent of His work than dependent on it? 
 Can He destroy it without treason to Himself? Consider and 
 make your choice : Whether He should some day destroy it, 
 or not destroy it ; either alternative is equally fatal to attri- 
 butes, without which He cannot subsist. Is the world a mere 
 experiment, a perishable mould which must be destroyed ? 
 Then God must be inconsistent and impotent. Inconsistent 
 for ought He not to have known the issue before making 
 the experiment, and why does He delay destroying that which 
 
SERAPHITA. 97 
 
 is to be destroyed ? Impotent or how else could He have 
 created an imperfect world ? 
 
 "And if an imperfect creation belies the faculties that man 
 ascribes to God, let us, on the other hand, suppose it to be 
 perfect. This idea is in harmony with our conception of a God 
 of supreme intelligence who could make no mistake ; but, 
 then, why any deterioration ? Why Regeneration ? Then a 
 perfect world is necessarily indestructible, its forms must be 
 imperishable ; it can neither advance nor retrocede ; it rolls 
 on in an eternal orbit whence it can never deviate. Thus is 
 God dependent on His work ; thus is it coeternal with 
 Him, which brings us back to one of the propositions which 
 most audaciously attacks God. If the universe is imperfect, 
 it allows of advance and progress ; if perfect, it is stationary. 
 So if it is impossible to conceive of a progressive God, not 
 knowing from all eternity what the result would be of His 
 creation, can we then admit a stationary God ? Would not 
 that be the apotheosis of matter, the greatest possible nega- 
 tion ? Under the first hypothesis, God deceases by want of 
 power ; under the second, He deceases by the static force of 
 inertia. 
 
 " Hence, alike in the conception and the execution of 
 creation, to every honest mind the notion of matter as con- 
 temporaneous with God is a denial of God. 
 
 " Compelled to choose between these two aspects of the 
 question, in order to govern the nations, many generations of 
 great thinkers have chosen the second. This gave rise to the 
 dogma of two moral elements, as conceived of by the Magians, 
 which has spread in Europe under the image of Satan con- 
 tending with the Father of all. But are not this dogmatic 
 formula and the endless deifications that are derived from it 
 crimes of high treason to the Divine Majesty? By what 
 other name can we call a belief that makes the personification 
 of Evil the rival of God, for ever struggling in the throes of a 
 supreme intellect without any hope of victory? The laws of 
 7 
 
98 SERAPHITA. 
 
 statics show that two forces thus placed must neutralize each 
 other. 
 
 " Now, turn to the other side of the problem : God was 
 preexistent and alone. 
 
 " We need not reproduce the former arguments, which are 
 equally strong in relation to the division of eternity into two 
 periods uncreated and created. We will also set aside the 
 question of the motion or the immobility of worlds, and 
 restrict ourselves to the inherent difficulties of this second 
 thesis. 
 
 "If God preexisted alone, the universe proceeded from 
 Him ; matter is the emanation of His essence. Then matter 
 is not. Every form is but a veil hiding the Divine Spirit. 
 Then, the world is eternal ; then, the world is God ! But is 
 not this formula even more fatal than the former one to the 
 attributes assigned to God by human reason ? Does matter, as 
 emanating from God, and always one with Him, account for 
 the existing conditions of matter? How are we to believe 
 that the Almighty, supremely good in His nature and His 
 acts, could beget things so unlike Himself that He is not in 
 all things and everywhere the same? Were there in Him 
 certain evil constituents which He rejected from Him ? A con- 
 jecture more terrible than offensive or ridiculous, inasmuch as 
 it includes the two theorems which, in our former argument, 
 we proved to be inadmissible. God must be ONE and 
 cannot divide Himself without infringing the most important 
 of His attributes. Is it possible to conceive of a portion of 
 God which is not God ? 
 
 ''This hypothesis seemed so impious to the Roman Church 
 that she made God's omnipresence, even in the smallest frag- 
 ments of the eucharist, an article of faith. 
 
 " How, then, are we to conceive of an omnipotent intel- 
 ligence which yet cannot conquer? How unite it with 
 Nature, unless by direct conquest ? But Nature seeks and 
 combines, reproduces, dies, and is born again ; it is even 
 
SERAPHITA. 99 
 
 more agitated in the creative effort than when all is in a 
 state of fusion ; it suffers and groans ; it is ignorant, degene- 
 rate, does evil, makes mistakes, destroys itself, disappears, and 
 begins again. How are we to justify the almost universal 
 eclipse of the Divine element ? Why is death ? Why was 
 the spirit of evil, the monarch of this earth, sent forth from 
 a supremely good God good alike in His essence and His 
 faculties, who could have produced nothing that was not like 
 Himself? 
 
 "And if, setting aside this relentless issue which leads us at 
 once to the absurd, we go into details, what purpose can we 
 ascribe to the world ? If all is God, all is at once effect and 
 cause; or, more accurately, cause and effect do not exist. 
 Like God, all is ONE; and you can discern no starting-point 
 and no end. Can the real end be, possibly, a rotation of 
 matter growing more and more rare ? But whatever the end 
 may be, is not the mechanism of such matter proceeding from 
 God and returning to God, a mere child's plaything? Why 
 should He embody Himself so grossly ? Under what form is 
 God most completely God ? Which wins the day, spirit or 
 matter, when neither of those modes of being can be wrong? 
 Who can possibly discern God in this perennial toil by which 
 He divides Himself into two natures one omniscient, the 
 other knowing nothing? Can you conceive of God as play- 
 ing at being man, laughing His own labors to scorn, dying on 
 Friday to rise again on Sunday, and carrying on the play from 
 age to age while knowing the end from all eternity; and 
 never telling Himself, the Creature, what He is doing as 
 Creator? 
 
 "The God of the former hypothesis, null as He is by sheer 
 inertia, seems more possible if we had to choose between im- 
 possibilities than that stupid, mocking God who destroys 
 Himself when two portions of humanity meet weapon in 
 hand. Comical as this ultimate expression of the second as- 
 pect of the problem may be, it was that chosen by half the 
 
100 SERAPHITA. 
 
 human race among nations that had created certain gay myth- 
 ologies. These amorous nations were consistent ; to them 
 everything was a god, even fear and its cowardice, even 
 crime and its bacchanals. If we accept Pantheism, the faith 
 of some great human geniuses, who can tell where reason lies? 
 Is it with the savage running free in the desert, clothed in his 
 nakedness, lordly and always right in his actions whatever 
 they may be, listening to the sun and talking to the sea? Is 
 it with the civilized man, whose greatest pleasures are due to 
 falsehoods, who hews and hammers Nature to make the gun 
 he carries on his shoulder, who has applied his intelligence to 
 hasten the hour of his death, and create maladies that taint 
 his pleasures ? When the scourge of pestilence, or the plough- 
 share of war, or the genius of the desert had passed over a 
 spot of earth, annihilating everything, which came off best 
 the Nubian savage or the patrician of Thebes ? 
 
 " Your skepticism permeates from above downward. Your 
 doubts include everything, 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 every- 
 thing goes on improving, why do we die as children ? Why 
 do not nations, at any rate, perpetuate themselves? Is the 
 world that proceeded from God, that is contained in God, 
 stationary? Do we live but once? Or do we live for ever? 
 If we live but once, coerced by the advance of the Great All, 
 of which we have no knowledge given us, let us do what we 
 will ! If we are eternal, let everything pass ! Can the crea- 
 ture be guilty because it exists when changes are going on ? 
 If it sins at the moment of some great transformation, shall 
 it be punished for it after having been the victim ? What be- 
 comes of divine goodness if it refuses to place us at once in 
 the realms of happiness if such there be ? What becomes of 
 God's foreknowledge if He does not know the results of the 
 trials to which He subjects us? What is this alternative pro- 
 posed to man by all his creeds, between stewing in an eternal 
 
SERAPHITA. 101 
 
 caldron and wandering in a white robe with a palm in his 
 hand and crowned with a halo? Can this pagan invention be 
 the supreme promise of God? 
 
 "And what magnanimous spirit but sees how unworthy of 
 man and God alike is virtue out of self-interest, the eternity 
 of joys offered by every creed to those who, during a few 
 brief hours of existence, fulfill certain monstrous and often 
 unnatural conditions? Is it not preposterous to endow His 
 creature, man, with vehement senses and then forbid his grat- 
 ifying them ? 
 
 " Beside, to what end these trivial objections when good 
 and evil alike are negatived ? Does Evil exist ? If matter in 
 all its manifestations is God, then evil is God. 
 
 "The faculty of reason, as well as the faculty of feeling, 
 being bestowed on man for his use, nothing can be more par- 
 donable than to seek a meaning in human suffering and to 
 inquire into the future ; if this rigid and rigorous logic leads 
 us to such conclusions, what confusion is here ! The world 
 has then no stability; nothing moves on, and nothing stands 
 still ; everything changes, but nothing is destroyed ; every- 
 thing renews itself and reappears ; for, if your mind cannot 
 unanswerably prove an end, it is equally impossible to prove 
 the annihilation of the smallest atom of matter : it may be 
 transformed, but not destroyed. Though blind force may 
 prove the atheist's position, intelligent force is inscrutable; 
 for, if it proceeds from God, ought it to encounter any obsta- 
 cles; ought it not to conquer them immediately? 
 
 " Where is God ? If the living are not aware of Him, will 
 the dead find Him? 
 
 " Crumble into dust, O idolatries and creeds ! Fall, O too 
 feeble keystones of the social arches, for ye have never retarded 
 the destruction, the death, the oblivion, that have come upon 
 all the nations of the past, however securely they were founded. 
 Fall, O morality and justice! Our crimes are but relative, 
 they are divine results of which the causes are unknown to us J 
 
102 SERAPHITA. 
 
 Everything is God. Either we are God, or God is not ! 
 Child of an age of which each year has left on your brow the 
 cold touch of its skepticism Old Man ! this is the sum-total 
 of your science and your long meditations ! 
 
 " Dear Pastor Becker, you have rested your head on the 
 pillow of doubt, finding it the easiest solution, acting indeed 
 like the majority of the human race. They say to themselves, 
 * We will think no more of this question if God will not 
 vouchsafe us an algebraic demonstration for its solution, while 
 He has given us so many that lead us safely up from the earth 
 to the stars ' 
 
 " Now, are not these your secret thoughts? Have I missed 
 them ? Have I not, on the contrary, precisely stated them ? 
 Either the dogma of the two elementary principles, an antag- 
 onism in which God is destroyed by the very fact that He 
 who is Almighty plays at a struggle ; or the ridiculous Pan- 
 theism in which all things being God, God is no more these 
 two sources, whence flow the creeds to whose triumph the earth 
 is devoted, are equally pernicious. 
 
 "There, between us, lies the two-edged axe with which you 
 behead the white-haired Ancient of Days whom you enthrone 
 on painted clouds ! 
 
 " Now, give me the axe ! " 
 
 The pastor and Wilfrid looked at the girl in a sort of 
 dismay. 
 
 "Belief," said Seraphita in her gentle voice for the man 
 had been speaking hitherto " belief is a gift ! To believe is 
 to feel. To believe in God, you must feel God. This sense 
 is a faculty slowly acquired by the human being, as those 
 wonderful powers are acquired which you admire in great 
 men in warriors, artists, men of science those who act, 
 those who produce, those who know. Thought, a bundle of 
 the relations which you discern between different things, is an 
 intellectual language that may be learned, is it not? Belief, a 
 bundle of heavenly truths, is in the same way a language, but 
 
SERAPHITA. 103 
 
 as far above thought as thought is above instinct. This lan- 
 guage too can be learned. 
 
 "The believer answers in a single cry, a single sign; faith 
 places in his hand a flaming sword which cuts and throws 
 light on everything. The seer does not come down again 
 from heaven; he contemplates it and is silent. There is a 
 being who both believes and sees, who has knowledge and 
 power, who loves, prays, and waits. That being is resigned, 
 and aspires to the realm of light ; he has neither the believer's 
 lofty scorn nor the seer's dumbness; he both listens and 
 replies. To him the doubt of the dark ages is not a lethal 
 weapon, but a guiding clue ; he accepts the battle in whatever 
 guise ; he can accommodate his tongue to every language ; he 
 is never wroth, he pities ; he neither condemns nor kills, he 
 redeems and comforts; he has not the harshness of an ag- 
 gressor, but rather the mild fluidity of light which penetrates 
 and warms and illumines every place. In his eyes skepticism 
 is not impiety, is not blasphemy, is not a crime ; it is a stage 
 of transition whence a man must go forward toward the light 
 or back into the darkness. 
 
 " So now, dear pastor, let us reason together. You do not 
 believe in God. Why? God, as you express it, is incom- 
 prehensible and inexplicable. I grant it. I will not retort 
 that to comprehend God altogether is to be God. I will not 
 tell you that you deny what you think inexplicable simply to 
 give myself a right of affirming what seems to me believable. 
 To you there is an evident fact dwelling within you. In you 
 matter is conterminous with intelligence ; and yet you think 
 that human intelligence will end in darkness, in doubt, in 
 nothingness? Even if God seems to you incomprehensible 
 and inexplicable, confess at least that in all physical phe- 
 nomena you recognize in Him a consistent and exquisite 
 craftsman. 
 
 " Then why should His logic end at man, as His most 
 finished work? Though the question may not be convincing, 
 
104 SERAPHITA. 
 
 it deserves some consideration at any rate. Though you deny 
 God, to give a basis to your doubts, you happily can appre- 
 ciate certain double-edged truths which demolish your argu- 
 ments as effectually as your arguments demolish God. 
 
 "We both admit that matter and spirit are two separate 
 creations, neither of which contains the other ; that the spir- 
 itual world consists of infinite relations to which the finite 
 material world gives rise ; and that whereas no one on earth 
 has ever been able to identify himself by a sheer effort of 
 mind with the sum-total of earthly creations, all the more cer- 
 tainly can he not rise*to an apprehension of the relations which 
 the spirit discerns between these creations. So I might end 
 the matter with one blow by denying you the faculty of under- . 
 standing God, just as you deny the pebbles by the fiord the 
 faculty of counting or of seeing themselves. How do you 
 know that they may not deny the existence of man, though 
 man makes use of them to build his house ? 
 
 "There is one fact which overthrows you Infinitude. If 
 you feel it within you, how is it that you do not recognize the 
 consequences? Can the finite fully apprehend the infinite? 
 If you cannot comprehend the relations which, by your own 
 admission, are infinite, how can you comprehend the remote 
 finality in which they are summed? Order, of which the 
 manifestation is one of your needs, being infinite, can your 
 finite reason comprehend it? 
 
 "Nor need you inquire why man cannot comprehend all he 
 can conceive of, for he likewise can conceive of much that he 
 cannot comprehend. If I were to prove to you that your mind 
 is ignorant of everything that lies within its grasp, would you 
 grant me that it is impossible for it to conceive of what lies 
 beyond it? Should I not be justified, then, in saying: One 
 of the alternatives which bring God to naught at the bar of 
 your judgment must be true and the other false; Creation 
 exists, you feel the need for an end ; must not that end be a 
 noble one? Now, if in man matter is conterminous with 
 
SERAPHITA. 105 
 
 intelligence, why can you not be satisfied to grant that human 
 intelligence ends where the light begins of those superior 
 spheres for which is reserved the intuition of the God who, to 
 you, is merely an insoluble problem ? 
 
 " The species lower than man have no comprehension of 
 the universe; you have. Why should there not be, above man 
 again, species more intelligent than he? Before using his 
 powers to take measure of God, would not man do well to 
 know more about himself? Before defying the stars that give 
 him light, before attacking transcendent truths, ought he not 
 rather to verify the truths that immediately concern him- 
 self? 
 
 "But I should answer the negations of doubt by negation. 
 Well, then, I ask you: Is there here on earth a single thing 
 so self-evident that I am bound to believe in it ? I will show 
 you in a minute that you believe firmly in things that can act 
 and yet are not beings, that can give birth to thought and yet 
 are not spirits, in living abstractions which the understanding 
 cannot grasp under any shape, which nowhere exist, but which 
 you can everywhere find ; which have no possible names 
 though you have given them names; which, like the God in 
 human form whom you conceive of, perish before the inex- 
 plicable, the incomprehensible, and the absurd. And I will 
 ask you : If you admit these things, why do you reserve your 
 doubts for God ? 
 
 "You believe in Number as the foundation on which rests 
 the edifice of what you call the exact sciences. Without 
 number mathematics are impossible. Well, then, what im- 
 possible being, to whom life everlasting should be granted, 
 could ever finish counting and in what sufficiently concise 
 language could he utter the numbers contained in the infinite 
 number of which the existence is demonstrated by your reason. 
 Ask the greatest human genius, and suppose him to sit for a 
 thousand years leaning on a table, his head in his hands, what 
 would he answer ? 
 
106 SERAPHITA. 
 
 " You believe, you say, then, in Number a base on which 
 you have built the edifice of sciences which you call ' exact.' 
 You know neither where number begins, where it pauses, nor 
 where it ends. Now you call it time, anon you call it space ; 
 by number only does anything exist ; but for number all sub- 
 stance would be one and the same ; it alone differentiates and 
 modifies matter. Number is to your mind what it is to matter, 
 an intangible agent. But will you then make a god of it ? 
 Is it a being? Is it a breath of God sent forth to organize 
 the material universe, wherein nothing takes shape but as a 
 result of divisibility which is an effect of number? The 
 most minute as well as the most immense objects in creation 
 are distinguished from each other by quantity, quality, dimen- 
 sion, and force are not these all conditions of number? 
 That number is infinite is a fact proved to your intellect, but 
 of which no material proof is obtainable. A mathematician 
 will tell you that infinity of number is certain, but cannot be 
 demonstrated. And, my dear pastor, believers will tell you 
 that God is Number endowed with motion, to be felt but not 
 proven. He, like the unit, is the origin of number though 
 having nothing in common with numbers. The existence of 
 Number depends on that of the unit, which is not a number, 
 but the parent of them all. And God, dear Pastor Becker, is 
 a stupendous Unit, having nothing in common with His 
 creations, but their parent nevertheless. 
 
 " You must grant me that you are equally ignorant as to 
 where number begins or ends, and as to where created eternity 
 begins or ends? Why, then, if you believe in number, should 
 you deny God ? Does not creation hold a place between the 
 infinite of inorganic substances and the infinite of the Divine 
 spheres, as the unit stands between the infinite of fraction 
 lately termed decimals and the infinite numbers you call 
 whole numbers ? Men alone on earth comprehend number, 
 the first step to the forecourt leading to God, and even there 
 reason stumbles. What ! you can neither measure nor grasp 
 
SERAPHITA, 107 
 
 the primary abstraction proposed to you, and you want to 
 apply your puny standard to the ends of God's purpose? 
 What if I should cast you into the bottomless depths of 
 Motion, the force which organizes number? 
 
 " If I were to tell you that the universe is nothing but 
 Number and Motion, we should already, you see, be speaking 
 a different language. I understand both terms ; you do not. 
 What, then, if I should go on to say that motion and number 
 are generated by the Word ? This term, the supreme reason 
 of seers and prophets, who of old heard the voice of God that 
 overthrew St. Paul, is a laughing-stock to you you men, 
 though your own visible works communities, monuments, 
 actions, and passions are all the outcome of your own feeble 
 word ; and though without speech you would still be no higher 
 than the orang of the woods, the great ape that is so nearly 
 akin to the negro. 
 
 " Well, you believe firmly in number and motion, inexpli- 
 cable and incomprehensible as force and result, though I 
 might apply to their existence the same logical dilemma as 
 just now relieved you of the necessity of acknowledging that 
 of God. You, a powerful reasoner, will surely relieve me of 
 the necessity for proving that the Infinite must be everywhere 
 the same, and that it is inevitably one ? God alone is the In- 
 finite, for there obviously cannot be two Infinites. If, to use 
 words in their human sense, anything proved to you here on 
 earth strikes you as infinite, you may be sure you have in that 
 a glimpse of one aspect of God. 
 
 "To proceed : you have found for yourselves a place in the 
 Infinite of number ; you have fitted it to your stature by creating 
 arithmetic if you can be said to create anything the basis 
 on which everything is built up, even society. Arithmetic, or 
 the use of number, has organized the moral world, just as 
 number, the only thing in which your professing atheists be- 
 lieve, organizes physical creation. This science of numbers 
 ought to be absolute, like everything that is intrinsically true; 
 
108 SERAPHITA. 
 
 but it is, in fact, purely relative, it has no absolute existence. 
 You can give no proof of its reality. 
 
 "To begin with, though this science is apt at summing up 
 organized substances, it is impotent as applied to organizing 
 forces, since these are infinite, whereas the former are finite. 
 Man, whose intellect can conceive of the Infinite, cannot deal 
 with it as a whole ; if he could, he would be God. Hence 
 your arithmetic, as applied to finite things and not to the In- 
 finite, is true in relation to the details you apprehend, but 
 false in relation to the whole which you cannot apprehend. 
 Though nature does not vary in her organizing forces and her 
 elementary causes, which are infinite, she is never the same in 
 her finite results. Hence in all nature you will find no two 
 objects exactly alike. 
 
 "Thus, in the order of nature, two and two can never 
 really make four, since the units would have to be exactly 
 equal ; and you know that it is impossible to find two leaves 
 alike on one tree, or two specimens alike of the same species 
 of tree. This axiom of arithmetic then, which is false as re- 
 gards visible nature, is no less false in the invisible nature of 
 your abstractions, where there is the same dissimilarity in your 
 ideas which are derived from the objects of the visible world, 
 only extended in their relations ; in fact, differences are even 
 more strongly marked there than elsewhere. Everything 
 there being modified by the temperament, the strength, the 
 manners, and the habits of individuals, who are never alike, 
 the most trifling matters are representative of personal char- 
 acter. 
 
 "If man has ever succeeded in creating a unit, it was, no 
 doubt, by assigning equal weight and value to certain pieces 
 of gold. Well, add a rich man's ducat to a poor man's, and 
 tell yourself that to the public treasury these are equal quan- 
 tities ; but in the eyes of a thoughtful man, one, morally 
 speaking, is unquestionably greater than the other; one rep- 
 resents a month's happiness, the other the most transient 
 
SERAPHITA. 109 
 
 caprice. Two and two only make four in the sense of a false 
 and monstrous abstraction. 
 
 "Again : fraction does not exist in nature, since what you 
 call a part is a thing complete in itself; and does it not often 
 happen and have we not proof of the fact that the hun- 
 dredth part of some substance may be stronger than what you 
 call the whole ? And if fraction has no existence in the nat- 
 ural world, far less has it existence in the moral world, where 
 ideas and feelings may be as various as the species of the veg- 
 etable kingdom, but are always a whole. The theory of frac- 
 tions, then, is another concession of the mind. Number, with 
 its ' infinitely small ' and its ' infinite total,' is a power of which 
 a small part only is known to you, while its extent evades 
 you. You have built a little cottage in the infinitude of num- 
 ber ; you have adorned it with hieroglyphics very learnedly 
 designed and painted ; and you have said, ' Everything is 
 here ! ' 
 
 " From abstract number we will pass on to number as ap- 
 plied to solids. Your geometry states it as an axiom that a 
 straight line is the shortest way from one point to another; and 
 astronomy shows you that God has given motion only in 
 curves. Here, then, in the same science, are two facts equally 
 well proven one by the evidence of your senses, aided by the 
 telescope; the other by the testimony of your mind ; but one 
 contradicts the other. Man, who is liable to error, asserts 
 one, and the Maker of the worlds whom you have never 
 found in error contradicts it. Who can decide between 
 rectilinear and curvilinear geometry? between the theory of 
 straight lines and the theory of curved lines? If, in His work, 
 the mysterious Maker, who attains His ends with miraculous 
 directness, only makes use of the straight line to divide it at a 
 right angle and obtain a curve, man himself cannot rely on it; 
 the bullet a man wishes to send in a straight line follows a curve, 
 and when you want to hit a point in space with certainty you 
 propel the ball on its cruel parabola. Not one of your learned 
 
110 SERAPHITA. 
 
 men has arrived at the simple induction that the curved line 
 is that of the material world, and the straight line that of the 
 spiritual world ; that one is the theory of finite creation, and 
 the other the theory of the infinite. Man alone he alone 
 here on earth having any consciousness of the infinite can 
 know the straight line ; he alone, in a special organ, has the 
 sense of the vertical. May not the predilection for curved 
 lines in some men be an indication of the impurity of their 
 nature, still too closely allied to the material substances which 
 engender us? and may not the love for straight lines, seen in 
 lofty minds, be in them a presentiment of heaven ? Between 
 these two lines lies a gulf as wide as between the Finite and 
 the Infinite, between Matter and Spirit, between Man and the 
 Idea, between Motion and the Thing moved, between the 
 Creature and God. Borrow the wings of Divine Love and 
 you may cross that gulf. Beyond it the revelation of the Word 
 begins ! 
 
 " The things you call material are nowhere devoid of thick- 
 ness ; lines are the edges of solids having a power of action 
 which you ignore in your theorems, and that makes them false 
 in relation to bodies regarded as a whole ; hence the constant 
 destruction of human works, to which you have unwittingly 
 given active properties. Nature knows nothing but solid 
 bodies ; your science deals only with combinations of surfaces. 
 And so nature constantly gives the lie to all your laws ; can 
 you name one to which no fact makes an exception ? The 
 laws of statics are contradicted by a thousand incidents in 
 physics ; a fluid overthrows the most stupendous mountains, 
 and so proves that the heaviest substances may be upheaved by 
 imponderable agents. Your laws of acoustics and optics are 
 nullified by the sounds you hear in your brain during sleep, 
 and by the light of an electric flash, of which the rays are often 
 overpowering. You do not know how light is brought to your 
 intelligence any more than you know the simple and natural 
 process by which it is changed to ruby, sapphire, opal, and 
 
SERAPHITA. Ill 
 
 emerald on the neck of an Indian bird, while it lies dim and 
 gray on the same bird under the misty sky of Europe, nor 
 why it whitens here in the heart of the polar regions. You 
 cannot tell whether color is a faculty with which bodies are 
 endowed or an effect produced by the effluence of light. 
 
 "You believe the whole sea to be salt without having as- 
 certained that it is so in its deepest places. 
 
 "You recognize the existence of various substances which 
 traverse what you call the void : substances intangible under 
 any known form assumed by matter, and which meet and 
 combine with it in spite of every obstacle. That being the 
 case, you believe in the results obtained by chemistry, though 
 as yet it knows no method of estimating the changes produced 
 by the currents to and fro of those substances as they pass 
 through your crystals and your instruments on the impalpable 
 waves of heat or of light, conducted or repelled by the affini- 
 ties of metals or vitrified flint. You obtain no substances but 
 what are dead, out of which you have driven the unknown 
 force which resists decomposition in all earthly things, the 
 force of which attraction, undulation, cohesion, and polarity 
 are manifestations. 
 
 "Life is the mind of body; bodies are but a mode of de- 
 taining it, of delaying it in its transit ; if bodies were them- 
 selves living things, they would be a cause; they would not 
 die. When a man establishes the results of the motion of 
 which every form of creation has its share in proportion to its 
 power of absorbing it, you call him a learned man, as though 
 genius consisted in explaining what exists. Genius should 
 lift its eyes above effects. All your learned men would laugh 
 if you should say to them : ' There is a certain connecting 
 relation between two beings, such as that, if one of them were 
 here and the other in Java, they might feel the same sensation 
 at the same instant and be aware of the fact, and question 
 and answer each other without a mistake.' And yet there 
 are some mineral substances which exhibit sympathies as far 
 
112 SERAPH1TA. 
 
 reaching as that of which I speak. You believe in the power 
 of electricity when it is fixed in the lodestone, but you deny 
 it as emanating from the soul. According to you, the moon, 
 whose influence over the tides seems to you proven, has none 
 over the winds, over vegetation, or over men ; it can move 
 the sea and eat into glass, but it cannot affect the sick ; it has 
 undoubted effects on one-halt of the human race ; none on the 
 other half. These are your most precious convictions. 
 
 " We may go further You believe in physics ; but your 
 physics are based, like the Catholic religion, on an act of 
 faith. Do they not recognize an external force apart from 
 bodies to which it imparts movement ? You see its effects, 
 but what is it 9 Where is it? What is its essence, its life? 
 Has it any limits? And you deny God ! 
 
 " Thus most of your scientific axioms, though true in rela- 
 tion to man, are false in relation to the Great Whole. Science 
 is one, and you have divided it. To know the true sense of 
 the laws of phenomena, would it not be necessary to know the 
 correlations existing between the phenomena and the laws of 
 the whole ? There is in all things an appearance, a present- 
 ment, which strikes your sense; behind this presentment 
 there is a soul moving the body, and the faculty. Where 
 are the relations which hold things together studied or taught? 
 Nowhere. Have you, then, no absolute finality? Your best 
 ascertained theses rest on an analysis of the forms of matter, 
 while the spirit is constantly neglected. 
 
 "There is a supreme science of which some men too late 
 get a glimpse, though they dare not own it. These men 
 perceive the necessity for considering all bodies, not merely 
 from the point of view of their mathematical properties, but 
 also from that of their whole relations and occult affinities. 
 
 "The greatest of you all discerned, toward the end of his 
 life, that all things were at the same time cause and effect re- 
 ciprocally ; that the visible worlds were coordinated to each 
 other and captive to invisible spheres. He groaned over 
 
SERAPHITA. 113 
 
 having tried to establish absolute principles. When count- 
 ing his worlds, like grains of sand scattered throughout the 
 ether, he explained their connection by the laws of planetary 
 and molecular attraction. You hailed that man. Well, and 
 I tell you that he died in despair. Assuming that the centri- 
 fugal and centripetal forces, which he invented to account for 
 the universe, were absolutely equal, the universe would stand 
 still, yet he insisted on motion, though in an undefined direc- 
 tion ; but assuming the forces to be unequal, the worlds must 
 at once fall into confusion. Thus his laws were not final ; 
 there was another problem still higher than that of attraction, 
 on which his spurious glory was founded. The pull of the 
 stars against each other, and the centripetal tendency of their 
 individual notion, did not hinder him from seeking the branch 
 from which the whole cluster was hanging. Unhappy man ; 
 the more he extended space, the heavier was his load. He 
 told you that every part was in equilibrium ; but whither was 
 the whole bound ? 
 
 " He contemplated the space, infinite in the eyes of men, 
 that is filled with the groups of worlds, of which a small num- 
 ber are registered by our telescopes, while its immensity is 
 proved by the rapidity of light. This sublime contemplation 
 gave him a conception of the infinitude of worlds, planted in 
 space like flowers in a meadow, which are born like infants, 
 grow like men, die like old men, which live by assimilating 
 from their atmosphere the substances proper to nourish them, 
 which have a centre and principle of life, which protect them- 
 selves from each other by an intervening space, which consti- 
 tute a grand whole, that has its own life, its own destination. 
 
 "At this prospect the man trembled. He knew that life is 
 produced by the union of the Thing with its first Principle ; 
 that death, or inertia or gravitation is caused by a rupture 
 between the Thing and the motion proper to it ; and he thus 
 foresaw the crash of worlds, in ruins if God should withhold 
 the Breath of His Word. Then he set to work to seek the 
 8 
 
114 SERAPH1TA. 
 
 traces of that Word in the Apocalypse. You all thought him 
 mad. Know this : he strove to earn forgiveness for his 
 genius. 
 
 " Wilfrid, you came to request me to resolve equations, to 
 fly on a rain-cloud, to plunge into the fiord and reappear as a 
 swan. If science or miracle were the end of humanity, Moses 
 would have left you a calculus of fluxions ; Jesus Christ would 
 have cleared up the dark places of science ; His apostles would 
 have told you whence come those immense trains of gas or of 
 fused metals which rush revolving on a nucleus, solidifying as 
 they seek a place in the ether, and are sometimes violently 
 projected within range of a system where they are absorbed 
 "by a star, or crash into it by their shock, or dissolve it by the 
 infusion of deadly vapors. St. Paul, instead of bidding you 
 live in God, would have explained to you that nutrition is the 
 secret bond among all creation, and the visible bond among 
 all living animals. In our own day, the greatest miracle 
 would be to square the circle, a problem which you pronounce 
 impossible, but which has no doubt been solved in the pro- 
 gress of worlds by the intersection of some mathematical line, 
 whose curves are apparent to the eye of spirits elevated to the 
 highest spheres. 
 
 " Believe me, miracles are within us and not without us. 
 Thus have natural effects been wrought, which the nations 
 deemed to be supernatural. Would not God have been unjust 
 if He had vouchsafed to show His power to some generations, 
 and had refused it to others ? The brazen rod belongs to all. 
 Neither Moses nor Jacob, neither Zoroaster nor Paul, nor 
 Pythagoras nor Swedenborg, neither the most obscure evangel- 
 ists nor the most amazing of God's prophets, have been su- 
 perior to what you might become. Only, nations have their 
 day of faith. If positive science were indeed the end of all 
 human effort, how is it confess now that every social com- 
 munity, every great centre to which men gather, is invariably 
 broken up by Providence? If civilization were the final 
 
SERAPHITA. 115 
 
 cause of the human species, could intelligence perish ? Would 
 it perennially continue to be a purely individual possession ? 
 
 " The greatness of all the nations that have ever been great 
 has been founded on exceptions : when the exception ceased 
 to be, the power was dead. Would not the seers, the prophets, 
 the evangelists, have laid their hand on science instead of 
 relying on faith ; would they not have hammered at your 
 brains rather than have touched your hearts ? They all came 
 to drive the nations to God ; they all proclaimed the way of 
 life in the simple words which lead to the Heavenly King- 
 dom ; and fired with love and faith, and inspired by the Word 
 which hovers over the nations, compels them, vivifies them, 
 and uplifts them, they never used it for any human end. 
 Your great geniuses, poets, kings, and sages are swallowed up 
 with their towns, and the desert has buried them under a 
 shroud of sand ; while the names of these good shepherds 
 still are blessed and survive every catastrophe. 
 
 " We can never agree on any point. Gulfs lie between us. 
 You are on the side of darkness, I live in the true light. 
 
 " Is this the word you desired of me? I utter it with joy; 
 it may change you. Know, then, that there are sciences of 
 Matter and sciences of the Spirit. Where you see bodies, I 
 see forces tending toward each other by a creative impulse. 
 To me the character of a body is the sign-manual of its first 
 principles and the expression of its properties. These princi- 
 ples give rise to certain affinities which elude you, but which 
 are connected with centres. The different species to which 
 life is distributed are unfailing springs which communicate 
 with each other. Each has its specific function. 
 
 " Man is at once cause and effect ; he is nourished, but he 
 nourishes in return. When you call God the Creator, you be- 
 little Him. He did not, as you imagine, create plants, animals, 
 and the stars ; could He act by such various means ? Must He 
 not have proceeded by unity of purpose? He emitted principles 
 which were compelled to develop in accordance with His 
 
116 SERAPHITA, 
 
 general laws, and subject to the conditions of their environ- 
 ment? 
 
 "In point of fact, all the affinities are bound together by 
 immediate similarities ; the life of worlds is attracted to 
 centres by a greedy aspiration, just as you are all driven by 
 hunger to seek nourishment. To give you an instance of 
 affinities linked to similarities : the secondary law on which 
 the creations of your mind rest music, a celestial art is the 
 active evidence of this principle : is it not an assemblage of 
 sounds harmonized by number? Is not sound a condition of 
 the air under compression, dilatation, and repercussion? 
 You know of what the air is composed? Azote, carbon, and 
 oxygen. Since you can produce no sound in a vacuum, it is 
 evident that music and the human voice are the result of 
 organic chemical elements, acting in unison with the same 
 substances prepared within you by your mind, and coordinated 
 by means of light, the great foster-mother of this globe ; for 
 can you have cogitated on the quantities of nitre deposited 
 by the snows, on the discharge of thunder, on plants which 
 derive from the air the elements they contain, and have failed 
 to conclude that it is the sun that fuses and diffuses the subtle 
 essence which nourishes all things here below ? Swedenborg 
 truly said : 'The earth is a man.' 
 
 "All your sciences of to-day, which make you so great in 
 your own eyes, are a mere trifle compared with the light that 
 floods the Seer. 
 
 " Cease, cease to question me ; we speak of a different lan- 
 guage. I have used yours for once, to throw a flash of faith 
 upon your souls, to cast a corner of my mantle over you, and 
 tempt you away to the glorious regions of prayer. Is it God's 
 part to stoop to you ? Is it not yours rather to rise to Him? 
 If human reason has so soon exhausted the limits of its powers 
 merely by laying God out to prove His existence, without suc- 
 ceeding in doing so, is it not evident that it must seek some 
 other way of knowing Him ? That other way is in ourselves. 
 
SERAPHITA, 117 
 
 The Seer and the believer have within themselves eyes more 
 piercing than are those eyes which are bent on things of earth, 
 and they discern a dawn. 
 
 "Understand this saying : Your most exact sciences, your 
 boldest speculations, your brightest flashes of light, are but 
 clouds. Above them all is the sanctuary whence the true 
 Light is shed." 
 
 She sat down and was silent; and her calm features be- 
 trayed not the least sign of the trepidation which commonly 
 disturbs an orator after his least inflamed speech. 
 
 Wilfrid whispered into the pastor's ear, leaning over him 
 to do so 
 
 "Who told her all this?" 
 
 "I do not know," was the reply. 
 
 " He was milder on the Falberg," Minna remarked. 
 
 Seraphita passed her hands over her eyes, and said, with a 
 smile 
 
 "You are very pensive this evening, gentlemen. You treat 
 me and Minna like men to whom you would talk politics or 
 discuss trade, while we are but girls to whom you should tell 
 fairy-tales while drinking tea, as is the custom, Monsieur 
 Wilfrid, in our evenings in Norway. Come, Pastor Becker, 
 tell me some Saga which I do not know. That of Frithiof, 
 in which you believe, and which you promised to tell me, or 
 the story of the peasant's son who has a ship that speaks and 
 has a soul ? I dream of the frigate Ellida. Is it not on that 
 fairy vessel that girls should sail the seas?" 
 
 " Since we have come down to Jarvis again," said Wilfrid, 
 whose eyes were fixed on Seraphita as those of a robber hidden 
 in the gloom are fixed on the spot where treasure lies, "tell 
 me why you do not marry ? " 
 
 "You are all born widowers or widows," replied she. 
 "My marriage was decided on at my birth; I am be- 
 trothed " 
 
 " To whom ? " they all asked in a breath. 
 
118 SERAPHITA. 
 
 "Allow me to keep my secret," said she. " I promise, if 
 our Father will grant it, to invite you to that mysterious 
 wedding." 
 
 "Is it to be soon?" 
 
 "I am waiting." 
 
 A long silence ensued. 
 
 "The spring is come," said Seraphita. "The "noise of 
 waters and of breaking ice has begun ; will you not come to 
 hail the first springtime of the new century?" 
 
 She rose and, followed by Wilfrid, went to a window which 
 David had thrown open. After the long stillness of winter, 
 the vast waters were stirring beneath the ice, and sang through 
 the fiord like music; for there are sounds which distance 
 glorifies, and which reach the ear in waves that seem to bring 
 refreshment and light. 
 
 " Cease, Wilfrid," said she, " cease to cherish evil thoughts 
 whose triumph will be a torment to endure. Who could fail 
 to read your wishes in the sparkle of your eyes ? Be good ; 
 take a step in well-doing ! Is it not a step beyond the mere 
 love of men to sacrifice yourself entirely to the happiness of 
 the one you love ? Submit to me, and I will lead you into a 
 path where you will attain to all the greatness you dream of, 
 and where love will be really infinite." 
 
 She left Wilfrid lost in thought. 
 
 " Can this gentle creature really be the prophetess who but 
 now flashed lightnings from her eyes, whose words thundered 
 above the worlds, whose hand wielded the axe of Doubt in 
 defiance of our sciences?" said he to himself. " Have we 
 been asleep for these few minutes?" 
 
 " Minna," said Seraphitus, returning to the pastor's daughter, 
 " the eagles gather where the dead lie, the turtle-dove flies to 
 the springs of living water under green and peaceful groves. 
 The eagle soars to the skies, the dove descends from them. 
 Venture no more into regions where you will find neither foun- 
 tains nor shade. If this morning you could not look into the 
 
SERAPHITA. 119 
 
 gulf without destruction, keep your powers for him who will 
 love you. Go, poor child, I am betrothed, as you know." 
 
 Minna rose and went with Seraphitus to the window, where 
 Wilfrid still was standing. They could all three hear the Sieg 
 leaping under the force of the upper waters, which were bring- 
 ing down the trees that had been frozen into the ice. The 
 fiord had found its voice again. Illusion was over. They 
 wondered at Nature bursting her bonds, and answering in 
 noble harmonies to the Spirit whose call had awakened her. 
 
 When the three guests had left this mysterious being, they 
 were filled with an indefinable feeling which was not sleep, 
 nor torpor, nor astonishment, but a mixture of all three, 
 which was neither twilight nor daybreak, but which made 
 them long for light. They were all very thoughtful. 
 
 " I begin to think that she is a spirit veiled in human 
 form," said the pastor. 
 
 Wilfrid, in his own room again, calmed and convinced, 
 knew not how to contend with powers so divinely majestic. 
 
 Minna said to herself 
 
 " Why will he not allow me to love him?" 
 
V. 
 
 THE FAREWELL. 
 
 There is in man a phenomenon which is the despair of those 
 reflective minds who endeavor to find some meaning in the 
 march of social vicissitudes, and to formulate some laws of 
 progress for the movement of intellect. However serious a 
 fact may be, or, if supernatural facts could exist, however 
 magnificent a miracle could be, publicly performed, the 
 lightning flash of the fact, the thunderbolt of the miracle 
 would be lost in the moral ocean, and the surface, rippled for 
 an instant by some slight ebullition, would at once resume 
 the level of its ordinary swell. 
 
 Does the Voice, to be more surely heeded, pass through an 
 animal's jaws? Does the Hand write in strange characters on 
 the cornice of the hall where the Court is reveling? Does 
 the Eye light up the King's slumbers ? Does the Prophet read 
 the dream ? Does Death, when summoned, stand in the lumin- 
 ous space where a man's faculties revive? Does the Spirit 
 crush matter at the foot of the mystical ladder of the seven 
 spiritual worlds hung one above another in space, and seen by 
 the floods of light that fall in cascades down the steps of the 
 heavenly floor? Still, however deep the inner revelation, 
 however distinct the outward sign, by the morrow Balaam 
 doubts both his ass and himself; Belshazzar and Pharaoh call 
 in seers to explain the sign Daniel or Moses. 
 
 The Spirit descends, snatches a man above the earth, opens 
 the seas and shows him the bottom of them, calls up vanished 
 generations, gives life to the dry bones thickly strewn in the 
 great valley ; the Apostle writes the Apocalypse ; and twenty 
 centuries later human science confirms the Apostle and trans- 
 lates his figures of speech into axioms. What difference does 
 it make? The mass of people live to-day as they lived 
 (120) 
 
SERAPHITA. 121 
 
 yesterday, as they lived in the first Olympiad, as they lived 
 the first day after creation, and on the eve of the great cata- 
 clysm. Doubt drowns everything in its waters. The same 
 waves beat, with the selfsame ebb and flow, on the human 
 granite that hems in the sea of intellect. 
 
 Man asks himself whether, indeed, he saw what he saw, 
 whether he really heard the words that were spoken, whether 
 the fact was a fact, and the idea really an idea ; and then he 
 goes on his way, he thinks of his business, he obeys the in- 
 evitable servitor of Death Forget fulness, who throws his black 
 cloak over the old humanity of which the younger has no re- 
 membrance. Man never ceases to move, to go on, to grow as 
 a vegetable grows, till the day when the axe falls. If the 
 flood-like force, this mounting pressure of bitter waters, hin- 
 ders all progress, it also, no doubt, is a warning of death. 
 None but the loftier spirits open to faith can discern Jacob's 
 mystical stair, 
 
 After listening to the reply in which Seraphita, being so 
 urgently questioned, had unrolled the divine scroll, as an 
 organ fills a church with its roar, and shows the power of the 
 musical universe by flooding the most inaccessible vaults with 
 its solemn notes, playing, like light, among the frail wreaths 
 of the capitals, Wilfrid went home, appalled at having seen 
 the world in ruins, and, above the ruins a light unknown, 
 shed by the hand of that young creature. 
 
 On the following day he was still thinking of it, but his 
 terrors were allayed ; he was not in ruins, nor even changed 
 his passions and ideas woke up fresh and vigorous. 
 
 He went to breakfast with the minister, and found him 
 lost in the study of Jean Wier's treatise, which he had been 
 looking through that morning to be able to reassure his visitor. 
 With the childlike simplicity of a sage, the pastor had turned 
 down the leaves at some pages where Jean Wier adduced 
 authentic evidence demonstrating the possibility of such 
 things as had happened the day before; for to the learned an 
 
122 SERAPHITA. 
 
 idea is an event, whereas the greatest events are to them 
 hardly an idea. 
 
 By the time these two philosophers had swallowed their 
 fifth cup of tea, that mystical evening seemed quite natural. 
 The heavenly truths were more or less substantial arguments, 
 and open to discussion. Seraphita was a more or less eloquent 
 girl ; allowance must be made for her exquisite voice, her 
 enchanting beauty, her fascinating manner, all the oratorical 
 skill by which an actor can put a world of feelings and ideas 
 into a sentence which in itself is often quite commonplace. 
 
 " Pooh ! " said the good minister, with a little philosophical 
 grimace, as he spread a slice of bread with salt butter, "the 
 answer to all these riddles is six feet beneath the mold ! " 
 
 "At the same time," said Wilfrid, sugaring his tea, " T can- 
 not understand how a girl of sixteen can know so many things ; 
 for she squeezed everything into her speech as if it were in a 
 vise." 
 
 "But only read the story of the Italian girl who, at twelve 
 years old, could speak forty-two languages, ancient and mod- 
 ern," said the pastor. "And, again, that of the monk who 
 read thought by smell. These are in Jean Wier, and in a 
 dozen other treatises which I will give you to read, a thousand 
 proofs rather than one." 
 
 " I daresay, my dear pastor; but Seraphita remains to me a 
 wife it would be divine joy to possess." 
 
 " She is all intellect," replied the minister dubiously. 
 
 Some days passed, during which the snow in the valleys 
 insensibly melted away ; the greenery of the forests peeped 
 through like a fresh growth ; Norwegian nature made itself 
 beautiful in anticipation of its brief bridal day. All this time, 
 though the milder temperature allowed of open-air exercise, 
 Seraphita remained in solitary seclusion. Thus Wilfrid's pas- 
 sion was enhanced by the aggravating vicinity of the girl he 
 loved, and who refused to be seen. When the inscrutable 
 being admitted Minna, Minna could detect the symptoms of 
 
SERAPHITA. 123 
 
 an inward fever; Seraphita's voice was hollow, and her com- 
 plexion was wan ; whereas hitherto its transparency might 
 have been compared by a poet to that of the diamond, it now 
 had the sheen of the topaz. 
 
 "Have you seen her?" asked Wilfrid, who had prowled 
 round the house, awaiting Minna's return. 
 
 "We shall lose him ! " said the girl, her eyes filling with 
 tears. 
 
 "Do not try to fool me ! " cried the stranger, controlling 
 the vehemence of tone that expressed his fury. "You can 
 only love Seraphita as one girl loves another, not with such 
 love as I feel for her. You cannot conceive what peril you 
 would be in if there were anything to alarm my jealousy. 
 Why can I not go to see her ? Is it you who raise difficul- 
 ties?" 
 
 "I cannot think," said Minna, calm on the surface, but 
 quaking with mortal terror, " what right you have to sound 
 the depths of my heart. Yes, I love him," she went on, 
 summoning the courage of conviction to confess the faith of 
 her soul. " But my jealousy, though natural to love, fears no- 
 body here. Alas ! What I am jealous of is some unconfessed 
 feeling in which he is absorbed. Between him and me lies a 
 space I can never abridge. I want to know whether the stars 
 love him more than I, whether they or I would be the more 
 eagerly devoted to his happiness ? Why, why, should I not 
 be free to declare my affection ? In the presence of death we 
 may all confess our attachment and Seraphitus is dying." 
 
 " Minna, indeed you are under a mistake ; the siren round 
 whom my desires have so often hovered, who allows me to 
 admire her as she reclines on her couch, so graceful, fragile, 
 and suffering, is not a man." 
 
 "Nay," replied Minna, in some agitation, "he whose 
 powerful hand guided me over the Falberg to the safer under 
 the shelter of the Ice-Cap up there " and she pointed to the 
 peak "is certainly not a mere, weak jgirl. If you had but 
 
124 SERAPHITA. 
 
 heard her prophesy ! Her poetry is the music of thought. 
 No young girl could have had the solemn depth of voice 
 which stirred my soul." 
 
 "What certainty have you ? " Wilfrid began. 
 
 " None but that of my heart ! " replied Minna in confusion, 
 and hastily interrupting the speaker. 
 
 "Well, but I," cried Wilfrid, with the terrible glance of 
 eagerness and desire that kills, " I, who know what the extent 
 of her power is over me I will prove your mistake." 
 
 At this moment, when words were rushing to Wilfrid's 
 tongue as vehemently as ideas in his head, he saw Seraphita 
 come out of the Swedish Castle, followed by David. The 
 sight of her soothed his effervescent state. 
 
 " Look," said he ; " none but a woman can have that grace 
 and languor." 
 
 " He is ill ; it is his last walk ! " said Minna. 
 
 At a sign from his mistress, David left her, and she advanced 
 toward Wilfrid and Minna. 
 
 " Let us go to the falls of the Sieg," said the mysterious 
 being ; it was the wish of a sufferer to which all hasten to 
 accede. 
 
 A thin, white haze hung over the heights and dales of the 
 fiord, and the peaks, glittering like stars, pierced above it, 
 giving it the effect of a milky-way moving onward. Through 
 this earth-born vapor the sun was visible as a globe of red-hot 
 iron. In spite of these last freaks of winter, gusts of mild 
 air, bringing the scent of the birch-trees, already covered with 
 their yellow flowers, and the rich perfume exhaled by the 
 larches, whose silky tufts were all displayed breezes warm 
 with the incense and the breathing of the earth testified to 
 the exquisite springtime of northern lands, the brief rapture 
 of a most melancholy nature. 
 
 The wind was beginning to roll away the veil of mist that 
 hardly hid the view of the gulf. The birds were singing. 
 
 Where the sun had not dried off the frost that trickled 
 
SERAPHITA. 125 
 
 down the road in murmuring rills, the bark of the trees was 
 pleasing to the eye by its fantastic appearance. 
 
 They all three went along the strand in silence. Wilfrid 
 and Minna were lost in contemplation of the magical scene 
 after their long endurance of the monotonous winter land- 
 scape. Their companion was pensive, and walked as though 
 trying to distinguish one voice in the concert. They reached 
 the rocks between which the Sieg tumbles, at the end of the 
 long avenue of ancient fir-trees which the torrent had cut in 
 meandering through the forest, a path covered in by a groined 
 arch of boughs, meeting like those of a cathedral. From 
 thence the whole of the fiord was seen, and the sea sparkled 
 on the horizon like a steel blade. At this instant the clouds 
 vanished, showing the blue sky. Down in the hollows and 
 round the trees the air was full of floating spangles, the dia- 
 mond-dust swept up by a light breeze, and dazzling gems of 
 drops were hanging at the tip of the branches of each pyramid. 
 The torrent was rolling below ; a smoke came up from the 
 surface, tinted in the sunshine with every hue of light ; its 
 beams, decomposed, displayed perfect rainbows of the seven 
 colors, like the play of a thousand prisms meeting and cross- 
 ing there. This wild shore was curtained with various kinds 
 of lichen, a rich web, sheeny with moisture, like some gor- 
 geous hanging of silk. Heath, already in blossom, crowned 
 the rocks with flowers in skillful disorder. All this stirring 
 foliage, tempted by the living waters, hung their heads over 
 it like hair ; the larches waved their lace-like arms, as if caress- 
 ing the pines, that stood rigid like careworn old men. 
 
 This luxuriant display was a contrast to the solemnity of 
 the antique colonnades of the forests, range upon range on 
 the hillsides, and to the broad sheet of the fiord, in which the 
 torrent drowned its fury at the feet of the three spectators. 
 Beyond it all, the open sea closed in this picture, traced by 
 the greatest of poets Chance to which we owe the medley 
 beauty of creation when left, as it would seem, to itself. 
 
126 SERAPHITA. 
 
 Jarvis was a speck almost lost in this landscape, in this im- 
 mensity sublime, as everything is, which, having but a brief 
 existence, offers a transient image of perfection ; for by a law, 
 fatal only to our sight, creations that appear perfect, the de- 
 light of our heart and of our eyes, have but one spring to live 
 here. 
 
 At the top of that cliff these three beings might easily fancy 
 themselves alone in all the world. 
 
 "How exquisite ! " exclaimed Wilfrid. 
 
 "Nature sings its hymns," said Seraphita. "Is not this 
 music delicious? Confess now, Wilfrid, no woman you ever 
 knew could create for herself so magnificent a retreat. Here 
 I experience a feeling that the sight of great cities rarely in- 
 spires, and which makes me long to remain here, lying among 
 these grasses of such rapid growth. Then, with my eyes on 
 the sky, my heart laid bare, lost in the sense of immensity, I 
 could let myself listen to the sighs of the flower, which, 
 scarcely released from its primitive nature, would fain run 
 about ; and to the cries of the eider, aggrieved at having only 
 wings, while I thought of the cravings of man, who has some- 
 thing of everything, and who also is for ever full of desires j 
 But this, Wilfrid, is a woman's poetic fancy ! You can find a 
 voluptuous thought in that hazy expanse of water ; in those 
 fantastic veils, behind which nature plays like some coquettish 
 bride ; and in this atmosphere, where she perfumes her green 
 hair for her bridal. You would fain see the form of a naiad 
 in that wreath of mist, and I, as you think, ought to hear a 
 manly voice in the torrent." 
 
 " And is not love in it all, like a bee in a flower? " replied 
 Wilfrid, who, seeing in her for the first time some trace of 
 earthly feeling, thought it a favorable moment for the expres- 
 sion of his fervent affection. 
 
 "Always the same?" said Seraphita, laughing, Minna 
 having left them ; the girl was climbing a crag where she had 
 seen some blue saxifrages. 
 
SERAPHITA. 127 
 
 "Always! " exclaimed Wilfrid. "Listen," he said, with 
 an imperious glance that met a panoply of adamant, " you 
 know not who I am, nor what my power is, nor what I 
 demand. Do not reject my last entreaty. Be mine, for the 
 sake of the world within your heart ! Be mine, that my con- 
 science may be pure, that a heavenly voice may sound in my 
 ears and inspire me aright in the undertaking I have vowed 
 to carry out, impelled by my hatred of the nations, but to be 
 achieved for their welfare if only you are with me. What 
 nobler mission can a woman dream of? I came to these 
 lands meditating a great scheme." 
 
 " And you are prepared to sacrifice it and its glories," said 
 she, " to a very simple girl, whom you will love, and who will 
 guide you into a peaceful path?" 
 
 " What do I care? I only want you ! This is my secret," 
 he replied, going on with his speech. " I have traveled all 
 over the North, the great workshop where the new races are 
 produced who overspread the earth like floods of humanity 
 sent forth to renew worn-out civilization. I wanted to have 
 begun my work on one of these points, conquering there the 
 ascendency that force and intellect can assert over a small 
 race ; to have trained it to battle, to have declared war, and 
 have sent it raging like a conflagration to consume Europe, 
 while shouting to these ' Liberty ! ' to those ' Plunder ! ' to 
 some ' Glory ! ' to others ' Pleasure ! ' I, standing meanwhile 
 like the image of Fate, pitiless and cruel, moving like the 
 storm which assimilates from the atmosphere the atoms of 
 which the lightning is compounded, and feeding on men like 
 a rapacious monster. I should then have conquered Europe ; 
 she is now at a period when she looks for the coming of the 
 new Messiah, who is to devastate the world and to re-form the 
 nations. Europe can believe in no one but Him who will 
 trample her under foot. 
 
 "Some day historians and poets would have justified my 
 existence, have magnified me, have ascribed great ideas to me 
 
128 SERAPHITA. 
 
 to me, to whom this huge pleasantry, written in blood, is 
 but revenge. 
 
 "But, dear Seraphita, what I have seen has disgusted me 
 with the North ; force here is too blind, and I crave for the 
 Indies. A duel with a selfish, cowardly, and mercenary 
 government fascinates me more. Beside, it is easier to arouse 
 the imagination of the races that dwell at the foot of Cau- 
 casus than to convince the minds of men in these frozen 
 lands. I am tempted to cross the Russian steppes, to reach 
 the frontiers of Asia, to cover it as far as the Ganges with my 
 victorious flood of human beings, and then I shall overthrow 
 the English rule. Seven men, at different periods, have 
 already carried out such a scheme. I shall renew Art, as the 
 Saracens did when Mahomet cast them over Europe. I will 
 not be so sordid a king as those who now govern the ancient 
 provinces of the Roman Empire, quarreling with their sub- 
 jects over custom-house dues. No, nothing shall arrest the 
 flash of my gaze or the storm of my speech ! My feet, like 
 those of Genghis Khan, shall cover a third of the globe ; my 
 hand shall grasp Asia as did that of Aurung Zeeb. 
 
 " Be my partner ; take your seat, fair and lovely being, on 
 a throne. I have never doubted my success, but with you to 
 dwell in my heart, I should be certain of it." 
 
 "I have reigned already," said Seraphita. 
 
 The words were like the blow dealt by the axe of a skillful 
 woodsman at the root of a sapling, felling it at once. Men 
 alone can know what a storm a woman can rouse in a man's 
 soul when he has been trying to impress her with his strength 
 or his power, his intellect or his superiority, and the capricious 
 fair nods her head and says, " Oh, that is nothing ! " or with 
 a bored smile observes, "I know all that," when power is as 
 naught to her. 
 
 "What ! " cried Wilfrid in despair, "the riches of Art, the 
 wealth of the world, the splendor of a court " 
 
 She checked him by a mere curl of her lips, and said 
 
SERAPHITA. 12 9 
 
 "Beings more powerful than you are have offered me 
 more." 
 
 "Well, have you no soul, then, that you are not fascinated 
 by the prospect of consoling a great man who will sacrifice 
 everything to dwell with you in a little home by the side of a 
 lake?" 
 
 "Why," said she, "I am loved with a boundless love." 
 
 "By whom?" cried Wilfrid, going toward Seraphita with 
 a frenzied gesture, as if to fling her into the foaming falls of 
 the Sieg. 
 
 She looked at him ; his arm dropped ; and she pointed to 
 Minna, who came running down, all rose and white, and as 
 pretty as the flowers she carried in her hand. 
 
 " My child !" said Seraph itus, going forward to meet her. 
 
 Wilfrid stood on the edge of the cliff as motionless as a 
 statue, lost in thought, longing to cast himself into the flow of 
 the torrent, like one of the fallen trees that passed under his 
 eyes and vanished in the abyss beneath. 
 
 " I gathered them for you," said Minna, giving the nosegay 
 to the being she adored. " One of them this one," said she, 
 picking out a particular blossom, " is like the flower we gath- 
 ered on the Falberg." 
 
 Seraphitus looked at the blossom and then at Minna. 
 
 " Why do you question me thus? Do you doubt me ? " 
 
 " No," said the girl, " my confidence in you is unbounded. 
 While you are far more beautiful to me than this beautiful 
 scenery, you also seem to me to be superior in intelligence to 
 all the rest of humanity. When I have been with you, I seem 
 to have communed with God. I only wish " 
 
 "What?" asked Seraphitus, with a flashing look that re- 
 vealed to the girl the vast distance that divided them. 
 
 " I wish I could suffer in your stead." 
 
 " This is the most dangerous of Thy creatures," thought 
 Seraphitus. " Is it a criminal thought, O God, to long to 
 present her to Thee? Have you forgotten," he said aloud, 
 9 
 
130 SERAPHITA 
 
 "all I told you up there?" and he pointed upward to the 
 peak of the Ice-Cap. 
 
 "Now he is terrible again!" thought Minna with a 
 shudder. 
 
 The roar of the Sieg formed an accompaniment to the 
 thoughts of these three beings, who stood together for a few 
 minutes on a projecting slab of rock, parted, as they were, by 
 immeasurable gulfs in the spiritual world. 
 
 "Teach me then, Seraphitus," said Minna in a voice as 
 silvery as a pearl and as gentle as the movements of a sensitive 
 plant. "Teach me what I must do to avoid loving you? 
 Who could fail to admire you ? And love is the admiration 
 that is never tired." 
 
 "Poor child!" said Seraphitus, turning pale, "only one 
 Being can be loved thus." 
 
 "Who is that?" asked Minna. 
 
 " You shall know ! " was the reply in the weak voice of one 
 who lies down to die. 
 
 " Help ! He is dying ! " cried Minna. 
 
 Wilfrid hastened forward, and seeing this being reclining 
 gracefully on a block of gneiss over which time had thrown its 
 carpet of velvet, its glistening lichens, and dusky mosses, lus- 
 trous in the sunshine 
 
 " She is lovely ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 "This is the last glance I may give to nature in travail," 
 said Seraphita, collecting all her strength to rise. She went 
 to the edge of the cliff, whence she could see the whole of the 
 sublime landscape, but lately wrapped in its mantle of snow, 
 now full of life, green and flowery. 
 
 "Farewell," said she, "oh, burning hot-bed of love! 
 whence everything tends from the centre to the utmost cir- 
 cumference, while the extremities are gathered up, like a 
 woman's hair, to be spun into the unknown plait by which 
 thou art linked, in the invisible ether, to the Divine Idea ! 
 
 " Behold him who is bending over the furrow, watered with 
 
SERAPHITA. 131 
 
 his sweat, and pausing for an instant to look up to heaven ; 
 behold her who gathers the children in to feed them from her 
 breast ; him who knots the ropes in the fury of the tempest ; 
 her who sits in the niche of a rock awaiting her father ; and, 
 again, all those who hold out their hands for help after spend- 
 ing their life in thankless toil ! Peace and courage to them 
 all, and to all farewell ! 
 
 " Do you hear the cry of the soldier who dies unknown, the 
 wrath of the man who laments, disappointed, in the desert ? 
 Peace and courage to all, to all farewell ! Farewell, you who 
 die for the kings of the earth; but farewell, too, ye races 
 without a native land, and farewell, lands without a people 
 seeking each other. Farewell, above all, to thee, sublime 
 exile, who knowest not where to lay thy head ! Farewell, 
 dear innocents, dragged away by the hair of your head for 
 having loved too well ! Farewell, mothers sitting by your 
 dying sons ! Farewell, holy, broken-hearted wives ! Fare- 
 well, O ye who are poor, young, weak, and suffering, whose 
 woes I have so often made my own ! Farewell, all ye who 
 gravitate, groveling in the sphere of instinct, suffering there 
 for others ! 
 
 " Farewell, ye discoverers who seek the East through the 
 thick darkness of abstractions as grand as first principles ; and 
 ye martyrs of thought, led by thought to the true light ! Fare- 
 well, realms of inquiry, where I can hear the moans of insulted 
 genius, the sigh of the sage to whom light comes too late ! 
 
 " I perceive the angelic harmonies, the wafted fragrance, 
 the incense from the heart exhaled by those who move on, 
 praying, comforting, diffusing divine light and heavenly balm 
 to sorrowing souls. Courage, choir of Love ! to whom the 
 nations cry : ' Comfort us ! Protect us ! ' Courage, and 
 farewell ! 
 
 "Farewell, rock of granite, thou shalt become a flower; 
 farewell, flower, thou shalt be a dove; farewell, dove, thou 
 shalt be a woman; farewell, woman, thou shalt be Suffering; 
 
132 SERAPHITA. 
 
 farewell, man, thou shalt be Belief; farewell, you, who shall 
 be all love and prayer ! " 
 
 Exhausted by fatigue, this inexplicable being for the first 
 time leaned on Wilfrid and Minna to support her back to her 
 house. Wilfrid and Minna felt some mysterious contagion 
 from her touch. They had gone but a few steps when they 
 met David in tears. 
 
 " She is going to die ; why have you brought her hither? " 
 he exclaimed in a far-off voice. 
 
 Seraphita was lifted up by the old man, who had recovered 
 the strength of youth, and he flew with her to the door of the 
 Swedish Castle, like an eagle carrying some white lamb to his 
 eyrie. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE ROAD TO HEAVEN. 
 
 On the day after Seraphita had had this foretaste of her 
 end, and had bidden farewell to the earth, as a prisoner looks 
 at his cell before quitting it for ever, she was suffering such 
 pain as compelled her to remain in the absolute quietude 
 of those who endure extreme anguish. Wilfrid and Minna 
 went to see her, and found her lying on her couch of furs. 
 Her soul, still shrouded in the flesh, shone through the veil, 
 bleaching it, as it were, from day to day. The progress made 
 by the spirit in undermining the last barrier which divided it 
 from the infinite was called sickness; the hour of life was 
 named death. David wept to see his mistress suffering, and 
 refused to listen to her consolations ; the old man was as un- 
 reasonable as a child. The pastor was urgent on Seraphita to 
 take some remedies ; but all was in vain. 
 
 One morning she asked for the two she had been so fond 
 of, telling them that this was the last of her bad days. Wil- 
 frid and Minna came in great alarm ; they knew that they 
 were about to lose her. Seraphita smiled at them, as those 
 smile who are departing to a better world ; her head drooped 
 like a flower overweighted with dew, which opens its cup for 
 the last time and exhales its last fragrance to the air. She 
 looked at them with sadness, of which they were the cause ; 
 she had ceased to think of herself, and they felt this without 
 being able to express their grief, mingled as it was with grati- 
 tude. 
 
 Wilfrid remained standing, silent and motionless, lost in 
 such contemplation as is suggested by things so vast that they 
 make us understand, here on earth, the Supreme Immensity. 
 Minna, emboldened by the weakness of this powerful being, 
 
 (133) 
 
134 SERAPHITA. 
 
 or perhaps by her dread of losing her beloved for ever, bent 
 down and murmured, " Seraphitus let me follow you ! " 
 
 " Can I hinder you? " 
 
 " But why do you not love me enough to remain here?" 
 
 "I could not love anything here." 
 
 "What, then, do you love?" 
 
 "Heaven." 
 
 " Are you worthy of heaven if you thus despise God's 
 creatures here?" 
 
 " Minna, can we love two beings at the same time? Is the 
 Best-beloved really the Best-beloved if He does not fill the 
 whole heart? Ought He not to be the first and last and only 
 One ? Does not she who is all love quit the world for her 
 Beloved ? Her whole family becomes but a memory ; she has 
 but one relation it is He ! Her soul is no longer her own, 
 but His ! If she keeps anything within her that is not His, 
 she does not love; no, she does not love! Is loving half- 
 heartedly loving at all ? The voice of the Beloved makes her 
 all glad and flows through her veins like a purple tide, redder 
 than the blood ; His look is a light that flashes through her, 
 she is fused with Him ; where He is all is beautiful. He is 
 warmth to her soul, He lights everything; near Him, is it 
 ever cold or dark to her ? He is never absent ; He is always 
 within us, we think in Him, with Him, for Him. That, 
 Minna, is how I love Him." 
 
 " Whom ? " said Minna, gripped by consuming jealousy. 
 
 " God ! " replied Seraphitus, whose voice flashed upon their 
 souls like a beacon-light of freedom blazing from hill to hill 
 " God, who never betrays us ! God, who does not desert 
 us, but constantly fulfills our desires, and who alone can peren- 
 nially satisfy His creatures with infinite and unmixed joys ! 
 God, who is never weary, and who only has smiles ! God, 
 ever new, who pours His treasures into the soul, who purifies 
 it without bitterness, who is all harmony, all flame ! God, who 
 enters into us to blossom there, who fulfills all our aspirations, 
 
SERAPHITA. 135 
 
 who never calls us to account if we are His, but gives Himself 
 wholly, ravishes us, and expands and multiplies us in Himself 
 God, in short ! 
 
 " 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 to Him," said she, kneeling down. " Take 
 me by the hand ; I will leave you no more." 
 
 "Lead us, Seraphita," cried Wilfred vehemently, coming 
 forward to kneel with Minna. " Yes, you have made me 
 thirst for the Light and thirst for the Word ; I thirst with the 
 love you have implanted in my heart, I will cherish your soul 
 in mine ; impart your Will, and I will do whatsoever you bid 
 me do. If I may not win you, I will treasure every feeling 
 that you can infuse into me as part of you ! If I cannot be 
 united to you but by my strength alone, I will cling as flame 
 clings to what it consumes. Speak ! " 
 
 "Angel ! " cried the incomprehensible being, with a look 
 that seemed to enfold them in an azure mantle. "Angel! 
 heaven is thine inheritance ! " 
 
 And a great silence fell after this cry, which rang in the 
 souls of Wilfrid and Minna like the first chord of some celestial 
 symphony. 
 
 " If you desire to train your feet to walk in the way that 
 leads to heaven, remember that the first steps are rough," said 
 the suffering soul. "God must be sought for His own sake. 
 In that sense He is a jealous God, He will have you altogether 
 His; but when you have given yourself to Him, He never 
 abandons you. I will leave you the keys of the kingdom 
 where His light shines, where you will everywhere be in the 
 bosom of the Father, in the heart of the Bridegroom. No 
 sentinel guards the gates; you can enter from any side ; His 
 palace, His treasures, His sceptre, nothing is forbidden ; He 
 says to all, Take them freely ! ' But you must will to go 
 thither. You must start as for a journey, leave your home, 
 give up your plans, bid farewell to your friends father, 
 
136 SERAPHITA. 
 
 mother, sister, even the infant brother that cries an eternal 
 farewell, for you will never return, any more than martyrs 
 bound for the stake returned to their homes ; you must, in 
 short, strip yourself of the feelings and possessions to which 
 men cling; otherwise, you will not be wholly given up to 
 your enterprise. 
 
 " Do for God what you would have done for your ambitious 
 schemes, what you do when you take up an art, what you did 
 when you loved a creature more than Him, or when you were 
 studying some secret of human knowledge. Is not God 
 Knowledge itself, Love itself, the Font of all poetry? Is not 
 His treasure a thing to covet? His treasure is inexhaustible, 
 His poetry is infinite, His love unchangeable, His knowledge 
 infallible and full of mysteries. Cling to nothing, then ; He 
 will give you All ! Yes, in His heart you will find possessions 
 beyond all compare with those you leave on earth. 
 
 " What I tell you is the truth. You will have His power, 
 you will be allowed to use it as you use anything that belongs 
 to your lover or your mistress. 
 
 "Alas ! most men doubt, lack faith, will, and perseverance. 
 Though some set out on the road, they presently look back 
 and return. Few are they who know how to choose between 
 these two extremes to go or to 'stay; heaven or the muck- 
 heap. All hesitate. Weakness leads to wandering, passion 
 to evil ways, vice as a habit clogs the feet, and man makes no 
 progress toward a better state. 
 
 " Every being passes a preliminary life in the Sphere of In- 
 stinct, laboring with endless toil to amass earthly treasures, only 
 to recognize their futility at last. But how many times must 
 we live through this first life before quitting it fit to begin an- 
 other stage of trial in the Sphere of Abstractions, where the 
 mind is exercised in false science, and the spirit is at last weary 
 of human speech for, matter being exhausted, the spirit pre- 
 vails ? How many forms must the being elect of heaven wear 
 out, before he has learned the preciousness of silence, and of 
 
SERAPHITA. 137 
 
 the solitude whose star-strewn steppes are the floor of the 
 spiritual world? It is after testing and trying the void that 
 his eyes turn to the right path. Then there are other exist- 
 ences to be worn through or ever he may reach the road where 
 the Light shines. 
 
 " Death marks a stage on this journey. After that, his expe- 
 rience is in a reversed order ; it takes a whole life, perhaps, to 
 acquire the virtues that are the antithesis of the errors in which 
 he has previously lived. 
 
 "Thus, first we live the life of suffering, where torments 
 make us thirst for love. Next comes the life of loving, where 
 devotion to the creature teaches us devotion to the Creator ; 
 where the virtues of love, its thousand sacrifices, its angelic 
 hope, its joys paid for by grief, its patience and resignation, 
 excite an .appetite for things divine. After this comes the life 
 during which we seek, in silence, the traces of the Word, and 
 become humble and charitable. Then the life of high desire ; 
 finally, the life of prayer. There we find eternal sunshine ; 
 there are flowers, there is fruition ! 
 
 " The qualities we acquire, and which slowly grow up in us, 
 are the invisible bonds binding each of these existences to the 
 next ; the soul alone remembers them, since matter has no 
 memory for spiritual things. The mind alone preserves a tra- 
 dition of former states. This unbroken legacy of the past to 
 the present, and of the present to the future, is the secret of 
 human genius : some have the gift of form, some the gift of 
 number, some the gift of harmony ; these are all steps in the 
 way to the Light. Yes, whoever possesses one of these gifts 
 touches the infinite at one spot. 
 
 " The Word, of which I have here uttered a few axioms, has 
 been distributed over the earth, which has reduced it to pow- 
 der, and infused it into its works, its doctrines, its poetry. If 
 the tiniest speck of it shines on a work, you say, ' This is 
 great ; this is true ; this is sublime ! ' And that mere atom 
 vibrates within you, giving you a foretaste of heaven. Thus, 
 
138 SERAPHITA. 
 
 one has sickness, to divide him from the world ; another has 
 solitude, bringing him near to God; a third has poetry; in 
 short, everything that throws you in on yourself, striking you 
 and crushing you, is a ringing call from the Divine Sphere. 
 
 " When a being has traced the first furrow straight, it is 
 enough to make the others by ; one single profound thought, 
 a voice once heard, an acute pang, a single echo that finds the 
 Word in you, changes your soul for ever. Every road leads 
 to God ; hence you have many chances of finding Him if you 
 walk straight on. When the happy day dawns that finds you 
 with your foot on the road, starting on your pilgrimage, the 
 earth knows no more of you, it understands you no more, you 
 are no longer in harmony with it, it rejects you. 
 
 " Those who come to know these things, and who speak a 
 few utterances of the true Word, find not where to lay their 
 head ; they are hunted like wild beasts, and often perish on 
 the scaffold amid the rejoicing of the assembled populace ; but 
 angels open the gates of heaven to them. So your destination 
 is a secret between God and you, as love is a secret between 
 two hearts. You are as the hidden treasure over which men 
 trample, greedy for gold, but not knowing that it is there. 
 
 " Your life is one of incessant activity. Each act has a pur- 
 pose that tends to God, just as, when you love, your acts and 
 thoughts are full of the creature you love ; but love and its 
 joys, love and its sensual pleasures, is but an imperfect image 
 of the infinite love that unites you to the Celestial Bridegroom. 
 Every earthly joy is succeeded by anguish and dissatisfaction ; 
 for love to bring no disgust in its train, death must quench it 
 at the fiercest, or ever you see the ashes ; but God transforms 
 our miseries into raptures, joy is multiplied by itself, it con- 
 stantly increases, and knows no bounds. 
 
 "Thus, in the earthly life, a transient love is ended by en- 
 during tribulations ; whereas, in the spiritual life, the tribula- 
 tions of a day end in infinite joys. Your soul is for ever glad. 
 You feel God close to you, in you ; He gives a flavor of holi- 
 
SERAPHITA. 139 
 
 ness to all things, He shines in your soul, He seals you with 
 His sweetness, He weans you from the earth for your own 
 sake, and makes you care for it for His sake by suffering you to 
 use His power. You do, in His name, the works He inspires 
 you to do ; you wipe away tears ; you act for Him ; you have 
 nothing of your own ; like Him, you love all creatures with 
 inextinguishable love; you long to see them all marching 
 toward Him, as a truly loving woman would fain see all the 
 nations of the earth obedient to her well-beloved. 
 
 "The last life that in which all previous lives are summed 
 up is the life of prayer; in it every power is strung to the 
 highest pitch, and its merits will open the gates of heaven to 
 the being made perfect. Who can make you understand the 
 greatness, the majesty, the power of prayer? Oh that my 
 voice may be as thunder in your hearts, and that it may 
 change them ! Be now, forthwith, what you will become 
 after trials. There are certain privileged beings prophets, 
 seers, evangelists, martyrs, all who suffer for the Word or who 
 have declared it these souls cross the human spheres at a 
 single bound, and rise at once to prayer. So, too, do those 
 who are consumed by the flame of faith. Be ye then such a 
 daring pair ! God accepts such temerity ; He loves those 
 who take Him with violence, He never rejects such as can 
 force their way to Him. Understand this: Desire, the 
 torrent of will, is so potent in a man that a single jet forci- 
 bly emitted is enough to win anything, a single cry is often 
 enough when uttered under the stress of faith. Be ye one of 
 those beings, full of force, will, and love ! Be victorious over 
 the earth ! Let the hunger and thirst for God possess you 
 wholly ; run to Him as the thirsting hart runs to the water- 
 brook. Desire will give you wings ; tears, the flowers of 
 repentance, will fall like a heavenly baptism, whence your 
 nature will come forth purified. From the bosom of these 
 waters leap into prayer ! 
 
 " Silence and meditation are efficacious means of entering 
 
140 SERAPHITA. 
 
 on this road ; God always reveals Himself to the solitary and 
 contemplative man. By this method the necessary separation 
 is effected between matter, which has so long held you 
 shrouded in darkness, and the spirit, which is born in you 
 and gives you light, and day will dawn in your soul. Your 
 broken heart receives the light which floods it ; you no lon- 
 ger feel convictions, but dazzling certainties. The poet has 
 expression, the sage meditates, the righteous man acts ; but he 
 who is on the frontier of the divine worlds prays, and his 
 prayer is expression, meditation, and action all in one ! Yes, 
 his prayer contains everything, includes everything ; it com- 
 pletes your nature by showing you the Spirit and the Way. 
 
 " Prayer is the fair and radiant daughter of all the human 
 virtues, the arch connecting heaven and earth, the sweet 
 companion that is alike the lion and the dove ; and prayer 
 will give you the key of heaven. As pure and as bold as 
 innocence, as strong as all things are that are entire and 
 single, this fair and invincible queen rests on the material 
 world ; she has ta'ken possession of it ; for, like the sun, she 
 casts about it a sphere of light. The universe belongs to him 
 who will, who can, who knows how to pray ; but he must will, 
 he must be able, and he must know how in one word, he 
 must have power, faith, and wisdom. And, indeed, when 
 prayer is the outcome of so many trials, it is the consum- 
 mation of all truth, of all power, of all emotion. The off- 
 spring of the laborious, slow, and persistent development of 
 every natural property, and alive by the divine insufflation of 
 the Word, she has enchantments in her hand, she is the crown 
 of worship neither material worship of images, nor spiritual 
 worship, which has its formulas, but worship of the divine 
 order. 
 
 " We do not then say prayers ; prayer lights up within us, 
 and is a faculty which acts of itself; it acquires the vital 
 activity which lifts it above all forms ; it links the soul to God, 
 and you are joined to Him as the root of a tree is joined to the 
 
SERAPHITA, 141 
 
 earth ; the elements of things flow in your veins, and you live 
 the life of the worlds themselves. Prayer bestows external 
 conviction by enabling you to penetrate the world of matter 
 through a cohesion of all your faculties with elementary sub- 
 stances; it bestows internal conviction by evolving your very 
 essence, and mingling it with that of the spiritual spheres. 
 
 " To pray thus you must attain to absolute freedom from 
 the flesh ; you must be refined in the furnace to the purity of 
 a diamond; for that perfect communion can only be achieved 
 by absolute quiescence, the stilling of every storm. Yes, 
 prayer, literally an aspiration of the soul set wholly free from 
 the body, bears up every power, applying them all to the con- 
 stant and persistent union of the visible and the invisible. 
 When you possess the gift of praying without weariness, with 
 love, assurance, force, and intelligence, your spiritualized 
 nature soon attains to power. It passes beyond everything, 
 like the whirlwind or the thunder, and partakes of the nature 
 of God. You acquire alacrity of spirit ; in one instant you 
 can be present in every region ; you are borne, like the Word 
 itself, from one end of the world to the other. There is a 
 harmony you join in it ; there is a light you see it ; there 
 is a melody its echo is in you. In that frame you will feel 
 your intellect expanding, growing, and its insight reaching to 
 prodigious distances ; in fact, to the spirit, time and space 
 are not. Distance and duration are proportions proper to 
 matter ; and spirit and matter have nothing in common. 
 
 ''Although these things proceed in silence and stillness, 
 without disturbance or external motion, everything is action 
 in prayer; but vital action, devoid of all substantiality, refined 
 like the motion of worlds into a pure and invisible force. It 
 comes down from above like light, and gives life to the souls 
 that lie in its rays, as nature lies in those of the sun. It 
 everywhere resuscitates virtue, purifies and sanctifies action, 
 peoples the solitude, and gives a foretaste of eternal bliss. 
 When once you hare known the ecstasy of the divine trans- 
 
142 SERAPHITA. 
 
 port that comes of your internal struggles, there is no more to 
 be said ; when once you have grasped the sistrum on which 
 to praise God, you will never lay it down. Hence the isola- 
 tion in which angelic spirits dwell and their scorn of all that 
 constitutes human joys. 
 
 "I say unto you, they are cut off from the number of those 
 who must die ; if they understand their speech, they no longer 
 understand their ideas ; they are amazed by their doings, by 
 what is termed politics, by earthly laws and communities ; to 
 them there are no mysteries, nothing but truth. Those who 
 have attained the degree at which their eyes can discern the 
 gates of heaven, and who, without casting a single glance 
 behind, without expressing a single regret, can look down 
 upon the worlds and read their destinies those, I say, are 
 silent, and wait and endure the last conflicts; the last is the 
 hardest, resignation is the supreme virtue. To dwell in exile 
 and make no complaint, to have no care for things on earth 
 and yet to smile, to belong to God and be left among men ! 
 
 " Do you not plainly hear the voice that cries to you, ' On ! 
 on ! ' Often in a celestial vision the angels descend and wrap 
 you in song. Then you must see them soar back to the hive 
 without a tear, without a murmur. To murmur would be to 
 fail. Resignation is the fruit that ripens at the gate of heaven. 
 How impressive and beautiful are the calm smile, the unruffled 
 brow of the resigned creature ! How radiant the light that 
 adorns his face ! Those who come within his range grow 
 better; his look is penetrating and pathetic. He triumphs 
 merely by his presence, more eloquent in his silence than the 
 prophet in his speech. He stands alert like a faithful dog 
 listening for his master. 
 
 " Stronger than love, more eager than hope, greater than 
 faith, Resignation is the adorable maiden who, prone on the 
 earth, clings for an instant to the palm she has won by leaving 
 the print of her pure white feet ; and when she is no more, 
 men come in crowds and say, ' Behold ! ' God preserves her 
 
SERAPHITA. 143 
 
 there as an image, and at her feet creep all the shapes and 
 species of animal life seeking their way. Now and again she 
 shakes and sheds the light that emanates from her hair, and 
 we see; she speaks, and we listen ; and all say to one another, 
 'A miracle i ' 
 
 " Often she triumphs in the name of God ; men in their 
 terror deny her and put her to death ; she lays down her 
 sword and smiles at the stake after saving the nations ! 
 
 " How many pardoned angels have stepped from martyrdom 
 to heaven ! Sinai and Golgotha are not here nor there. The 
 angel is crucified everywhere, and in every sphere. Sighs go 
 up to God from every world. The earth on which we live is 
 one ear of the harvest ; humanity is but a species in the vast 
 field where flowers are grown for heaven. 
 
 " In short, God is everywhere the same, and it is easy 
 everywhere to go up to Him by prayer." 
 
 After these words, falling as from the lips of a second 
 Hagar in the desert, and stirring the souls they pierced like 
 the spears shot by the fiery word of Isaiah, the Being was 
 silent to collect some little remaining strength. Neither 
 Wilfrid nor Minna dared to speak. Then on a sudden HE 
 sat up to die. 
 
 " Soul of the universe, oh God, whom I love for Thyself! 
 Thou, Judge and Father, gauge a fervor that knows no limit 
 but Thine infinite goodness ! Impart to me Thine essence 
 and Thy faculties, that I may be more truly Thine ! Take 
 me, that I may no longer be my own. If I am not duly puri- 
 fied, cast me back into the furnace. If I am not finely 
 moulded; let me be made into some useful ploughshare or 
 victorious sword. Grant me some glorious martyrdom to 
 proclaim Thy word. Even if Thou reject me, I will bless 
 Thy justice. If my exceeding love may win in a moment what 
 hard, and patient labor may not obtain, snatch me up in Thy 
 chariot of fire ! Whether Thou shalt grant me to triumph or 
 to suffer again, blessed be Thou ! But if I surfer for Thee, is 
 
144 SERAPHITA. 
 
 not that a triumph? Take me seize, snatch, drag me away ! 
 Or, if Thou wilt, reject me ! Thou art He whom I worship, 
 and who can do no wrong. Ah!" he cried after a pause, 
 "the bonds are breaking. Pure spirits, holy throng, come 
 forth from the depths, fly over the surface of the luminous 
 flood ! The hour has struck ; come, gather round me. We 
 will sing at the gates of the sanctuary, our chants shall dis- 
 perse the last lingering clouds. We will unite to hail the 
 morn of everlasting day. Behold the dawn of the true 
 Light ! Why cannot I take my friends with me ? Farewell, 
 poor earth, farewell ! " 
 
VII. 
 
 THE ASSUMPTION. 
 
 This last hymn was not uttered in words, nor expressed by 
 gestures, nor by any of the signs which serve men as a means 
 of communicating their thoughts, but as the soul speaks to 
 itself; for, at the moment when Seraphita was revealed in her 
 true nature, her ideas were no longer enslaved to human 
 language. The vehemence of her last prayer had broken the 
 bonds. Like a white dove, the soul hovered for a moment 
 above this body, of which the exhausted materials were about 
 to dissever. 
 
 The aspiration of this soul to heaven was so infectious that 
 Wilfrid and Minna failed to discern death as they saw the 
 radiant spark of life. 
 
 They had fallen on their knees when Seraphitus had turned 
 to the dawn, and they were inspired by his ecstasy. 
 
 The fear of the Lord, who creates man anew and purges 
 him of his dross, consumed their hearts. Their eyes were 
 closed to the things of the earth, and opened to the glories of 
 heaven. 
 
 Though surprised by the trembling before God which over- 
 came some of those seers known to men as prophets, they still 
 trembled, like them, when they found themselves within the 
 circle where the glory of the Spirit was shining. 
 
 Then the veil of the flesh, which had hitherto hidden him 
 from them, insensibly faded away, revealing the divine sub- 
 stance: They were left in the twilight of the dawn, whose 
 pale light prepared them to see the true light, and to hear the 
 living word without dying of it. 
 
 In this condition they both began to understand the im- 
 measurable distances that divide the things of earth from the 
 things of heaven. 
 
 10 (145) 
 
146 SERAPHITA. 
 
 The life on whose brink they stood, trembling and dazzled 
 in a close embrace, as two children take refuge side by side to 
 gaze at a conflagration that Life gave no hold to the senses. 
 The Spirit was above them ; it shed fragrance without odor, 
 and melody without the help of sound; here, where they 
 knelt, there were neither surfaces, nor angles, nor atmosphere. 
 They dared no longer question him nor gaze on him, but re- 
 mained under his shadow, as under the burning rays of the 
 tropical sun we dare not raise our eyes for fear of being 
 blinded. 
 
 They felt themselves near to him, though they could not 
 tell by what means they thus found themselves, as in a dream, 
 on the border-line of the visible and the invisible, nor how 
 they had ceased to see the visible and perceived the invisible. 
 
 They said to themselves, "If he should touch us, we shall 
 die! " But the Spirit was in the infinite, and they did not 
 know that in the infinite time and space are not, that they 
 were divided from him by gulfs, though apparently so near. 
 Their souls not being prepared to receive a complete knowl- 
 edge of the faculties of that life, they only perceived it darkly, 
 apprehending it according to their weakness. 
 
 Otherwise, when the Living Word rang forth, of which the 
 distant sound fell on their ear, its meaning entered into their 
 soul as life enters into a body, a single tone of that Word 
 would have swept them away, as a whirl of fire seizes a straw. 
 
 Thus they beheld only what their nature, upheld by the 
 power of the Spirit, allowed them to see ; they heard only so 
 much as they were able to hear. 
 
 Still, in spite of these mitigations, they shuddered as they 
 heard the voice of the suffering soul, the hymn of the spirit 
 awaiting life, and crying out for it. That cry froze the very 
 marrow in their bones. 
 
 The Spirit knocked at the sacred gate. 
 
 "What wilt thou?" asked a choir, whose voice rang 
 through all the worlds. 
 
SERAPHITA. 147 
 
 "To go to God." 
 
 " Hast thou conquered ? " 
 
 "I have conquered the flesh by abstinence; I have van- 
 quished false speech by silence; I have vanquished false 
 knowledge by humility; I have vanquished pride by charity; 
 I have vanquished the earth by love; I have paid my tribute 
 of suffering ; I am purified by the fires of faith ; I have striven 
 for life by prayer; I wait in adoration, and I am resigned." 
 
 But no reply came. 
 
 "The Lord be praised!" said the Spirit, believing him- 
 self rejected. His tears flowed, and fell in dew on the kneel- 
 ing witnesses, who shuddered at the judgments of God. 
 
 On a sudden, the trumpets sounded for the victory of the 
 Angel in this last test ; their music filled space, like a sound 
 met by an echo ; it rang through it, making the universe 
 tremble. Wilfrid and Minna felt the world shrink under 
 their feet. They shivered, shaken by the terrors of appre- 
 hending the mystery that was to be accomplished. 
 
 There was, in fact, a vast stir, as though the eternal legions 
 were forming to march, and gathering in spiral order. The 
 worlds spun round, like clouds swept away by a mad whirl- 
 wind. It was all in a moment. The veils were rent ; they 
 saw far above them, as it were, a star immeasurably brighter 
 than the brightest star in the skies ; it fell from its place like 
 a thunderbolt, still flashing like the lightning, paling in its 
 flight all that they had ever hitherto thought to be light. 
 This was the messenger bearing the good-tidings, and the 
 plume in his helmet was a flame of life. He left behind him 
 a wake, filled up at once by the waves of the luminous flood 
 he passed through. 
 
 He bore a palm and a sword ; with the palm he touched the 
 Spirit, and it was transfigured ; its white wings spread without 
 a sound. 
 
 At the communication of the Light, which changed the 
 Spirit into a seraph, the garb of heavenly armor that clothed 
 
148 SERAPHITA. 
 
 its glorious form, shed such radiance that the two seers were 
 blinded. And, like the three apostles to whose sight Jesus 
 appeared, Wilfrid and Minna were conscious of the burden of 
 their bodies, which hindered them from complete and un- 
 clouded intuition of the Word and the True Life. 
 
 They saw the nakedness of their souls, and could measure 
 their lack of brightness by comparison with the halo of the 
 seraph, in which they stood as a shameful spot. They felt an 
 ardent desire to rush back into the mire of the universe, to 
 endure trial there, so as to be able some clay to utter at the 
 sacred gate the answer spoken by the glorified Spirit. 
 
 That seraph knelt down at the gate of the sanctuary, which 
 he could at last see face to face, and said, pointing to them 
 
 " Grant them to see more clearly. They will love the 
 Lord, and proclaim His Word." 
 
 In answer to this prayer, a veil fell. Whether the unknown 
 power that laid a hand on the two seers did for a moment 
 annihilate their physical bodies, or whether it released their 
 spirit to soar free, they were aware of a separation in them- 
 selves of the pure from the impure. 
 
 Then the seraph's tears rose round them in the form of a 
 vapor which hid the lower worlds from their eyes, and wrapped 
 them round and carried them away, and gave them oblivion 
 of earthly meanings, and the power of understanding the sense 
 of divine things. The True Light appeared ; it shed light on 
 all creation, which, to them, looked barren indeed when they 
 saw the source whence the worlds earthly, spiritual, and 
 divine derive motion. 
 
 Each world had a centre to which tended every atom of the 
 sphere ; these worlds were themselves each an atom tending 
 to the centre of their species. Each species had its centre in 
 the vast celestial region that is in communion with the inex- 
 haustible and flaming motor power of all that exists. Thus, 
 from the most vast to the smallest of the worlds, and from 
 the smallest sphere to the minutest atom of the creation that 
 
SERAPHITA. 149 
 
 constitutes it, each thing was an individual, and yet all was 
 one. 
 
 What, then, was the purpose of the Being, immutable in 
 Essence and Faculty, but able to communicate them without 
 loss, able to manifest them as phenomena without separating 
 them from Himself, and causing everything outside Himself 
 to be a creation immutable in its essence and mutable in its 
 form ? The two guests bidden to this high festival could only 
 see the order and arrangement of beings, and wonder at their 
 immediate ends. None but angels could go beyond that, and 
 know the means and understand the purpose. 
 
 But that which those two chosen ones could contemplate, 
 and of which they carried away the evidence to be a light to 
 their souls for ever after, was the certainty of the action of 
 worlds and beings, and a knowledge of the effort with which 
 they all tend to a final result. They heard the various parts 
 of the infinite forming a living melody; and at each beat, 
 when the concord made itself felt as a deep expiration, the 
 worlds, carried on by this unanimous motion, bowed to the 
 Omnipotent One, who in His unapproachable centre made all 
 things issue from Him and return to Him. This ceaseless 
 alternation of voices and silence seemed to be the rhythm of 
 the holy hymn that was echoed and sustained from age to age. 
 
 Wilfrid and Minna now understood some of the mysterious 
 words of the being who on earth had appeared to them under 
 the form which was intelligible to each Seraphitus to one, 
 Seraphita to the other seeing that here all was homogeneous. 
 Light gave birth to melody, and melody to light ; colors were 
 both light and melody; motion was number endowed by the 
 Word ; in short, everything was at once sonorous, diaphanous, 
 and mobile ; so that, everything existing in everything else, 
 extension knew no limits, and the angels could traverse it 
 everywhere to the utmost depths of the infinite. 
 
 They saw then how puerile were the human sciences of 
 which they had heard. Before them lay a view without any 
 
150 SERAPHITA. 
 
 horizon, an abyss into which ardent craving invited them to 
 plunge ; but burdened with their hapless bodies, they had the 
 desire without the power. 
 
 The seraph lightly spread his wings to take his flight, and 
 did not look back at them he had nothing now in common 
 with the earth. 
 
 He sprang upward ; the vast span of his dazzling pinions 
 covered the two seers like a beneficent shade, allowing them ' 
 to raise their eyes and see him borne away in his glory escorted 
 by the rejoicing archangel. He mounted like a beaming sun 
 rising from the bosom of the waters; but, more happy he 
 than the day-star and destined to more glorious ends, he 
 was not bound, like inferior creatures, to a circular orbit; 
 he followed the direct line of the infinite, tending undevia- 
 tingly to the central one, to be lost there in life eternal, and 
 to absorb into his faculties and into his essence the power of 
 rejoicing through love and the gift of comprehending through 
 wisdom. 
 
 The spectacle that was then suddenly unveiled to the eyes of 
 the two seers overpowered them by its vastness, for they felt like 
 atoms whose smallness was comparable only to the minutest 
 fraction which infinite divisibility allows man to conceive of, 
 brought face to face with the infinitely numerous which God 
 alone can contemplate as He contemplates Himself. 
 
 What humiliation and what greatness in those two points, 
 strength and love, which the seraph's first desire had placed 
 as two links uniting the immensity of the inferior universe to 
 the immensity of the superior universe ! They understood 
 the invisible bonds by which material worlds are attached to 
 the spiritual worlds. As they recalled the stupendous efforts 
 of the greatest human minds, they discerned the principle of 
 melody as they heard the songs of heaven which gave them 
 all the sensations of color, perfume, and thought, and re- 
 minded them of the innumerable details of all the creations, 
 as an earthly song can revive the slenderest memories of love. 
 
SERAPHITA. 151 
 
 Strung by the excessive exaltation of their faculties to a 
 pitch for which there is no word in any language, for a 
 moment they were suffered to glance into the divine sphere. 
 There all was gladness. Myriads of angels winged their way 
 with one consent and without confusion, all alike but all 
 different, as simple as the wild rose, as vast as worlds. 
 
 Wilfrid and Minna did not see them come nor go ; they 
 suddenly pervaded the infinite with their presence, as stars 
 appear in the unfathomable ether. The blaze of all their 
 diadems flashed into light in space, as the heavenly fire is 
 lighted when the day rises among mountains. Waves of light 
 fell from their hair, and their movements gave rise to un- 
 dulating throbs like the dancing waves of a phosphorescent 
 sea. 
 
 The two seers could discern the seraph as a darker object 
 amid deathless legions, whose wings were as the mighty 
 plumage of a forest swept by the breeze. And then, as 
 though all the arrows of a quiver were shot off at once, the 
 spirits dispelled with a breath every vestige of his former 
 shape ; as the seraph mounted higher he was purified, and ere 
 long he was no more than a filmy image of what they had 
 seen when he was first transfigured lines of fire with no 
 shadow. Up and up, receiving a fresh gift at each circle, 
 while the sign of his election was transmitted to the highest 
 heaven, whither he mounted purer and purer. 
 
 None of the voices ceased ; the hymn spread in all its 
 modes 
 
 " Hail to him who rises to life ! Come, flower of the 
 worlds, diamond passed through the fire of affliction, pearl 
 without spot, desire without flesh, new link between earth and 
 heaven, be though Light ! Conquering spirit, queen of the 
 world, fly to take thy crown ; victorious over the earth, re- 
 ceive thy diadem ! Thou art one with us ! " 
 
 The angel's virtues reappeared in all their beauty. His first 
 longing for heaven was seen in the grace of tender infancy. 
 
152 SERAPHITA. 
 
 His deeds adorned him with brightness like constellations ; 
 his acts of faith blazed like the hyacinth of the skies, the hue 
 of the stars. Charity decked him with oriental pearls, treas- 
 ured tears. Divine love bowered him in roses, and his pious 
 resignation by its whiteness divested him of every trace of 
 earthliness. 
 
 Soon, to their eyes, he was no more than a speck of flame, 
 growing more and more intense, its motion lost in the melo- 
 dious acclamations that hailed his arrival in heaven. 
 
 The celestial voices made the two exiles weep. 
 
 Suddenly the silence of death spread like a solemn veil 
 from the highest to the lowest sphere, throwing Wilfrid and 
 Minna into unutterable expectancy. At that instant the 
 seraph was lost in the heart of the sanctuary, where he re- 
 ceived the gift of eternal life. 
 
 Then they were aware of an impulse of intense adoration, 
 which filled them with rapture mingled with awe. They felt 
 that every being had fallen prostrate in the divine spheres, in 
 the spiritual spheres, and in the worlds of darkness. The 
 angels bent the knee to do honor to his glory, the spirits bent 
 the knee to testify to their eagerness, and in the abyss all 
 knelt, shuddering with awe. 
 
 A mighty shout of joy broke out, as a choked spring breaks 
 forth again, tossing up its thousands of flower-like jets, mir- 
 roring the sun which turns the sparkling drops to diamond 
 and pearl, at the instant when the seraph emerged, a blaze of 
 light, crying: 
 
 " Eternal ! Eternal ! Eternal ! " 
 
 The worlds heard him and acknowledged him ; he became 
 one with them as God is, and entered into possession of the 
 infinite. 
 
 The seven divine worlds were aroused by his voice and an- 
 swered him. 
 
 At this instant there was a great rush, as if whole stars 
 were purified and went up in dazzling glory to be eternal. 
 
SERAPHITA. 153 
 
 Perhaps the seraph's first duty was to call all creations filled 
 with the Word to come to God. 
 
 But the hallelujah was already dying away in the ears of 
 Wilfrid and Minna, like the last waves of dying music. The 
 glories of heaven were already vanishing, like the hues of a 
 setting sun amid curtains of purple and gold. 
 
 Death and impurity were repossessing themselves of their 
 prey. 
 
 As they resumed the bondage of the flesh from which their 
 spirit had for a moment been released by a sublime trance, the 
 two mortals felt as on awaking in the morning from a night 
 of splendid dreams, of which reminiscences float in the brain, 
 though the senses have no knowledge of them, and human 
 language would fail to express them. The blackness of the 
 limbo into which they fell was the sphere where the sun of 
 visible worlds shines. 
 
 " We must go down again," said Wilfrid to Minna. 
 
 "We will do as he bade us," replied she. " Having seen 
 the worlds moving on toward God, we know the right way. 
 Our starry diadems are above ! " 
 
 They fell into the abyss, into the dust of the lower worlds, 
 and suddenly saw the earth as it were a crypt, of which the 
 prospect was made clear to them by the light they brought 
 back in their souls, for it still wrapped them in a halo, and 
 through it they still vaguely heard the vanishing harmonies of 
 heaven. This was the spectacle which of old fell on the 
 mind's eye of the prophets. Ministers of all religions, call- 
 ing themselves true, kings consecrated by force and fear, 
 warriors and conquerors sharing the nations, learned men and 
 rich lording it over a refractory and suffering populace whom 
 they trampled under foot these were all attended by their 
 followers and their women, all were clad in robes of gold, 
 silver, and azure, covered with pearls and gems torn from the 
 bowels of the earth or from the depths of the sea by the 
 
154 SERAPHITA. 
 
 perennial toil of sweating and blaspheming humanity. But 
 in the eyes of the exiles this wealth and splendor, harvested 
 with blood, were but filthy rags. 
 
 " What do ye here in motionless ranks?" asked Wilfred. 
 
 They made no answer. 
 
 " What do ye here in motionless ranks?" 
 
 But they made no answer. 
 
 Wilfrid laid his hands on them and shouted 
 
 " What do ye here in motionless ranks? " 
 
 By a common impulse they all opened their robes and 
 showed him their bodies, dried up, eaten by worms, corrupt, 
 putrid, crumbling to dust, and rotten with horrible diseases. 
 
 " Ye lead the nations to death," said Wilfrid; "ye have 
 defiled the earth, perverted the Word, prostituted justice. Ye 
 have eaten the herb of the field, and now ye would kill the 
 lambs ! Do ye think that there is justification in showing your 
 wounds? I shall warn those of my brethren who still can 
 hear the Voice, that they may slake their thirst at the springs 
 that you have hidden." 
 
 "Let us save our strength for prayer," said Minna. "It 
 is not your mission to be a prophet, nor a redeemer, nor an 
 evangelist. We are as yet only on the margin of the lowest 
 sphere ; let us strive to cleave through space on the pinions of 
 prayer." 
 
 " You are my sole love ! " 
 
 " You are my sole strength ! " 
 
 "We have had a glimpse of the higher mysteries; we are, 
 each to the other, the only creatures here below with whom 
 joy and grief are conceivable. Come then, we will pray ; 
 we know the road, we will walk in it." 
 
 " Give me your hand," said the girl. " If we always walk 
 together, the path will seem less rough and not so long." 
 
 "Only with you," said the young man, "could I traverse 
 that vast desert without allowing myself to repine." 
 
 " And we will go to heaven together ! " said she. 
 
SERAPHITA. 155 
 
 The clouds fell, forming a dark canopy. Suddenly the 
 lovers found themselves kneeling by a dead body, which old 
 David was protecting from prying curiosity, and insisted on 
 burying with his own hands. 
 
 Outside, the first summer of the nineteeth century was in all 
 its glory; the lovers fancied they could hear a voice in the 
 sunbeams. They breathed heavenly perfume from the new- 
 born flowers, and said as they took each other by the hand 
 
 " The vast ocean that gleams out there is an image of that 
 we saw above ! ' ' 
 
 " Whither are you going? " asked Pastor Becker. 
 
 "We mean to go to God," said they. " Come with us, 
 father." 
 
 GENEVA AND PARIS, December, 1833 November, 1835. 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 DEDICATION : 
 *'Et nunc et semper dilecta dicatum" 
 
 Louis LAMBERT was born in 1797 at Montoire, a little town 
 in the Vendomois, where his father owned a tannery of no great 
 magnitude, and intended that his son should succeed him ; but 
 his precocious bent for study modified the paternal decision. 
 For, indeed, the tanner and his wife adored Louis, their only 
 child, and never contradicted him in anything. 
 
 At the age of five Louis had begun by reading the Old and New 
 Testaments; and these two Books, including so many books, 
 had sealed his fate. Could that childish imagination under- 
 stand the mystical depths of the Scriptures ? Could it so early 
 follow the flight of the Holy Spirit across the worlds ? Or 
 was it merely attracted by the romantic touches which abound 
 in those Oriental poems ! Our narrative will answer these 
 questions to some readers. 
 
 One thing resulted from this first reading of the Bible: 
 Louis went all over Montoire begging for books, and he ob- 
 tained them by those winning ways peculiar to children, 
 which no one can resist. While devoting himself to these 
 studies under no sort of guidance, he reached the age of ten. 
 
 At that period substitutes for the army were scarce ; rich 
 families secured them long beforehand to have them ready 
 when the lots were drawn. The poor tanner's modest fortune 
 did not allow of their purchasing a substitute for their son, 
 and they saw no means allowed by law for evading the con- 
 scription but that of making him a priest; so, in 1807, they 
 sent him to his maternal uncle, the parish priest of Mer, an- 
 other small town on the Loire, not far from Blois. This 
 (156) 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 157 
 
 arrangement at once satisfied Louis' passion for knowledge, 
 and his parents' wish not to expose him to the dreadful 
 chances of war ; and, indeed, his taste for study and preco- 
 cious intelligence gave grounds for hoping that he might rise 
 to high fortune in the church. 
 
 After remaining for about three years with his uncle, an old 
 and not uncultured Oratorian, Louis left him early in 1811 to 
 enter the college at Vendome, where he was maintained at 
 the cost of Madame de Stael. 
 
 Lambert owed the favor and patronage of this celebrated 
 lady to chance, or shall we not say to Providence, who can 
 smooth the path of forlorn genius. To us, indeed, who do 
 not see below the surface of human things, such vicissitudes, 
 of which we find many examples in the lives of great men, 
 appear to be merely the result of physical phenomena; to 
 most biographers the head of a man of genius rises above the 
 herd as some noble plant in the fields attracts the eye of the 
 botanist by its splendor. This comparison may well be ap- 
 plied to Louis Lambert's adventure ; he was accustomed to 
 spend the time allowed him by his uncle for holidays at his 
 father's house ; but instead of indulging, after the manner of 
 schoolboys, in the sweets of the delightful far niente that 
 tempts us at every age, he set out every morning with part of 
 a loaf and his books, and went to read and meditate in the 
 woods, to escape his mother's remonstrances, for she believed 
 such persistent study to be injurious. How admirable is a 
 mother's instinct ! From that time reading was in Louis a 
 sort of appetite which nothing could satisfy; he devoured 
 books of every kind, feeding indiscriminately on religious 
 works, history, philosophy, and physics. He has told me 
 that he found indescribable delight in reading dictionaries 
 for lack of other books, and I readily believed him. What 
 scholar has not many a time found pleasure in seeking the 
 probable meaning of some unknown word ? The analysis of 
 a word, its physiognomy and history, would be to Lambert 
 
158 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 matter for long dreaming. But these were not the instinctive 
 dreams by which a boy accustoms himself to the phenomena 
 of life, steels himself to every moral or physical perception 
 an involuntary education which subsequently brings forth fruit 
 both in the understanding and character of a man ; no, Louis 
 mastered the facts, and he accounted for them after seeking 
 out both the principle and the end with the mother wit of a 
 savage. Indeed, from the age of fourteen, by one of those 
 startling freaks in which nature sometimes indulges, and which 
 proved how anomalous was his temperament, he would utter 
 quite simply ideas of which the depth was not revealed to me 
 till a long time after. 
 
 " Often," he has said to me when speaking of his studies, 
 " often have I made the most delightful voyage, floating on a 
 word down the abyss of the past, like an insect embarked on 
 a blade of grass tossing on the ripples of a stream. Starting 
 from Greece, I would get to Rome, and traverse the whole 
 extent of modern ages. What a fine book might be written 
 of the life and adventures of a word ! It has, of course, re- 
 ceived various stamps from the occasions on which it has 
 served its purpose; it has conveyed different ideas in different 
 places ; but is it not still grander to think of it under the 
 three aspects of soul, body, and motion ? Merely to regard 
 it in the abstract, apart from its functions, its effects, and its 
 influence, is enough to cast one into an ocean of meditations? 
 Are not most words colored by the idea they represent ? 
 Then, to whose genius are they due ? If it takes great intelli- 
 gence to create a word, how old may human speech be ? The 
 combination of letters, their shapes, and the look they give to 
 the word are the exact reflection, in accordance with the 
 character of each nation, of the unknown beings whose traces 
 survive in us. 
 
 "Who can philosophically explain the transition from sen- 
 sation to thought, from thought to word, from the word to its 
 hieroglyphic presentment, from hieroglyphics to the alphabet, 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 159 
 
 from the alphabet to written language, of which the eloquent 
 beauty resides in a series of images, classified by rhetoric, and 
 forming, in a sense, the hieroglyphics of thought? Was it 
 not the ancient mode of representing human ideas as embodied 
 in the forms of animals that gave rise to the shapes of the first 
 signs used in the East for writing down language? Then has 
 it not left its traces by tradition on our modern languages, 
 which have all seized some remnant of the primitive speech 
 of nations, a majestic and solemn tongue whose grandeur and 
 solemnity decrease as communities grow old ; whose sonorous 
 tones ring in the Hebrew Bible, and still are noble in Greece, 
 but grow weaker under the progress of successive phases of 
 civilization ? 
 
 " Is it to this time-honored spirit that we owe the mysteries 
 lying buried in every human word? In the word TRUE 
 (vrai^) do we not discern a certain imaginary rectitude? Does 
 not the compact brevity of its sound suggest a vague image of 
 chaste nudity and the simplicity of Truth in all things? The 
 syllable seems to me singularly crisp and fresh. 
 
 " I chose the formula of an abstract idea on purpose, not 
 wishing to illustrate the case by a word which should make it 
 too obvious to the apprehension, as the word FLIGHT (fuite), 
 for instance, which is a direct appeal to the senses. 
 
 "But is it not so with every root-word? They all are 
 stamped with a living power that comes from the soul, and 
 which they restore to the soul through the mysterious and 
 wonderful action and reaction between thought and speech. 
 Might we not speak of it as a lover who finds on his mistress' 
 lips as much love as he gives ? Thus, by their mere physiog- 
 nomy, words call to life in our brain the beings which they 
 serve to clothe. Like all beings, there is but one place where 
 their properties are at full liberty to act and develop. But 
 the subject demands a science to itself, perhaps? " 
 
 And he would shrug his shoulders, as much as to say, " But 
 we are too high and too low ! " 
 
160 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 Louis' passion for reading had on the whole been very 
 well satisfied. The cure" of Mer had two or three thousand 
 volumes. This treasure had been derived from the plunder 
 committed during the Revolution in the neighboring chateaux 
 and abbeys. As a priest who had taken the oath, the worthy 
 man had been able to choose the best books from among these 
 precious libraries, which were sold by the pound. In three 
 years Louis Lambert had assimilated the contents of all the 
 books in his uncle's library that were worth reading. The 
 process of absorbing ideas by means of reading had become 
 in him a very strange phenomenon. His eye took in six or 
 seven lines at once, and his mind grasped the sense with a 
 swiftness as remarkable as that of his eye ; sometimes even 
 one word in a sentence was enough to enable him to seize the 
 gist of the matter. 
 
 His memory was prodigious. He remembered with equal 
 exactitude the ideas he had derived from reading, and those 
 which had occurred to him in the course of meditation or 
 conversation. Indeed, he had every form of memory for 
 places, for names, for words, things, and faces. He not 
 only recalled any object at will, but he saw them in his 
 mind, situated, lighted, and colored as he had originally 
 seen them. And this power he could exert with equal effect 
 with regard to the most abstract efforts of the intellect. He 
 could remember, as he said, not merely the position of a 
 sentence in the book where he had met with it, but the frame 
 of mind he had been in at remotest dates. Thus his was the 
 singular privilege of being able to retrace in memory the 
 whole life and progress of his mind, from the ideas he had 
 first acquired to the last thought evolved in it, from the most 
 obscure to the clearest. His brain, accustomed in early youth 
 to the mysterious mechanism by which human faculties are 
 concentrated, drew from this rich treasury endless images full 
 of life and freshness, on which he fed his spirit during those 
 lucid spells of contemplation. 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 161 
 
 " Whenever I wish it," said he to me in his own language, 
 to which a fund of remembrance gave precocious originality, 
 " I can draw a veil over my eyes. Then I suddenly see within 
 me a camera obscura, where natural objects are reproduced in 
 purer forms than those under which they first appeared to my 
 external sense." 
 
 At the age of twelve his imagination, stimulated by the per- 
 petual exercise of his faculties, had developed to a point which 
 permitted him to have such precise conceptions of things, 
 which he knew only from reading about them, that the image 
 stamped on his mind could not have been clearer if he had 
 actually seen them, whether this was by a process of analogy 
 or that he was gifted with a sort of second-sight by which he 
 could command all nature. 
 
 " When I read the story of the battle of Austerlitz," said 
 he to me one day, " I saw every incident. The roar of the 
 cannon, the cries of the fighting men rang in my ears, and 
 made my inmost self quiver ; I could smell the powder ; I heard 
 the clatter of horses and the voices of men ; I looked down on 
 the plain where armed nations were in collision, just as if I 
 had been on the heights of Santon. The scene was as terrify- 
 ing as a passage from the Apocalypse." On the occasions 
 when he brought all his powers into play, and in some degree 
 lost consciousness of his physical existence, and lived on only 
 by the remarkable energy of his mental powers, whose sphere 
 was enormously expanded, he left space behind him, to use 
 his own words. 
 
 But I will not here anticipate the intellectual phases of his 
 life. Already, in spite of myself, I have reversed the order in 
 which I ought to tell the history of this man, who transferred 
 all his activities to thinking, as others throw all their life into 
 action. 
 
 A strong bias drew his mind to mystical studies. 
 
 "Abyssus abyssum" he would say. " Our spirit is abysmal 
 and loves the abyss. In childhood, manhood, and old age we 
 11 
 
162 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 are always eager for mysteries in whatever form they present 
 themselves. ' ' 
 
 This predilection was disastrous ; if indeed his life can be 
 measured by ordinary standards, or if we may gauge another's 
 happiness by our own or by social notions. This taste for the 
 " things of heaven," another phrase he was fond of using, this 
 metis divinior, was due perhaps to the influence produced on 
 his mind by the first books he read at his uncle's. Saint 
 Theresa and Madame Guyon were a sequel to the Bible; they 
 had the first-fruits of his manly intelligence, and accustomed 
 him to those swift reactions of the soul of which ecstasy is at 
 once the result and the means. This line of study, this pecu- 
 liar taste, elevated his heart, purified, ennobled it, gave him 
 an appetite for the divine nature, and suggested to him the 
 almost womanly refinement of feeling which is instinctive in 
 great men ; perhaps their sublime superiority is no more than 
 the desire to devote themselves which characterizes woman, 
 only transferred to the greatest things. 
 
 As a result of these early impressions, Louis passed immacu- 
 late through his school-life ; this beautiful virginity of the 
 senses naturally resulted in the richer fervor of his blood, and 
 in increased faculties of mind. 
 
 The Baroness de Stael, forbidden to come within forty 
 leagues of Paris, spent several months of her banishment on an 
 estate near Vendome. One day, when out walking, she met 
 on the outskirts of the park the tanner's son, almost in rags, 
 and absorbed in reading. The book was a translation of 
 " Heaven and Hell." At that time Monsieur Saint-Martin, 
 Monsieur de Gence, and a few other French or half-German 
 writers were almost the only persons in the French Empire to 
 whom the name of Swedenborg was known. Madame de 
 Stael, greatly surprised, took the book from him with the 
 roughness she affected in her questions, looks, and manners, 
 and with a keen glance at Lambert : 
 
 "Do you understand all this?" she asked. 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 163 
 
 " Do you pray to God ? " said the child. 
 
 "Why? yes." 
 
 "And do you understand Him?" 
 
 The baroness was silent for a moment ; then she sat down 
 by Lambert, and began to talk to him. Unfortunately, my 
 memory, though retentive, is far from being so trustworthy as 
 my friend's, and I have forgotten the whole of the dialogue 
 excepting those first words. 
 
 Such a meeting was of a kind to strike Madame de Stael 
 very greatly ; on her return home she said but little about it, 
 notwithstanding an effusiveness which in her became mere 
 loquacity ; but it evidently occupied her thoughts. 
 
 The only person now living who preserves any recollection 
 of the incident, and whom I catechised to be informed of 
 what few words Madame de Stael had let drop, could with 
 difficulty recall these words spoken by the baroness as describ- 
 ing Lambert, " He is a real seer." 
 
 Louis failed to justify in the eyes of the world the high 
 hopes he had inspired in his protectress. The transient favor 
 she showed him was regarded as a feminine caprice, one of the 
 fancies characteristic of artist souls. Madame de Stael de- 
 termined to save Louis Lambert alike from serving the Em- 
 peror or the church, and to preserve him for the glorious 
 destiny which, she thought, awaited him ; for she made him 
 out to be a second Moses snatched from the waters. Before 
 her departure she instructed a friend of hers, Monsieur de 
 Corbigny, to send her Moses in due course to the High 
 School at Vendome ; then she probably forgot him. 
 
 Having entered this college at the age of fourteen, early in 
 1811, Lambert would leave it at the end of 1814, when he 
 had finished the course of Philosophy. I doubt whether dur- 
 ing the whole time he ever heard a word of his benefactress- 
 if, indeed, it was the act of a benefactress to pay for a lad's 
 schooling for three years without a thought of his future pros- 
 
164 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 pects, after diverting him from a career in which he might 
 have found happiness. The circumstances of the time, and 
 Louis Lambert's character, may to a great extent absolve 
 Madame de Stael for her thoughtlessness and her generosity. 
 The gentleman who was to have kept up communications 
 between her and the boy left Blois just at the time when 
 Louis passed out of the college. The political events that 
 ensued were then a sufficient excuse for this gentleman's 
 neglect of the baroness' protege. The authoress of " Cor- 
 inne" heard no more of her little Moses. 
 
 A hundred louis, which she placed in the hands of Mon- 
 sier de Corbigny, who died, I believe, in 1812, was not a 
 sufficiently large sum to leave lasting memories in Madame de 
 Stael., whose excitable nature found ample pasture during the 
 vicissitudes of 1814 and 1815, which absorbed all her interest. 
 
 At this time Louis Lambert was at once too proud and too 
 poor to go in search of a patroness who was traveling all 
 over Europe. However, he went on foot from Blois to Paris 
 in the hope of seeing her, and arrived, unluckily, on the very 
 day of her death. Two letters from Lambert to the baroness 
 remained unanswered. The memory of Madame de Stael's 
 good intentions with regard to Louis remains, therefore, only 
 in some few young minds, struck, as mine was, by the strange- 
 ness of the story. 
 
 No one who had not gone through the training at our college 
 could understand the effect usually made on our minds by 
 the announcement that a " new boy" had arrived, or the im- 
 pression that such an adventure as Louis Lambert's was calcu- 
 lated to produce. 
 
 And here a little information must be given as to the 
 primitive administration of this institution, originally half- 
 military and half-monastic, to explain the new life which 
 there awaited Lambert. Before the Revolution, the Oratorians, 
 devoted, like the Society of Jesus, to the education of youth 
 succeeding the Jesuits, in fact, in certain of their establish- 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 165 
 
 ments had various provincial houses, of which the most 
 famous were the colleges of Vendome, of Tournon, of la 
 Fleche, Pout-Levoy, Sorreze, and Juilly. That at Vendome, 
 like the others, I believe, turned out a certain number of 
 cadets for the army. The abolition of educational bodies, 
 decreed by the Convention, had but little effect on the college 
 at Vendome. When the first crisis had blown over, the 
 authorities recovered possession of their buildings; certain 
 Oratorians, scattered about the country, came back to the 
 college and reopened it under the old rules, with the habits, 
 practices, and customs which gave this school a character with 
 which I have seen nothing at all comparable in any that I 
 have visited since I left that establishment. 
 
 Standing in the heart of the town, on the little river Loir 
 which flows under its walls, the college possesses extensive 
 precincts, carefully inclosed by walls, and including all the 
 buildings necessary for an institution on that scale : a chapel, 
 a theatre, an infirmary, a bakehouse, gardens, and water- 
 supply. This college is the most celebrated home of learning 
 in all the central provinces, and receives pupils from them and 
 from the colonies. Distance prohibits any frequent visits 
 from parents to their children. 
 
 The rule of the House forbids holidays away from it. Once 
 entered there, a pupil never leaves till his studies are finished. 
 With the exception of walks taken under the guidance of the 
 fathers, everything is calculated to give the school the benefit 
 of conventual discipline ; in my day the tawse was still a living 
 memory, and the classical leather strap played its terrible part 
 with all the honors. The punishments originally invented by 
 the Society of Jesus, as alarming to the moral as to the physi- 
 cal man, were still in force in all the integrity of the original 
 code. 
 
 Letters to parents were obligatory on certain days, so was 
 confession. Thus our sins and our sentiments were all 
 according to pattern. Everything bore the stamp of monastic 
 
168 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 rule. I well remember, among other relics of the ancient 
 order, the inspection we went through every Sunday. We 
 were all in our best, placed in file like soldiers to await the 
 arrival of the two inspectors who, attended by the tutors and 
 the tradesmen, examined us from the three points of view of 
 dress, health, and morals. 
 
 The two or three hundred pupils lodged in the establish- 
 ment were divided, according to ancient custom, into the 
 minimcs (the smallest), the little boys, the middle boys, and 
 the big boys. The division of the minimcs included the 
 eighth and seventh classes ; the little boys formed the sixth, 
 fifth, and fourth ; the middle boys were classed as third and 
 second ; and the first class comprised the senior students of 
 philosophy, rhetoric, the higher mathematics, and chemistry. 
 Each of these divisions had its own building, class-rooms, and 
 play-ground, in the large common precincts on to which the 
 class-rooms opened, and beyond which was the refectory. 
 
 This dining-hall, worthy of an ancient religious order, 
 accommodated all the school. Contrary to the usual practice 
 in educational institutions, we were allowed to talk at our 
 meals, a tolerant Oratorian rule which enabled us to exchange 
 plates according to our taste. This gastronomical barter was 
 always one of the chief pleasures of our college life. If one 
 of the " middle " boys at the head of his table wished for a 
 helping of lentils instead of dessert for we had dessert the 
 offer was passed down from one to another: "Dessert for 
 lentils ! " till some other epicure had accepted ; then the 
 plate of lentils was passed up to the bidder from hand to 
 hand, and the plate of dessert returned by the same road. 
 Mistakes were never made. If several identical offers were 
 made, they were taken in order, and the formula would be, 
 "Lentils number one for dessert number one." The tables 
 were very long ; our incessant barter kept everything mov- 
 ing ; we transacted it with amazing eagerness ; and the chatter 
 of three hundred lads, the bustling to and fro of the servants 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 167 
 
 employed in changing the plates, setting down the dishes, 
 handing the bread, with the tours of inspection of the masters, 
 made this refectory at Vendome a scene unique in its way, and 
 the amazement of visitors. 
 
 To make our life more tolerable, deprived as we were of all 
 communication with the outer world and of family affection, 
 we were allowed to keep pigeons and to have gardens. Our 
 two or three hundred pigeon-houses, with a thousand birds 
 nesting all round the outer wall, and above thirty garden 
 plots, were a sight even stranger than our meals. But a full 
 account of the peculiarities which made the college at Ven- 
 dome a place unique in itself and fertile in reminiscences to 
 those who spent their boyhood there would be weariness to 
 the reader. Which of us all but remembers with delight, not- 
 withstanding the bitterness of learning, the eccentric pleasures 
 of that cloistered life ? The sweetmeats purchased by stealth 
 in the course of our walks, permission obtained to play cards 
 and devise theatrical performances during the holidays, such 
 tricks and freedom as were necessitated by our seclusion ; 
 then, again, our military band, a relic of the cadets ; our 
 academy, our chaplain, our father professors, and all our 
 games permitted or prohibited, as the case might be; the 
 cavalry charges on stilts, the long slides made in winter, the 
 clatter of our clogs ; and, above all, the trading transactions 
 with " the store " set up in the courtyard itself. 
 
 This store was kept by a sort of cheap-jack, of whom big 
 and little boys could procure according to his prospectus 
 boxes, stilts, tools, Jacobin pigeons, and nuns,* mass-books 
 an article in small demand penknives, paper, pens, pencils, 
 ink of all colors, balls, and marbles; in short, the whole 
 catalogue of the most treasured possessions of boys, including 
 everything from sauce for the pigeons we were obliged to kill 
 off, to the earthenware pots in which we set aside the rice 
 from supper to be eaten at next morning's breakfast. Which 
 * Nontiette ; ginger-bread. 
 
168 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 of us is so unhappy as to have forgotten how his heart beat at 
 the sight of this booth, open periodically during play-hours 
 on Sundays, to which we went, each in his turn, to spend his 
 little pocket-money ; while the smallness of the sum allowed 
 by our parents for these minor pleasures required us to make 
 a choice among all the objects that appealed so strongly to 
 our desires ? Did ever a young wife, to whom her husband, 
 during the first days of happiness, hands, twelve times a year, 
 a purse of gold, the budget of her personal fancies, dream of 
 so many different purchases, each of which would absorb the 
 whole sum, as we imagined possible on the eve of the first 
 Sunday in each month ? For six francs during one night we 
 owned every delight of that inexhaustible store ! and during 
 mass every response we chanted was mixed up in our minds 
 with our secret calculations. Which of us all can recollect 
 ever having had a sou left to spend on the Sunday following? 
 And which of us but obeyed the instinctive law of social 
 existence by pitying, helping, and despising those pariahs 
 who, by the avarice or poverty of their parents, found them- 
 selves penniless ? 
 
 Any one who forms a clear idea of this huge college, with 
 its monastic buildings in the heart of a little town, and the 
 four plots in which we were distributed as by a monastic rule, 
 will easily conceive of the excitement that we felt at the arrival 
 of a new boy, a passenger suddenly embarked on the ship. 
 No young duchess, on her first appearance at Court, was ever 
 more spitefully criticised than the new boy by the youths in 
 his division. Usually during the evening play-hour before 
 prayers, those sycophants who were accustomed to ingratiate 
 themselves with the fathers who took it in turns two and two 
 for a week to keep an eye on us, would be the first to hear on 
 trustworthy authority : " There will be a new boy to-morrow ! " 
 and then suddenly the shout, "A New Boy ! A New Boy ! " 
 rang through the courts. We hurried up to crowd round the 
 superintendent and pestered him with questions 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 169 
 
 " Whence was he coming ? What was his name ? In which 
 class would he be? " and so forth. 
 
 Louis Lambert's advent was the subject of a romance 
 worthy of the "Arabian Nights." I was in the fourth class 
 at the time among the little boys. Our housemasters were 
 two men whom we called fathers from habit and tradition, 
 though they were not priests. In my time there were, indeed, 
 but three genuine Oratorians to whom this title legitimately 
 belonged ; in 1814 they all left the college, which had gradu- 
 ally become secularized, to find occupation about the altar in 
 various country parishes, like the cure of Mer. 
 
 Father Haugoult, the master for the week, was not a bad 
 man, but of very moderate attainments, and he lacked the tact 
 which is indispensable for discerning the different characters 
 of children, and graduating their punishment to their powers 
 of resistance. Father Haugoult, then, began very obligingly to 
 communicate to his pupils the wonderful events which were to 
 end on the morrow in the advent of the most singular of 
 "new boys." Games were at an end. All the children 
 came round in silence to hear the story of Louis Lambert, 
 discovered, like an aerolite, by Madame de Stael, in a corner 
 of the wood. Monsieur Haugoult had to tell us all about 
 Madame de Stael ; that evening she seemed to me ten feet 
 high ; I saw at a later time a picture of Corinne, in which 
 Gerard represents her as so tall and handsome ; and, alas ! the 
 woman painted by my imagination so far transcended this, 
 that the real Madame de Stael fell at once in my estimation, 
 even after I read her book of really masculine power, " De 
 1'Allemagne." 
 
 But Lambert at that time was an even greater wonder. 
 Monsieur Mareschal, the headmaster, after examining him, had 
 thought of placing him among the senior boys. It was 
 Louis' ignorance of Latin that placed him so low as the fourth 
 class, but he would certainly leap up a class every year; 
 and, as a remarkable exception, he was to be one of the 
 
170 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 "Academy." Proh pudor! we were to have the honor of 
 counting among the "little boys" one whose coat was 
 adorned with the red ribbon displayed by the "Academi- 
 cians " of Vendome. These Academicians enjoyed distin- 
 guished privileges ; they often dined at the director's table, 
 and held two literary meetings annually, at which we were all 
 present to hear their elucubrations. An Academician was 
 a great man in embryo. And if every Vendome scholar 
 would speak the truth, he would confess that, in later life, an 
 Academician of the great French Academy seemed to him far 
 less remarkable than the stupendous boy who wore the cross 
 and the imposing red ribbon which were the insignia of our 
 "Academy." 
 
 It was very unusual to be one of that illustrious body before 
 attaining to the second class, for the Academicians were ex- 
 pected to hold public meetings every Thursday during the 
 holidays, and to read tales in verse or prose, epistles, essays, 
 tragedies, dramas compositions far above the intelligence of 
 the lower classes. I long treasured the memory of a story 
 called the "Green Ass," which was, I think, the masterpiece 
 of this unknown society. In the fourth, and an Academician ! 
 This boy of fourteen a poet already, the protege of Madame 
 de Stael, a coming genius, said Father Haugoult, was to be 
 one of us ! a wizard, a youth capable of writing a composition 
 or a translation while we were being called in to lessons, and 
 of learning his lessons by reading them through but once. 
 Louis Lambert bewildered all our ideas. And Father Hau- 
 goult's curiosity and impatience to see this new boy added 
 fuel to our excited fancy. 
 
 "If he has pigeons, he can have no pigeon-house; there is 
 not room for another. Well, it cannot be helped," said one 
 boy, since famous as an agriculturist. 
 
 "Who will sit next him?" said another. 
 
 "Oh, I wish I might be his chum ! " cried an enthusiast. 
 
 In school language, the word here rendered chum -faisanf, 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 171 
 
 or, in some schools, copin expressed a fraternal sharing of 
 the joys and evils of your childish existence, a community of 
 interests that was fruitful of squabbling and making friends 
 again, a treaty of alliance offensive and defensive. It is 
 strange, but never in my time did I know brothers who were 
 chums. If man lives by his feelings, he thinks perhaps that 
 he will make his life the poorer if he merges an affection of 
 his own choosing in a natural tie. 
 
 The impression made upon me by Father Haugoult's ha- 
 rangue that evening is one of the most vivid reminiscences of 
 my childhood ; I can compare it with nothing but my first 
 reading of " Robinson Crusoe." Indeed, I owe to my recol- 
 lection of these prodigious impressions an observation that 
 may perhaps be new as to the different sense attached to 
 words by each hearer. The word in itself has no final mean- 
 ing ; we affect a word more than it affects us ; its value is in 
 relation to the images we have assimilated and grouped round 
 it ; but a study of this fact would require considerable elabora- 
 tion, and lead us too far from our immediate subject. 
 
 Not being able to sleep, I had a long discussion with my 
 next neighbor in the dormitory as to the remarkable being 
 who on the morrow was to be one of us. This neighbor, who 
 became an officer, and is now a writer with lofty philosophical 
 views, Barchou de Penhoep, has not been false to his predes- 
 tination, nor to the hazard of fortune by which the only two 
 scholars of Vendome, of whose fame Vendome ever hears, 
 were brought together in the same class-room, on the same 
 form, and under the same roof. Our comrade Dufaure had 
 not, when this book was published, made his appearance in 
 public life as a lawyer. The translator of Fichte, the ex- 
 positor and friend of Ballanche, was already interested, as I 
 myself was, in metaphysical questions ; we often talked non- 
 sense together about God, ourselves, and nature. He at that 
 time affected pyrrhonism. Jealous of his place as leader, he 
 doubted Lambert's precocious gifts; while I, having lately read 
 
172 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 "Les Enfants celebres," overwhelmed him with evidence, 
 quoting young Montcalm, Pico della Mirandola, Pascal in 
 short, a score of early developed brains, anomalies that are 
 famous in the history of the human mind, and Lambert's 
 predecessors. 
 
 I was at the time passionately addicted to reading. My 
 father, who was ambitious to see me in the Ecole Polytech- 
 nique, paid for me to have a special course of private lessons 
 in mathematics. My mathematical master was the librarian of 
 the college, and allowed me to help myself to books without 
 much caring what I chose to take from the library, a quiet 
 spot where I went to him during play-hours to have my lesson. 
 Either he was no great mathematician, or he was absorbed in 
 some grand scheme, for he very willingly left me to read when 
 I ought to have been learning, while he worked at I knew not 
 what. So, by a tacit understanding between us, I made no 
 complaints of being taught nothing, and he said nothing of 
 the books I borrowed. 
 
 Carried away by this ill-timed mania, I neglected my studies 
 to compose poems, which certainly can have shown no great 
 promise, to judge by a line of too many feet which became 
 famous among my companions the beginning of an epic on 
 
 the Incas 
 
 "O Inca! O roi infortun6 et malheureux ! " 
 
 In derision of such attempts, I was nicknamed the Poet, 
 but mockery did not cure me. I was always rhyming, but in 
 spite of good advice from Monsieur Mareschal, the head- 
 master, who tried to cure me of an unfortunately inveterate 
 passion by telling me the fable of a linnet that fell out of the 
 nest because it tried to fly before its wings were grown. I 
 persisted in my reading; I became the least emulous, the 
 idlest, the most dreamy of all the division of "little boys," 
 and consequently the most frequently punished. 
 
 This autobiographical digression may give some idea of the 
 reflections I was led to make in anticipation of Lambert's 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 173 
 
 arrival. I was then twelve years old. I felt sympathy from 
 the first for the boy whose temperament had some points of 
 likeness to my own. I was at last to have a companion in 
 day-dreams and meditations. Though I knew not yet what 
 glory meant, I thought it glory to be the familiar friend of a 
 child whose immortality was foreseen by Madame de Stael. 
 To me Louis Lambert was as a giant. 
 
 The looked-for morrow came at last. A minute before 
 breakfast we heard the steps of Monsieur Mareschal and of 
 the new boy in the quiet courtyard. Every head was turned 
 at once to the door of the class-room. Father Haugoult, who 
 participated in our torments of curiosity, did not sound the 
 whistle he used to reduce our mutterings to silence and bring 
 us back to our tasks. We then saw this famous new boy, 
 whom Monsieur Mareschal was leading by the hand. The 
 superintendent descended from his desk, and the headmaster 
 said to him solemnly, according to etiquette: "Monsieur, 
 I have brought you Monsieur Louis Lambert ; will you place 
 him in the fourth class, he will begin work to-morrow." 
 
 Then, after speaking a few words in an undertone to the 
 class-master, he said 
 
 "Where can he sit?" 
 
 It would have been unfair to displace one of us for a new- 
 comer ; so as there was but one desk vacant, Louis Lambert 
 came to fill it, next to me, for I had last joined the class. 
 Though we still had some time to wait before lessons were 
 over, we all stood up to look at Louis Lambert. Monsieur 
 Mareschal heard our mutterings, saw how eager we were, and 
 said, with the kindness that endeared him to us all 
 
 " Well, well, but make no noise ; do not disturb the other 
 classes." 
 
 These words set us free to play some little time before 
 breakfast, and we all gathered round Lambert while Monsieur 
 Mareschal walked up and down the courtyard with Father 
 Haugoult. 
 
174 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 There were about eighty of us little demons, as bold as 
 birds of prey. Though we ourselves had all gone through 
 this cruel novitiate, we showed no mercy on a new-comer, 
 never sparing him the mockery, the catechism, the imperti- 
 nence, which were inexhaustible on such occasions, to the 
 discomfiture of the neophyte, whose manners, strength, and 
 temper were thus tested. Lambert, whether he was stoical 
 or dumfounded, made no reply to any questions. One of us 
 thereupon remarked that he was no doubt of the school of 
 Pythagoras, and there was a shout of laughter. The new boy 
 was thenceforth Pythagoras through all his life at the college. 
 At the same time, Lambert's piercing eye, the scorn expressed 
 in his face for our childishness, so far removed from the stamp 
 of his own nature, the easy attitude he assumed, and his evi- 
 dent strength in proportion to his years, infused a certain re- 
 spect into the veriest scamps among us. For my part, I kept 
 near him, absorbed in studying him in silence. 
 
 Louis Lambert was slightly built, nearly five feet in height ; 
 his face was tanned, and his hands were burnt brown by the 
 sun, giving him an appearance of manly vigor, which, in fact, 
 he did not possess. Indeed, two months after he came to the 
 college, when study in the class-room had faded his vivid, so 
 to speak, vegetable coloring, he became as pale and white as a 
 woman. 
 
 His head was unusually large. His hair, of a fine, bright 
 black in masses of curls, gave wonderful beauty to his brow, 
 of which the proportions were extraordinary even to us heed- 
 less boys, knowing nothing, as may be supposed, of the 
 auguries of phrenology, a science still in its cradle. The dis- 
 tinction of this prophetic brow lay principally in the exquisitely 
 chiseled shape of the arches under which his black eyes 
 sparkled, and which had the transparency of alabaster, the 
 line having the unusual beauty of being perfectly level to 
 where it met the top of the nose. But when you saw his eyes 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 175 
 
 it was difficult to think of the rest of his face, which was 
 indeed plain enough, for their look was full of a wonderful 
 variety of expression ; they seemed to have a soul in their 
 depths. At one moment astonishingly clear and piercing, at 
 another full of heavenly sweetness, those eyes became dull, 
 almost colorless, as it seemed, when he was lost in meditation. 
 They then looked like a window from which the sun had 
 suddenly vanished after lighting it up. His strength and his 
 voice were no less variable ; equally rigid, equally unexpected. 
 His tone could be as sweet as that of a woman compelled to 
 own her love ; at other times it was labored, rough, rugged, 
 if I may use such words in a new sense. As to his strength, 
 he was habitually incapable of enduring the fatigue of any 
 game, and seemed weakly, almost infirm. But during the 
 early days of his school-life, one of our little bullies having 
 made game of this sickliness, which rendered him unfit for 
 the violent exercise in vogue among his fellows, Lambert 
 took hold with both hands of one of the class-tables, consist- 
 ing of twelve large desks, face to face and sloping from the 
 middle; he leaned back against the class-master's desk, 
 steadying the table with his feet on the cross-bar, below, and 
 said 
 
 " Now, ten of you try to move it ! " 
 
 I was present, and can vouch for this strange display of 
 strength ; it was impossible to move the table. 
 
 Lambert had the gift of summoning to his aid at certain 
 times the most extraordinary powers, and of concentrating all 
 his forces on a given point. But children, like men, are wont 
 to judge of everything by first impressions, and after the first 
 few days we ceased to study Louis ; he entirely belied Madame 
 de StaeTs prognostications, and displayed none of the prod- 
 igies we looked for in him. 
 
 After three months at school, Louis was looked upon as a 
 quite ordinary scholar. I alone was allowed really to know 
 that sublime why should I not say divine ? soul, for what 
 
176 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 is nearer to God than genius in the heart of a child ? The 
 similarity of our tastes and ideas made us friends and chums ; 
 our intimacy was so brotherly that our school-fellows joined 
 our two names ; one was never spoken without the other, and 
 to call either they always shouted " Poet-and-Pythagoras ! " 
 Some other names had been known coupled in a like manner. 
 Thus for two years I was the school friend of poor Louis 
 Lambert; and during that time my life was so identified 
 with his, that I am enabled now to write his intellectual 
 biography. 
 
 It was long before I fully knew the poetry and the wealth 
 of ideas that lay hidden in my companion's heart and brain. 
 It was not till I was thirty years of age, till my experience 
 was matured and condensed, till the flash of an intense illumin- 
 ation had thrown a fresh light upon it, that I was capable of 
 understanding all the bearings of the phenomena which I wit- 
 nessed at that early time. I benefited by them without un- 
 derstanding their greatness or their processes ; indeed, I have 
 forgotten some, or remember only the most conspicuous facts ; 
 still, my memory is now able to coordinate them, and I have 
 mastered the secrets of that fertile brain by looking back to 
 the delightful days of our boyish affection. So it was time 
 alone that initiated me into the meaning of the events 
 and facts that were crowded into that obscure life, as into 
 that of many another man who is lost to science. Indeed, 
 this narrative, so far as the expression and appreciation of 
 many things is concerned, will be found full of what may be 
 termed moral anachronisms, which perhaps will not detract 
 from its peculiar interest. 
 
 In the course of the first few months after coming to Ven- 
 dome, Louis became the victim of a malady which, though 
 the symptoms were invisible to the eyes of our superiors, con- 
 siderably interfered with the exercise of his remarkable gifts. 
 Accustomed to live in the open air and to the freedom of a 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 177 
 
 purely haphazard education, happy in the tender care of an 
 old man who was devoted to him, used to meditating in the 
 sunshine, he found it very hard to submit to college rules, to 
 walk in the ranks, to live within the four walls of a room 
 where eighty boys were sitting in silence on wooden forms, 
 each in front of his desk. His senses were developed to such 
 perfection as gave them the most sensitive keenness, and every 
 part of him suffered from this life in common. 
 
 The effluvia that vitiated the air, mingled with the odors of 
 a class-room that was never clean or free from the fragments 
 of our breakfasts or little lunches, affected his sense of smell, 
 the sense which, being more immediately connected than the 
 others with the nerve-centres of the brain, must, when shocked, 
 cause invisible disturbance to the organs of thought. 
 
 Beside these elements of impurity in the atmosphere, there 
 were lockers in the class-rooms in which the boys kept their 
 miscellaneous plunder pigeons killed for fete days, or titbits 
 filched from the dinner-table. In each class-room, too, there 
 was a large stone slab, on which two pails full of water were 
 kept standing, a sort of sink, where we every morning washed 
 our faces and hands, one after another, in the master's pres- 
 ence. We then passed on to a table, where women combed 
 and powdered our hair. Thus the place, being cleaned but 
 once a day before we were up, was always more or less dirty. 
 In spite of numerous windows and lofty doors, the air was 
 constantly fouled by the smells from the washing-place, the 
 hairdressing, the lockers, and the thousand messes made by 
 the boys, to say nothing of their eighty closely packed bodies. 
 And this sort of humus, mingling with the mud we brought 
 in from the play -ground, produced a suffocatingly pestilent 
 filthiness. 
 
 The loss of the fresh and fragrant country air in which he 
 
 had hitherto lived, the change of habits and strict discipline, 
 
 combined to depress Lambert. With his elbow on his desk 
 
 and his head supported on his left hand, he spent the hours 
 
 12 
 
178 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 of study gazing at the trees in the court or the clouds in the 
 sky ; he seemed to be thinking of his lessons ; but the master, 
 seeing his pen motionless, or the sheet before him still a 
 blank, would call out 
 
 " Lambert, you are doing nothing ! " 
 
 This "you are doing nothing!" was a pin-thrust that 
 wounded Louis to the quick. And then he never earned the 
 rest of recess ; he always had impositions to write. The im- 
 position, a punishment which varies according to the prac- 
 tice of different schools, consisted at Vendome of a certain 
 number of lines to be written out in play-hours. Lambert 
 and I were so overpowered with impositions that we had not 
 six free days during the two years of our school friendship. 
 But for the books we took out of the library, which main- 
 tained some vitality in our brains, this system of discipline 
 would have reduced us to idiocy. Want of exercise is fatal 
 to children. The habit of preserving a dignified appearance, 
 begun in tender infancy, has, it is said, a visible effect on the 
 constitution of royal personages when the faults of such an 
 education are not counteracted by the life of the battlefield or 
 the laborious sport of hunting. And if the laws of etiquette 
 and Court manners can act on the spinal marrow to such an 
 extent as to affect the pelvis of kings, to soften their cerebral 
 tissue, and so degenerate the race, what deep-seated mischief, 
 physical and moral, must result in schoolboys from the con- 
 stant lack of air, exercise, and cheerfulness ! 
 
 Indeed, the rules of punishment carried out in schools de- 
 serve the attention of the office of public instruction when any 
 thinkers are to be found there who do not think exclusively 
 of themselves. 
 
 We incurred the infliction of an imposition in a thousand 
 ways. Our memory was so good that we never learned a 
 lesson. It was enough for either of us to hear our class-fellows 
 repeat the task in French, Latin, or grammar, and we could 
 say it when our turn came ; but if the master, unfortunately, 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 179 
 
 took it into his head to reverse the usual order and call upon 
 us first, we very often did not even know what the lesson was; 
 then the imposition fell in spite of our most ingenious excuses. 
 Then we always put off writing our exercises till the last 
 moment; if there were a book to be finished, or if we were 
 lost in thought, the task was forgotten again an imposition. 
 How often have we scribbled an exercise during the time 
 when the head-boy, whose business it was to collect them 
 when we came into school, was gathering them from the 
 others ! 
 
 In addition to the moral misery which Lambert went through 
 in trying to acclimatize himself to college life, there was a 
 scarcely less cruel apprenticeship through which every boy 
 had to pass : to those bodily sufferings which seemed infinitely 
 varied. The tenderness of a child's skin needs extreme care, 
 especially in winter, when a schoolboy is constantly ex- 
 changing the frozen air of the muddy playing-yard for the 
 stuffy atmosphere of the class-room. The "little boys" and 
 the smallest of all, for lack of a mother's care, were martyrs 
 to chilblains and chaps so severe that they had to be regularly 
 dressed during the breakfast hour; but this could only be 
 very indifferently done to so many damaged hands, toes, and 
 heels. A good many of the boys indeed were obliged to pre- 
 fer the evil to the remedy ; the choice constantly lay between 
 their lessons waiting to be finished or the joys of a slide, and 
 waiting for a bandage carelessly put on, and still more care- 
 lessly cast off again. Also it was the fashion in the school to 
 gibe at the poor, feeble creatures who went to be doctored ; 
 the bullies vied with each other in snatching off the rags 
 which the infirmary nurse had tied on. Hence, in winter, 
 many of us, with half-dead feet and fingers, sick with pain, 
 were incapable of work, and punished for not working. The 
 fathers, too often deluded by shammed ailments, would not 
 believe in real suffering. 
 
 The price paid for our schooling and board also covered 
 
180 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 the cost of clothing.* The committee contracted for the shoes 
 and clothes supplied to the boys; hence the weekly inspection 
 of which I have spoken. This plan, though admirable for 
 the manager, is always disastrous to the managed. Woe to 
 the boy who indulged in the bad habit of treading his shoes 
 down at neel, of cracking the shoe-leather, or wearing out 
 the soles too fast, whether from a defect in his gait, or by 
 fidgeting during lessons in obedience to the instinctive need 
 of movement common to all children. That boy did not get 
 through the winter without great suffering. In the first place, 
 his chilblains would ache and shoot as badly as a fit of the 
 gout; then the rivets and wax-thread intended to repair the 
 shoes would give way, or the broken heels would prevent the 
 wretched shoes from keeping on his feet ; he was obliged to 
 drag them wearily along the frozen roads, or sometimes to 
 dispute their possession with the clay soil of the district ; the 
 water and snow got in through some unnoticed crack or ill- 
 sewn patch, and the foot would swell. 
 
 Out of sixty boys, not ten perhaps could walk without some 
 special form of torture, and yet they all kept up with the body 
 of the troop, dragged on by the general movement, as men 
 are driven through life by life itself. Many a time some 
 proud-tempered boy would shed tears of rage while summoning 
 his remaining energy to run ahead and get home again in 
 spite of pain, so sensitively afraid of laughter or of pity two 
 forms of scorn is the still tender soul at that age. 
 
 At school, as in social life, the strong despise the feeble 
 without knowing in what true strength consists. 
 
 Nor was this all. No gloves. If by good hap a boy's 
 parents, the infirmary nurse, or the headmaster gave gloves to 
 a particularly delicate lad, the wags or the big boys of the 
 class would put them on the stove, amused to see them dry 
 and shrivel ; or if the gloves escaped the marauders, after 
 getting wet they shrunk as they dried for want of care. No, 
 * This still obtains in the cheaper pensions or boarding-schools. 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 181 
 
 gloves were impossible. Gloves were a privilege, and boys 
 ever did and ever will insist on equality, especially in schools 
 and colleges. 
 
 Louis Lambert fell a victim to all these varieties of torment. 
 Like many contemplative men, who, when lost in thought, 
 acquire a habit of mechanical motion, he had a mania for 
 fidgeting with his shoes, and destroyed them very quickly. 
 His girlish complexion, the skin of his ears and lips, cracked 
 with the least cold. His soft, white hands grew red and 
 swollen. He had perpetual colds. Thus he was a constant 
 sufferer till he became inured to school-life. Taught at last by 
 cruel experience, he was obliged to " look after his things," 
 to use the school phrase. He was forced to take care of his 
 locker, his desk, his clothes, his shoes ; to protect his ink, his 
 books, his copy-paper, and his pens from pilferers; in short, 
 to give his mind to the thousand details of our trivial life, to 
 which more selfish and commonplace minds devoted such 
 strict attention thus infallibly securing prizes for " profi- 
 ciency " and "good conduct" while they were overlooked 
 by a boy of the highest promise, who, under the hand of an 
 almost divine imagination, gave himself up with rapture to the 
 flow of his ideas. 
 
 This was not all. There is a perpetual struggle going on 
 between the masters and the boys, a struggle without truce, to 
 be compared with nothing else in the social world, unless it be 
 the resistance of the opposition to the ministry in a represen- 
 tative government. But journalists and opposition speakers 
 are probably less prompt to take advantage of a weak point, 
 less extreme in resenting an injury, and less merciless in their 
 mockery than boys are in regard to those who rule over them. 
 It is a task to put angels out of patience. An unhappy class- 
 master must then not be too severely blamed, ill-paid as he 
 is, and consequently not too competent, if he is occasionally 
 unjust or out of temper. Perpetually watched by a hundred 
 mocking eyes, and surrounded with snares, he sometimes 
 
182 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 revenges himself for his own blunders on the boys who are 
 only too ready to detect them. 
 
 Unless for serious misdemeanors, for which there were other 
 forms of punishment, the strap was regarded at Vendome as 
 the ultima ratio Patrum. Exercises forgotten, lessons ill 
 learned, common ill behavior were sufficiently punished by an 
 imposition, but offended dignity spoke in the master through 
 the strap. Of all the physical torments to which we were 
 exposed, certainly the most acute was that inflicted by this 
 leathern instrument, about two fingers wide, applied to our 
 poor little hands with all the strength and all the fury of the 
 administrator. To endure this classical form of correction, the 
 victim knelt in the middle of the room. He had to leave his 
 form and go to kneel down near the master's desk under the 
 curious and generally merciless eyes of his fellows. To sensi- 
 tive natures these preliminaries were an introductory torture, 
 like the journey from the Palais de Justice to the Place de 
 Greve which the condemned used to make to the scaffold. 
 
 Some boys cried out and shed bitter tears before or after the 
 application of the strap ; others accepted the infliction with 
 stoic calm ; it was a question of nature ; but few could control 
 an expression of anguish in anticipation. 
 
 Louis Lambert was constantly enduring the strap, and owed 
 it to a peculiarity of his physiognomy of which he was for a 
 long time quite unconscious. Whenever he was suddenly 
 roused from a fit of abstraction by the master's cry, "You are 
 doing nothing! " it often happened that, without knowing it, 
 he flashed at his teacher a look full of fierce contempt, and 
 charged with thought, as a Leyden jar is charged with elec- 
 tricity. This look, no doubt, discomfited the master, who, 
 indignant at this unspoken retort, wished to cure his scholar 
 of that thunderous flash. 
 
 The first time the father took offense at this ray of scorn, 
 which struck him like a lightning-flash, he made this speech, 
 as I well remember 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 183 
 
 " If you look at me again in that way, Lambert, you will get 
 the strap." 
 
 At these words every nose was in the air, every eye looked 
 alternately at the master and at Louis. The observation was 
 so utterly foolish, that the boy again looked at the father, 
 overwhelming him with another flash. From this arose a 
 standing feud between Lambert and his master, resulting in a 
 certain amount of "strap." Thus did he first discover the 
 power of his eye. 
 
 The hapless poet, so full of nerves, as sensitive as a woman, 
 under the sway of chronic melancholy, and as sick with genius 
 as a girl with love that she pines for, knowing nothing of it; 
 this boy, at once so powerful and so weak, transplanted by 
 " Corinne " from the country he loved, to be squeezed in the 
 mould of a collegiate routine to which every spirit and every 
 body must yield, whatever their range or temperament, accept- 
 ing its rule and its uniform as gold is crushed into round coin 
 under the press ; Louis Lambert suffered in every spot where 
 pain can touch the soul or the flesh. Stuck on a form, re- 
 stricted to the acreage of his desk, a victim to the strap and 
 to a sickly frame, tortured in every sense, environed by dis- 
 tress everything compelled him to give his body up to the 
 myriad tyrannies of school-life; and, like the martyrs who 
 smiled in the midst of suffering, he took refuge in heaven, 
 which lay open to his mind. Perhaps this life of purely in- 
 ward emotions helped him to see something of the mysteries 
 he so entirely believed in ! 
 
 Our independence, our illicit amusements, our apparent 
 waste of time, our persistent indifference, our frequent punish- 
 ments and aversion for our exercises and impositions, earned 
 us a reputation, which no one cared to controvert, for being 
 an idle and incorrigible pair. Our masters treated us with 
 contempt, and we fell into utter disgrace with, our compan- 
 ions, from whom we concealed our secret studies for fear of 
 being laughed at. This hard judgment, which was injustice 
 
184 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 in the masters, was but natural in our school-fellows. We 
 could neither play ball, nor run races, nor walk on stilts. On 
 exceptional holidays, when amnesty was proclaimed and we 
 got a few hours of freedom, we shared in none of the popular 
 diversions of the school. Aliens from the pleasures enjoyed 
 by the others, we were outcasts, sitting forlorn under a tree in 
 the play-ground. The Poet-and-Pythagoras formed an ex- 
 ception and led a life apart from the life of the rest. 
 
 The penetrating instinct and unerring conceit of schoolboys 
 made them feel that we were of a nature either far above or far 
 beneath their own ; hence some simply hated our aristocratic 
 reserve, others merely scorned our ineptitude. These feelings 
 were equally shared by us without our knowing it ; perhaps I 
 have but now divined them. We lived exactly like two rats, 
 huddled into the corner of the room where our desks were, 
 sitting there alike during lesson-time and play-hours. This 
 strange state of affairs inevitably and in fact placed us on a 
 footing of war with all the other boys in our division. For- 
 gotten for the most part, we sat there very contentedly ; half 
 happy, like two plants, two images who would have been 
 missed from the furniture of the room. But the most aggres- 
 sive of our school-fellows would sometimes torment us, just to 
 show their malignant power, and we responded with stolid 
 contempt, which brought many a thrashing down on the Poet- 
 and-Pythagoras. 
 
 Lambert's home-sickness lasted for many months. I know 
 no words to describe the dejection to which he was a prey. 
 Louis has taken the glory off many a masterpiece for me. We 
 had both played the part of the "Leper of Aosta," and had 
 both experienced the feelings described in Monsieur de 
 Maistre's story, before we read them as expressed by his elo- 
 quent pen. A book may, indeed, revive the memories of our 
 childhood, but it can never compete with them successfully. 
 Lambert's woes had taught me many a chant of sorrow far 
 more appealing than the finest passages in " Werther." And, 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT, 185 
 
 indeed, there is no possible comparison between the pangs of 
 a passion condemned, whether rightly or wrongly, by every 
 law, and the grief of a poor child pining for the glorious sun- 
 shine, the dews of the valley, and liberty. Werther is the 
 slave of desire : Louis Lambert was an enslaved soul. Given 
 equal talent, the more pathetic sorrow, founded on desires 
 which, being purer, are the more genuine, must transcend the 
 wail even of genius. 
 
 After sitting for a long time with his eyes fixed on a lime- 
 tree in the play-ground, Louis would say just a word ; but that 
 word would reveal an infinite speculation. 
 
 " Happily for me," he exclaimed one day, " there are hours 
 of comfort when I feel as though the walls of the room had 
 fallen and I were away away in the fields ! What a pleasure 
 it is to let one's self go on the stream of one's thoughts as a bird 
 is borne up on its wings ! 
 
 " Why is green a color so largely diffused throughout crea- 
 tion ? " he would ask me. "Why are there so few straight lines 
 in nature? Why is it that man, in his structures, rarely in- 
 troduces curves ? Why is it that he alone, of all creatures, 
 has a sense of straightness?" 
 
 These queries revealed long excursions in space. He had, 
 I am sure, seen vast landscapes fragrant with the scent of 
 woods. He was always silent and resigned, a living elegy, 
 always suffering but unable to complain of suffering. An eagle 
 that needed the world to feed him, shut in between four nar- 
 row, dirty walls ; and thus his life became an ideal life in the 
 strictest meaning of the words. Filled as he was with con- 
 tempt of the almost useless studies to which we were harnessed, 
 Louis went on his skyward way absolutely unconscious of the 
 things about us. 
 
 I, obeying the imitative instinct that is so strong in child- 
 hood, tried to regulate my life in conformity with his. And 
 Louis the more easily infected me with the sort of torpor in which 
 deep contemplation leaves the body, because I was younger 
 
186 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 and more impressionable than he. Like two lovers, we got into 
 the habit of thinking together in a common reverie. His in- 
 tuitions had already acquired that acuteness which must surely 
 characterize the intellectual perceptiveness of great poets and 
 often bring them to the verge of madness. 
 
 "Do you ever feel," said he to me one day, "as though 
 imagined suffering affected you in spite of yourself? If, for 
 instance, I think with concentration of the effect that the 
 blade of my penknife would have in piercing my flesh, I feel 
 an acute pain as if I had really cut myself; only the blood is 
 wanting. But the pain comes suddenly, and startles me like 
 a sharp noise breaking profound silence. Can an idea cause 
 physical pain ! What do you say to that, eh?" 
 
 When he gave utterance to such subtle reflections, we both 
 fell into artless meditation ; we set to work to detect in our- 
 selves the inscrutable phenomena of the origin of thoughts, 
 which Lambert hoped to discover in their earliest germ, so as 
 to describe some day the unknown process. Then, after 
 much discussion, often mixed up with childish notions, a look 
 would flash from Lambert's eager eyes ; he would grasp my 
 hand, and a word from the depths of his soul would show the 
 current of his mind. 
 
 "Thinking is seeing," said he one day, carried away by 
 some objection raised as to the first principles of our organiza- 
 tion. " Every human science is based on deduction, which 
 is a slow process of seeing by which we work up from the 
 effect to the cause ; or, in a wider sense, all poetry, like every 
 work of art, proceeds from a swift vision of things." 
 
 He was a spiritualist (as opposed to materialism) ; but I 
 would venture to contradict him, using his own arguments to 
 consider the intellect as a purely physical phenomenon. We 
 both were right. Perhaps the words materialism and spiritu- 
 alism express the two faces of the same fact. His considera- 
 tions on the substance of the mind led to his accepting, with 
 a certain pride, the life of privation to which we were con- 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 187 
 
 demned in consequence of our idleness and our indifference 
 to learning. He had a certain consciousness of his own 
 powers which bore him up through his spiritual cogitations. 
 How delightful it was to me to feel his soul acting on my own ! 
 Many a time have we remained sitting on our form, both 
 buried in one book, having quite forgotten each other's ex- 
 istence, and yet not apart; each conscious of the other's 
 presence, and bathing in an ocean of thought, like two fish 
 swimming in the same waters. 
 
 Our life, apparently, was merely vegetating ; but we lived 
 through our heart and brain. 
 
 Lambert's influence over my imagination left traces that 
 still abide. I used to listen hungrily to his tales, full of the 
 marvels which make men, as well as children, rapturously 
 devour stories in which truth assumes the most grotesque 
 forms. His passion for mystery, and the credulity natural to 
 the young, often led us to discuss Heaven and Hell. Then 
 Louis, by expounding Swedenborg, would try to make me 
 share in his beliefs concerning angels. In his least logical 
 arguments there were still amazing observations as to the 
 powers of man, which gave his words that color of truth with- 
 out which nothing can be done in any art. The romantic 
 end he foresaw as the destiny of man was calculated to flatter 
 the yearning which tempts blameless imaginations to give 
 themselves up to beliefs. Is it not during the youth of a 
 nation that its dogmas and idols are conceived? And are 
 not the supernatural beings before whom the people tremble 
 the personification of their feelings and their magnified desires? 
 
 All that I can now remember of the poetical conversations 
 we held together concerning the Swedish prophet, whose 
 works I have since had the curiosity to read, may be told in a 
 few paragraphs. 
 
 In each of us there are two distinct beings. According 
 to Swedenborg, the angel is an individual in whom the inner 
 
188 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 being conquers the external being. If a man desires to earn 
 his call to be an angel, as soon as his mind reveals to him his 
 twofold existence, he must strive to foster the delicate angelic 
 essence that exists within him. If, for lack of a lucid appre- 
 ciation of his destiny, he allows bodily action to predominate, 
 instead of confirming his intellectual being, all his powers will 
 be absorbed in the use of his external senses, and the angel 
 will slowly perish by the materialization of both natures. In 
 the contrary case, if he nourishes his inner being with the 
 ailment needful to it, the soul triumphs over matter and strives 
 to get free. 
 
 When they separate by the act of what we call death, the 
 angel, strong enough then to cast off its wrappings, survives 
 and begins its real life. The infinite variety which differen- 
 tiates individual men can only be explained by this twofold 
 existence, which, again, is proved and made intelligible by 
 that variety. 
 
 In point of fact, the wide distance between a man whose 
 torpid intelligence condemns him to evident stupidity, and 
 one who, by the exercise of his inner life, has acquired the 
 gift of some power, allows us to suppose that there is as great 
 a difference between men of genius and other beings as there 
 is between the blind and those who see. This hypothesis, 
 since it extends creation beyond all limits, gives us, as it were, 
 the clue to heaven. The beings who, here on earth, are 
 apparently mingled without distinction, are there distributed, 
 according to their inner perfection, in distinct spheres whose 
 speech and manners have nothing in common. In the invisi- 
 ble world, as in the real world, if some native of the lower 
 spheres comes, all unworthy, into a higher sphere, not only 
 can he never understand the customs and language there, but 
 his mere presence paralyzes the voice and hearts of those who 
 dwell therein. 
 
 Dante, in his "Divine Comedy," had perhaps some slight 
 intuition of those spheres which begin in the world of torment, 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 189 
 
 and rise, circle on circle, to the highest heaven. Thus Swed- 
 enborg's doctrine is the product of a lucid spirit noting down 
 the innumerable signs by which the angels manifest their 
 presence among men. 
 
 This doctrine, which I have endeavored to sum up in a more 
 or less consistent form, was set before me by Lambert with all 
 the fascination of mysticism, swathed in the wrappings of the 
 phraseology affected by mystical writers : an obscure language 
 ful 1 of abstractions, and taking such effect on the brain, that 
 there are books by Jacob Boshm, Swedenborg, and Madame 
 Guyon, so strangely powerful that they give rise to phantasies 
 as various as the dreams of the opium-eater. Lambert told 
 me of mystical facts so extraordinary, he so acted on my 
 imagination, that he made my brain reel. Still, I loved to 
 plunge into that realm of mystery, invisible to the senses, in 
 which every one likes to dwell, whether he pictures it to him- 
 self under the indefinite ideal of the Future, or clothes it in 
 the more solid guise of romance. These violent revulsions 
 of the mind on itself gave me, without my knowing it, a 
 comprehension of its power, and accustomed me to the work- 
 ings of the mind. 
 
 Lambert himself explained everything by his theory of the 
 angels. To him pure love love as we dream of it in youth 
 was the coalescence of two angelic natures. Nothing could 
 exceed the fervency with which he longed to meet a woman 
 angel. And who better than he could inspire or feel love ? 
 If anything could give an impression of an exquisite nature, 
 was it not the amiability and kindliness that marked his feel- 
 ings, his words, his actions, his slightest gestures, the conjugal 
 regard that united us as boys, and that we expressed when we 
 called ourselves chums ? 
 
 There was no distinction for us between my ideas and his. 
 We imitated each other's handwriting, so that one might 
 write the tasks of both. Thus, if one of us had a book to 
 finish and to return to the mathematical master, he could read 
 
190 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 on without interruption while the other scribbled off his exer- 
 cise and imposition. We did our tasks as though paying a 
 debt on our peace of mind. If my memory does not play me 
 false, they were sometimes of remarkable merit when Lambert 
 did them. But on the foregone conclusion that we were both 
 of us idiots, the master always went through them under a 
 rooted prejudice, and even kept them to read to be laughed 
 at by our school-fellows. 
 
 I remember one afternoon, at the end of the lesson, which 
 lasted from two till four, the master took possession of a page 
 of translation by Lambert. The passage began with, Caius 
 Gracchus, vir nobilis ; Lambert had construed this by" Caius 
 Gracchus had a noble heart." 
 
 "Where do you find 'heart' in nobilis ?" said the father 
 sharply. 
 
 And there was a roar of laughter, while Lambert looked at 
 the master in some bewilderment. 
 
 "What would Madame la Baronne de Stael say if she could 
 know that you make such nonsense of a word that means of 
 noble family, of patrician rank ? ' ' 
 
 " She would say that you were an ass," said I in a muttered 
 tone. 
 
 " Master Poet, you will stay in for a week," replied the 
 master, who unfortunately overheard me. 
 
 Lambert simply repeated, looking at me with inexpressible 
 affection : ' ' Vir nobilis ! ' ' 
 
 Madame de Stael was, in fact, partly the cause of Lambert's 
 troubles. On every pretext masters and pupils threw the 
 name in his teeth, either in irony or in reproof. 
 
 Louis lost no time in getting himself "kept in " to share 
 my imprisonment. Freer thus than in any other circum- 
 stances, we could talk the whole day long in the silence of the 
 dormitories, where each boy had a chamber six feet square, the 
 partitions consisting at the top of open bars. The doors, 
 fitted with gratings, were locked at night and opened in the 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 191 
 
 morning under the eye of the father whose duty it was to 
 superintend our rising and going to bed. The creak of these 
 gates, which the college servants unlocked with remarkable 
 expedition, was a sound peculiar to that college. These little 
 cells were our prison, and boys were sometimes shut up there for 
 a month at a time. The boys in these coops were under the stern 
 eye of the prefect, a sort of monitor who stole up at certain 
 hours or at unexpected moments, with a silent step, to hear if we 
 were talking instead of writing our impositions. But a few wal- 
 nut shells dropped on the stairs, or the sharpness of our hearing, 
 almost always enabled us to beware of his coming, so we could 
 give ourselves up without anxiety to our favorite studies. 
 However, as books were prohibited, our prison hours were 
 chiefly filled up with metaphysical discussions, or with re- 
 lating singular facts connected with the astounding phenomena 
 of mind. 
 
 One of the most extraordinary of these incidents beyond 
 question is this, which I will here record, not only because it 
 concerns Lambert, but because it perhaps was the turning- 
 point of his scientific career. By the law of custom in all 
 schools, Thursday and Sunday were holidays ; but the services, 
 which we were made to attend very regularly, so completely 
 filled up Sunday, that we considered Thursday our only real 
 day of freedom. After once attending mass, we had a long 
 day before us to spend in walks in the country round the town 
 of Vendome. The manor of Rochambeau was the most in- 
 teresting object of our excursions, perhaps by reason of its 
 distance; the smaller boys were very seldom taken on so 
 fatiguing an expedition. However, once or twice a year the 
 class-masters would hold out Rochambeau as a reward for 
 diligence. 
 
 In 1812, toward the end of the spring, we were to go there 
 for the first time. Our anxiety to see this famous Rochambeau 
 Castle, where the owner sometimes treated the boys to milk, 
 made us all very good, and nothing hindered the outing. 
 
192 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 Neither Lambert nor I had ever seen the pretty valley of the 
 Loir where the house stood. So his imagination and mine 
 were much excited by the prospect of this excursion, which 
 filled the school with traditional glee. We talked of it all the 
 evening, planning to spend in fruit or milk such money as we 
 had saved, against all the habits of school-life. 
 
 After dinner next day, we set out at half-past twelve, each 
 provided with a square hunch of bread, given to us for our 
 afternoon lunch. And off we went, as gay as swallows, 
 marching in a body on the famous castle with an eagerness 
 which would at first allow of no fatigue. When we reached 
 the hill, whence we looked down on the house standing half- 
 way down the slope, on the devious valley through which the 
 river winds and sparkles between meadows in graceful curves 
 a beautiful landscape, one of those scenes to which the keen 
 emotions of early youth or of love lend such a charm, that it 
 is wise never to see them again in later years Louis Lambert 
 said to me: " Why, I saw this last night in a dream." 
 
 He recognized the clump of trees under which we were 
 standing, the grouping of the woods, the color of the water, 
 the turrets of the castle, the details, the distance ; in fact, 
 every part of the prospect which he looked on for the first 
 time. We were mere children ; I, at any rate, who was but 
 thirteen ; Louis, at fifteen, might have the precocity of genius, 
 but at that time we were incapable of falsehood in the most 
 trivial matters of our life as friends. Indeed, if Lambert's 
 powerful mind had any presentiment of the importance of 
 such facts, he was far from appreciating their whole bearing ; 
 and he was quite astonished by this incident. I asked him if 
 he had not perhaps been brought to Rochambeau in his in- 
 fancy, and my question struck him ; but after thinking it 
 over, he answered in the negative. This incident, analogous 
 to what may be known of the phenomena of sleep in several 
 persons, will illustrate the beginning of Lambert's line of 
 talent ; he took it, in fact, as the basis of a whole system, using 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 193 
 
 a fragment as Cuvier did in another branch of inquiry as 
 a clue to the reconstruction of a complete system. 
 
 At this moment we were sitting together on an old oak- 
 stump, and, after a few minutes' reflection, Louis said to me 
 
 " If the landscape did not come to me which it is absurd 
 to imagine I must have come here. If I was here while I 
 was asleep in my chamber, does not that constitute a complete 
 severance of my body and my inner being? Does it not 
 prove some inscrutable locomotive faculty in the spirit with 
 effects resembling those of locomotion in the body? Well, 
 then, if my spirit and my body can be severed during sleep, 
 why should I not insist on their separating in the same way 
 while I am awake? I see no half-way mean between the two 
 propositions. 
 
 " But if we go further into details : Either the facts are due 
 to the action of a faculty which brings out a second being to 
 whom my body is merely a husk, since I was in my cell, and 
 yet I saw the landscape and this upsets many systems; or 
 the facts took place either in some nerve-centre, of which the 
 name is yet to be discovered, where our feelings dwell and 
 move ; or else in the cerebral centre, where ideas are formed. 
 This last hypothesis gives rise to some strange questions. I 
 walked, I saw, I heard. Motion is inconceivable but in 
 space, sound acts only at certain angles or on surfaces, color 
 is caused only by light. If, in the dark, with my eyes shut, 
 I saw, in myself, colored objects; if I heard sounds in the 
 most perfect silence and without the conditions requisite for 
 the production of sound ; if without stirring I traversed wide 
 tracts of space, there must be inner faculties independent of 
 the external laws of physics. Material nature must be pene- 
 trable by the spirit. 
 
 " How is it that men have hitherto given so little thought 
 
 to the phenomena of sleep, which seem to prove that man 
 
 has a double life ? May there not be a new science lying 
 
 beneath them ? " he added, striking his brow with his hand. 
 
 13 
 
194 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 % 
 
 " If not the elements of a science, at any rate the revelation 
 of stupendous powers in man ; at least they prove a frequent 
 severance of our two natures, the fact I have been thinking 
 out for a very long time. At last, then, I have hit on evi- 
 dence to show the superiority that distinguishes our latent 
 senses from our corporeal senses ! Homo duplex ? 
 
 "And yet," he went on, after a pause, with a doubtful 
 shrug, " perhaps we have not two natures ; perhaps we are 
 merely gifted with personal and perfectible qualities, of which 
 the development within us produces certain unobserved phe- 
 nomena of activity, penetration, and vision. In our love of 
 the marvelous, a passion begotten of our pride, we have trans- 
 lated these effects into poetical inventions, because we did 
 not understand them. It is so convenient to deify the incom- 
 prehensible ! 
 
 " I should, I own, lament over the loss of my illusions. I 
 so much wished to believe in our twofold nature and in 
 Swedenborg's angels. Must this new science destroy them ? 
 Yes ; for the study of our unknown properties involves us in 
 a science that appears to be materialistic, for the Spirit uses, 
 divides, and animates the Substance ; but it does not destroy 
 it." 
 
 He remained pensive, almost sad. Perhaps he saw the 
 dreams of his youth as swaddling clothes that he must soon 
 shake off. 
 
 " Sight and hearing are, no doubt, the sheaths for a very 
 marvelous instrument," said he, laughing at his own figure of 
 speech. 
 
 Always when he was talking to me of heaven and hell, he 
 was wont to treat of nature as being master ; but now, as he 
 pronounced these last words, big with prescience, he seemed 
 to soar more boldly than ever above the landscape, and his 
 forehead seemed ready to burst with the afflatus of genius. 
 His powers mental powers we must call them till some new 
 term is found seemed to flash from the organs intended to 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 196 
 
 express them. His eyes shot out thoughts; his uplifted hand, 
 his silent but tremulous lips were eloquent ; his burning glance 
 was radiant; at last his head, as though too heavy, or ex- 
 hausted by too eager a flight, fell on his breast. This boy 
 this giant bent his head, took my hand and clasped it in 
 his own, which was damp, so fevered was he for the search 
 for truth ; then, after a pause, he said 
 
 "I shall be famous! And you too," he added after a 
 pause. " We will both study the chemistry of the Will." 
 
 Noble soul ! I recognized his superiority, though he took 
 great care never to make me feel it. He shared with me all 
 the treasures of his mind, and regarded me as instrumental in 
 his discoveries, leaving me the credit of my insignificant con- 
 tributions. He was always as gracious as a woman in love ; 
 he had all the bashful feeling, the delicacy of soul which make 
 life happy and pleasant to endure. 
 
 On the following day he began writing what he called a 
 "Treatise on the Will;" his subsequent reflections led to 
 many changes in its plan and method ; but the incident of 
 that day was certainly the germ of the work, just as the electric 
 shock always felt by Mesmer at the approach of a particular 
 manservant was the starting-point of his discoveries in mag- 
 netism, a science till then interred under the mysteries of 
 Isis, of Delphi, of the cave of Trophonius, and rediscovered 
 by that prodigious genius, close on Lavater,* and the precursor 
 of Gall.* 
 
 Lambert's ideas, suddenly illuminated by this flash of light, 
 assumed vaster proportions; he disentangled certain truths 
 from his many acquisitions and brought them into order; 
 then, like a founder, he cast the model of his work. At the 
 end of six months' indefatigable labor, Lambert's writings ex- 
 cited the curiosity of our companions, and became the object 
 of cruel practical jokes which led to a fatal issue. 
 
 * The respective founders of Physiognomy and Phrenology. 
 
196 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 One day one of the masters, who was bent on seeing the 
 manuscripts, enlisted the aid of our tyrants, and came to seize, 
 by force, a box that contained the precious papers. Lambert 
 and I defended it with incredible courage. The trunk was 
 locked, our aggressors could not open it, but they tried to 
 smash it in the struggle, a stroke of malignity at which we 
 shrieked with rage. Some of the boys, with a sense of justice, 
 or struck perhaps by our heroic defense, advised the attacking 
 party to leave us in peace, crushing us with insulting con- 
 tempt. But suddenly, brought to the spot by the noise of a 
 battle, Father Haugoult roughly intervened, inquiring as to 
 the cause of the fight. Our enemies had interrupted us in 
 writing our impositions, and the class-master came to protect 
 his slaves. The foe, in self-defense, betrayed the existence of 
 the manuscript. The dreadful Haugoult insisted on our giv- 
 ing up the box ; if we should resist, he would have it broken 
 open. Lambert gave him the key ; the master took out the 
 papers, glanced through them, and said, as he confiscated 
 them 
 
 "And it is for such rubbish as this that you neglect your 
 lessons ! " 
 
 Large tears fell from Lambert's eyes, wrung from him as 
 much by a sense of his offended moral superiority as by the 
 gratuitous insult and betrayal that we had suffered. We gave 
 the accusers a glance of stern reproach: had they not de- 
 livered us over to the common enemy? If the common law 
 of school entitled them to thrash us, did it not require them 
 to keep silence as to our misdeeds ? 
 
 In a moment they were, no doubt, ashamed of their base- 
 ness. 
 
 Father Haugoult probably sold the " Treatise on the Will " 
 to a local grocer, unconscious of the scientific treasure, of 
 which the germs thus fell into unworthy hands. 
 
 Six months later I left the school, and I do not know 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 197 
 
 whether Lambert ever recommenced his labors. Our parting 
 threw him into a mood of the darkest melancholy. 
 
 It was in memory of the disaster that befell Louis' book 
 that, in the tale which comes first in the studies, I adopted 
 the title invented by Lambert for a work of fiction, and gave 
 the name of a woman who was dear to him to a girl charac- 
 terized by her self-devotion ; but this is not all I have bor- 
 rowed from him : his character and occupations were of great 
 value to me in writing that book, and the subject arose from 
 some reminiscences of our youthful meditations. This present 
 volume is intended as a modest monument, a broken column, 
 to commemorate the life of the man who bequeathed to me 
 all he had to leave his thoughts. 
 
 In that boyish effort Lambert had enshrined the ideas of a 
 man. Ten years later, when I met some learned men who 
 were devoting serious attention to the phenomena that had 
 struck us and that Lambert had so marvelously analyzed, I 
 understood the value of his work, then already forgotten as 
 childish. I at once spent several months in recalling the 
 principal theories discovered by my poor school-mate. Hav- 
 ing collected my reminiscences, I can boldly state that, by 
 1812, he had proved, divined, and set forth in his Treatise 
 several important facts of which, as he had declared, evidence 
 was certain to come sooner or later. His philosophical spec- 
 ulations ought undoubtedly to gain him recognition as one of 
 the great thinkers who have appeared at wide intervals among 
 men, to reveal to them the bare skeleton of some science to 
 come, of which the roots spread slowly, but which, in due 
 time, bring forth fair fruit in the intellectual sphere. Thus a 
 humble artisan, Bernard Palissy, searching the soil to find 
 minerals for glazing pottery, proclaimed, in the sixteenth 
 century, with the infallible intuition of genius, geological facts 
 which it is now the glory of Cuvier and Buffon to have de 
 monstrated. 
 
 1 can, I believe, give some idea of Lambert's Treatise by 
 
198 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 stating the chief propositions on which it was based ; but, in 
 spite of myself, I shall strip them of the ideas in which they 
 were clothed, and which were indeed their indispensable 
 accompaniment. I started on a different path, and only 
 made use of those of his researches which answered the pur- 
 pose of my scheme. I know not, therefore, whether as his 
 disciple I can faithfully expound his views, having assimilated 
 them in the first instance so as to color them with my own. 
 
 New ideas require new words, or a new and expanded use 
 of old words, extended and defined in their meaning. Thus 
 Lambert, to set forth the basis of his system, had adopted 
 certain common words that answered to his notions. The 
 word Will he used to connote the medium in which the mind 
 moves, or to use a less abstract expression, the mass of power 
 by which man can reproduce, outside himself, the actions 
 constituting his external life. Volition a word due to 
 Locke expressed the act by which a man exerts his will. 
 The word Mind, or Thought, which he regarded as the 
 quintessential product of the Will, also represented the 
 medium in which the ideas originate to which thought gives 
 substance. The Idea, a name common to every creation of 
 the brain, constituted the act by which man uses his mind. 
 Thus the Will and the Mind were the two generating 
 forces; the Volition and the Idea were the two products. 
 Volition, he thought, was the Idea evolved from the ab- 
 stract state to a concrete state, from its generative fluid to 
 a solid expression, so to speak, if such words may be taken to 
 formulate notions so difficult of definition. According to 
 him, the Mind and Ideas are the motion and the outcome of 
 our inner organization, just as the Will and Volition are of 
 our external activity. 
 
 He gave the Will precedence over the Mind. 
 
 "You must will before you can think," he said. "Many 
 beings live in a condition of Willing without ever attaining 
 to the condition of Thinking. In the North, life is long; 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 199 
 
 in the South, it is shorter ; but in the North we see torpor, 
 in the South a constant excitability of the Will, up to the 
 point where from an excess of cold or of heat the organs 
 are almost nullified." 
 
 The use of the word " medium " was suggested to him by 
 an observation he had made in his childhood, though, to be 
 sure, he had no suspicion then of its importance, but its 
 singularity naturally struck his delicately alert imagination. 
 His mother, a fragile, nervous woman, all sensitiveness and 
 affection, was one of those beings created to represent woman- 
 hood in all the perfection of her attributes, but relegated by 
 a mistaken fate to too low a place in the social scale. Wholly 
 loving, and consequently wholly suffering, she died young, 
 having thrown all her energies into her motherly love. Lam- 
 bert, a child of six, lying, but not always sleeping, in a cot by 
 his mother's bed, saw the electric sparks from her hair when 
 she combed it. The man of fifteen made scientific application 
 of this fact which had amused the child, a fact beyond dis- 
 pute, of which there is ample evidence in many instances, 
 especially of women who by a sad fatality are doomed to let 
 unappreciated feelings evaporate in the air, or some super- 
 abundant power run to waste. 
 
 In support of his definitions, Lambert propounded a 
 variety of problems to be solved, challenges flung out to 
 science, though he proposed to seek the solution for him- 
 self. He inquired, for instance, whether the element that 
 constitutes electricity does not enter as a base into the 
 specific fluid whence our Ideas and Volitions proceed ? 
 Whether the hair, which loses its color, turns white, falls out, 
 or disappears, in proportion to the decay or crystallization of 
 our thoughts, may not be in fact a capillary system, either 
 absorbent or diffusive, and wholly electrical? Whether the 
 fluid phenomena of the Will, a matter generated within us, 
 and spontaneously reacting under the impress of conditions as 
 yet unobserved, were at all more extraordinary than those of 
 
200 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 the invisible and intangible fluid produced by a voltaic pile, 
 and applied to the nervous system of a dead man ! Whether 
 the formation of Ideas and their constant diffusion was less 
 incomprehensible than evaporation of the atoms, impercep- 
 tible indeed, but so violent in their effects, that are given off 
 from a grain of musk without any loss of weight. Whether, 
 granting that the function of the skin is purely protective, 
 absorbent, excretive, and tactile, the circulation of the blood 
 and all its mechanism would not correspond with the trans- 
 substantiation of our Will, as the circulation of the nerve-fluid 
 corresponds to that of the Mind ? Finally, whether the more 
 or less rapid affluence of these two real substances may not be 
 the result of a certain perfection or imperfection of organs 
 whose conditions require investigation in every manifestation? 
 
 Having set forth these principles, he proposed to class the 
 phenomena of human life in two series of distinct results, de- 
 manding, with the ardent insistency of conviction, a special 
 analysis for each. In fact, having observed in almost every 
 type of created thing two separate motions, he assumed, nay, 
 he asserted, their existence in our human nature, and desig- 
 nated this vital antithesis Action and Reaction. 
 
 "A desire," he said, "is a fact completely accomplished 
 in our will before it is accomplished externally." 
 
 Hence the sum-total of our Volitions and our Ideas con- 
 stitutes Action, and the sum-total of our external acts he called 
 Reaction. 
 
 When I subsequently read the observations made by Bichat 
 on the duality of our external senses, I was really bewildered 
 by my recollections, recognizing the startling coincidences 
 between the views of that celebrated physiologist and those of 
 Louis Lambert. They both died too young, and they had 
 with equal steps arrived at the same strange truths. Nature 
 has in every case been pleased to give a twofold purpose to 
 the various apparatus that constitute her creatures ; and the 
 twofold action of the human organism, which is now ascer- 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 201 
 
 tained beyond dispute, proves by a mass of evidence in daily 
 life how true were Lambert's deductions as to Action and 
 Reaction. 
 
 The inner Being, the Being of Action the word he used 
 to designate an unknown specialization the mysterious nexus 
 of fibrils to which we owe the inadequately investigated powers 
 of thought and will in short, the nameless entity which sees, 
 acts, foresees the end, and accomplishes everything before 
 expressing itself in any physical phenomenon must, in con- 
 formity with its nature, be free from the physical conditions 
 by which the external Being of Reaction, the visible man, is 
 fettered in its manifestation. From this followed a multitude 
 of logical explanation as to those results of our twofold nature 
 which appear the strangest, and a rectification of various 
 systems in which truth and falsehood are mingled. 
 
 Certain men, having had a glimpse of some phenomena, of 
 the natural working of the Being of Action, were, like Swe- 
 denborg, carried away above this world by their ardent soul, 
 thirsting for poetry, and filled with the Divine Spirit. Thus, 
 in their ignorance of the causes and their admiration of the 
 facts, they pleased their fancy by regarding that inner man as 
 divine, and constructing a mystical universe. Hence we 
 have angels ! A lovely illusion which Lambert would never 
 abandon, cherishing it even when the sword of his logic was 
 cutting off their dazzling wings. 
 
 " Heaven," he would say, " must, after all, be the survival 
 of our perfected faculties, and hell the void into which our 
 unperfected faculties are cast away." 
 
 But how, then, in the ages when the understanding had 
 preserved the religious and spiritualist impressions, which 
 prevailed from the time of Christ till that of Descartes, be- 
 tween faith and doubt, how could men help accounting for 
 the mysteries of our nature otherwise than by divine inter- 
 position ? Of whom, but of God Himself, could sages demand 
 an account of an invisible creature so actively and so reactively 
 
202 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 sensitive, gifted with faculties so extensive, so improvable by 
 use, and so powerful under certain occult influences, that they 
 could sometimes see it annihilate, by some phenomenon of 
 sight or movement, space in its two manifestations Time 
 and Distance of which the former is the space of the intel- 
 lect, the latter is physical space? Sometimes they found it 
 reconstructing the past, either by the power of retrospective 
 vision, or by the mystery of a palingenesis not unlike the 
 power a man might have of detecting in the form, integu- 
 ment, and embryo of a seed, the flowers of the past, and the 
 numberless variations of their color, scent, and shape ; and 
 sometimes, again, it could be seen vaguely foreseeing the 
 future, either by its apprehension of final causes or by some 
 phenomenon of physical presentiment. 
 
 Other men, less poetically religious, cold, and argumentative 
 quacks perhaps, but enthusiasts in brain at least, if not in 
 heart recognizing some isolated examples of such phenomena, 
 admitted their truth while refusing to consider them as radia- 
 ting from a common centre. Each of these was, then, bent 
 on constructing a science out of a simple fact. Hence arose 
 demonology, judicial astrology, the black arts, in short, 
 every form of divination founded on circumstances that were 
 essentially transient, because they varied according to men's 
 temperament, and to conditions that are still completely un- 
 known. 
 
 But from these errors of the learned, and from the ecclesi- 
 astical trials under which fell so many martyrs to their own 
 powers, startling evidence was derived of the prodigious facul- 
 ties at the command of the Being of Action, which, according 
 to Lambert, can abstract itself completely from the Being 
 of Reaction, bursting its envelope, and piercing walls by its 
 potent vision ; a phenomenon known to the Hindoos, as mis- 
 sionaries tell us, by the name of "Tokeiad ; "* or again, by 
 another faculty, can grasp in the brain, in spite of its closest 
 * Telepathy. 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 203 
 
 convolutions, the ideas which are formed or forming there, 
 and the whole of past consciousness. 
 
 " If apparitions are not impossible," said Lambert, " they 
 must be due to a faculty of discerning the ideas which repre- 
 sent man in his purest essence, whose life, imperishable per- 
 haps, escapes our grosser senses, though they may become 
 perceptible to the inner being when it has reached a high 
 degree of ecstasy, or a great perfection of vision." 
 
 I know though my remembrance is now vague that Lam- 
 bert, by following the results of Mind and Will step by step, 
 after he had established their laws, accounted for a multitude 
 of phenomena which, till then, had been regarded with reason 
 as incomprehensible. Thus wizards, men possessed, those 
 gifted with second-sight, and demoniacs of every degree the 
 victims of the Middle Ages became the subject of explana- 
 tions so natural, that their very simplicity often seemed to me 
 the seal of their truth. The marvelous gifts which the church 
 of Rome, jealous of all mysteries, punished with the stake, 
 were, in Louis' opinion, the result of certain affinities between 
 the constituent elements of matter and those of mind, which 
 proceed from the same source. The man holding a hazel-rod 
 when he found a spring of water was guided by some antipathy 
 or sympathy of which he was unconscious; nothing but the 
 eccentricity of these phenomena could have availed to give 
 some of them historic certainty. 
 
 Sympathies have rarely been proved ; they afford a kind of 
 pleasure which those who are so happy as to possess them 
 rarely speak of unless they are abnormally singular, and even 
 then only in the privacy of intimate intercourse, where every- 
 thing is buried. But the antipathies that arise from the 
 inversion of affinities have, very happily, been recorded when 
 developed in famous men. Thus, Bayle had hysterics when 
 he heard water splashing, Scaliger turned pale at the sight of 
 water-cress, Erasmus was thrown into a fever by the smell of 
 fish. These three antipathies were connected with water. 
 
204 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 The Due d'Epernon fainted at the sight of a hare, Tycho- 
 Brahe at that of a fox, Henri III. at the presence of a cat, the 
 Marechal d'Albret at the sight of a wild hog; these antipathies 
 were produced by animal emanations, and often took effect 
 at a great distance. The Chevalier de Guise, Marie de' 
 Medici, and many other persons have felt faint at seeing a 
 rose even in a painting. Lord Bacon, whether he was fore- 
 warned or not of an eclipse of the moon, always fell into a 
 syncope ; and his vitality, suspended while the phenomenon 
 lasted, was restored as soon as it was over, without his feeling 
 any further inconvenience. These effects of antipathy, all 
 well authenticated and chosen from among many which history 
 has happened to preserve, are enough to give a clue to the 
 sympathies which remain unknown. 
 
 This fragment of Lambert's investigations, which I re- 
 member from among his essays, will throw a light on the 
 method on which he worked. I need not emphasize the ob- 
 vious connection between this theory and the collateral sci- 
 ences projected by Gall and Lavater; they were its natural 
 corollary ; and every more or less scientific brain will discern 
 the ramifications by which it is inevitably connected with the 
 phrenological observations of one and the speculations on phys- 
 iognomy of the other. 
 
 Mesmer's discovery, so important, though as yet so little 
 appreciated, was also embodied in a single section of this 
 treatise, though Louis did not know the Swiss doctor's writ- 
 ings which are few and brief. 
 
 A simple and logical inference from these principles led him 
 to perceive that the will might be accumulated by a contractile 
 effort of the inner man, and then, by another effort, projected, 
 or even imparted, to material objects. Thus, the whole force 
 of a man must have the property of reacting on other men, 
 and of infusing into them an essence foreign to their own, if 
 they could not protect themselves against such an aggression. 
 The evidence of this theorem of the science of humanity is, 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 205 
 
 of course, very multifarious; but there is nothing to establish 
 it beyond question. We have only the notorious disaster of 
 Marius and his harangue to the Cimbrian commanded to kill 
 him, or the august injunction of a mother to the Lion of 
 Florence, in historic proof of instances of such lightning 
 flashes of mind. To Lambert, then, Will and Thought were 
 living forces ; and he spoke of them in such a way as to im- 
 press his belief on the hearer. To him these two forces were, 
 in a way, visible, tangible. Thought was slow or alert, heavy 
 or nimble, light or dark; he ascribed to it all the attributes of 
 an active agent, and thought of it as rising, resting, waking, 
 expanding, growing old, shrinking, becoming atrophied, or 
 resuscitating ; he described its life, and specified all its actions 
 by the strangest words in our language, speaking of its spon- 
 taneity, its strength, and all its qualities with a kind of intui- 
 tion which enabled him to recognize aj[j the manifestations of 
 its substantial existence. 
 
 " Often," said he, " in the midst of quiet and silence, when 
 our inner faculties are dormant, when we have given our- 
 selves up to sweet repose, when a sort of darkness reigns 
 within us, and we are lost in the contemplation of things out- 
 side us, an idea suddenly flies forth, and rushes with the swift- 
 ness of lightning across the infinite space which our inner 
 vision allows us to perceive. This radiant idea, springing into 
 existence like a will-o'-the-wisp, dies out never to return; an 
 ephemeral life, that of babes who give their parents such 
 infinite joy and sorrow; a sort of still-born blossom in the 
 fields of the mind. Sometimes an idea, instead of springing 
 forcibly into life and dying unembodied, dawns gradually, 
 hovers in the unknown limbo of the organs where it has its 
 birth ; exhausts us by long gestation, develops, is itself fruit- 
 ful, grows outwardly in all the grace of youth and the promis- 
 ing attributes of a long life ; it can endure the closest inspec- 
 tion, invites it, and never tires the sight ; the investigation it 
 undergoes commands the admiration we give to work slowly 
 
206 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 elaborated. Sometimes ideas are evolved in a swarm ; one 
 brings another; they come linked together; they vie with 
 each other; they fly in clouds, wild and headlong. Again, 
 they rise up pallid and misty, and perish for want of strength 
 or of nutrition ; the vital force is lacking. Or again, on 
 certain days, they rush down into the depths to light up that 
 immense obscurity ; they terrify us and leave the soul dejected. 
 
 "Ideas are a complete system within us, resembling a 
 natural kingdom, a sort of flora, of which the image will one 
 day be outlined by some man who will perhaps be accounted 
 a madman. 
 
 "Yes, within us and without, everything testifies to the 
 livingness of those exquisite creations, which I compare with 
 flowers in obedience to some unutterable revelation of their 
 true nature ! 
 
 " Their being produced as the final cause of man is, after 
 all, not more amazing than the production of perfume and 
 color in a plant. Perfumes are ideas, perhaps ! 
 
 "When we consider that the line where flesh ends and the 
 nail begins contains the invisible and inexplicable mystery of 
 the constant transformation of a fluid into horn, we must con- 
 fess that nothing is impossible in the marvelous modifications 
 of human tissue. 
 
 "And are there not in our inner nature phenomena of 
 weight and motion comparable to those of physical nature? 
 Suspense, to choose an example vividly familiar to everybody, 
 is painful only as a result of the law in virtue of which the 
 weight of a body is multiplied by its velocity. The weight of 
 the feeling produced by suspense increases by the constant 
 addition of past pain to the pain of the moment. 
 
 "And then, to what, unless it be to the electric fluid, are 
 we to attribute the magic by which the Will enthrones itself 
 so imperiously in the eye to demolish obstacles at the behest 
 of genius, thunders in the voice, or filters, in spite of dissim- 
 ulation, through the human frame ? The current of that 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 207 
 
 sovereign fluid, which, in obedience to the high pressure of 
 thought or of feeling, flows in a torrent or is reduced to a 
 mere thread, and collects to flash in lightnings, is the occult 
 agent to which are due the evil or the beneficent efforts L of 
 Art and Passion intonation of voice, whether harsh or suave, 
 terrible, lascivious, horrifying or seductive by turns, thrilling 
 the heart, the nerves, or the brain at our will ; the marvels of 
 the touch, the instrument of the mental transfusions of a 
 myriad artists, whose creative fingers are able, after passionate 
 study, to reproduce the forms of nature ; or, again, the infinite 
 gradations of the eye from dull inertia to the emission of the 
 most terrifying gleams. 
 
 " By this system God is bereft of none of His rights. 
 Mind, as a form of matter, has brought me a new conviction 
 of His greatness." 
 
 After hearing him discourse thus, after receiving into my 
 soul his look like a ray of light, it was difficult not to be 
 dazzled by his conviction and carried away by his arguments. 
 The Mind appeared to me as a purely physical power, sur- 
 rounded by its innumerable progeny. It was a novel concep- 
 tion of humanity under a new form. 
 
 This brief sketch of the laws which, as Lambert maintained, 
 constitute the formula of our intellects, must suffice to give a 
 notion of the prodigious activity of his spirit feeding on itself. 
 Louis had sought for proofs of his theories in the history of 
 great men, whose lives, as set forth by their biographers, 
 supply very curious particulars as to the operation of their 
 understanding. His memory allowed him to recall such facts 
 as might serve to support his statements; he had appended 
 them to each chapter in the form of demonstrations, so as to 
 give to many of his theories an almost mathematical certainty. 
 The works of Cardan, a man gifted with singular powers of 
 insight, supplied him with valuable materials. He had not 
 forgotten that Apollonius of Tyana had, in Asia, announced 
 the death of the tyrant with every detail of his execution, at 
 
208 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 the very hour when it was taking place in Rome ; nor that 
 Plotinus, when far away from Porphyrius, was aware of his 
 friend's intention to kill himself, and flew to dissuade him; 
 nor the incident in the last century, proved in the face of the 
 most incredulous mockery ever known an incident most 
 surprising to men who were accustomed to regard doubt as a 
 weapon against the fact alone, but simple enough to believers 
 the fact that Alphonzo-Maria di Liguori, Bishop of Saint- 
 Agatha, administered consolations to Pope Ganganelli, who 
 saw him, heard him, and answered him, while the bishop 
 himself, at a great distance from Rome, was in a trance at 
 home, in the chair where he commonly sat on his return from 
 mass. On recovering consciousness, he saw all his attendants 
 kneeling beside him, believing him to be dead : " My friends," 
 said he, "the holy father is just dead." Two days later a 
 letter confirmed the news. The hour of the pope's death 
 coincided with that when the bishop had been restored to his 
 natural state. 
 
 Nor had Lambert omitted the yet more recent adventure 
 of an English girl who was passionately attached to a sailor, 
 and set out from London to seek him. She found him, with- 
 out a guide, making her way alone in the North American 
 wilderness, reaching him just in time to save his life. 
 
 Louis had found confirmatory evidence in the mysteries of 
 the ancients, in the acts of the martyrs in which glorious in- 
 stances may be found of the triumph of human will, in the 
 demonology of the Middle Ages, in criminal trials and med- 
 ical researches; always select-ing the real fact, the probable 
 phenomenon, with admirable sagacity. 
 
 All this rich collection of scientific anecdotes, culled from 
 so many books, most of them worthy ot credit, served no 
 doubt to wrap parcels in ; and this work, which was curious, 
 to say the least of it, as the outcome of a most extraordinary 
 memory, was doomed to destruction. 
 
 Among the various cases which added to the value of Lam- 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 209 
 
 bert's Treatise was an incident that had taken place in his 
 own family, of which he had told me before he wrote his 
 essay. This fact, bearing on the post-existence of the inner 
 man, if I may be allowed to coin a new word for a phenom- 
 enon hitherto nameless, struck me so forcibly that I have 
 never forgotten it. His father and mother were being forced 
 into a lawsuit, of which the loss would leave them with a stain 
 on their good name, the only thing they had in the world. 
 Hence their anxiety was very great when the question first 
 arose as to whether they should yield to the plaintiffs unjust 
 demands, or should defend themselves against him. The 
 matter came under discussion one autumn evening, before a 
 turf fire in the room used by the tanner and his wife. Two 
 or three relations were invited to this family council, and 
 among others Louis' maternal great-grandfather, an old la- 
 borer, much bent, but with a venerable and dignified counte- 
 nance, bright eyes, and a nearly bald, yellow head, on which 
 grew a few locks of thin, white hair. Like the Obi of the 
 Negroes or the Sagamore* of the Indian savage, he was a sort 
 of oracle, consulted on important occasions. His land was 
 tilled by his grandchildren, who fed and served him; he 
 predicted rain and fine weather, and told them when to mow 
 the hay and gather the crops. The barometric exactitude of 
 nis forecasts was quite famous, and added to the confidence 
 and respect he inspired. For whole days he would sit immov- 
 able in his armchair. This state of rapt meditation often 
 came upon him since his wife's death ; he had been attached 
 to her with the truest and most faithful affection. 
 
 This discussion was held in his presence, but he did not 
 seem to give much heed to it. 
 
 " My children," said he, when he was asked for his opinion, 
 " this is too serious a matter for me to decide on alone. I 
 must go and consult my wife." 
 
 The old man rose, took his stick, and went out, to the great 
 
 * Medicine Man. 
 14 
 
210 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 astonishment of the others, who thought him crazy. He pres- 
 ently came back and said 
 
 " I did not have to go so far as the graveyard ; your mother 
 came to meet me ; I found her by the brook. She tells me 
 that you will find some receipts in the hands of a notary at 
 Blois, which will enable you to gain your suit." 
 
 The words were spoken in a firm tone ; the old man's de- 
 meanor and countenance showed that such an apparition was 
 habitual with him. In fact, the disputed receipts were found, 
 and the lawsuit was not attempted. 
 
 This event, under his father's roof and of his own knowl- 
 edge, when Louis was nine years old, contributed largely to 
 his belief in Swedenborg's miraculous visions, for in the course 
 of that philosopher's life he repeatedly gave proofs of the 
 power of sight developed in his Inner Being. As he grew 
 older, and as his intelligence was developed, Lambert was nat- 
 urally led to seek in the laws of nature for the causes of the 
 miracle which, in his childhood, had captivated his attention. 
 What name can be given to the chance which brought within 
 his ken so many facts and books bearing on such phenomena, 
 and made him the principal subject and actor in such marvel- 
 ous manifestations of mind? 
 
 If Lambert had no other title to fame than the fact of his 
 having formulated, in his sixteenth year, such a psychological 
 dictum as this: " The events which bear witness to the action 
 of the human race, and are the outcome of its intellect, have 
 causes by which they are preconceived, as our actions are ac- 
 complished in our mind before they are reproduced by the 
 outer man ; presentiments or predictions are the perception 
 of these causes" I think we may deplore in him a genius 
 equal to Pascal, Lavoisier, or Laplace. His chimerical no- 
 tions about angels perhaps overruled his work too long ; but 
 was it not in trying to make gold that the alchemists uncon- 
 sciously created chemistry? At the same time, Lambert, at a 
 later period, studied comparative anatomy, physics, geometry, 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 211 
 
 and other sciences bearing on his discoveries, and this was 
 undoubtedly with the purpose of collecting facts and submit- 
 ting them to analysis the only torch that can guide us 
 through the dark places of the most inscrutable work of 
 nature. He had too much good sense to dwell among the 
 clouds of theories which can all be expressed in a few words. 
 In our day, is not the simplest demonstration based on facts 
 more highly esteemed than the most specious system though 
 defended by more or less ingenious inductions? But as I did 
 not know him at the period of his life when his cogitations 
 were, no doubt, the most productive of results, I can only 
 conjecture what the bent of his work must have been from 
 that of his first efforts of thought. 
 
 It is easy to see where his "Treatise on the Will" was 
 faulty. Though gifted already with the powers which charac- 
 terize superior men, he was but a boy. His brain, though 
 endowed with a great faculty for abstractions, was still full of 
 the delightful beliefs that hover around youth. Thus his 
 conception, while at some points it touched the ripest fruits 
 of his genius, still, by many more, clung to the smaller ele- 
 ments of its germs. To certain readers, lovers of poetry, 
 what he chiefly lacked must have been a certain vein of 
 interest. 
 
 But his work bore the stamp of the struggle that was going 
 on in that noble Spirit between the two great principles of 
 Spiritualism and Materialism, round which so many a fine 
 genius has beaten its way without ever daring to amalgamate 
 them. Louis, at first purely Spiritualist, had been irresistibly 
 led to recognize the Material conditions of Mind. Con- 
 founded by the facts of analysis at the moment when his 
 heart still gazed with yearning at the clouds that floated in 
 Swedenborg's heaven, he had not yet acquired the necessary 
 powers to produce a coherent system, compactly cast in a 
 piece, as it were. Hence certain inconsistencies that have 
 left their stamp even on the sketch here given of his first 
 
212 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 attempts. Still, incomplete as his work may have been, was 
 it not the rough copy of a science of which he would have 
 investigated the secrets at a later time, have secured the 
 foundations, have examined, deduced, and connected the 
 logical sequence? 
 
 Six months after the confiscation of the "Treatise on the 
 Will" I left school. Our parting was unexpected. My 
 mother, alarmed by a feverish attack which for some months 
 I had been unable to shake off, while my inactive life induced 
 symptoms of coma, carried me off at four or five hours' notice. 
 The announcement of my departure reduced Lambert to 
 dreadful dejection. 
 
 "Shall I ever see you again?" said he in his gentle voice, 
 as he clasped me in his arms. " You will live," he went on, 
 " but I shall die. If I can, I will come back to you." 
 
 Only the young can utter such words with the accent of 
 conviction that gives them the impressiveness of prophecy, 
 of a pledge, leaving a terror of its fulfillment. For a long 
 time indeed I vaguely looked for the promised apparition. 
 Even now there are days of depression, of doubt, alarm, and 
 loneliness, when I am forced to repel the intrusion of that sad 
 parting, though it was not fated to be the last. 
 
 When I crossed the yard by which we left, Lambert was at 
 one of the refectory windows to see me pass. By my request 
 my mother obtained leave for him to dine with us at the inn, 
 and in the evening I escorted him back to the fatal gate of the 
 college. No lover and his mistress ever shed more tears at 
 parting. 
 
 " Well, good-by ; I shall be left alone in this desert ! " said 
 he, pointing to the play-ground where two hundred boys were 
 disporting themselves and shouting. " When I come back 
 half-dead with fatigue from my long excursions through the 
 fields of thought, on whose heart can I rest ? I could tell you 
 everything in a look. Who will understand me now ? Good- 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 213 
 
 by ! I could wish I had never met you ; I should not know 
 all I am losing." 
 
 "And what is to become of me ?" said I. "Is not my 
 position a dreadful one ? / have nothing here to uphold me ! " 
 and I slapped my forehead. 
 
 He shook his head with a gentle gesture, gracious and sad, 
 and we parted. 
 
 At that time Louis Lambert was about five feet five inches 
 in height; he grew no more. His countenance, which was 
 full of expression, revealed his sweet nature. Divine patience, 
 developed by harsh usage, and the constant concentration 
 needed for his meditative life, had bereft his eyes of the auda- 
 cious pride which is so attractive in some faces, and which had so 
 shocked our masters. Peaceful mildness gave charm to his 
 face, an exquisite serenity that was never marred by a tinge 
 of irony or satire ; for his natural kindliness tempered his 
 conscious strength and superiority. He had pretty hands, 
 very slender, and almost always moist. His frame was a marvel, 
 a model for a sculptor; but our iron-gray uniform, with gilt 
 buttons and knee-breeches, gave us such an ungainly appear- 
 ance that Lambert's fine proportions and firm muscles could 
 only be appreciated in the bath. When we swam in our pool 
 in the Loir, Louis was conspicuous by the whiteness of his 
 skin, which was unlike the different shades of our school- 
 fellows' bodies mottled by the cold, or blue from the water. 
 Gracefully formed, elegant in his attitudes, delicate in hue, 
 never shivering after his bath, perhaps because he avoided 
 the shade and always ran into the sunshine, Louis was like one 
 of those cautious blossoms that close their petals to the blast 
 and refuse to open unless to a clear sky. He ate little, and 
 drank water only; either by instinct or by choice he was 
 averse to any exertion that made a demand on his strength ; 
 his movements were few and simple, like those of Orientals 
 or of savages, with whom gravity seems a condition of nature. 
 
 As a rule, he disliked everything that resembled any special 
 
214 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 care for his person. He commonly sat with his head a little 
 inclined to the left, and so constantly rested his elbows on the 
 table that the sleeves of his coats were soon in holes. 
 
 To this slight picture of the outer man I must add a sketch 
 of his moral qualities, for I believe I can now judge him im- 
 partially. 
 
 Though naturally religious. Louis did not accept the minute 
 practices of the Romish ritual ; his ideas were more intimately 
 in sympathy with Saint-Theresa and Fenelon, and several 
 fathers and certain saints, who, in our day, would be regarded 
 as heresiarchs or atheists. He was rigidly calm during the 
 services. His own prayers went up in gusts, in aspirations, 
 without any regular formality in all things he gave himself 
 up to nature, and would not pray, any more than he would 
 think, at any fixed hour. In chapel he was equally apt to 
 think of God or to meditate on some problem of natural 
 philosophy. 
 
 To him Jesus Christ was the most perfect type of his system. 
 El Verbum caro factum est seemed a sublime statement in- 
 tended to express the traditional formula of the Will, the Word, 
 and the Act made visible. Christ's unconsciousness of His 
 death having so perfected His Inner Being by divine works, 
 that one day the invisible form of it appeared to His disciples 
 and the other mysteries of the Gospels, the magnetic cures 
 wrought by Christ, and the gift of tongues, all to him con- 
 firmed his doctrine. I remember once hearing him say on 
 this subject that the greatest work that could be written nowa- 
 days was a history of the primitive church. And he never 
 rose to such poetic heights as when, in the evening, as we con- 
 versed, he would enter on an inquiry into miracles worked by 
 the power of Will during that great age of faith. He discerned 
 the strongest evidence of his theory in most of the martyr- 
 doms endured during the first century of our era, which he 
 spoke of as " the great era of the Mind." 
 
 " Do not the phenomena observed in almost every instance 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 21o 
 
 of the torments so heroically endured by the early Christians 
 for the establishment of the faith amply prove that Material 
 force will never prevail against the force of Ideas or the Will 
 of man ? " he would say. " From this effect, produced by the 
 Will of all, each man may draw conclusions in favor of his 
 own." 
 
 I need say nothing of his views on poetry or history, nor of 
 his judgment on the masterpieces of our language. There 
 would be little interest in the record of opinions now almost 
 universally held, though at that time, from the lips of a boy, 
 they might seem remarkable. Louis was capable of the highest 
 flights. To give a notion of his talents in two words, he could 
 have written " Zadig" as wittily as Voltaire ; he could have 
 thought out the Dialogue between Syllaand Eucrates as power- 
 fully as Montesquieu. His rectitude of character made him 
 desire above all else in a work that it should bear the stamp of 
 utility ; at the same time his refined taste demanded novelty 
 of thought as well as of form. One of his most remarkable 
 literary observations, which will serve as a clue to all the. 
 others, and show the lucidity of his judgment, is this, which 
 has ever dwelt in my memory: "The Apocalypse is written 
 ecstasy." He regarded the Bible as a part of the traditional 
 history of the antediluvian nations which had taken for its 
 share the new humanity. He thought that the mythology of 
 the Greeks was borrowed both from the Hebrew Scriptures and 
 from the sacred books of India, adapted after their own fashion 
 by the beauty-loving Hellenes. 
 
 " It is impossible," said he, " to doubt the priority of the 
 Asiatic scriptures ; they are earlier than our sacred books. 
 The man who is candid enough to admit this historical fact 
 sees the whole world expand before him. Was it not on the 
 Asiatic highland that the few men took refuge who were able 
 to escape the catastrophe that ruined our globe if, indeed, 
 men had existed before that cataclysm or shock ? A serious 
 query, the answer to which lies at the bottom of the sea. 
 
5216 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 The anthropogony of the Bible is merely a genealogy of a 
 swarm escaping from the human hive which settled on the 
 mountainous slopes of Thibet between the summits of the 
 Himalayas and the Caucasus. 
 
 " The character of the primitive ideas of that horde, called 
 by its lawgiver the people of God, no doubt to secure its 
 unity, and perhaps also to induce it to maintain his laws and 
 his system of government for the Books of Moses are a re- 
 ligious, political, and civil code that character bears the 
 authority of terror; convulsions of nature are interpreted with 
 stupendous power as a vengeance from on high. In fact, since 
 this wandering tribe knew none of the ease enjoyed by a 
 community settled in a patriarchal home, their sorrows as 
 pilgrims inspired them with none but gloomy poems, majestic 
 but blood-stained. In the Hindoos, on the contrary, the 
 spectacle of the rapid recoveries of the natural world, and 
 the prodigious effects of sunshine, which they were the first to 
 recognize, gave rise to happy images of blissful love, to the 
 worship of Fire and of the endless personifications of reproduc- 
 tive force. These fine fancies are lacking in the book of the 
 Hebrews. A constant need of self-preservation amid all the 
 dangers and the lands they traversed to reach the promised 
 land engendered their exclusive race-feeling and their hatred 
 of all other nations. 
 
 " These three scriptures are the archives of an engulfed world. 
 Therein lies the secret of the extraordinary splendor of those 
 languages and their myths. A grand human history lies be- 
 neath those names of men and places, and those fables which 
 charm us so irresistibly, we know not why. Perhaps it is 
 because we find in them the native air of renewed humanity." 
 
 Thus, to him, this threefold literature included all the 
 thoughts of man. Not a book could be written, in his opin- 
 ion, of which the subject might not there be discerned in its 
 germ. This view shows how learnedly he had pursued his 
 early studies of the Bible, and how far they had led him. 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 217 
 
 Hovering, as it were, over the heads of society, and knowing 
 it solely from books, he could judge it coldly. 
 
 "The law," said he, "never puts a check on the enter- 
 prises of the rich and great, but crushes the poor, who, on 
 the contrary, need protection." 
 
 His kind heart did not therefore allow him to sympathize 
 in political ideas ; his system led rather to the passive obedi- 
 ence of which Jesus set the example. During the last hours 
 of my life at Vendome, Louis had ceased to feel the spur to 
 glory; he had, in a way, had an abstract enjoyment of fame; 
 and having opened it, as the ancient priests of sacrifice sought 
 to read the future in the hearts of men, he had found nothing 
 in the entrails of his chimera. Scorning a sentiment so wholly 
 personal : " Glory," said he, " is but beatified egoism." 
 
 Here, perhaps, before taking leave of this exceptional boy- 
 hood, I may pronounce judgment on it by a rapid glance. 
 
 A short time before our separation, at Vendome, Lambert 
 said to me : 
 
 " Apart from the general laws which I have formulated 
 and this, perhaps, will be my glory laws which must be those 
 of the human organism, the life of man is Movement deter- 
 mined in each individual by the pressure of some inscrutable 
 influence by the brain, the heart, or the sinews. All the 
 innumerable modes of human existence result from the pro- 
 portions in which these three generating forces are more or 
 less intimately combined with the substances they assimilate in 
 the environment in which they live." 
 
 He stopped short, struck his forehead, and exclaimed : 
 "How strange! In every great man whose portrait I have 
 remarked, the neck is short. Perhaps nature requires that in 
 them the heart should be nearer to the brain 1 " 
 
 Then he went on : 
 
 "From that, a sum-total of action takes its rise which con- 
 stitutes social life. The man of sinew contributes action or 
 strength; the man of brain, genius; the man of heart, faith. 
 
218 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 But," he added sadly, "faith sees only the clouds of the 
 sanctuary; the Angel alone ha? light." 
 
 So according to his own definitions, Lambert was all brain 
 and all heart. It seems to me that his intellectual life was 
 divided into three marked phases. 
 
 Under the impulsion, from his earliest years, of a preco- 
 cious activity, due, no doubt, to some malady or to some 
 special perfection of organism, his powers were concentrated 
 on the functions of the inner senses and a superabundant flow 
 of nerve-fluid. As a man of ideas, he craved to satisfy the 
 thirst of his brain, to assimilate every idea. Hence his 
 reading ; and from his reading, the reflections that gave him 
 the power of reducing things to their simplest expression, and 
 of absorbing them to study them in their essence. Thus, the 
 advantages of this splendid stage, acquired by other men 
 only after long study, were achieved by Lambert during his 
 bodily childhood : a happy childhood, colored by the studious 
 joys of a born poet. 
 
 The point which most thinkers reach at las* was to him the 
 starting-point, whence his brain was to set out one day in 
 search of new worlds of knowledge. Though as yet he knew 
 it not, he had made for himself the most exacting life possible, 
 and the most insatiably greedy. Merely to live, was he not 
 compelled to be perpetually casting nutriment into the gulf he 
 had opened in himself? Like some beings who dwell in the 
 grosser world, might he not die of inanition for want of feed- 
 ing abnormal and disappointed cravings ? Was not this 
 a sort of debauchery of the intellect which might lead to 
 spontaneous combustion, like that of bodies saturated with 
 alcohol ? 
 
 I had seen nothing of this first phase of his brain-develop- 
 ment ; it is only now, at a later day, that I can thus give an 
 account of its prodigious fruit and results. Lambert was then 
 thirteen. 
 
 I was so fortunate as to witness the first stage of the second 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 219 
 
 peroid. Lambert was cast into all the miseries of school-life 
 and that, perhaps, was his salvation it absorbed the super- 
 abundance of his thoughts. After passing from concrete ideas 
 to their purest expression, from words to their ideal import, 
 and from that import to principles, after reducing everything 
 to the abstract, to enable him to live he yearned for yet other 
 intellectual creations. Quelled by the woes of school and the 
 critical development of his physical constitution, he became 
 thoughtful, dreamed of feeling, and caught a glimpse of new 
 sciences positively masses of ideas. Checked in his career, 
 and not yet strong enough to contemplate the higher spheres, 
 he contemplated his inmost self. I then perceived in him the 
 struggle of the Mind reacting on itself, and trying to detect 
 the secrets of its own nature, like a physician who watches 
 the course of his own disease. 
 
 At this stage of weakness and strength, of childish grace 
 and superhuman powers, Louis Lambert is the creature who, 
 more than any other, gave me a poetical and truthful image 
 of the being we call an angel, always excepting one woman 
 whose name, whose features, whose identity, and whose life I 
 would fain hide from all the world, so as to be sole master of 
 the secret of her existence, and to bury it in the depths of my 
 heart. 
 
 The third phase I was not destined to see. It began when 
 Lambert and I were parted, for he did not leave college till 
 he was eighteen, in the summer of 1815. He had at that time 
 lost his father and mother about six months before. Finding 
 no member of his family with whom his soul could sympathize, 
 expansive still, but, since our parting, thrown back on himself, 
 he made his home with his uncle, who was also his guardian, 
 and who, having been turned out of his benefice as a priest 
 who had taken the oaths, had come to settle at Blois. There 
 Louis lived for some time ; but consumed ere long by the de- 
 sire to finish his incomplete studies, he came to Paris to see 
 
220 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 Madame de Stael, and to drink of science at its highest source. 
 The old priest, being very fond of his nephew, left Louis free 
 to spend his whole little inheritance in his three years' stay in 
 Paris, though he lived very poorly. This fortune consisted of 
 but a few thousand francs. 
 
 Lambert returned to Blois at the beginning of 1820, driven 
 from Paris by the sufferings to which the impecunious are ex- 
 posed there. He must often have been a victim to the secret 
 storms, the terrible rage of mind by which artists are tossed, 
 to judge from the only fact his uncle recollected, and the only 
 letter he preserved of all those which Louis Lambert wrote to 
 him at that time, perhaps because it was the last and the 
 longest. 
 
 To begin with the story. Louis one evening was at the 
 Theatre-Francois, seated on a bench in the upper gallery, near 
 to one of the pillars which, in those days, divided off the third 
 row of boxes. On rising between the acts, he saw a young 
 woman who had just come into the box next him. The sight 
 of this lady, who was young, pretty, well dressed, in a low 
 bodice no doubt, and escorted by a man for whom her face 
 beamed with all the charms of love, produced such a terrible 
 effect on Lambert's soul and senses, that he was obliged to 
 leave the theatre. If he had not been controlled by some re- 
 maining glimmer of reason, which was not wholly extinguished 
 by this first fever of burning passion, he might perhaps have 
 yielded to the almost irresistible desire that came over him to 
 kill the young man on whom the lady's looks beamed. Was 
 not this a reversion, in the heart of the Paris world, to the 
 savage passion that regards woman as its prey, an effect of 
 animal instinct combining with the almost luminous flashes of 
 a soul crushed under the weight of thought ? In short, was it 
 not the prick of the penknife so vividly imagined by the boy, 
 felt by the man as the thunderbolt of his most vital craving 
 for love ? 
 
 And now, here is the letter that depicts the state of his mind 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 221 
 
 as it was struck by the spectacle of Parisian civilization. His 
 feelings, perpetually wounded nc doubt in that whirlpool of 
 self-interest, must always have suffered there; he probably had 
 no friend to comfort him, no enemy to give tone to his life. 
 Compelled to live in himself alone, having no one to share his 
 subtle raptures, he may have hoped to solve the problem of 
 his destiny by a life of ecstasy, adopting an almost vegetative 
 attitude, like an anchorite of the early church, and abdicating 
 the empire of the intellectual world. 
 
 This letter seems to hint at such a scheme, which is a temp- 
 tation to all lofty souls at periods of social reform. But is 
 not this purpose, in some cases, the result of a vocation ? Do 
 not some of them endeavor to concentrate their powers by 
 long silence, so as to emerge fully capable of governing the 
 world by word or by deed ? Louis must, assuredly, have 
 found much bitterness in his intercourse with men, or have 
 striven hard with society in terrible irony, without extracting 
 anything from it, before uttering so strident a cry, and ex- 
 pressing, poor fellow, the desire which satiety of power and 
 of all earthly things has led even monarchs to indulge ! 
 
 And perhaps, too, he went back to solitude to carry out 
 some great work that was floating inchoate in his brain. 
 We would gladly believe it as we read this fragment of his 
 thoughts, betraying the struggle of his soul at the time when 
 youth was ending and the terrible power of production was 
 coming into being, to which we might have owed the works 
 of the man. 
 
 This letter connects itself with the adventure at the theatre. 
 The incident and the letter throw light on each other, body 
 and soul were tuned to the same pitch. This tempest of 
 doubts and asseverations, of clouds and of lightnings that flash 
 before the thunder, ending by a starved yearning for heavenly 
 illumination, throws such a light on the third phase of his 
 education as enables us to understand it perfectly. As we 
 read these lines, written at chance moments, taken up when 
 
222 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 the vicissitudes of life in Paris allowed, may we not fancy that 
 we see an oak at that stage of its growth when its inner expan- 
 sion bursts the tender green bark, covering it with wrinkles 
 and cracks, when its majestic stature is in preparation if 
 indeed the lightnings of heaven and the axe of man shall 
 spare it? 
 
 This letter, then, will close, alike for the poet and the 
 philosopher, this portentous childhood and unappreciated 
 youth. It finishes off the outline of this nature in its germ. 
 Philosophers will regret the foliage frost-nipped in the bud ; 
 but they will, perhaps, find the flowers expanding in regions 
 far above the highest places of the earth. 
 
 "PARIS, September- October, 1819. 
 
 "DEAR UNCLE: I shall soon be leaving this part of the 
 world, where I could never bear to live. I find no one here 
 who likes what I like, who works at my work, or is amazed at 
 what amazes me. Thrown back on myself, leat'my heart out 
 in misery. My long and patient study of society here has 
 brought me to melancholy conclusions, in which doubt pre- 
 dominates. 
 
 " Here, money is the mainspring of everything. Money is 
 indispensable, even for going without money. But though 
 that dross is necessary to any one who wishes to think in 
 peace, I have not courage enough to make it the sole motive 
 power of my thoughts. To make a fortune, I must take up a 
 profession ; in two words, I must, by acquiring some privilege 
 of position or of self-advertisement, either legal or ingeniously 
 contrived, purchase the right of taking day by day out of 
 somebody else's purse a certain sum which, by the end of the 
 year, would amount to a small capital ; and this, in twenty 
 years, would hardly secure an income of four or five thousand 
 francs to a man who deals honestly. An advocate, a notary, 
 a merchant, any recognized professional, has earned a living 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 223 
 
 for his later days in the course of fifteen or sixteen years after 
 ending his apprenticeship. 
 
 " But I have never felt fit for work of this kind. I prefer 
 thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to 
 activity. I am absolutely devoid of the constant attention 
 indispensable to the making of a fortune. Any mercantile 
 venture, any need for using other people's money would bring 
 me to grief, and I should be ruined. Though I have nothing, 
 at least at the moment, I owe nothing. The man who gives 
 his life to the achievement of great things in the sphere of 
 intellect needs very little; still, though twenty sous a day 
 would be enough, I do not possess that small income for my 
 laborious idleness. When I wish to cogitate, want drives me 
 out of the sanctuary where my mind has its being. What is 
 to become of me ? 
 
 " I am not frightened at poverty. If it were not that beg- 
 gars are imprisoned, branded, scorned, I would beg, to enable 
 me to solve at my leisure the problems that haunt me. Still, 
 this sublime resignation, by which I might emancipate my 
 mind, through abstracting it from my body, would not serve 
 my end. I should still need money to devote myself to cer- 
 tain experiments. But for that, I would accept the outward 
 indigence of a sage possessed of both heaven and earth. A 
 man need only never stoop, to remain lofty in poverty. He 
 who struggles and endures, while marching on to a glorious 
 end, presents a noble spectacle ; but who can have the strength 
 to fight here ? We can climb cliffs, but it is unendurable to 
 remain for ever tramping the mud. Everything here checks 
 the flight of a spirit that strives toward the future. 
 
 " I should not be afraid of myself in a desert cave ; I am 
 afraid of myself here. In the desert I should be alone with 
 myself, undisturbed ; here man has a thousand wants which 
 drag him down. You go out walking, absorbed in dreams; 
 the voice of the beggar asking an alms brings you back to this 
 world of hunger and thirst. You need money only to take a 
 
224 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 walk. Your organs of sense, perpetually wearied by trifles, 
 never get any rest. The poet's sensitive nerves are constantly 
 shocked, and what ought to be his glory becomes his torment ; 
 his imagination is his crudest enemy. The injured workman, 
 the poor mother in childbed, the prostitute who has fallen ill, 
 the foundling, the infirm and aged even vice and crime here 
 find a refuge and charity ; but the world is merciless to the 
 inventor, to the man who thinks. Here everything must 
 show an immediate and practical result. Fruitless attempts 
 are mocked at, though they may lead to the greatest discov- 
 eries; the deep and untiring study that demands long concen- 
 tration of every faculty is not valued here. The State might 
 pay talent as it pays the bayonet ; but it is afraid of being 
 taken in by mere cleverness, as if genius could be counter- 
 feited for any length of time. 
 
 " Ah, my dear uncle, when monastic solitude was destroyed, 
 uprooted from its home at the foot of mountains, under green 
 and silent shade, asylums ought to have been provided for 
 those suffering souls who, by an idea, promote the progress 
 of nations or prepare some new and fruitful development of 
 science. 
 
 " September zotk. 
 
 " The love of study brought me hither, as you know. I 
 have met really learned men, amazing for the most part ; but 
 the lack of unity in scientific work almost nullifies their efforts. 
 There is no Head of instruction or of scientific research. At 
 the Museum a professor argues to prove that another in the 
 Rue Saint- Jacques talks nonsense. The lecturer at the Col- 
 lege of Medicine abuses him of the College of France. When 
 I first arrived, I went to hear an old Academician who taught 
 five hundred youths that Corneille was a haughty and powerful 
 genius; Racine, elegiac and graceful; Moliere, inimitable; 
 Voltaire, supremely witty ; Bossuet and Pascal, incomparable 
 in argument. A professor of philosophy may make a name 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 225 
 
 by explaining how Plato is Platonic. Another discourses on 
 the history of words, without troubling himself about ideas. 
 One explains ^Eschylus ; another tells you that communes were 
 communes, and neither more nor less. These original and 
 brilliant discoveries, diluted to last several hours, constitute 
 the higher education which is to lead to giant strides in human 
 knowledge. 
 
 " If the Government could have an idea, I should suspect 
 it of being afraid of any real superiority, which, once roused, 
 might bring Society under the yoke of an intelligent rule. 
 Then nations would go too far and too fast ; so professors are 
 appointed to produce simpletons. How else can we account 
 for a scheme devoid of method or any notion of the future ? 
 
 " The Institute might be the central government of the 
 moral and intellectual world ; but it has been ruined lately by 
 its subdivision into separate academies. So human science 
 marches on, without a guide, without a system, and floats hap- 
 hazard with no road traced out. 
 
 " This vagueness and uncertainty prevails in politics as well 
 as in science. In the order of nature means are simple, the 
 end is grand and marvelous ; here in science, as in govern- 
 ment, the means are stupendous, the end is mean. The force 
 which in nature proceeds at an equal pace, and of which the 
 sum is constantly being added to itself the A-f- A from which 
 everything is produced is destructive in society. Politics, 
 at the present time, place human forces in antagonism to neu- 
 tralize each other, instead of combining them to promote their 
 action to some definite end. 
 
 "Looking at Europe alone from Caesar to Constantine, 
 from the puny Constantine to the great Attila, from the Huns 
 to Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Leo X., from Leo X. to 
 Philip II., from Philip II. to Louis XIV., from Venice to 
 England, from England to Napoleon, from Napoleon to Eng- 
 land I see no fixed purpose in politics ; its constant agitation 
 has led to no progress. 
 15 
 
226 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 " Nations leave witnesses to their greatness in monuments, 
 and to their happiness in the welfare of individuals. Are 
 modern monuments as fine as those of the ancients? I doubt 
 it. The arts, which are the direct outcome of the individual, 
 the products of genius or of handicraft, have not advanced 
 much. The pleasures of Lucullus were as good as those of 
 Samuel Bernard, of Beaujon, or of the King of Bavaria. And 
 then human longevity has diminished. 
 
 " Thus, to those who will be candid, man is still the same ; 
 might is still his only law and success his only wisdom. 
 
 " Jesus Christ, Mahomet, and Luther only lent a different 
 hue to the arena in which youthful nations disport them- 
 selves. 
 
 " No development of politics has hindered civilization, with 
 its riches, its manners, its alliance of the strong against the 
 weak, its ideas, and its delights, from moving from Memphis 
 to Tyre, from Tyre to Baalbek, from Tadmor to Carthage, 
 from Carthage to Rome, from Rome to Constantinople, from 
 Constantinople to Venice, from Venice to Spain, from Spain 
 to England while no trace is left of Memphis, of Tyre, of 
 Carthage, of Rome, of Venice, or Madrid. The soul of those 
 great bodies has fled. Not one of them has preserved itself 
 from destruction, nor formulated this axiom : When the effect 
 produced ceases to be in a ratio to its cause, disorganization 
 follows. 
 
 " The most subtle genius can discover no common bond 
 between great social facts. No political theory has ever lasted. 
 Governments pass away, as men do, without handing down 
 any lesson, and no system gives birth to a system better than 
 that which came before it. What can we say about politics 
 when a Government directly referred to God perished in 
 India and Egypt ; when the rule of the Sword and of the Tiara 
 are past ; when monarchy is dying ; when the Government of 
 the People has never been alive ; when no scheme of intellec- 
 tual power as applied to material interests has ever proved 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 227 
 
 durable, and everything at this day remains to be done all over 
 again, as it has been at every period when man has turned to 
 cry out : ' I am in torment ! ' 
 
 " The code, which is considered Napoleon's greatest achieve- 
 ment, is the most Draconian work I know of. Territorial 
 subdivision carried out to the uttermost, and its principle con- 
 firmed by the equal division of property generally, must result 
 in the degeneracy of the nation and the death of the Arts and 
 Sciences. The land, too much broken up, is cultivated only 
 with cereals and small crops ; the forests, and consequently the 
 rivers, are disappearing ; oxen and horses are no longer bred. 
 Means are lacking both for attack and for resistance. If we 
 should be invaded, the people must be crushed ; it has lost its 
 mainspring its leaders. This is the history of deserts ! 
 
 "Thus the science of politics has no definite principles, 
 and it can have no fixity ; it is the spirit of the hour, the per- 
 petual application of strength proportioned to the necessities 
 of the moment. The man who should foresee two centuries 
 ahead would die at the place of execution, loaded with the 
 imprecations of the mob, or else which seems worse would 
 be lashed with the myriad whips of ridicule. Nations are 
 but individuals, neither wiser nor stronger than man, and their 
 destinies are identical. If we reflect on man, is not that to 
 consider mankind ? 
 
 " By studying the spectacle of society perpetually storm- 
 tossed in its foundations as well as in its results, in its causes 
 as well as in its actions, while philanthropy is but a splendid 
 mistake, and progress is vanity, I have been confirmed in 
 this truth : Life is within and not without us ; to rise above 
 men, to govern them, is only the part of an aggrandized 
 schoolmaster ; and those men who are capable of rising to 
 the level whence they can enjoy a view of the world should 
 not look at their own feet. 
 
228 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 " November ajh. 
 
 " I am no doubt occupied with weighty thoughts, I am on 
 the way to certain discoveries, an invincible power bears me 
 toward a luminary which shone at an early age on the dark- 
 ness of my moral life ; but what name can I give to the power 
 that ties my hands and shuts my mouth, and drags me in a 
 direction opposite to my vocation ? I must leave Paris, bid 
 farewell to the books in the libraries, those noble centres of 
 illumination, those kindly and always accessible sages, and the 
 younger geniuses with whom I sympathize. Who is it that 
 drives me away ? Chance or providence ? 
 
 " The two ideas represented by those words are irrecon- 
 cilable. If chance does not exist, we must admit fatalism, 
 that is to say, the compulsory coordination of things under the 
 rule of a general plan. Why then do we rebel ? If man is 
 not free, what becomes of the scaffolding of his moral sense ? 
 Or, if he can control his destiny, if by his own free-will he 
 can interfere with the execution of the general plan, what 
 becomes of God ? 
 
 "Why did I come here? If I examine myself, I find the 
 answer : I find in myself axioms that need developing. But 
 why then have I such vast faculties without being suffered to 
 use them ? If my suffering could serve as an example, I could 
 understand it; but no, I suffer unknown. 
 
 "This is, perhaps, as much the act of Providence as the 
 fate of the flower that dies unseen in the heart of the virgin 
 forest, where no one can enjoy its perfume or admire its 
 splendor. Just as that blossom vainly sheds its fragrance to 
 the solitude, so do I, here in a garret, give birth to ideas that 
 no one can grasp. 
 
 "Yesterday evening I sat eating bread and grapes in front 
 of my window with a young doctor named Meyraux. We 
 talked as men do whom misfortune has joined in brotherhood, 
 and I said to him 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 229 
 
 " ' I am going away ; you are staying. Take up my ideas 
 and develop them.' 
 
 "'I cannot!' said he, with bitter regret; 'my feeble 
 health cannot stand so much work, and I shall die young of 
 my struggle with penury.' 
 
 " We looked up at the sky and grasped hands. We first met 
 at the Comparative Anatomy course, and in the galleries of 
 the Museum, attracted thither by the same study the unity 
 of geological structure. In him this was the presentiment of 
 genius sent to open a new path in the fallows of intellect; in 
 me it was a deduction from a general system. 
 
 "My point is to ascertain the real relation that may exist 
 between God and man. Is not this a need of the age? 
 Without the highest assurance, it is impossible to put bit and 
 bridle on the social factions that have been let loose by the 
 spirit of skepticism and discussion, and which are now crying 
 aloud : ' Show us a way in which we may walk and find no 
 pitfalls in our path 1 ' 
 
 "You will wonder what comparative anatomy has to do 
 with a question of such importance to the future of society. 
 Must we not attain to the conviction that man is the end of 
 all earthly means before we ask whether he too is not the 
 means to some end ? If man is bound up with everything, 
 is there not something above him with which he again is 
 bound up? If he is the end-all of the unexplained transmu- 
 tations that lead up to him, must he not be also the link 
 between the visible and invisible creations? 
 
 "The activity of the universe is not absurd ; it must tend 
 to an end, and that end is surely not a social body constituted 
 as ours is ! There is a fearful gulf between us and heaven. 
 In our present existence we can neither be always happy nor 
 always in torment ; must there not be some tremendouschange to 
 bring about Paradise and Hell, two images without which God 
 cannot exist to the mind of the vulgar? I know that a com- 
 promise was made by the invention of the Soul; but it is repug- 
 
230 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 nant to me to make God answerable for human baseness, for 
 our disenchantments, our aversions, our degeneracy. 
 
 "Again, how can we recognize as divine the principle 
 within us which can be overthrown by a few glasses of rum? 
 How conceive of immaterial faculties which matter can con- 
 quer, and whose exercise is suspended by a grain of opium ? 
 How imagine that we shall be able to feel when we are bereft 
 of the vehicles of sensation ? Why must God perish if matter 
 can be proved to think ? Is the vitality of matter in its innu- 
 merable manifestations the effect of its instincts at all more 
 explicable than the effects of the mind? Is not the motion 
 given to the worlds enough to prove God's existence, without 
 our plunging into absurd speculations suggested by pride? 
 And if we pass, after our trials, from a perishable state of 
 being to a higher existence, is not that enough for a creature 
 that is distinguished from other creatures only by more perfect 
 instincts? If in moral philosophy there is not a single prin- 
 ciple which does not lead to the absurd, or cannot be dis- 
 proved by evidence, is it not high time that we should set to 
 work to seek such dogmas as are written in the innermost 
 nature of things? Must we not reverse philosophical science ? 
 
 "We trouble ourselves very little about the supposed void 
 that must have preexisted for us. and we try to fathom the 
 supposed void that lies before us. We make God responsible 
 for the future, but we do not expect Him to account for the 
 past. And yet it is quite as desirable to know whether we 
 have any roots in the past as to discover whether we are 
 inseparable from the future. 
 
 "We have been deists or atheists in one direction only. 
 
 " Is the world eternal ? Was the world created ? We can 
 conceive of no middle term between these two propositions ; 
 one, then, is true and the other false ! Take your choice. 
 Whichever it may be, God, as our reason depicts Him, must 
 be deposed, and that amounts to denial. The world is eternal : 
 then, beyond question, God has had it forced upon Him. 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 231 
 
 The world was created j then God is an impossibility. How 
 could He have subsisted through an eternity, not knowing that 
 He would presently want to create the world ? How could 
 He have failed to foresee all the results? 
 
 "Whence did He derive the essence of creation? Evi- 
 dently from Himself. If, then, the world proceeds from 
 God, how can you account for evil ? That Evil should pro- 
 ceed from Good is absurd. If evil does not exist, what do 
 you make of social life and its laws ? On all hands we find 
 a precipice ! On every side a gulf in which reason is lost ! 
 Then social science must be altogether reconstructed. 
 
 "Listen to me, uncle; until some splendid genius shall 
 have taken account of the obvious inequality of intellects and 
 the general sense of humanity, the word God will be con- 
 stantly arraigned, and Society will rest on shifting sands. 
 The secret of the various moral zones through which man 
 passes will be discovered by the analysis of the animal type 
 as a whole. That animal type has hitherto been studied with 
 reference only to its differences, not to its similitudes; in its 
 organic manifestations, not in its faculties. Animal faculties 
 are perfected in direct transmission, in obedience to laws 
 which remain to be discovered. These faculties correspond 
 to the forces which express them, and those forces are essen- 
 tially material and divisible. 
 
 " Material faculties ! Reflect on this juxtaposition of words. 
 Is not this a problem as insoluble as that of the first communi- 
 cation of motion to matter an unsounded gulf of which the 
 difficulties were transposed rather than removed by Newton's 
 system ? Again, the universal assimilation of light by every- 
 thing that exists on earth demands a new study of our globe. 
 The same animal differs in the tropics of India and in the 
 North. Under the angular or the vertical incidence of the 
 sun's rays nature is developed the same, but not the same; 
 identical in its principles, but totally dissimilar in its outcome. 
 The phenomenon that amazes our eyes in the zoological world 
 
232 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 when we compare the butterflies of Brazil with those of Eu- 
 rope, is even more startling in the world of Mind. A par- 
 ticular facial angle, a certain amount of brain convolutions, 
 are indispensable to produce Columbus, Raphael, Napoleon, 
 Laplace, or Beethoven ; the sunless valley produces the cretin 
 draw your own conclusions. Why such differences, due to 
 the more or less ample diffusion of light to men ? The masses 
 of suffering humanity, more or less active, fed, and enlight- 
 ened, are a difficulty to be accounted for, crying out against 
 God. 
 
 " Why in great joy do we always want to quit the earth? 
 whence comes the longing to rise which every creature has 
 known or will know? Motion is a great Soul, and its alliance 
 with matter is just as difficult to account for as the origin of 
 thought in man. In these days science is one ; it is impossi- 
 ble to touch politics independent of moral questions, and 
 these are bound up with scientific questions. It seems to me 
 that we are on the eve of a great human struggle ; the forces 
 are there ; only I do not see the general. 
 
 " November 25. 
 
 " Believe me, dear uncle, it is hard to give up the life that 
 is in us without a pang. I am returning to Blois with a 
 heavy grip at my heart ; I shall die then, taking with me 
 some useful truths. No personal interest debases my regrets. 
 Is earthly fame a guerdon to those who believe that they will 
 mount to a higher sphere ? 
 
 " I am by no means in love with the two syllables Lam 
 and bert; whether spoken with respect or with contempt over 
 my grave, they can make no change in my ultimate destiny. 
 I feel myself strong and energetic ; I might become a power ; 
 I feel in myself a life so luminous that it might enlighten a 
 world, and yet I am shut up in a sort of mineral, as perhaps 
 indeed are the colors you admire on the neck of an Indian 
 bird. I should need to embrace the whole world, to clasp 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 233 
 
 and recreate it ; but those who have done this, who have 
 thus embraced and remoulded it, began did they not ? by 
 being a wheel in the machine. I can only be crushed. Ma- 
 homet had the sword ; Jesus had the cross ; I shall die un- 
 known. I shall be at Blois for a day, and then in my coffin. 
 
 " Do you know why I have come back to Swedenborg after 
 vast studies of all religions, and after proving to myself, by 
 reading all the works published within the last sixty years by 
 the patient English, by Germany, and by France, how deeply 
 true were my youthful views about the Bible ? Swedenborg 
 undoubtedly epitomizes all the religions or rather the one 
 religion of humanity. Though forms of worship are infi- 
 nitely various, neither their true meaning nor their metaphysi- 
 cal interpretation has ever varied. In short, man has, and 
 has had, but one religion. 
 
 " Sivaism, Vishnuism, and Brahmanism, the three primitive 
 creeds, originating as they did in Thibet, in the valley of the 
 Indus, and on the vast plains of the Ganges, ended their war- 
 fare some thousand years before the birth of Christ by adopt- 
 ing the Hindoo Trimourti. The Trimourti is our Trinity. 
 From this dogma Magianism arose in Persia ; in Egypt, the 
 African beliefs and the Mosaic law ; the worship of the Cabiri, 
 and the polytheism of Greece and Rome. While by thi rami- 
 fication of the Trimourti the Asiatic myths became adapted to 
 the imaginations of various races in the lands they reached by 
 the agency of certain sages whom men elevated to be demi- 
 gods Mithra, Bacchus, Hermes, Hercules, and the rest 
 Buddha, the great 'reformer of the three primeval religions, 
 lived in India, and founded his church there, a sect which 
 still numbers two hundred millions more believers than Chris- 
 tianity can show, while it certainly influenced the powerful 
 Will both of Jesus and of Confucius. 
 
 "Then Christianity raised her standard. Subsequently 
 Mahomet fused Judaism and Christianity, the Bible and the 
 Gospel, in one book, the Koran, adapting them to the appre- 
 
234 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 hension of the Arab race. Finally, Swedenborg borrowed 
 from Magianism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Christian mys- 
 ticism all the truth and divine beauty that those four great 
 religious books hold in common, and added to them a doc- 
 trine, a basis of reasoning, that may be termed mathematical. 
 
 "Any man who plunges into those religious waters, of 
 which the sources are not all known, will find proofs that 
 Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ, and Swe- 
 denborg had identical principles and aimed at identical ends. 
 
 "The last of them all, Swedenborg, will perhaps be the 
 Buddha of the North. Obscure and diffuse as his writings 
 are, we find in them the elements of a magnificent conception 
 of society. His Theocracy is sublime, and his creed is the 
 only acceptable one to superior souls. He alone brings man 
 into immediate communion with God, he gives a thirst for 
 God, he has freed the Majesty of God from the trappings in 
 which other human dogmas have disguised Him. He left 
 Him where He is, making His myriad creations and creatures 
 gravitate toward Him through successive transformations 
 which promise a more immediate and more natural future 
 than the Catholic idea of Eternity. Swedenborg has absolved 
 God from the reproach attaching to Him in the estimation of 
 tender souls for the perpetuity of revenge to punish the sin of 
 a moment a system of injustice and cruelty. 
 
 " Each man may know for himself what hope he has of life 
 eternal, and whether this world has any rational sense. I 
 mean to make the attempt. And this attempt may save the 
 world, just as much as the cross at Jerusalem or the sword at 
 Mecca. These were both the offspring of the desert. Of the 
 thirty-three years of Christ's life, we only know the history of 
 nine ; His life of seclusion prepared Him for His life of glory. 
 And I too crave for the desert ! " 
 
 Notwithstanding the difficulties of the task, I have felt it 
 my duty to depict Lambert's boyhood, the unknown life to 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 236 
 
 which I owe the only happy hours, the only pleasant memories, 
 of my early days. Excepting during those two years I had 
 nothing but annoyances and weariness. Though some happi- 
 ness was mine at a later time, it was always incomplete. 
 
 I have been diffuse, I know ; but in default of entering into 
 the whole wide heart and brain of Louis Lambert two words 
 which inadequately express the infinite aspects of his inner 
 life it would be almost impossible to make the second part 
 of his intellectual history intelligible a phase that was un- 
 known to the world and to me, but of which the mystical out- 
 come was made evident to my eyes in the course of a few 
 hours. Those who have not already dropped this volume will, 
 I hope, understand the events I still have to tell, forming as 
 they do a sort of second existence lived by this creature may 
 I not say this creation ? in whom everything was to be so 
 extraordinary, even his end. 
 
 When Louis returned to Blois, his uncle was eager to pro- 
 cure him some amusement ; but the poor priest was regarded 
 as a perfect leper in that godly-minded town. No one would 
 have anything to say to a revolutionary who had taken the 
 oaths. His society, therefore, consisted of a few individuals 
 of what were then called liberal or patriotic, or constitutional 
 opinions, on whom he would call for a rubber of whist or of 
 boston. 
 
 At the first house where he was introduced by his uncle, 
 Louis met a young lady whose circumstances obliged her to 
 remain in this circle, so contemned by those of the fashionable 
 world, though her fortune was such as to make it probable that 
 she might by-and-by marry into the highest aristocracy of the 
 province. Mademoiselle Pauline de Villenoix was sole heiress 
 to the wealth amassed by her grandfather, a Jew named Salo- 
 mon, who, contrary to the customs of his nation, had, in his 
 old age, married a Christian and a Catholic. He had an only 
 son, who was brought up in his mother's faith. At his father's 
 death young Salomon purchased what was known at that 
 
236 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 time as a savonnette a vilain (literally a cake of soap for a 
 serf), a small estate called Villenoix, which he contrived to 
 get registered with a baronial title, and took its name. He 
 died unmarried, but he left a natural daughter, to whom he 
 bequeathed the greater part of his fortune, including the lands 
 of Villenoix. He appointed one of his uncles, Monsieur 
 Joseph Salomon, to be the girl's guardian. The old Jew was 
 so devoted to his ward that he seemed willing to make great 
 sacrifices for the sake of marrying her well. But Mademoiselle 
 de Villenoix's birth, and the cherished prejudice against Jews 
 that prevails in the provinces, would not allow of her being 
 received in the very exclusive circle which, rightly or wrongly, 
 considers itself noble, notwithstanding her own large fortune 
 and her guardian's. 
 
 Monsieur Joseph Salomon was resolved that if she could 
 not secure a country squire, his niece should go to Paris and 
 make choice of a husband among the peers of France, liberal 
 or monarchical ; as to happiness, that he believed he could 
 secure her by the terms of the marriage-contract. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Villenoix was now twenty. Her remark- 
 able beauty and gifts of mind were surer guarantees of happi- 
 ness than those offered by money. Her features were of the 
 purest type of Jewish beauty; the oval lines, so noble and 
 maidenly, have an indescribable stamp of the ideal, and seem 
 to speak of the joys of the East, its unchangeably blue sky, the 
 glories of its lands, and the fabulous riches of life there. She 
 had fine eyes, shaded by deep eyelids, fringed with thick, 
 curled lashes. Biblical innocence sat on her brow. Her 
 complexion was of the pure -whiteness of the Levite's robe. 
 She was habitually silent and thoughtful, but her movements 
 and gestures betrayed a quiet grace, as her speech bore witness 
 to a woman's sweet and loving nature. She had not, indeed, 
 the rosy freshness, the fruit-like bloom which blush on a girl's 
 cheek during her careless years. Darker shadows, with here 
 and there a redder vein, took the place of color, symptomatic 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 237 
 
 of an energetic temper and nervous irritability, such as many 
 men do not like to meet with in a wife, while to others they 
 are an indication of the most sensitive chastity and passion 
 mingled with pride. 
 
 As soon as Louis saw Mademoiselle de Villenoix, he dis- 
 cerned the angel within. The richest powers of his soul, and his 
 tendency to ecstatic reverie, every faculty within him was at once 
 concentrated in boundless love, the first love of a young man, 
 a passion which is strong indeed in all, but which in him was 
 raised to incalculable power by the perennial ardor of his 
 senses, the character of his ideas, and the manner in which 
 he lived. This passion became a gulf, into which the hapless 
 fellow threw everything ; a gulf whither the mind dare not 
 venture, since his, flexible and firm as it was, was lost there. 
 There all was mysterious, for everything went on in that moral 
 world, closed to most men, whose laws were revealed to him 
 perhaps to his sorrow. 
 
 When an accident threw me in the way of his uncle, the 
 good man showed me into the room in which Lambert had at 
 that time lived. I wanted to find some vestiges of his writ- 
 ings, if he should have left any. There, among his papers, 
 untouched by the old man from that fine instinct of grief that 
 characterizes the aged, I found a number of letters, too illegi- 
 ble ever to have been sent to Mademoiselle de Villenoix. 
 My familiarity with Lambert's writing enabled me in time to 
 decipher the hieroglyphics of this shorthand, the result of 
 impatience and a frenzy of passion. Carried away by his 
 feelings, he had written without being conscious of the irregu- 
 larity of words too slow to express his thoughts. He must 
 have been compelled to copy these chaotic attempts, for the 
 lines often ran into each other; but he was also afraid, per- 
 haps, of not having sufficiently disguised his feelings, and at 
 first, at any rate, he had probably written his love-letters twice 
 over. 
 
 It required all the fervency of my devotion to his memory, 
 
238 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 and the sort of fanaticism which comes of such a task, to 
 enable me to divine and restore the meaning of the five letters 
 that here follow. These documents, preserved by me with 
 pious care, are the only material evidence of his overmastering 
 passion. Mademoiselle de Villenoix has no doubt destroyed 
 the real letters that she received, eloquent witnesses to the 
 delirium she inspired. 
 
 The first of these papers, evidently a rough sketch, betrays 
 by its style and by its length the many emendations, the 
 heartfelt alarms, the innumerable terrors caused by a desire 
 to please; the changes of expression and the hesitation 
 between the whirl of ideas that beset a man as he indites his 
 first love-letter a- letter he never will forget, each line the 
 result of a reverie, each word the subject of long cogitation, 
 while the most unbridled passion known to man feels the 
 necessity of the most reserved utterance, and, like a giant 
 stooping to enter a hovel, speaks humbly and low, so as not 
 to alarm a girl's soul. 
 
 No antiquary ever handled his palimpsests with greater 
 respect than I showed in reconstructing these mutilated docu- 
 ments of such joy and suffering as must always be sacred to 
 those who have known similar joy and grief. 
 
 " Mademoiselle, when you have read this letter, if you ever 
 should read it, my life will be in your hands, for I love you : 
 and to me, the hope of being loved is life. Others, perhaps, 
 ere now, have, in speaking of themselves, misused the words 
 I must employ to depict the state of my soul ; yet I beseech 
 you to believe in the truth of my expressions ; though weak, 
 they are sincere. Perhaps I ought not thus to proclaim my 
 love. Indeed, my heart counseled me to wait in silence till 
 my passion should touch you, that I might the better conceal 
 it if its silent demonstrations should displease you ; or till I 
 could express it even more delicately than in words if I found 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 239 
 
 favor in your eyes. However, after having listened for long 
 to the coy fears that fill a youthful heart with alarms, I write 
 in obedience to the instinct which drags useless lamentations 
 from the dying. 
 
 " It has needed all my courage to silence the pride of pov- 
 erty, and to overleap the barriers which prejudice erects be- 
 tween you and me. I have had to smother many reflections 
 to love you in spite of your wealth ; and as I write to you, am 
 I not in danger of the scorn which women often reserve for 
 professions of love, which they accept only as one more tribute 
 of flattery? But we cannot help rushing with all our might 
 toward happiness, or being attracted to the life of love as a 
 plant is to the light ; we must have been very unhappy before 
 we can conquer the torment, the anguish, of those secret de- 
 liberations when reason proves to us ty a thousand arguments 
 how barren our yearning must be if it remains buried in our 
 hearts, and when hopes bid us dare all things. 
 
 " I was happy when I admired you in silence ; I was so lost 
 in the contemplation of your beautiful soul, that only to see 
 you left me hardly anything further to imagine. And I should 
 not now have dared to address you if I had not heard that you 
 were leaving. What misery has that one word brought upon 
 me ! Indeed, it is my despair that has shown me the extent 
 of my attachment it is unbounded. Mademoiselle, you will 
 never know at least, I hope you may never know the an- 
 guish of dreading lest you should lose the only happiness that 
 has dawned upon you on earth, the only thing that has thrown 
 a gleam of light into the darkness of misery. I understood 
 yesterday that my life was no more in myself, but in you. 
 There is but one woman in the world for me, as there is but 
 one thought in my soul. I dare not tell you to what a state I 
 am reduced by my love for you. I would have you only as a 
 gift from yourself; I must therefore avoid showing myself to 
 you in all the attractiveness of dejection for is it not often 
 more impressive to a noble soul than that of good-fortune ? 
 
240 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 There are many things I may not tell you. Indeed, I have 
 too lofty a notion of love to taint it with ideas that are alien 
 to its nature. If my soul is worthy of yours, and my life pure, 
 your heart will have a sympathetic insight, and you will under- 
 stand me ! 
 
 "It is the fate of man to offer himself to the woman who 
 can make him believe in happiness ; but it is your prerogative 
 to reject the truest passion if it is not in harmony with the 
 vague voices in your heart that I know. If my lot, as de- 
 cided by you, must be adverse to my hopes, mademoiselle, let 
 me appeal to the delicacy of your maiden soul and the in- 
 genuous compassion of a woman to burn my letter. On my 
 knees I beseech you to forget all ! Do not mock at a feeling 
 that is wholly respectful, and that is too deeply graven on my 
 heart ever to be effaced. Break my heart, but do not rend it ! 
 Let the expression of my first love, a pure and youthful love, 
 be lost in your pure and youthful heart ! Let it die there as 
 a prayer rises up to die in the bosom of God ! 
 
 " I owe you much gratitude: I have spent delicious hours 
 occupied in watching you, and giving myself up to the faint 
 dreams of my life ; do not crush these long but transient joys 
 by some girlish irony. Be satisfied not to answer me. I shall 
 know how to interpret your silence ; you will see me no more. 
 If I must be condemned to know for ever what happiness 
 means, and to be for ever bereft of it ; if, like a banished 
 angel, I am to cherish the sense of celestial joys while bound 
 for ever to a world of sorrow well, I can keep the secret of 
 my love as well as that of my griefs. 
 
 "And farewell ! 
 
 "Yes, I resign you to God, to whom I will pray for you, 
 beseeching Him to grant you a happy life ; for even if I am 
 driven from your heart, into which I have crept by stealth, 
 still I shall ever be near you. Otherwise, of what value 
 would the sacred words be of this letter, my first and perhaps 
 my last entreaty ? If I should ever cease to think of you, to 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 241 
 
 love you whether in happiness or in woe, should I not deserve 
 my punishment ? " 
 
 ii. 
 
 " You are not going away ! And I am loved ! I, a poor, 
 insignificant creature ! My beloved Pauline, you do not your- 
 self know the power of the look I believe in, the look you 
 gave me to tell me that you had chosen me you so young 
 and lovely, with the world at your feet ! 
 
 " To enable you to understand my happiness, I should have 
 to give you a history of my life. If you had rejected me, all 
 was over for me. I have suffered too much. Yes, my love 
 for you, my comforting and stupendous love, was a last effort 
 of yearning for the happiness my soul strove to reach a soul 
 crushed by fruitless labor, consumed by fears that make me 
 doubt myself, eaten into by despair which has often urged me 
 to die. No one in the world can conceive of the terrors my 
 fateful imagination inflicts on me. It often bears me up to 
 the sky, and suddenly flings me to earth again from prodigious 
 heights. Deep-seated rushes of power, or some rare and 
 subtle instance of peculiar lucidity, assure me now and then 
 that I am capable of great things. Then I embrace the uni- 
 verse in my mind, I knead, shape it, inform it, I comprehend 
 it or fancy that I do ; then suddenly I awake alone, sunk 
 in blackest night, helpless and weak ; I forget the light I saw 
 but now, I find no succor ; above all, there is no heart where 
 I may take refuge. 
 
 " This distress of my inner life affects my physical existence. 
 The nature of my character gives me over to the raptures of 
 happiness as defenseless as when the fearful light of reflection 
 comes to analyze and demolish them. Gifted as I am with 
 the melancholy faculty of seeing obstacles and success with 
 equal clearness, according to the mood of the moment, I am 
 happy or miserable by turns. 
 
 "Thus, when first I met you, I felt the presence of an 
 angelic nature, I breathed an air that was sweet to my burn- 
 16 
 
242 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 ing breast, I heard in my soul the voice that never can be 
 false, telling me that here was happiness ; but perceiving all 
 tne barriers that divided us, I understood for the first time 
 what wordly prejudices were ; I understood the vastness of 
 their pettiness, and these difficulties terrified me more than 
 the prospect of happiness could delight me. At once I felt 
 the awful reaction which casts my expansive soul back on 
 itself; the smile you had brought to my lips suddenly turned 
 to a bitter grimace, and I could only strive to keep calm, 
 while my soul was boiling with the turmoil of contradictory 
 emotions. In short, I experienced that gnawing pang to 
 which twenty-three years of suppressed sighs and betrayed 
 affections have not inured me. 
 
 "Well, Pauline, the look by which you promised that I 
 should be happy suddenly warmed my vitality, and turned all 
 my sorrows into joy. Now, I could wish that I had suffered 
 more. My love is suddenly full-grown. My soul was a wide 
 territory that lacked the blessing of sunshine, and your eyes 
 have shed light on it. Beloved providence ! you will be all in 
 all to me, orphan as I am, without a relation but my uncle. 
 You will be my whole family, as you are my whole wealth, 
 nay, the whole world to me. Have you not bestowed on me 
 every gladness man can desire in that chaste lavish timid 
 glance ? 
 
 "You have given me incredible self-confidence and au- 
 dacity. I can dare all things now. I came back to Blois in 
 deep dejection. Five years of study in the heart of Paris had 
 made me look on the world as a prison. I had conceived of 
 vast schemes, and dared not speak of them. Fame seemed to 
 me a prize for charlatans, to which a really noble spirit should 
 not stoop. Thus, my ideas could only make their way by the 
 assistance of a man bold enough to mount the platform of the 
 press, and to harangue loudly the simpletons he scorns. This 
 kind of courage I have not. I ploughed my way on, crushed 
 by the verdict of the crowd, in despair at never making it 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 243 
 
 hear me. I was at once too humble and too lofty ! I swal- 
 lowed my thoughts as other men swallow humiliations. I 
 had even come to despise knowledge, blaming it for yielding 
 no real happiness. 
 
 " But since yesterday I am wholly changed. For your sake 
 I now covet every palm of glory, every triumph of success. 
 When I lay my head on your knees, I could wish to attract to 
 you the eyes of the whole world, just as 1 long to concentrate 
 in my love every idea, every power that is in me. The most 
 splendid celebrity is a possession that genius alone can 
 create. Well, I can, at my will, make for you a bed of laurels. 
 And if the silent ovation paid to science is not all you desire, 
 I have within me the sword of the Word ; I could run in the 
 path of honor and ambition where others only crawl. 
 
 "Command me, Pauline; I will be whatever you will. 
 My iron will can do anything I am loved ! Armed with 
 that thought, ought not a man to sweep everything before 
 him? The man who wants all can do all. If you are the 
 prize of success, I enter the lists to-morrow. To win such a 
 look as that you bestowed on me, I would leap the deepest 
 abyss. Through you I understand the fabulous achievements 
 of chivalry and the most fantastic tales of the 'Arabian 
 Nights.' I can believe now in the most fantastic excesses of 
 love, and in the success of a prisoner's wildest attempt to re- 
 cover his liberty. You have aroused the thousand virtues that 
 lay dormant within me patience, resignation, all the powers 
 of my heart, all the strength of my soul. I live by you and 
 heavenly thought ! for you. Everything now has a mean- 
 ing for me in life. I understand everything, even the vanities 
 of wealth. 
 
 "I find myself shedding all the pearls of the Indies at your 
 feet ; I fancy you reclining either on the rarest flowers or on 
 the softest tissues, and all the splendor of the world seems 
 hardly worthy of you, for whom I would I could command 
 the harmony and the light that are given out by the harps of 
 
244 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 seraphim and the stars of heaven ! Alas ! a poor, studious 
 poet, I offer you in words treasures I cannot bestow; I can 
 only give you my heart, in which you reign for ever. I have 
 nothing else. But are there no treasures in eternal gratitude, 
 in a smile whose expression will perpetually vary with peren- 
 nial happiness, under the constant eagerness of my devotion 
 to guess the wishes of your loving soul ? Has not one celestial 
 glance given us assurance of always understanding each other ? 
 
 "I have a prayer now to be said to God every night a 
 prayer full of you : ' Let my Pauline be happy ! ' And will 
 you fill all my days as you now fill my heart ? 
 
 " Farewell, I can but trust you to God alone?" 
 
 in. 
 
 " Pauline ! tell me if I can in any way have displeased you 
 yesterday? Throw off the pride of heart which inflicts on me 
 the secret tortures that can be caused by one we love. Scold 
 me if you will ! Since yesterday a vague, unutterable dread 
 of having offended you pours grief on the life of feeling which 
 you made so sweet and so rich. The lightest veil that comes 
 between two souls sometimes grows to be a brazen wall. 
 There are no venial crimes in love 1 If you have the very 
 spirit of that noble sentiment, you must feel all its pangs, and 
 we must be unceasingly careful not to fret each other by some 
 heedless word. 
 
 " No doubt, my beloved treasure, if there is any fault, it is 
 in me. I cannot pride myself in the belief that I understand 
 a woman's heart in all the expansion of its tenderness, all the 
 grace of its devotedness ; but I will always endeavor to appre- 
 ciate the value of what you vouchsafe to show me of the 
 secrets of yours. 
 
 " Speak to me ! Answer me soon ! The melancholy into 
 which we are thrown by the idea of a wrong done is frightful ; 
 it casts a shroud over life and doubts on everything. 
 
 " I spent this morning sitting on the bank by the sunken 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 245 
 
 road, gazing at the turrets of Villenoix, not daring to go to 
 our hedge. If you could imagine all I saw in my soul ! 
 What gloomy visions passed before me under the gray sky, 
 whose cold sheen added to my dreary mood ! I had dark 
 presentiments ! I was terrified lest I should fail to make you 
 happy. 
 
 "I must tell you everything, my dear Pauline. There are 
 moments when the spirit of vitality seems to abandon me. 
 I feel bereft of all strength. Everything is a burden to me ; 
 every fibre of my body is inert, every sense is flaccid, my 
 sight grows dim, my tongue is paralyzed, my imagination is 
 extinct, desire is dead nothing survives but my mere human 
 vitality. At such times, though you were in all the splendor 
 of your beauty, though you should lavish on me your subtlest 
 smiles and tenderest words, an evil influence would blind me 
 and distort the most ravishing melody into discordant sounds. 
 At those times as I believe some argumentative demon 
 stands before me, showing me the void beneath the most real 
 possessions. This pitiless demon mows down every flower 
 and mocks at the sweetest feelings, saying : Well and then ? ' 
 He mars the fairest work by showing me its skeleton, and 
 reveals the mechanism of things while hiding the beautiful 
 results. 
 
 "At those terrible moments, when the evil spirit takes 
 possession of me, when the divine light is darkened in my 
 soul without my knowing the cause, I sit in grief and anguish, 
 I wish myself deaf and dumb, I long for death to give me 
 rest. These hours of doubt and uneasiness are perhaps 
 inevitable ; at any rate, they teach me not to be proud after 
 the flights which have borne me to the skies where I have 
 gathered a full harvest of thoughts ; for it is always after some 
 long excursion in the vast fields of the intellect, and after the 
 most luminous speculations, that I tumble, broken and weary, 
 into this limbo. At such a moment, my angel, a wife would 
 doubt my love for her at any rate, she might. If she were 
 
246 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 capricious, ailing, or depressed, she would need the comforting 
 overflow of ingenuous affection, and I should not have a glance 
 to bestow on her. It is my shame, Pauline, to have to tell 
 you that at such times I could weep with you, but that noth- 
 ing could make me smile. 
 
 " A woman can always conceal her troubles ; for her child, 
 or for the man she loves, she can laugh in the midst of suffer- 
 ing. And could not I, for you, Pauline, imitate the exquisite 
 reserve of a woman ? Since yesterday I have doubted my own 
 power. If I could displease you once, if I failed once to 
 understand you, I dread lest I should often be carried out of 
 our happy circle by my evil demon. Supposing I were to 
 have many of those dreadful moods, or that my unbounded 
 love could not make up for the dark hours of my life that I 
 were doomed to remain such as I am ? Fatal doubts ! 
 
 " Power is indeed a dreadful possession if what I feel within 
 me is power. Pauline, go ! Leave me, desert me ! Sooner 
 would I endure every ill in life then endure the misery of 
 knowing that you were unhappy through me. 
 
 " But, perhaps, the demon has had such empire over me 
 only because I have had no gentle, white hands about me to 
 drive him off. No woman has ever shed on me the balm of 
 her affection ; and I know not whether, if love should wave 
 his pinions over my head in these moments of exhaustion, 
 new strength might not be given to my spirit. This terrible 
 melancholy is perhaps a result of my isolation, one of the 
 torments of a lonely soul which pays for its hidden treasures 
 with groans and unknown suffering. Those who enjoy little 
 shall suffer little ; immense happiness entails unutterable 
 anguish ! 
 
 " How terrible a doom ! If it be so, must we not shudder 
 for ourselves, we who are superhumanly happy ? If nature 
 sells us everything at its true value, into what pit are we not 
 fated to fall ? Ah ! the most fortunate lovers are those who 
 die together in the midst of their youth and love ! How sad 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 24? 
 
 it all is ! Does my soul foresee evil in the future ? I examine 
 myself, wondering whether there is anything in me that can 
 cause you a moment's anxiety. I love you too selfishly 
 perhaps ? I shall be laying on your beloved head a burden 
 heavy out of all proportion to the joy my love can bring to 
 your heart. If there dwells in me some inexorable power 
 which I must obey if I am compelled to curse when you 
 pray, if some dark thought coerces me when I would fain 
 kneel at your feet and play as a child, will you not be jealous 
 of that wayward and tricky spirit ? 
 
 "You understand, dearest heart, that what I dread is not 
 being wholly yours ; that I would gladly forego all the sceptres 
 and the palms of the world to enshrine you in one eternal 
 thought, to see a perfect life and an exquisite poem in our 
 rapturous love ; to throw my soul into it, drown my powers, 
 and wring from each hour the joys it has to give ! 
 
 " Ah, my memories of love are crowding back upon me, 
 the clouds of despair will lift. Farewell. I leave you now 
 to be more entirely yours. My beloved soul, I look for a 
 line, a word that may restore my peace of mind. Let me 
 know whether I really grieved my Pauline, or whether some 
 uncertain expression of her countenance misled me. I could 
 not bear to have to reproach myself after a whole life of 
 happiness, for ever having met you without a smile of love, a 
 honeyed word. To grieve the woman I love Pauline, I 
 should count it a crime. Tell me the truth, do not put me 
 off with some magnanimous subterfuge, but forgive me with- 
 out cruelty." 
 
 FRAGMENT. 
 
 " Is so perfect an attachment happiness ? Yes, for years of 
 suffering would not pay for an hour of love. 
 
 " Yesterday, your sadness, as I supposed, passed into my 
 soul as swiftly as a shadow falls. Were you sad or suffering? 
 I was wretched. Whence came my distress? Write to me 
 at once. Why did I not know it? We are not yet com- 
 
248 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 pletely one in mind. At two leagues' distance or at a thou- 
 sand I ought to feel your pains and sorrows. I shall not 
 believe that I love you till my life is so bound up with yours 
 that our life is one, till our hearts, our thoughts are one. I 
 must be where you are, see what you see, feel what you feel, 
 be with you in thought. Did not I know, at once, that your 
 carriage had been overthrown and you were bruised ? But on 
 that day I had been with you, I had never left you, I could 
 see you. When my uncle asked me what made me turn so 
 pale, I answered at once, 'Mademoiselle de Villenoix has 
 had a fall.' 
 
 "Why, then, yesterday, did I fail to read your soul? Did 
 you wish to hide the cause of your grief? However, I fancied 
 I could feel that you were arguing in my favor, though in 
 vain, with that dreadful Salomon, who freezes my blood. 
 That man is not of our heaven. 
 
 "Why do you insist that our happiness, which has no re- 
 semblance to that of other people, should conform to the laws 
 of the world ? And yet I delight too much in your bashful- 
 ness, your religion, your superstitions, not to obey your 
 lightest whim. What you do must be right ; nothing can be 
 purer than your mind, as nothing is lovelier than your face, 
 which reflects your divine soul. 
 
 " I shall wait for a letter before going along the lanes to 
 meet the sweet hour you grant me. Oh ! if you could know 
 how the sight of those turrets makes my heart throb when 
 I see them edged with light by the moon, our only confi- 
 dante." 
 
 rv. 
 
 'Farewell to glory, farewell to the future, to the life I had 
 dreamed of! Now, my well-beloved, my glory is that I am 
 yours, and worthy of you ; my future lies entirely in the hope 
 of seeing you ; and is not my life summed up in sitting at 
 your feet, in lying under your eyes, in drawing deep breaths 
 in the heaven you have created for me ? All my powers, all 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 249 
 
 my thoughts must be yours, since you could speak those thrill- 
 ing words : ' Your sufferings must be mine ! ' Should I not be 
 stealing some joys from love, some moments from happiness, 
 some experiences from your divine spirit, if I gave my hours 
 to study ideas to the world and poems to the poets. . Nay, 
 nay, my very life, I will treasure everything for you ; I will 
 bring to you every flower of my soul. Is there anything fine 
 enough, splendid enough, in all the resources of the world 
 or of intellect, to do honor to a heart so rich, so pure as 
 yours the heart to which I dare now and again to unite my 
 own? Yes, now and again, I dare believe that I can love as 
 much as you do. 
 
 "And yet, no ; you are the angel- woman ; there will always 
 be a greater charm in the expression of your feelings, more 
 harmony in your voice, more grace in your smile, more purity 
 in your looks than in mine. Let me feel that you are the 
 creature of a higher sphere than that in which I live; it 
 will be your pride to have descended from it j mine, that I 
 should have deserved you ; and you will not perhaps have 
 fallen too far by coming down to me in my poverty and 
 misery. Nay, if a woman's most glorious refuge is in a heart 
 that is wholly her own, you will always reign supreme in mine. 
 Not a thought, not a deed, shall ever pollute this heart, this 
 glorious sanctuary, so long as you vouchsafe to dwell in it 
 and will you not live in it for ever ? Did you not enchant 
 me by the words, 'Now and forever?' Nunc et semper! 
 And I have written these words of our ritual below your por- 
 trait words worthy of you, as they are of God. He is nunc 
 et semper, as my love is. 
 
 " Never, no, never, can I exhaust that which is immense, 
 infinite, unbounded and such is the feeling I have for you ; 
 I have imagined its immeasurable extent, as we measure space 
 by the dimensions of one of its parts. I have had ineffable 
 joys, whole hours filled with delicious meditation, as I have 
 recalled a single gesture or the tone of a word of yours. Thus 
 
250 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 there will be memories of which the magnitude will overpower 
 me, if the reminiscence of a sweet and friendly interview is 
 enough to make me shed tears of joy, to move and thrill my 
 soul, and to be an inexhaustible well-spring of gladness. Love 
 is the life of angels ! 
 
 " I can never, I believe, exhaust my joy in seeing you. This 
 rapture, the least fervid of any, though it never can last long 
 enough, has made me apprehend the eternal contemplation 
 in which seraphim and spirits abide in the presence of God ; 
 nothing can be more natural, if from His essence there ema- 
 nates a light as fruitful of new emotions as that of your eyes is, 
 of your lustrous brow, and your beautiful countenance the 
 image of your mind. Then the soul, our second self, whose 
 pure form can never perish, makes our love immortal. I 
 would there were some other language than that I use to ex- 
 press to you the ever-new ecstasy of my love ; but since there 
 is one of our own creating, since our looks are living speech, 
 must we not meet face to face to read in each other's eyes 
 those questions and answers from the heart, that are so living, 
 so penetrating, that one evening you could say to me : ' Be 
 silent ! ' when I was not speaking. Do you remember it, dear 
 life? 
 
 " When I am away from you in the darkness of absence, 
 am I not reduced to use human words, too feeble to express 
 heavenly feelings ? But words at any rate represent the marks 
 those feelings leave in my soul, just as the word GOD imper- 
 fectly sums up the notions we form of that mysterious First 
 Cause. But, in spite of the subtleties and infinite variety of 
 language, I have no words that can express to you the exquisite 
 union by which my life is merged into yours whenever I think 
 of you. 
 
 " And with what word can I conclude when I cease writing 
 to you, and yet do not part from you ? What can farewell 
 mean, unless death ? But is death a farewell ? Would not 
 my spirit be then more entirely one with yours? Ah ! my 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 251 
 
 first and last thought ; formerly I offered you my heart and 
 life on my knees ; now what fresh blossoms of feeling can I 
 discover in my soul that I have not already given you ? It 
 would be a gift of a part of what is wholly yours. 
 
 "Are you my future? How deeply I regret the past ! I 
 would I could have back all the years that are ours no more, 
 and give them to you to reign over, as you do over my present 
 life. What indeed was that time when I knew you not ? It 
 would be a void but that I was so wretched." 
 
 FRAGMENT. 
 
 "Beloved angel, how delightful last evening was! How 
 full of riches your dear heart is ! And is your love endless, 
 like mine ? Each word brought me fresh joy, and each look 
 made it deeper. The placid expression of your countenance 
 gave our thoughts a limitless horizon. It was all as infinite 
 as the sky, and as bland as its blue. The refinement of your 
 adored features repeated itself by some inexplicable magic in 
 your pretty movements and your least gestures. I knew that 
 you were all graciousness, all love, but I did not know how 
 variously graceful you could be. Everything combined to 
 urge me to tender solicitations, to make me ask the first kiss 
 that a woman always refuses, no doubt that it may be snatched 
 from her. You, dear soul of my life, will never guess before- 
 hand what you may grant to my love, and will yield, perhaps, 
 without knowing it ! You are utterly true, and obey your 
 heart alone. 
 
 " The sweet tones of your voice blended with the tender 
 harmonies that filled the quiet air, the cloudless sky. Not a 
 bird piped, not a breeze whispered solitude, you, and I. 
 The motionless leaves did not quiver in the beautiful sunset 
 hues which are both light and shadow. You felt that heavenly 
 poetry you who experienced so many various emotions, and 
 who so often raised your eyes to heaven to avoid answering 
 me. You who are proud and saucy, humble and masterful, 
 
252 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 who give yourself to me so completely in spirit and in thought, 
 and evade the most bashful caress. Dear witcheries of the 
 heart ! They ring in my ears ; they sound and play there 
 still. Sweet words but half spoken, like a child's speech, 
 neither promise nor confession, but allowing love to cherish 
 its fairest hopes without fear or torment ! How pure a mem- 
 ory for life ! What a free blossoming of all the flowers that 
 spring from the soul, which a mere trifle can blight, but 
 which, at that moment, everything warmed and expanded. 
 
 "And it will be always so, will it not, my beloved? As I 
 recall, this morning, the fresh and living delights revealed to 
 me in that hour, I am conscious of a joy which makes me con- 
 ceive of true love as an ocean of everlasting and ever-new 
 experiences, into which we may plunge with increasing de- 
 light. Every day, every word, every kiss, every glance, must 
 increase it by its tribute of past happiness. Hearts that are 
 large enough never to forget must live every moment in their 
 past joys as much as in those promised by the future. This 
 was my dream of old, and now it is no longer a dream ! 
 Have I not met on this earth with an angel who has made me 
 know all its happiness, as a reward, perhaps, for having en- 
 dured all its torments ? Angel of heaven, I salute thee with 
 a kiss. 
 
 " I shall send you this hymn of thanksgiving from my 
 heart, I owe it to you ; but it can hardly express my gratitude 
 or the morning worship my heart offers up day by day to her 
 who epitomized the whole gospel of the heart in this divine 
 
 word: 'Believe.' " 
 
 v. 
 
 " What ! no further difficulties, dearest heart ! We shall 
 be free to belong to each other every day, every hour, every 
 minute, and for ever ! We may be as happy for all the days 
 of our life as we now are by stealth, at rare intervals ! Our 
 pure, deep feelings will assume the expression of the thousand 
 fond acts I have dreamed of. For me your little foot will be 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 253 
 
 bared, you will be wholly mine ! Such happiness kills me; 
 it is too much for me. My head is too weak, it will burst 
 with the vehemence of my ideas. I cry and I laugh I am 
 possessed ! Every joy is as an arrow of flame ; it pierces and 
 burns me. In fancy you rise before my eyes, ravished and 
 dazzled by numberless and capricious images of delight. In 
 short, our whole future life is before me its torrents, its still 
 places, its joys ; it seethes, it flows on, it lies sleeping ; then 
 again it awakens, fresh and young. I see you and myself side 
 by side, walking with equal pace, living in the same thought; 
 each dwelling in the other's heart, understanding and re- 
 sponding to each other as an echo catches and repeats a sound 
 across wide space. 
 
 "Can life be long when it is thus consumed hour by 
 hour? Shall we not die in a first embrace? What if our 
 souls have already met in that sweet evening kiss which almost 
 overpowered us a feeling kiss, but the crown of my hopes, 
 the ineffectual expression of all the prayers I breathe while we 
 are apart, hidden in my soul like remorse? 
 
 "I, who would creep back and hide in the hedge only to 
 hear your footsteps as you went homeward I may henceforth 
 admire you at my leisure, see you busy, moving, smiling, 
 prattling ! An endless joy ! You cannot imagine all the 
 gladness it is to me to see you going and coming; only a 
 man can know that deep delight. Your least movement gives 
 me greater pleasure than a mother even can feel as she sees 
 her child asleep or at play. I love you with every kind of 
 love in one. The grace of your least gesture is always new 
 to me. I fancy I could spend whole nights breathing your 
 breath ; I would I could steal into every detail of your life, 
 be the very substance of your thoughts be your very self. 
 
 " Well, we shall, at any rate, never part again ! No human 
 alloy shall ever disturb our love, infinite in its phases and as 
 pure as all things are which are One our love, vast as the 
 sea, vast as the sky ! You are mine ! all mine ! I may look 
 
254 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 into the depths of your eyes to read the sweet soul that alter- 
 nately hides and shines there, to anticipate your wishes. 
 
 "My best-beloved, listen to some things I have never yet 
 dared to tell you, but which I may confess to you now. I 
 fek a certain bashfulness of soul which hindered the full ex- 
 pression of my feelings, so I strove to shroud them under the 
 garb of thoughts. But now I long to lay my heart bare before 
 you, to tell you of the ardor of my dreams, to reveal the boil- 
 ing demands of my senses, excited, no doubt, by the s.olitude 
 in which I have lived, perpetually fired by conceptions of 
 happiness, and aroused by you, so fair in form, so attractive 
 in manner. How can I express to you my thirst for the un- 
 known rapture of possessing an adored wife, a rapture to which 
 the union of two souls by love must give frenzied intensity. 
 Yes, my Pauline, I have sat for hours in a sort of stupor caused 
 by the violence of my passionate yearning, lost in the dream 
 of a caress as though in a bottomless abyss. At such moments 
 my whole vitality, my thoughts and powers, are merged and 
 united in what I must call desire, for lack of a word to express 
 that nameless delirium. 
 
 "And I may confess to you now that one day, when I 
 would not take your hand when you offered it so sweetly an 
 act of melancholy prudence that made you doubt my love I 
 was in one of those fits of madness when a man could commit 
 a murder to possess a woman. Yes, if I had felt the exquisite 
 pressure you offered me as vividly as I heard your voice in 
 my heart, I know not to what lengths my passion might not 
 have carried me. But I can be silent, and suffer a great deal. 
 Why speak of this anguish when my visions are to become 
 realities ? It will be in my power now to make life one long 
 love-making ! 
 
 " Dearest love, there is a certain effect of light on your 
 black hair which would rivet me for hours, my eyes full of 
 tears, as I gazed at your sweet person, were it not that you 
 turn away and say : ' For shame ; you make me quite shy ! ' 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 255 
 
 " To-morrow, then, our love is to be made known ! Oh, 
 Pauline ! the eyes of others, the curiosity of strangers, weigh 
 on my soul. Let us go to Villenoix, and stay there far from 
 every one. I should like no creature in human form to in- 
 trude into the sanctuary where you are to be mine ; I could 
 even wish that, when we are dead, it should cease to exist 
 should be destroyed. Yes ; I would fain hide from all nature 
 a happiness which we alone can understand, alone can feel, 
 which is so stupendous that I throw myself into it only to die 
 it is a gulf! 
 
 " Do not be alarmed by the tears that have wetted this 
 page ; they are tears of joy. My only blessing, we need 
 never part again ! " 
 
 In 1823 I traveled from Paris to Touraine by diligence. 
 At Mer we took up a passenger for Blois. As the guard put 
 him into that part of the coach where I had my seat, he said 
 jestingly 
 
 "You will not be crowded, Monsieur Lefebvre ! " 
 
 I was, in fact, alone. 
 
 On hearing this name, and seeing a white-haired old man, 
 who looked eighty at least, I naturally thought of Lambert's 
 uncle. After a few ingenious questions, I discovered that I 
 was not mistaken. The good man had been looking after his 
 vintage at Mer, and was returning to Blois. I then asked for 
 some news of my old "chum." At the first word, the old 
 priest's face, as grave and stern already as that of a soldier 
 who has gone through many hardships, became more sad and 
 dark ; the lines on his forehead were slightly knit, he set his 
 lips, and said, with a suspicious glance 
 
 " Then you have never seen him since you left the Col- 
 lege?" 
 
 " Indeed, I have not," said I. " But we are equally to 
 blame for our forgetfulness. Young men, as you know, lead 
 such an adventurous and storm-tossed life when they leave 
 
256 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 their school-forms, that it is only by meeting that they can be 
 sure of an enduring affection. However, a reminiscence of 
 youth sometimes comes as a reminder, and it is impossible 
 to forget entirely, especially when two lads have been such 
 friends as we were. We went by the name of the Poet-and- 
 Pythagoras." 
 
 I told him my name ; when he heard it, the worthy man 
 grew gloomier than ever. 
 
 ''Then you have not heard his story?" said he. "My 
 poor nephew was to be married to the richest heiress in Blois ; 
 but the day before his wedding he went mad." 
 
 " Lambert ! Mad ! " cried I in dismay. " But from what 
 cause ? He had the finest memory, the most strongly consti- 
 tuted brain, the soundest judgment, I ever met with. Really 
 a great genius with too great a passion for mysticism perhaps ; 
 but the kindest heart in the world. Something most extraor- 
 dinary must have happened ? " 
 
 " I see you knew him well," said the priest. 
 
 From Mer, till we reached Blois, we talked only of my poor 
 friend, with long digressions, by which I learned the facts I 
 have already related in the order of their interest. I confessed 
 to his uncle the character of our studies and of his nephew's 
 predominant ideas ; then the old man told me of the events 
 that had come into Lambert's life since our parting. From 
 Monsieur Lefebvre's account, Lambert had betrayed symp- 
 toms of madness before the day of marriage ; but they were 
 such as are common to men who love passionately, and seemed 
 to me less startling when I knew how vehement his love had 
 been and when I saw Mademoiselle de Villenoix. In the 
 country, where ideas are scarce, a man overflowing with 
 original thought and devoted to a system, as Louis was, might 
 well be regarded as eccentric, to say the least. His language 
 would, no doubt, seem the stranger because he so rarely spoke. 
 He would say: "That man does not dwell in my heaven," 
 where any one else would have said : " We are not made on 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 257 
 
 the same pattern." Every clever man has his own quirks of 
 speech. The broader his genius, the more conspicuous are 
 the singularities which constitute the various degrees of 
 eccentricity. In the country an eccentric man is at once set 
 down as half-mad. 
 
 Hence Monsieur Lefebvre's first sentences left me doubtful 
 of my school-mate's insanity. I listened to the old man, but 
 I criticised his statements. 
 
 The most serious symptom occurred a day or two before 
 that fixed for the marriage. Louis had had some well-marked 
 attacks of catalepsy. He had once remained motionless for 
 fifty-nine hours, his eyes staring, neither speaking nor eating ; 
 a purely nervous affection, to which persons under the influ- 
 ence of violent passion are liable ; a rare malady, but perfectly 
 well known to the medical faculty. What was really extraor- 
 dinary was that Louis should not have had several previous 
 attacks, since his habits of rapt thought and the character of 
 his mind would predispose him to them. But his tempera- 
 ment, physical and mental, was so admirably balanced, that it 
 had, no doubt, been able to resist the demands on his strength. 
 The excitement to which he had been wound up by the antici- 
 pation of acute physical enjoyment, enhanced by a chaste life 
 and a highly strung soul, had no doubt led to these attacks, 
 of which the results are as little known as the cause. 
 
 The letters that have by chance escaped destruction show 
 very plainly a transition from pure idealism to the most 
 intense sensualism. 
 
 Time was when Lambert and I had admired his phenomenon 
 of the human mind, in which he saw the fortuitous separation 
 of our two natures, and the signs of a total removal of the 
 inner man, using its unknown faculties under the operation 
 of an unknown cause. This disorder, a mystery as deep as 
 that of sleep, was connected with the scheme of evidence 
 which Lambert had set forth in his "Treatise on the Will." 
 And when Monsieur Lefebvre spoke to me of Louis' first 
 17 
 
258 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 attack, I suddenly remembered a conversation we had had on 
 the subject after reading a medical book. 
 
 " Deep meditation and rapt ecstasy are perhaps the unde- 
 veloped germs of catalepsy," he had said in conclusion of the 
 matter. 
 
 On the occasion when he so concisely formulated this idea, 
 he had been trying to link mental phenomena together by a 
 series of results, following the processes of the intellect step 
 by step, from their beginnings as those simple, purely animal 
 impulses of instinct, which are all-sufficient to many human 
 beings, particularly to those men whose energies are wholly 
 spent in mere mechanical labor ; then, going on to the aggre- 
 gation of ideas and rising to comparison, reflection, medita- 
 tion, and finally ecstasy and catalepsy. Lambert, of course, 
 in the artlessness of youth, imagined that he had laid down 
 the lines of a great work when he thus built up a scale of the 
 various degrees of man's mental powers. 
 
 I remember that, by one of those chances which seem like 
 predestination, we got hold of a great Martyrology, in which 
 the most curious narratives are given of the total abeyance of 
 physical life which a man can attain to under the paroxysms 
 of the inner life. By reflecting on the effects of fanaticism, 
 Lambert was led to believe that the collected ideas to which 
 we give the name of feelings may very possibly be the material 
 outcome of some fluid which is generated in all men, more or 
 less abundantly, according to the way in which their organs 
 absorb, from the medium in which they live, the elementary 
 atoms that produce it. We went crazy over catalepsy; and 
 with the eagerness that boys throw into every pursuit, we 
 endeavored to endure pain by thinking of something else. 
 We exhausted ourselves by making experiments not unlike 
 those of the epileptic fanatics of the last century, a religious 
 mania which will some day be of service to the science of 
 humanity. I would stand on Lambert's chest, remaining 
 there several minutes without giving him the slightest pain ; 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 259 
 
 but notwithstanding these crazy attempts, we did not achieve 
 an attack of catalepsy. 
 
 This digression seemed necessary to account for my first 
 doubts, which were, however, completely dispelled by Mon- 
 sieur Lefebvre. 
 
 " When this attack had passed off," said he, " my nephew 
 sank into a state of extreme terror, a dejection that nothing 
 could overcome. He'thought himself unfit for marriage. I 
 watched him with the care of a mother for her child, and found 
 him preparing to perform on himself the operation to which 
 Origen* believed he owed his talents. I at once carried him 
 off to Paris, and placed him under the care of Monsieur 
 Esquirol. All through our journey Louis sat sunk in almost 
 unbroken torpor, and did not recognize me. The Paris 
 physicians pronounced him incurable, and unanimously ad- 
 vised his being left in perfect solitude, with nothing to break 
 the silence that was needful for his very improbable recovery, 
 and that he should live always in a cool room with a subdued 
 light. Mademoiselle de Villenoix, whom I had been careful 
 not to apprise of Louis' state," he went on, blinking his eyes, 
 "but who was supposed to have broken off the match, went 
 to Paris and heard what the doctors had pronounced. She 
 immediately begged to see my nephew, who hardly recognized 
 her ; then, like the noble soul she is, she insisted on devoting 
 herself to giving him such care as might tend to his recovery. 
 She would have been obliged to do so if he had been her 
 husband, she said, and could she do less for him as her lover ? 
 She removed Louis to Villenoix, where they have been living 
 for two years." 
 
 So, instead of continuing my journey, I stopped at Blois to 
 see Louis. Good Monsieur Lefebvre would not hear of my 
 lodging anywhere but at his house, where he showed me his 
 nephew's room, with the books and all else that had belonged 
 
 *An early Christian Father (i 86 A. n.) His life was very ascetic ; he 
 mutilated himself as he supposed is recommended in Matthew xix. 12. 
 
260 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 to him. At every turn the old man could not suppress some 
 mournful exclamation, showing what hopes Louis' precocious 
 genius had raised, and the terrible grief into which this irre- 
 parable ruin had plunged him. 
 
 "That young fellow knew everything, my dear sir ! " said 
 he, laying on the table a volume containing Spinoza's works. 
 " How could so well organized a brain go astray? " 
 
 "Indeed, monsieur," said I, "wasiPnot perhaps the result 
 of its being so highly organized? If he really is a victim to 
 the malady as yet unstudied in all its aspects, which is known 
 simply as madness, I am inclined to attribute it to his passion. 
 His studies and his mode of life had strung his powers and 
 faculties to a degree of energy beyond which the least further 
 strain was too much for nature ; Love was enough to crack 
 them, or to raise them to a new form of expression which we 
 are maligning perhaps, by ticketing it without due knowledge. 
 In fact, he may perhaps have regarded the joys of marriage as 
 an obstacle to the perfection of his inner man and his flight 
 toward spiritual spheres." 
 
 " My dear sir," said the old man, after listening to me with 
 attention, " your reasoning is, no doubt, very sound ; but even 
 if I could follow it, would this melancholy logic comfort me 
 for the loss of my nephew? " 
 
 Lambert's uncle was one of those men who live only by 
 their affections. 
 
 I went to Villenoix on the following day. The kind old 
 man accompanied me to the gates of Blois. When we were 
 out on the road to Villenoix, he stopped me and said 
 
 "As you may suppose, I do not go there. But do not forget 
 what I have said ; and in Mademoiselle de Villenoix' s presence 
 affect not to perceive that Louis is mad." 
 
 He remained standing on the spot where I left him, watch- 
 ing me till I was out of sight. 
 
 I made my way to the Castle of Villenoix, not without deep 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 261 
 
 agitation. My thoughts were many at each step on this road, 
 which Louis had so often trodden with a heart full of hopes, 
 a soul spurred on by the myriad darts of love. The shrubs, 
 the trees, the turns of the winding road where little gullies 
 broke the banks on each side, were to me full of strange in- 
 terest. I tried to enter into the impressions and thoughts of 
 my unhappy friend. Those evening meetings on the edge of 
 the coombe, where his lady-love had been wont to find him, 
 had, no doubt, initiated Mademoiselle de Villenoix into the 
 secrets of that vast and lofty spirit, as I had learned them all 
 some years before. 
 
 But the thing that most occupied my mind and gave to my 
 pilgrimage the interest of intense curiosity, in addition to the al- 
 most pious feelings that led me onward, was that glorious faith 
 of Mademoiselle de Villenoix's which the good priest had told 
 me of. Had she in the course of time been infected with her 
 lover's madness, or had she so completely entered into his soul 
 that she could understand all its thoughts, even the most per- 
 plexed ? I lost myself in the wonderful problem of feeling, 
 passing the highest inspirations of passion and the most beau- 
 tiful instances of self-sacrifice. That one should die for the 
 other is an almost vulgar form of devotion. To live faithful 
 to one love is a form of heroism that immortalized Made- 
 moiselle Dupuis. When the great Napoleon and Lord Byron 
 could find successors in the hearts of women they had loved, we 
 may well admire Bolingbroke's widow; but Mademoiselle Du- 
 puis could feed on the memories of many years of happiness, 
 whereas Mademoiselle de Villenoix, having known nothing of 
 love but its first excitement, seemed to me to typify love in its 
 highest expression. If she were herself almost crazy, it was 
 splendid ; but if she had understood and entered into his 
 madness, she combined with the beauty of a noble heart a 
 crowning effort of passion worthy to be studied and honored. 
 
 When I saw the tall turrets of the castle, remembering how 
 often poor Lambert must have thrilled at the sight of them, 
 
262 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 my heart beat anxiously. As I recalled the events of our boy- 
 hood, I was almost a sharer in his present life and situation. 
 At last I reached a wide, deserted courtyard, and I went into 
 the hall of the house without meeting a soul. There the sound 
 of my steps brought out an old woman, to whom I gave a 
 letter written to Mademoiselle de Villenoix by Monsieur Le- 
 febvre. In a few minutes this woman returned to bid me 
 enter, and led me to a low room, floored with black-and-white 
 marble ; the Venetian shutters were closed, and at the end of 
 the room I dimly saw Louis Lambert. 
 
 " Be seated, monsieur," said a gentle voice that went to my 
 heart. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Villenoix was at my side before I was 
 aware of her presence, and noiselessly brought me a chair, 
 which at first I would not accept. It was so dark that at first 
 I saw Mademoiselle de Villenoix and Lambert only as two 
 black masses perceived against the gloomy background. I 
 presently sat down under the influence of the feeling that 
 comes over us, almost in spite of ourselves, under the ob- 
 scure vault of a church. My eyes, full of the bright sunshine, 
 accustomed themselves gradually to this artificial night. 
 
 " Monsieur is your old school-friend," she said to Louis, in 
 low tones. 
 
 He made no reply. At last I could see him, and it was one 
 of those spectacles that are stamped on the memory for ever. 
 He was standing, his elbows resting on the cornice of the low 
 wainscot, which threw his body forward, so that it seemed 
 bowed under the weight of his bent head. His hair was as 
 long as a woman's, falling over his shoulders and hanging 
 about his face, giving him a resemblance to the busts of the 
 great men of the time of Louis XIV. His face was perfectly 
 white. He constantly rubbed one leg against the other, with 
 a mechanical action that nothing could have checked, and the 
 incessant friction of the bones made a doleful sound. Near 
 him was a bed of moss on boards. 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 263 
 
 "He very rarely lies down," said Mademoiselle de Ville- 
 noix; " but whenever he does, he sleeps for several days." 
 
 Louis stood, as I beheld him, day and night with a fixed 
 gaze, never winking his eyelids as we do. Having asked 
 Mademoiselle de Villenoix whether a little more light would 
 hurt our friend, on her reply I opened the shutters a little way, 
 and could see the expression of Lambert's countenance. Alas ! 
 he was wrinkled, white-headed, his eyes dull and lifeless as 
 those of the blind. His features seemed all drawn upward 
 to the top of his head. I made several attempts to talk to 
 him, but he did not hear me. He was a wreck snatched from 
 the grave, a conquest of life from death or of death from 
 life ! 
 
 I stayed for about an hour, sunk in unaccountable dreams 
 and lost in painful thought. I listened to Mademoiselle de 
 Villenoix, who told me every detail of this life that of a 
 child in arms. 
 
 Suddenly Louis ceased rubbing his legs together, and said 
 slowly 
 
 "The angels are white." 
 
 I cannot express the effect produced upon me by this ut- 
 terance, by the sound of the voice I had loved, whose accents, 
 so painfully expected, had seemed to be lost for ever. My 
 eyes filled with tears in spite of every effort. An involuntary 
 instinct warned me, making me doubt whether Louis had 
 really lost his reason. I was indeed well assured that he 
 neither saw nor heard me ; but the sweetness of his tone, 
 which seemed to reveal heavenly happiness, gave his speech 
 an amazing effect. These words, the incomplete revelation of 
 an unknown world, rang in our souls like some glorious distant 
 bells in the depth of a dark night. I was no longer surprised 
 that Mademoiselle de Villenoix considered Lambert to be 
 perfectly sane. The life of the soul had perhaps subdued 
 that of the body. His faithful companion had no doubt 
 as I had at that moment intuitions of that melodious and 
 
264 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 beautiful existence to which we give the name of Heaven in 
 its highest meaning. 
 
 This woman, this angel, was always with him, seated at her 
 embroidery frame; and each time she drew the needle out 
 she gazed at Lambert with sad and tender feeling. Unable 
 to endure this terrible sight for I could not, like Mademoi- 
 selle de Villenoix, read all his secrets I went out, and she 
 came with me to walk for a few minutes and talk of herself 
 and of Lambert. 
 
 "Louis must, no doubt, appear to be mad," said she. 
 " But he is not, if the term mad ought only to be used in 
 speaking of those whose brain is for some unknown cause dis- 
 eased, and who can show no reason in their actions. Every- 
 thing in my husband is perfectly balanced. Though he did 
 not actively recognize you, it is not that he did not see you. 
 He has succeeded in detaching himself from his body, and 
 discerns us under some other aspect what that is, I know 
 not. When he speaks, he utters wondrous things. Only it 
 often happens that he concludes in speech an idea that had its 
 beginning in his mind ; or he may begin a sentence and finish 
 it in thought. To other men he seems insane ; to me, living 
 as I do in his mind, his ideas are quite lucid. I follow the 
 road his spirit travels ; and though I do not know every turn- 
 ing, I can reach the goal with him. 
 
 "Which of us has not often known what it is to think of 
 some futile thing and be led on to some serious reflection 
 through the ideas or memories it brings in its train ? Not 
 infrequently, after speaking about some trifle, the simple 
 starting-point of a rapid train of reflections, a thinker may 
 forget or be silent as to the abstract connection of ideas lead- 
 ing to his conclusion, and speak again only to utter the last 
 link in the chain of his meditations. 
 
 " Inferior minds, to whom this swift mental vision is a 
 thing unknown, who are ignorant of the spirit's inner work- 
 ings, laugh at the dreamer ; and if he is subject to this kind 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 265 
 
 of obliviousness, regard him as a madman. Louis is always 
 in this state ; he soars perpetually through the spaces of 
 thought, traversing them with the swiftness of a swallow ; I 
 can follow him in his flight. This is the whole history of his 
 madness. Some day, perhaps, Louis will come back to the 
 life in which we vegetate ; but if he breathes the air of heaven 
 before the time when we may be permitted to do so, why 
 should we desire to have him down among us? I am content 
 to hear his heart beat, and all my happiness is to be with 
 him. Is he not wholly mine ? In three years, twice at inter- 
 vals he was himself for a few days ; once in Switzerland, 
 where we went, and once in an island off the wilds of Brit- 
 tany, where he took some sea-baths. I have twice been 
 very happy ! I can live on memory." 
 
 " But do you write down the things he says? " I asked. 
 
 "Why should I?" said she. 
 
 I was silent ; human knowledge was indeed as nothing in 
 this woman's eyes. 
 
 "At those times, when he talked a little," she added, " I 
 think I have recorded some of his phrases, but I left it off; 
 I did not understand him then." 
 
 I asked her for them by a look ; she understood me. This 
 is what I have been able to preserve from oblivion : 
 
 i. 
 
 Everything here on earth is produced by an ethereal sub- 
 stance which is the common element of various phenomena, 
 known inaccurately as electricity, heat, light, the galvanic 
 fluid, the magnetic fluid, and so forth. The universal distri- 
 bution of this substance, under various forms, constitutes what 
 is commonly known as Matter. 
 
 n. 
 
 The brain is the alembic to which the Animal conveys what 
 each of its organizations, in proportion to the strength of that 
 
266 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 vessel, can absorb of that Substance, which returns it trans- 
 formed into Will. 
 
 The Will is a fluid inherent in every creature endowed with 
 motion. Hence the innumerable forms assumed by the 
 Animal, the results of its combinations with that Substance. 
 The Animal's instincts are the product of the coercion of the 
 environment in which it develops. Hence its variety. 
 
 in. 
 
 In Man the Will becomes a power peculiar to him, and 
 exceeding in intensity that of any other species. 
 
 IV. 
 
 By constant assimilation, the Will depends on the Substance 
 it meets with again and again in all its transmutations, per- 
 vading them by Thought, which is a product peculiar to the 
 human Will, in combination with the modifications of that 
 
 Substance. 
 
 v. 
 
 The innumerable forms assumed by Thought are the result 
 of the greater or less perfection of the human mechanism. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Will acts through organs commonly called the five 
 senses, which, in fact, are but one the faculty of Sight. 
 Feeling and tasting, hearing and smelling, are Sight modified 
 to the transformations of the Substance which Man can absorb 
 in two conditions : untransformed and transformed. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Everything of which the form comes within the cognizance 
 of the one sense of Sight may be reduced to certain simple 
 bodies of which the elements exist in the air, the light, or in 
 the elements of air and light. Sound is a condition of the 
 air; colors are all conditions of light ; every smell is a combi- 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 267 
 
 nation of air and light ; hence the four aspects of Matter with 
 regard to Man sound, color, smell, and shape have the 
 same origin, for the day is not far off when the relationship 
 of the phenomena of air and light will be made clear. 
 
 Thought, which is allied to Light, is expressed in words 
 which depend on sound. To man, then, everything is derived 
 from the Substance, whose transformations vary only through 
 Number a certain quantitative dissimilarity, the proportions 
 resulting in the individuals or objects of what are classed as 
 Kingdoms. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 When the Substance is absorbed in sufficient number (or 
 quantity) it makes of man an immensely powerful mechanism, 
 in direct communication with the very element of the Sub- 
 stance, and acting on organic nature in the same way as a 
 large stream when it absorbs the smaller brooks. Volition 
 sets this force in motion independently of the Mind. By its 
 concentration it acquires some of the qualities of the Substance, 
 such as the swiftness of light, the penetrating power of elec- 
 tricity, and the faculty of saturating a body; to which must 
 be added that it apprehends what it can do. 
 
 Still, there is in man a primordial and overruling phenomenon 
 which defies analysis. Man may be dissected completely; the 
 elements of Will and Mind may perhaps be found ; but there 
 will still remain beyond apprehension the x against which I 
 once used to struggle. That .* is the Word, the Logos, whose 
 communication burns and consumes those who are not pre- 
 pared to receive it. The Word is forever generating the 
 Substance. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Rage, like all our vehement demonstrations, is a current of 
 the human force that acts electrically ; its turmoil when liber- 
 ated acts on persons who are present even though they be 
 neither its cause nor its object. Are there not certain men 
 
268 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 who by a discharge of Volition can sublimate the essence of 
 the feelings of the masses? 
 
 x. 
 
 Fanaticism and all emotions are living forces. These forces 
 in some beings become rivers that gather in and sweep away 
 everything. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Though Space is, certain faculties have the power of traver- 
 sing it with such rapidity that it is as though it existed not. 
 From your own bed to the frontiers of the universe there are 
 but two steps : Will and Faith. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Facts are nothing j they do not subsist ; all that lives of us 
 is the Idea. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The realm of Ideas is divided into three spheres: that of 
 Instinct, that of Abstractions, that of Specialism. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The greater part, the weaker part of visible humanity, dwells 
 in the Sphere of Instinct. The INSTINCTIVES are born, labor, 
 and die without rising to the second degree of human intelli- 
 gence, namely, Abstraction. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Society begins in the sphere of Abstraction. If Abstrac- 
 tion, as compared with Instinct, is an almost divine power, it 
 is nevertheless incredibly weak as compared with the gift of 
 Specialism, which is the formula of God. Abstraction com- 
 prises all nature in a germ, more virtually than a seed contains 
 the whole system of a plant and its fruit. From Abstraction 
 are derived laws, arts, social ideas, and interests. It is the 
 glory and the scourge of the earth : its glory because it has 
 created social life ; its scourge because it allows man to evade 
 entering into Specialism, which is one of the paths to the 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 269 
 
 Infinite. Man measures everything by Abstractions: Good 
 and Evil, Virtue and Crime. Its formula of equity is a pair 
 of scales, its justice is blind. God's justice sees: there is all 
 the difference. 
 
 There must be intermediate Beings, then, dividing the 
 sphere of Instinct from the sphere of Abstractions, in whom 
 the two elements mingle in an infinite variety of proportions. 
 Some have more of one, some more of the other. And there 
 are also some in which the two powers neutralize each other 
 by equality of effect. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Specialism consists in seeing the things of the material 
 universe and the things of the spirtual universe in all their 
 ramifications, original and causative. The greatest human 
 geniuses are those who started from the darkness of Abstrac- 
 tion to attain to the light of Specialism. (Specialism, species, 
 sight; speculation, or seeing everything, and all at once; 
 speculum, a mirror or means of apprehending a thing by seeing 
 the whole of it.) Jesus had the gift of Specialism; He saw 
 each fact in its root and in its results, in the past where it had 
 its rise, and in the future where it would grow and spread ; 
 His sight pierced into the understanding of others. The per- 
 fection of the inner eye gives rise to the gift of Specialism. 
 Specialism brings with it Intuition. Intuition is one of the 
 faculties of the Inner Man, of which Specialism is an attribute. 
 Intuition acts by an imperceptible sensation of which he who 
 obeys it is not conscious : for instance, Napoleon instinctively 
 moving from a spot struck immediately afterward by a cannon 
 ball. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Between the sphere of Abstraction and that of Specialism, 
 as between those of Abstraction and Instinct, there are beings 
 in whom the attributes of both combine and produce a mix- 
 ture ; these are men of genius. 
 
270 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Specialism is necessarily the most perfect expression of man, 
 and he is the link binding the visible world to the higher 
 worlds ; he acts, sees, and feels by his inner powers. The 
 man of Abstraction thinks. The man of Instinct acts. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Hence man has three degrees. That of Instinct, below the 
 average ; that of Abstraction, the general average ; that of 
 Specialism, above the average. Specialism opens to man his 
 true career ; the Infinite dawns on him ; he sees what his 
 destiny must be. 
 
 xx. 
 
 There are three worlds the Natural, the Spiritual, and the 
 Divine. Humanity passes through the Natural world, which 
 is not fixed either in its essence or its faculties. The Spiritual 
 world is fixed in its essence and unfixed in its faculties. The 
 Divine world is fixed in its faculties and its essence both. 
 Hence there is necessarily a Material worship, a Spiritual 
 worship, and a Divine worship : three forms expressed in 
 action, speech, and prayer, or, in other words, in deed, appre- 
 hension, and love. Instinct demands deed ; Abstraction is 
 concerned with Ideas ; Specialism sees the end, it aspires to 
 God with presentiment or contemplation. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Hence, perhaps, some day the converse of Et Verbum caro 
 factum est will become the epitome of a new Gospel, which 
 will proclaim that the Flesh shall be made the Word and be- 
 come the Utterance of God. 
 
 xxn. 
 
 The Resurrection is the work of the Wind of Heaven 
 sweeping over the worlds. The angel borne on the Wind 
 does not say: "Arise, ye dead;" he says, "Arise, ye who 
 live ! " 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 271 
 
 Such are the meditations which I have with great difficulty 
 cast in a form adapted to our understanding. There are 
 some others which Pauline remembered more exactly, where- 
 fore I know not, and which I wrote from her dictation ; but 
 they drive the mind to despair when, knowing in what an 
 intellect they originated, we strive to understand them. I 
 will quote a few of them to complete my study of this figure ; 
 partly, too, perhaps, because, in these last aphorisms, Lam- 
 bert's formulas seem to include a larger universe than the 
 former set, which would apply only to zoological evolution. 
 Still, there is a relation between the two fragments, evident 
 to those persons though they be but few who love to dive 
 into such intellectual deeps : 
 
 I. 
 
 Everything on earth exists solely by motion and number. 
 
 n. 
 
 Motion is, so to speak, number in action. 
 
 in. 
 
 Motion is the product of a force generated by the Word 
 and by Resistance, which is Matter. But for Resistance, 
 Motion would have had no results ; its action would have 
 been infinite. Newton's gravitation is not a law, but an 
 effect of the general law of universal motion. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Motion, acting in proportion to Resistance, produces a 
 result which is Life. As soon as one or the other is the 
 stronger, Life ceases. 
 
 v. 
 
 No portion of Motion is wasted ; it always produces num- 
 ber; still, it can be neutralized by disproportionate resistance, 
 as in minerals. 
 
272 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Number, which produces variety of all kinds, also gives rise 
 to Harmony, which, in the highest meaning of the word, is 
 the relation of parts to the whole. 
 
 VII. 
 
 But for Motion, everything would be one and the same. 
 Its products, identical in their essence, differ only by Number, 
 which gives rise to faculties. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Man looks to faculties ; angels look to the Essence. 
 
 IX. 
 
 By giving his body up to elemental action, man can achieve 
 an inner union with the Light. 
 
 x. 
 
 Number is intellectual evidence belonging to man alone; 
 by it he acquires knowledge of the Word. 
 
 XI. 
 
 There is a Number beyond which the impure cannot pass : 
 the Number which is the limit of creation. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The unit was the starting-point of every product: com- 
 pounds are derived from it, but the end must be identical with 
 the beginning. Hence this Spiritual formula : the compound 
 Unit, the variable Unit, the fixed Unit. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The Universe is the Unit in variety. Motion is the means ; 
 Number is the result. The end is the return of all things to 
 the Unit, which is God. 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 273 
 
 XIV. 
 Three and Seven are the two chief Spiritual numbers. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Three is the formula of created worlds. It is the Spiritual 
 Sign of the creation, as it is the Material Sign of dimension. 
 In fact, God has worked by curved lines only : the Straight 
 Line is an attribute of the Infinite ; and man, who has the pre- 
 sentiment of the Infinite, reproduces it in his works. Two is 
 the number of generation. Three is the number of Life which 
 includes generation and offspring. Add the sum of four, and 
 you have Seven, the formula of Heaven. Above all is God ; 
 He is the Unit. 
 
 After going in to see Louis once more, I took leave of his 
 wife and went home, lost in ideas so adverse to social life 
 that, in spite of a promise to return to Villenoix, I did 
 not go. 
 
 The sight of Louis had had some mysteriously sinister influ- 
 ence over me. I was afraid to place myself again in that 
 heavy atmosphere, where ecstasy was contagious. Any man 
 would have felt, as I did, a longing to throw himself into the 
 infinite, just as one soldier after another killed himself in a 
 certain sentry-box where one had committed suicide in the 
 camp at Boulogne. It is a known fact that Napoleon was 
 obliged to have the hut burnt which had harbored an idea 
 that had become a mortal infection. 
 
 Louis' room had, perhaps, the same fatal effect as that 
 sentry-box. 
 
 These two facts would then be additional evidence in favor 
 of this theory of the transfusion of Will. I was conscious of 
 strange disturbances, transcending the most fantastic results 
 of taking tea, coffee, or opium, of dreams or of fever mys- 
 terious agents, whose terrible action often sets our brains on 
 fire. 
 
 18 
 
274 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 I ought, perhaps, to have made a separate book of these 
 fragments of thought, intelligible only to certain spirits who 
 have been accustomed to lean over the edge of abysses in the 
 hope of seeing to the bottom. The life of that mighty brain, 
 which split up on every side perhaps, like a too vast empire, 
 would have been set forth in the narrative of this man's 
 visions a being incomplete for lack of force or of weakness ; 
 but I preferred to give an account of my own impressions 
 rather than to compose a more or less poetical romance. 
 
 Louis Lambert died at the age of twenty-eight, September 
 25, 1824, in his true love's arms. He was buried by her de- 
 sire in an island in the park at Villenoix. His tombstone is a 
 plain stone cross, without name or date. Like a flower that 
 has blossomed on the margin of a precipice, and drops into it, 
 its colors and fragrance all unknown, it was fitting that he, 
 too, should fall. Like many another misprized soul, he had 
 often yearned to dive haughtily into the void, and abandon 
 there the secrets of his own life. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Villenoix would, however, have been quite 
 justified in recording his name on that cross with her own. 
 Since her partner's death, reunion has been her constant, 
 hourly hope. But the vanities of woe are foreign to faithful 
 souls. 
 
 Villenoix is falling into ruin. She no longer resides there ; 
 to the end, no doubt, that she may the better picture herself 
 there as she used to be. She had said long ago 
 
 " His heart was mine ; his genius is with God." 
 
 CHATEAU DE SACHE, June-July, 1832. 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL 
 
 (Le Bal de Sceaux). 
 To Henri de Balzac, his brother Honort. 
 
 THE Comte de Fontaine, head of one of the oldest families 
 in Poitou, had served the Bourbon cause with intelligence 
 and bravery during the war in La Vendee against the Re- 
 public. After having escaped all the dangers which threat- 
 ened the Royalist leaders during this stormy period of modern 
 history, he was wont to say in jest, "I am one of the men 
 who gave themselves to be killed on the steps of the throne." 
 And the pleasantry had some truth in it, being spoken by a 
 man left for dead at the bloody battle of Les Quatre Chemins. 
 Though ruined by confiscation, the stanch Vendeen steadily 
 refused the lucrative posts offered him by the Emperor Napo- 
 leon. Immovable in his aristocratic faith, he had blindly 
 obeyed its precepts when he thought it fitting to choose a 
 companion for life. In spite of the blandishments of a rich 
 but revolutionary parvenu, who valued the alliance at a high 
 figure, he married Mademoiselle de Kergarouet, without a 
 fortune, but belonging to one of the oldest families in Brittany. 
 
 When the second revolution burst on Monsieur de Fontaine 
 he was encumbered with a large family. Though it was no 
 part of the noble gentleman's views to solicit favors, he 
 yielded to his wife's wish, left his country estate, of which the 
 income barely sufficed to maintain his children, and came to 
 Paris. Saddened by seeing the greediness of his former com- 
 rades in the rush for places and dignities under the new Con- 
 stitution, he was about to return to his property when he 
 received a ministerial dispatch, in which a well-known mag- 
 nate announced to him his nomination as marechal dc camp, 
 
 (275) 
 
276 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 or brigadier-general, under a rule which allowed the officers 
 of the Catholic armies to count the twenty submerged years of 
 Louis XVIII. 's reign as years of service. Some days later he 
 further received, without any solicitation, cx-officio, the crosses 
 of the Legion of Honor and of Saint-Louis. 
 
 Shaken in his determination by these successive favors, due, 
 as he supposed, to the monarch's remembrance, he was no 
 longer satisfied with taking his family, as he had piously done 
 every Sunday, to cry " Vive le Roi " in the hall of the Tuil- 
 eries when the royal family passed through on their way to 
 chapel ; he craved the favor of a private audience. The audi- 
 ence, at once granted, was in no sense private. The royal 
 drawing-room was full of old adherents, whose powdered 
 heads, seen from above, suggested a carpet of snow. There 
 the count met some old friends, who received him somewhat 
 coldly; but the princes he thought adorable, an enthusiastic 
 expression which escaped him when the most gracious of his 
 masters, to whom the count had supposed himself to be known 
 only by name, came to shake hands with him, and spoke of 
 him as the most thorough Vendeen of them all. Notwith- 
 standing this ovation, none of these august persons thought of 
 inquiring as to the sum of his losses, or of the money he had 
 poured so generously into the chests of the Catholic regiments. 
 He discovered, a little late, that he had made war at his own 
 cost. Toward the end of the evening he thought he might 
 venture on a witty allusion to the state of his affairs, similar, 
 as it was, to that of many other gentlemen. His majesty 
 laughed heartily enough ; any speech that bore the hall-mark 
 of wit was certain to please him ; but he nevertheless replied 
 with one of those royal pleasantries whose sweetness is more 
 formidable than the anger of a rebuke. One of the King's 
 most intimate advisers took an opportunity of going up to the 
 fortune-seeking Vendeen, and made him understand by a keen 
 and polite hint that the time had not yet come for settling 
 accounts with the sovereign ; that there were bills of much 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 277 
 
 longer standing than his on the books, and there, no doubt, 
 they would remain, as part of the history of the Revolution. 
 The count prudently withdrew from the venerable group, 
 which formed a respectful semicircle before the august family ; 
 then, having extricated his sword, not without some difficulty, 
 from among the lean legs with which it had become mixed up, 
 he crossed the courtyard of the Tuileries and got into the 
 hackney coach he had left on the quay. With the restive 
 spirit, which is peculiar to the nobility of the old school, in 
 whom still survives the memory of the League and the day 
 of the Barricades (in 1588), he bewailed himself in his coach, 
 loudly enough to compromise him, over the change that had 
 come over the Court. "Formerly," he said to himself, 
 "every one could speak freely to the King of his own little 
 affairs ; the nobles could ask him a favor, or for money, when 
 it suited them, but nowadays one cannot recover the money 
 advanced for his service without raising a scandal ! By 
 heaven ! the cross of Saint-Louis and the rank of brigadier- 
 general will not make good the three hundred thousand francs 
 I have spent, out and out, on the royal cause. I must speak 
 to the King, face to face in his own room." 
 
 This scene cooled Monsieur de Fontaine's ardor all the 
 more effectually because his requests for an interview were 
 never answered. And, indeed, he saw the upstarts of the 
 Empire obtaining some of the offices reserved, under the old 
 monarchy, for the highest families. 
 
 " All is lost!" he exclaimed one morning. "The King 
 has certainly never been other than a revolutionary. But 
 for MONSIEUR, who never derogates, and is some comfort 
 to his faithful adherents, I do not know into what hands 
 the crown of France might not fall if things continue to 
 go on like this. Their cursed constitutional system is the 
 worst possible government, and can never suit France. Louis 
 XVIII. and Monsieur Beugnot spoiled everything at Saint 
 Ouen." 
 
278 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 The count, in despair, was preparing to retire to his estate, 
 abandoning, with dignity, all claims to repayment. At this 
 moment the events of the zoth March (1815) gave warning of 
 a fresh storm, threatening to overwhelm the legitimate mon- 
 arch and his defenders. Monsieur de Fontaine, like one of 
 those generous souls who do not dismiss a servant in a torrent 
 of rain, borrowed on his lands to follow the routed monarchy, 
 without knowing whether this complicity in emigration would 
 prove more propitious to him than his past devotion. But 
 when he perceived that the companions of the King's exile 
 were in higher favor than the brave men who had protested, 
 sword in hand, against the establishment of the Republic, he 
 may, perhaps, have hoped to derive greater profit from this 
 journey into a foreign land than from active and dangerous 
 service in the heart of his own country. Nor was his courtier- 
 like calculation one of those rash speculations which promise 
 splendid results on paper, and are ruinous in effect. He was 
 to quote the wittiest and most successful of our diplomatists 
 one of the faithful five hundred who shared the exile of the 
 Court at Ghent, and one of the fifty thousand who returned 
 with it. During the short banishment of royalty, Monsieur 
 de Fontaine was so happy as to be employed by Louis 
 XVIII., and found more than one opportunity of giving him 
 proofs of great political honesty and sincere attachment. 
 One evening, when the King had nothing better to do, he 
 recalled Monsieur de Fontaine's witticism at the Tuileries. 
 The old Vend6en did not let such a happy chance slip ; he 
 told his history with so much vivacity that a king, who never 
 forgot anything, might remember it at a convenient season. 
 The royal amateur of literature also observed the elegant style 
 given to some notes which the discreet gentleman had been 
 invited to recast. This little success stamped Monsieur de 
 Fontaine on the King's memory as one of the loyal servants 
 of the Crown. 
 At the second restoration the count was one of those special 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 27d 
 
 envoys who were sent throughout the departments charged 
 with absolute jurisdiction over the leaders of revolt ; but he 
 used his terrible powers with moderation. As soon as this 
 temporary commission was ended, the high provost found a 
 seat in the Privy Council, became a deputy, spoke little, 
 listened much, and changed his opinions very considerably. 
 Certain circumstances, unknown to historians, brought him 
 into such intimate relations with the sovereign, that one day, 
 as he came in, the shrewd monarch addressed him thus: "My 
 friend Fontaine, I shall take care never to appoint you to be 
 director-general or minister. Neither you nor I, as employes, 
 could keep our place on account of our opinions. Represen- 
 tative government has this advantage : it saves Us the trouble 
 We used to have, of dismissing Our secretaries of State. Our 
 Council is a perfect inn-parlor, whither public opinion some- 
 times sends strange travelers ; however, We can always find a 
 place for Our faithful adherents." 
 
 This ironical speech was introductory to a rescript giving 
 Monsieur de Fontaine an appointment as administrator in the 
 office of Crown lands. As a consequence of the intelligent 
 attention with which he listened to his royal friend's sarcasms, 
 his name always rose to his majesty's lips when a commission 
 was to be appointed of which the members were to receive a 
 handsome salary. He had the good-sense to hold his tongue 
 about the favor with which he was honored, and knew how to 
 entertain the monarch in those familiar chats in which Louis 
 XVIII. delighted as much as in a well-written note, by his 
 brilliant manner of repeating political anecdotes, and the 
 political or parliamentary tittle-tattle if the expression may 
 pass which at that time was rife. It is well known that he 
 was immensely amused by every detail of his Gouvcrnemcn- 
 tabilitl a word adopted by his facetious majesty. 
 
 Thanks to the Comte de Fontaine's good-sense, wit, and 
 tact, every member of his numerous family, however young, 
 ended, as he jestingly told his sovereign, in attaching himself 
 
280 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 like a silkworm to th* leaves of the pay-list. Thus, by the 
 King's intervention, his eldest son found a high and fixed 
 position as a lawyer. The second, before the Restoration a 
 mere captain, was appointed to the command of a legion on 
 the return from Ghent; then, thanks to the confusion of 1815, 
 when the regulations were evaded, he passed into the body- 
 guard, returned to a line regiment, and found himself after 
 the affair of the Trocaddro a lieutenant-general with a com 
 mission in the Guards. The youngest, appointed sub-prefect, 
 became ere long a legal official and director of a municipal 
 board of the city of Paris, where he was safe from changes in 
 the Legislature. These bounties, bestowed without parade, 
 and as secret as the favor enjoyed by the count, fell unper- 
 ceived. Though the father and his three sons each had sine- 
 cures enough to enjoy an income in salaries almost equal to 
 that of a chief of department, their political good-fortune 
 excited no envy. In those early days of the constitutional 
 system, few persons had very precise ideas of the peaceful 
 domain of the civil service, where astute favorites managed to 
 find an equivalent for the demolished abbeys. Monsieur the 
 Comte de Fontaine, who till lately boasted that he had not 
 read the Charter, and displayed such indignation at the greed 
 of courtiers, had, before long, proved to his august master 
 that he understood, as well as the King himself, the spirit and 
 resources of the representative system. At the same time, 
 notwithstanding the established careers open to his three sons, 
 and the pecuniary advantages derived from four official appoint- 
 ments, Monsieur de Fontaine was the head of too large a 
 family to be able to reestablish his fortune easily and rapidly. 
 His three sons were rich in prospects, in favor, and in 
 talent ; but he had three daughters, and was afraid of wearying 
 the monarch's benevolence. It occurred to him to mention 
 only one by one, these virgins eager to light their torches. 
 The King had too much good taste to leave his work incom- 
 plete. The marriage of the eldest with a receiver-general, 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 281 
 
 Planat de Baudry, was arranged by one of those royal speeches 
 which cost nothing and are worth millions. One evening, 
 when the sovereign was out of spirits, he smiled on hearing 
 of the existence of another Demoiselle de Fontaine, for whom 
 he found a husband in the person of a young magistrate, of 
 inferior birth, no doubt, but wealthy, and whom he created 
 baron. When, the year after, the Vendeen spoke of Made- 
 moiselle Emilie de Fontaine, the King replied in his thin, 
 sharp tones, "Amicus Plato sed magis arnica Natio" Then, 
 a few days later, he treated his " friend Fontaine" to a qua- 
 train, harmless enough, which he styled an epigram, in which 
 he made fun of these three daughters so skillfully introduced, 
 under the form of a trinity. Nay, if report is to be believed, 
 the monarch had found the point of the jest in the unity of 
 the three divine persons. 
 
 " If your majesty would only condescend to turn the epi- 
 gram into an epithalamium ? " said the count, trying to turn 
 the sally to good account. 
 
 "Though I see the rhyme of it, I fail to see the reason," 
 retorted the King, who did not relish any pleasantry, however 
 mild, on the subject of his poetry. 
 
 From that day his intercourse with Monsieur de Fontaine 
 showed less amenity. Kings enjoy contradicting more than 
 people think. Like most youngest children, Emilie de Fon- 
 taine was a Benjamin spoilt by almost everybody. The 
 King's coolness, therefore, caused the count all the more re- 
 gret, because no marriage was ever so difficult to arrange as 
 that of this darling daughter. To understand all the obstacles 
 we must make our way into the fine residence where the official 
 was housed at the expense of the nation. Emilie had spent 
 her childhood on the family estate, enjoying the abundance 
 which suffices for the joys of early youth ; her lightest wishes 
 had been law to her sisters, her brothers, her mother, and even 
 her father. All her relations doted on her. Having come to 
 years of discretion just when her family was loaded with the 
 
282 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 favors of tortune, the pretty enchantments of life continued. 
 The luxury of Paris seemed to her just as natural as a wealth 
 of flowers or fruit, or as the rural plenty which had been the 
 joy of her first years. Just as in her childhood she had never 
 been thwarted in the satisfaction of her playful desires, so 
 now, at fourteen, she was still obeyed when she rushed into 
 the whirl of fashion. 
 
 Thus, accustomed by degrees to the enjoyment of money, 
 elegance of dress, of gilded drawing-rooms and fine carriages, 
 they became as necessary to her as the compliments of flattery, 
 sincere or false, and the festivities and vanities of court life. 
 Like most spoilt children, she tyrannized over those who loved 
 her, and kept her blandishments for those who were indif- 
 ferent. Her faults grew with her growth, and her parents 
 were to gather the bitter fruits of this disastrous education. 
 At the age of nineteen Emilie de Fontaine had not yet been 
 pleased to make a choice from among the many young men 
 whom her father's politics brought to his entertainments. 
 Though so young, she asserted in society all the freedom of 
 mind that a married woman can enjoy. Her beauty was so 
 remarkable that, for her, to appear in a room was to be its 
 queen ; but, like sovereigns, she had no friends, though she 
 was everywhere the object of attentions to which a finer nature 
 than hers might perhaps have succumbed. Not a man, not 
 even an old man, had it in him to contradict the opinions of 
 a young girl whose lightest look could rekindle love in the 
 coldest heart. 
 
 She had been educated with a care which her sisters had 
 not enjoyed ; painted pretty well, spoke Italian and English, 
 and played the piano brilliantly; her voice, trained by the 
 best masters, had a ring in it which made her singing irresist- 
 ibly charming. Clever, and intimate with every branch of 
 literature, she might have made people believe that, as Mas- 
 carille says, people of quality come into the world knowing 
 everything. She could argue fluently on Italian or Flemish 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 283 
 
 painting, on the Middle Ages or the Renaissance ; pronounced 
 at haphazard on books new or old, and could expose the de- 
 fects of a work with a cruelly graceful wit. The simplest 
 thing she said was accepted by an admiring crowd as zfetfah of 
 the Sultan by the Turks. She thus dazzled shallow persons ; 
 as to deeper minds, her natural tact enabled her to discern 
 them, and for them she put forth so much fascination that, 
 under cover of her charms, she escaped their scrutiny. This 
 enchanting veneer covered a careless heart ; the opinion 
 common to many young girls that no one else dwelt in a 
 sphere so lofty as to be able to understand the merits of her 
 soul ; and a pride based no less on her birth than on her 
 beauty. In the absence of the overwhelming sentiment 
 which, sooner or later, works havoc in a woman's heart, she 
 spent her young ardor in an immoderate love of distinctions, 
 and expressed the deepest contempt for persons of inferior 
 birth. Supremely impertinent to all newly created nobility, 
 she made every effort to get her parents recognized as equals 
 by the most illustrious families of the Saint-Germain quarter. 
 These sentiments had not escaped the observing eye of 
 Monsieur de Fontaine, who more than once, when his two 
 elder girls were married, had smarted under Emilie's sarcasm. 
 Logical readers will be surprised to see the old Royalist be- 
 stowing his eldest daughter on a receiver-general, possessed, 
 indeed, of some old hereditary estates, but whose name was 
 not preceded by the little word to which the throne owed so 
 many partisans, and his second to a magistrate too lately 
 baronified to obscure the fact that his father had sold fire- 
 wood. This noteworthy change in the ideas of a noble on 
 the verge of his sixtieth year an age when men rarely re- 
 nounce their convictions was due not merely to his unfortu- 
 nate residence in the modern Babylon, where, sooner or later, 
 country folk all get their corners rubbed down ; the Comte 
 de Fontaine's new political conscience was also a result of the 
 King's advice and friendship. The philosophical prince had 
 
284 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 taken pleasure in converting the Vendeen to the ideas required 
 by the advance of the nineteenth century, and the new aspect 
 of the Monarchy. Louis XVIII. aimed at fusing parties as 
 Napoleon had fused things and men. The legitimate King, 
 who was not less clever perhaps than his rival, acted in a 
 contrary direction. The last head of the House of Bourbon 
 was just as eager to satisfy the third estate and the creations 
 of the Empire, by curbing the clergy, as the first of the Napo- 
 leons had been to attract the grand old nobility, or to endow 
 the church. The privy councilor, being in the secret of these 
 royal projects, had insensibly become one of the most prudent 
 and influential leaders of that moderate party which most de- 
 sired a fusion of opinion in the interests of the nation. He 
 preached the expensive doctrines of constitutional govern- 
 ment, and lent all his weight to encourage the political see- 
 saw which enabled his master to rule France in the midst of 
 storms. Perhaps Monsieur de Fontaine hoped that one of 
 the sudden gusts of legislation, whose unexpected efforts then 
 startled the oldest politicians, might carry him up to the rank 
 of peer. One of his most rigid principles was to recognize 
 no nobility in France but that of the peerage the only fami- 
 lies that might enjoy any privileges. 
 
 " A nobility bereft of privileges," he would say, " is a tool 
 without a handle." 
 
 As far from Lafayette's party as he was from La Bourdon- 
 naye's, he ardently engaged in the task of general reconcilia- 
 tion, which was to result in a new era and splendid fortunes for 
 France. He strove to convince the families who frequented 
 his drawing-room, or those whom he visited, how few favor- 
 able openings would henceforth *be offered by a civil or mili- 
 tary career. He urged mothers to give their boys a start in 
 independent and industrial professions, explaining that mili- 
 tary posts and high Government appointments must at last 
 pertain, in a quite constitutional order, to the younger sons 
 of members of the peerage. According to him, the people 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 285 
 
 had conquered a sufficiently large share in practical govern- 
 ment by its elective assembly, its appointments to law-offices, 
 and those of the exchequer, which, said he, would always, as 
 heretofore, be the natural right of the distinguished men of 
 the third estate. 
 
 These new notions of the head of the Fontaines, and the 
 prudent matches for his eldest girls to which they had led, met 
 with strong resistance in the bosom of his family. The Com- 
 tesse de Fontaine remained faithful to the ancient beliefs which 
 no woman could disown, who, through her mother, belonged 
 to the Rohans. Although she had for a while opposed the 
 happiness and fortune awaiting her two eldest girls, she yielded 
 to those private considerations which husband and wife con- 
 fide to each other when their heads are resting on the same 
 pillow. Monsieur de Fontaine calmly pointed out to his wife, 
 by exact arithmetic, that their residence in Paris, the necessity 
 for entertaining, the magnificence of the house which made up 
 to them now for the privations so bravely shared in La Vendee, 
 and the expenses of their sons, swallowed up the chief part of 
 their income from salaries. They must therefore seize, as a 
 boon from heaven, the opportunities which offered for settling 
 their girls with such wealth. Would they not some day enjoy 
 sixty eighty a hundred thousand francs a year? Such ad- 
 vantageous matches were not to be met with every day for girls 
 without a portion. Again, it was time that they should begin 
 to think of economizing, to add to the estate of Fontaine, and 
 reestablish the old territorial fortune of the family. The com- 
 tesse yielded to such cogent arguments, as every mother would 
 have done in her place, though perhaps with a better grace ; 
 but she declared that Emilie, at any rate, should marry in such 
 a way as to satisfy the pride she had unfortunately contributed 
 to foster in the girl's young soul. 
 
 Thus events, which ought to have brought joy into the 
 family, had introduced a small leaven of discord. The re- 
 ceiver-general and the young lawyer were the objects of a 
 
286 THE SCEAUX BALL, 
 
 ceremonious formality which the comtesse and Emilie con- 
 trived to create. This etiquette soon found even ampler op- 
 portunity for the display of domestic tyranny ; for Lieutenant- 
 General de Fontaine married Mademoiselle Mongenod, the 
 daughter of a rich banker ; the president very sensibly found 
 a wife in a young lady whose father, twice or thrice a mil- 
 lionaire, had traded in salt ; and the third brother, faithful to 
 his plebeian doctrines, married Mademoiselle Grossetdte, the 
 only daughter of the receiver-general at Bourges. The three 
 sisters-in-law and the two brothers-in-law found the high sphere 
 of political bigwigs, and the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg 
 Saint-Germain, so full of charm and of personal advantages, 
 that they united in forming a little court round the overbear- 
 ing Emilie. This treaty between interest and pride was not, 
 however, so firmly cemented but that the young despot was, 
 not infrequently, the cause of revolts in her little realm. 
 Scenes, which the highest circles would not have disowned, 
 kept up a sarcastic temper among all the members of this 
 powerful family ; and this, without seriously diminishing the 
 regard they professed in public, degenerated sometimes in 
 private into sentiments far from charitable. Thus the lieu- 
 tenant-general's wife, having become a baronne, thought her- 
 self quite as noble as a Kergarouet, and imagined that her 
 good hundred thousand francs a year gave her the right to be 
 as impertinent as her sister-in-law Emilie, whom she would 
 sometimes wish to see happily married, as she announced that 
 the daughter of some peer of France had married Monsieur 
 So-and-so with no title to his name. The Vicomtesse de 
 Fontaine amused herself by eclipsing Emilie in the taste and 
 magnificence that were conspicuous in her dress, her furniture, 
 and her carriages. The satirical spirit in which her brothers 
 and sisters sometimes received the claims avowed by Made- 
 moiselle de Fontaine roused her to wrath that a perfect hail- 
 storm of sharp sayings could hardly mitigate. So when the 
 head of the family felt a slight chill in the King's tacit and 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 287 
 
 precarious friendship, he trembled all the more because, as a 
 result of her sisters' defiant mockery, his favorite daughter had 
 never before looked so high. 
 
 In the midst of these circumstances, and at a moment when 
 this petty domestic warfare had become serious, the monarch, 
 whose favor Monsieur de Fontaine still hoped to regain, was 
 attacked by the malady of which he was to die. The great 
 political chief, who knew so well how to steer his bark in the 
 midst of tempests, soon succumbed. Certain then of favors 
 to come, the Comte de Fontaine made every effort to collect 
 the elite of marrying men about his youngest daughter. Those 
 who may have tried to solve the difficult problem of settling a 
 haughty and capricious girl will understand the trouble taken 
 by the unlucky father. Such an affair, carried out to the 
 liking of his beloved child, would worthily crown the career 
 the count had followed for these ten years at Paris. From 
 the way in which his family claimed salaries under every de- 
 partment, it might be compared with the House of Austria, 
 which, by intermarriage, threatens to pervade Europe. The 
 old Vendeen was not to be discouraged in bringing forward 
 suitors, so much had he his daughter's happiness at heart, but 
 nothing could be more absurd than the way in which the im- 
 pertinent young thing pronounced her verdicts and judged the 
 merits of her adorers. It might have been supposed that, like 
 a princess in the "Arabian Nights," Emilie was rich enough 
 and beautiful enough to choose from among all the princes in the 
 world. Her objections were each more preposterous than the 
 last : one had too thick knees and was bow-legged, another was 
 short-sighted, this one's name was Durand, that one limped, 
 and almost all were too fat. Livelier, more attractive, and 
 gayer than ever after dismissing two or three suitors, she rushed 
 into the festivities of the winter season, and to balls, where her 
 keen eyes criticised the celebrities of the day, delighting in 
 encouraging proposals which she invariably rejected. 
 
 Nature had bestowed on her all the advantages needed for 
 
288 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 playing the part of Celimene. Tall and slight, Emilie de 
 Fontaine could assume a dignified or a frolicsome mien at 
 her will. Her neck was rather long, allowing her to affect 
 beautiful attitudes of scorn and impertinence. She had culti- 
 vated a large variety of those turns of the head and feminine 
 gestures, which emphasize so cruelly or so happily a hint or a 
 smile. Fine black hair, thick and strongly arched eyebrows, 
 lent her countenance an expression of pride to which her 
 coquettish instincts and her mirror had taught her to add 
 terror by a stare, or gentleness by the softness of her gaze, by 
 the set or the gracious curve of her lips, by the coldness or the 
 sweetness of her smile. When Emilie meant to conquer a 
 heart, her pure voice did not lack melody ; but she could also 
 give it a sort of curt clearness when she was minded to para- 
 lyze a partner's indiscreet tongue. Her colorless face and 
 alabaster brow were like the limpid surface of a lake, which by 
 turns is rippled by the impulse of a breeze and recovers its 
 glad serenity when the air is still. More than one young man, 
 a victim to her scorn, accused her of acting a part ; but she 
 justified herself by inspiring her detractors with the desire to 
 please her, and then subjecting them to all her most con- 
 temptuous caprice. Among the young girls of fashion, not 
 one knew better than she how to assume an air of reserve when 
 a man of talent was introduced to her, or how to display the 
 insulting politeness which treats an equal as an inferior, and 
 to pour out her impertinence on all who tried to hold their 
 heads on a level with hers. Wherever she went she seemed 
 to be accepting homage rather than compliments, and even in 
 a princess her airs and manner would have transformed the 
 chair on which she sat into an imperial throne. 
 
 Monsieur de Fontaine discovered too late how utterly the 
 education of the daughter he loved had been ruined by the 
 tender devotion of the whole family. The admiration which 
 the world is at first ready to bestow on a young girl, but for 
 which, sooner or later, it takes its revenge, had added to 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 289 
 
 Emilie's pride, and increased her self-confidence. Universal 
 subservience had developed in her the selfishness natural to 
 spoilt children, who, like kings, make a plaything of every- 
 thing that comes to hand. As yet the graces of youth and 
 the charms of talent hid these faults from every eye ; faults all 
 the more odious in a woman, since she can only please by 
 self-sacrifice and unselfishness; but nothing escapes the eye of 
 a good father, and Monsieur de Fontaine often tried to explain 
 to his daughter the more important pages of the mysterious 
 book of life. Vain effort ! He had to lament his daughter's 
 capricious indocility and ironical shrewdness too often to 
 persevere in a task so difficult as that of correcting an ill- 
 disposed nature. He contented himself with giving her from 
 time to time some gentle and kind advice ; but he had the 
 sorrow of seeing his tenderest words slide from his daughter's 
 heart as if it were of marble. A father's eyes are slow to be 
 unsealed, and it needed more than one experience before the 
 old Royalist perceived that his daughter's rare caresses were 
 bestowed on him with an air of condescension. She was like 
 young children, who seem to say to their mother: "Make 
 haste to kiss me, that I may go to play." In short, Emilie 
 vouchsafed to be fond of her parents. But often, by those 
 sudden whims, which seem inexplicable in young girls, she 
 kept aloof and scarcely ever appeared ; she complained of 
 having to share her father's and mother's heart with too many 
 people ; she was jealous of every one, even of her brothers and 
 sisters. Then, after creating a desert about her, the strange 
 girl accused all nature of her unreal solitude and her willful 
 griefs. Strong in the experience of her twenty years, she 
 blamed fate, because, not knowing that the mainspring of 
 happiness is in ourselves, she demanded it of the circumstances 
 of life. She would have fled to the ends of the earth to escape 
 a marriage such as those of her two sisters, and nevertheless 
 her heart was full of horrible jealousy at seeing them married, 
 rich, and happy. In short, she sometimes led her mother 
 19 
 
290 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 who was as much a victim to her vagaries as Monsieur de 
 Fontaine to suspect that she had a touch of madness. 
 
 But such aberrations are quite explicable ; nothing is com- 
 moner than this unconfessed pride developed in the heart of 
 young girls belonging to families high in the social scale, and 
 gifted by nature with great beauty. They are almost all con- 
 vinced that their mothers, now forty or fifty years of age, can 
 neither sympathize with their young souls nor conceive of 
 their imaginings. They fancy that most mothers, jealous of 
 their girls, want to dress them in their own way with the pre- 
 meditated purpose of eclipsing them or robbing them of 
 admiration. Hence, often, secret tears and dumb revolt 
 against supposed tyranny. In the midst of these woes, which 
 become very real though built on an imaginary basis, they 
 have also a mania for composing a scheme of life, while cast- 
 ing for themselves a brilliant horoscope ; their magic consists 
 in taking their dreams for reality ; secretly, in their long 
 meditations, they resolve to give their heart and hand to none 
 but a man possessing this or the other qualification ; and they 
 paint in fancy a model to which, whether or not, the future 
 lover must correspond. After some little experience of life, 
 and the serious reflections that come with years, by dint of 
 seeing the world and its prosaic round, by dint of observing 
 unhappy examples, the brilliant hues of their ideal are extin- 
 guished. Then, one fine day, in the course of events, they 
 are quite astonished to find themselves happy without the 
 nuptial poetry of their day-dreams. It was on the strength 
 of that poetry that Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine, in her 
 slender wisdom, had drawn up a programme to which a suitor 
 must conform to be accepted. Hence her disdain and 
 sarcasm. 
 
 "Though young and of an ancient family, he must be a 
 peer of France," said she to herself. " I could not bear not 
 to see my coat-of-arms on the panels of my carriage among 
 the folds of azure mantling, not to drive like the princes down 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 291 
 
 the broad walk of the Champs Elysees on the days of Long- 
 champs in holy week. Beside, my father says that it will 
 some day be the highest dignity in France. He must be a 
 soldier but I reserve the right of making him retire; and 
 he must bear an Order, that the sentries may present arms 
 to us." 
 
 And these rare qualifications would count for nothing if 
 this creature of fancy had not a most amiable temper, a fine 
 figure, intelligence, and, above all, if he were not slender. 
 To be lean, a personal grace which is but fugitive, especially 
 under a representative government, was an indispensable con- 
 dition. Mademoiselle de Fontaine had an ideal standard 
 which was to be the model. A young man who at the first 
 glance did not fulfill the requisite conditions did not even get 
 a second look. 
 
 "Good heavens! see how fat he is!" was with her the 
 utmost expression of contempt. 
 
 To hear her, people of respectable corpulence were inca- 
 pable of sentiment, bad husbands, and unfit for civilized 
 society. Though it is esteemed a beauty in the East, to be 
 fat seemed to her a misfortune for a woman ; but in a man it 
 was a crime. These paradoxical views were amusing, thanks 
 to a certain liveliness of rhetoric. The count felt nevertheless 
 that by-and-by his daughter's affectations, of which the ab- 
 surdity would be evident to some women who were not less 
 clear-sighted than merciless, would inevitably become a sub- 
 ject of constant ridicule. He feared lest her eccentric notions 
 should deviate into bad style. He trembled to think that the 
 pitiless world might already be laughing at a young woman 
 who remained so long on the stage without arriving at any 
 conclusion of the drama she was playing. More than one 
 actor in it, disgusted by a refusal, seemed to be waiting for 
 the slightest turn of ill-luck to take his revenge. The indif- 
 ferent, the lookers-on were beginning to weary of it ; admira- 
 tion is always exhausting to human beings. The old Vendeen 
 
292 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 knew better than any one that if there is an art in choosing 
 the right moment for coming forward on the boards of the 
 world, on those of the Court, in a drawing-room or on the 
 stage, it is still more difficult to quit them in the nick of time. 
 So during the first winter after the accession of Charles X., 
 he redoubled his efforts, seconded by his three sons and his 
 sons-in-law, to assemble in the rooms of his official residence 
 the best matches which Paris and the various deputations from 
 departments could offer. The splendor of his entertainments, 
 the luxury of his dining-room, and his dinners, fragrant with 
 truffles, rivaled the famous banquets by which the ministers 
 of that time secured the vote of their parliamentary recruits. 
 
 The honorable deputy was consequently pointed at as a 
 most influential corrupter of the legislative honesty of the 
 illustrious Chamber that was dying as it would seem of indi- 
 gestion. A whimsical result ! his efforts to get his daughter 
 married secured him a splendid popularity. He perhaps 
 found some covert advantage in selling his truffles twice over. 
 This accusation, started by certain mocking Liberals, who 
 made up by their flow of words for their small following in 
 the Chamber, was not a success. The Poitevin gentleman 
 had always been so noble and so honorable, that he was not 
 once the object of those epigrams which the malicious jour- 
 nalism of the day hurled at the three hundred votes of the 
 centre, at the Ministers, the cooks, the directors-general, the 
 princely Amphitryons, and the official supporters of the 
 Villele Ministry. 
 
 At the close of this campaign, during which Monsieur de 
 Fontaine had on several occasions brought out all his forces, 
 he believed that this time the procession of suitors would not 
 be a mere dissolving view in his daughter's eyes ; that it was 
 time she should make up her mind. He felt a certain inward 
 satisfaction at having well fulfilled his duty as a father. And 
 having left no stone unturned, he hoped that, among so many 
 hearts laid at Emilie's feet, there might be one to which her 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 293 
 
 caprice might give a preference. Incapable of repeating such 
 an effort, and tired, too, of his daughter's conduct, one 
 morning, toward the end of Lent, when the business at the 
 Chamber did not demand his vote, he determined to ask 
 what her views were. While his valet was artistically decorat- 
 ing his bald yellow head with the delta of powder which, with 
 the hanging " aile s de pigeon" (pigeon-wings), completed his 
 venerable style of hairdressing, Emilie's father, not without 
 some secret misgivings, told his old servant to go and desire 
 the haughty damsel to appear in the presence of the head of 
 the family. 
 
 "Joseph," he added, when his hair was dressed, "take 
 away that towel, draw back the curtains, put those chairs 
 square, shake the rug, and lay it quite straight. Dust every- 
 thing. Now, air the room a little by opening the window." 
 
 The count multiplied his orders, putting Joseph out of 
 breath, and the old servant, understanding his master's inten- 
 tions, aired and tidied the room, of course the least cared for of 
 any in the house, and succeeded in giving a look of harmony 
 to the files of bills, the letter-boxes, the books and furniture 
 of this sanctum, where the interests of the royal demesnes 
 were debated over. When Joseph had reduced this chaos to 
 some sort of order, and brought to the front such things as 
 might be most pleasing to the eye, as if it were a store-front, 
 or such as by their color might give the effect of a kind of 
 official poetry, he stood for a minute in the midst of the 
 labyrinth of papers piled in some places even on the floor, 
 admired his handiwork, jerked his head, and went. 
 
 The anxious sinecure-holder did not share his retainer's 
 favorable opinion. Before seating himself in his deep chair, 
 whose rounded back screened him from draughts, he looked 
 round him doubtfully, examined his dressing-gown with a 
 hostile expression, shook off a few grains of snuff, carefully 
 wiped his nose, arranged the tongs and shovel, made the fire, 
 pulled up the heels of his slippers, jerked out his little queue 
 
294 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 of hair which had lodged horizontally between the collar of 
 his vest and that of his dressing-gown, restoring it to its per- 
 pendicular position ; then he swept up the ashes of the hearth, 
 which bore witness to a persistent catarrh. Finally, the old 
 man did not settle himself till he had once more looked all 
 over the room, hoping that nothing could give occasion to the 
 saucy and impertinent remarks with which his daughter was 
 apt to answer his good advice. On this occasion he was 
 anxious not to compromise his dignity as a father. He 
 daintily took a pinch of snuff, cleared his throat two or three 
 times, as if he were about to demand a count out of the 
 House ; then he heard his daughter's light step, and she came 
 in humming an air from "II Barbiere." 
 
 " Good-morning, papa. What do you want with me so 
 early?" Having sung these words, as though they were the 
 refrain of the melody, she kissed the count, not with the 
 familiar tenderness which makes a daughter's love so sweet a 
 thing, but with the light carelessness of a mistress confident 
 of pleasing, whatever she may do. 
 
 "My dear child," said Monsieur de Fontaine, gravely, "I 
 sent for you to talk very seriously to you about your future 
 prospects. You are at this moment under the necessity of 
 making such a choice of a husband as may secure you durable 
 happiness " 
 
 "My good father," replied Emilie, assuming her most 
 coaxing tone of voice to interrupt him, " it strikes me that 
 the armistice on which we agreed as to my suitors is not yet 
 expired." 
 
 "Emilie, we must to-day forbear from jesting on so im- 
 portant a matter. For some time past the efforts of those who 
 most truly love you, my dear child, have been concentrated 
 on the endeavor to settle you suitably ; and you would be 
 guilty of ingratitude in meeting with levity those proofs of 
 kindness which I am not alone in lavishing on you." 
 
 As she heard these words, after flashing a mischievously in- 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 295 
 
 quisitive look at the furniture of her father's study, the young 
 girl brought forward the armchair which looked as if it had 
 been least used by petitioners, set it at the side of the fire- 
 place so as to sit facing her father, and settled herself in so 
 solemn an attitude that it was impossible not to read in it a 
 mocking attention, crossing her arms over the dainty trim- 
 mings of a snow-white pelerine, and ruthlessly crushing its 
 endless frills of white tulle. After a laughing side-glance at 
 her old father's troubled face, she broke silence. 
 
 " I never heard you say, my dear father, that the Govern- 
 ment issued its instructions in its dressing-gown. However," 
 and she smiled, " that does not matter ; the mob is probably 
 not particular. Now, what are your proposals for legislation, 
 and your official introductions?" 
 
 " I shall not always be able to make them, headstrong girl ! 
 Listen, Emilie. It is my intention no longer to compromise 
 my reputation, which is part of my children's fortune, by re- 
 cruiting the regiment of dancers which, spring after spring, 
 you put to rout. You have already been the cause of many 
 dangerous misunderstandings with certain families. I hope to 
 make you perceive more truly the difficulties of your position 
 and of ours. You are two-and-twenty, my dear child, and you 
 ought to have been married nearly three years since. Your bro- 
 thers and your two sisters are richly and happily provided for. 
 But, my dear, the expenses occasioned by these marriages, and 
 the style of housekeeping you require of your mother, have 
 made such inroads on our income that I can hardly promise 
 you a hundred thousand francs as a marriage portion. From 
 this day forth I shall think only of providing for your mother, 
 who must not be sacrificed to her children. Emilie, if I were 
 to be taken from my family, Madame de Fontaine could not 
 be left at anybody's mercy, and ought to enjoy the affluence 
 which I have given her too late as a reward of her devotion in 
 my misfortunes. You see, my child, that the amount of your 
 fortune bears no relation to your notions of grandeur. Even 
 
296 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 that would be such a sacrifice as I have not hitherto made for 
 either of my children ; but they have generously agreed not to 
 expect in the future any compensation for the advantage thus 
 given to a too favored child." 
 
 "In their position ! " said Emilie, with an ironical toss of 
 her head. 
 
 " My dear, do not so depreciate those who love you. Only 
 the poor are generous as a rule ; the rich have always excellent 
 reasons for not handing over twenty thousand francs to a rela- 
 tion. Come, my child, do not pout, let us talk rationally. 
 Among the young marrying men have you noticed Monsieur 
 de Manerville?" 
 
 " Oh, he minces his words he says Zules instead of Jules ; 
 he is always looking at his feet, because he thinks them small, 
 and he gazes at himself in the glass. Beside, he is fair. I 
 don't like fair men." 
 
 "Well, then, Monsieur de Beaudenord?" 
 
 " He is not noble ! he is ill-made and stout. He is dark, 
 it is true. If the two gentlemen could agree to combine 
 their fortunes, and the first would give his name and his 
 figure to the second, who should keep his dark hair, then 
 perhaps " 
 
 "What can you say against Monsieur de Rastignac?" 
 
 "Madame de Nucingen has made a banker of him," she 
 said with meaning. 
 
 "And our cousin, the Vicomte de Portenduere ? " 
 
 " A mere boy, who dances badly ; beside, he has no for- 
 tune. And, after all, papa, none of these people have titles. 
 I want, at least, to be a countess like my mother." 
 
 *' Have you seen no one, then, this winter ? " 
 
 " No, papa." 
 
 " What then do you want ? " 
 
 "The son of a peer of France." 
 
 " My dear girl, you are mad ! " said Monsieur de Fontaine, 
 rising. 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 297 
 
 But he suddenly lifted his eyes to heaven, and seemed to 
 find a fresh source of resignation in some religious thought ; 
 then, with a look of fatherly pity at his daughter, who herself 
 was moved, he took her hand, pressed it, and said with deep 
 feeling: "God is my witness, poor mistaken child, I have 
 conscientiously discharged my duty to you as a father con- 
 scientiously, do I say? Most lovingly, my Emilie. Yes, 
 God knows ! This winter I have brought before you more 
 than one good man, whose character, whose habits, and whose 
 temper were known to me, and all seemed worthy of you. 
 My child, my task is done. From this day forth you are the 
 arbiter of your own fate, and I consider myself both happy 
 and unhappy at finding myself relieved of the heaviest of 
 paternal functions. I know not whether you will for any long 
 time, now, hear a voice which, to you, has never been stern ; 
 but remember that conjugal happiness does not rest so much 
 on brilliant qualities and ample fortune as on reciprocal 
 esteem. This happiness is, in its nature, modest, and devoid 
 of show. So now, my dear, my consent is given beforehand, 
 whoever the son-in-law may be whom you introduce to me ; 
 but if you should be unhappy, remember you will have no 
 right to accuse your father. I shall not refuse to take proper 
 steps and help you, only your choice must be serious and final. 
 I will never twice compromise the respect due to my white 
 hairs." 
 
 The affection thus expressed by her father, the solemn tones 
 of his urgent address, deeply touched Mademoiselle de Fon- 
 taine ; but she concealed her emotion, seated herself on her 
 father's knees for he had dropped all tremulous into his 
 chair again caressed him fondly, and coaxed him so engag- 
 ingly that the old man's brow cleared. As soon as Emilie 
 thought that her father had gotten over his painful agitation, she 
 said in a gentle voice : "I have to thank you for your grace- 
 ful attention, my dear father. You have had your room set 
 in order to receive your beloved daughter. You did not per- 
 
298 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 haps know that you would find her so foolish and so head- 
 strong. But, papa, is it so difficult to get married to a peer 
 of France? You declared that they were manufactured by 
 dozens. At least, you will not refuse to advise me." 
 
 " No, my poor child, no ; and more than once I may have 
 occasion to cry, ' Beware ! ' Remember that the making of 
 peers is so recent a force in our government machinery that 
 they have no great fortunes. Those who are rich look to be- 
 coming richer. The wealthiest member of our peerage has 
 not half the income of the least rich lord in the English Upper 
 Chamber. Thus all the French peers are on the lookout for 
 great heiresses for their sons, wherever they may meet with 
 them. The necessity in which they find themselves of thus 
 marrying for money will certainly exist for at least two cen- 
 turies. 
 
 " Pending such a fortunate accident as you long for and 
 this fastidiousness may cost you the best years of your life 
 your attractions might work a miracle, for men often marry 
 for love in these days. When experience lurks behind so 
 sweet a face as yours it may achieve wonders. In the first 
 place, have you not the gift of recognizing virtue in the 
 greater or small dimensions of a man's body? This is no 
 small matter ! To so wise a young person as you are, I need 
 not enlarge on all the difficulties of the enterprise. I am 
 sure that you would never attribute good-sense to a stranger 
 because he had a handsome face, or all the virtues because he 
 had a fine figure. And I am quite of your mind in thinking 
 that the sons of peers ought to have an air peculiar to them- 
 selves, and perfectly distinctive manners. Though nowadays 
 no external sign stamps a man of rank, those young men will 
 have, perhaps, to you the indefinable something that will 
 reveal it. Then, again, you have your heart well in hand, 
 like a good horseman who is sure his steed cannot bolt. Luck 
 be with you, my dear ! " 
 
 "You are making game of me, papa. Well, I assure you 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 299 
 
 that I would rather die in Mademoiselle de Conde's convent 
 than not be the wife of a peer of France." 
 
 She slipped out of her father's arms, and, proud of being 
 her own mistress, went off singing the air of Cara non dubitare, 
 in the " Matrimonio Segreto." 
 
 As it happened, the family were that day keeping the anni- 
 versary of a family f&te. At dessert, Madame Planat, the 
 receiver-general's wife, spoke with some enthusiasm of a 
 young American owning an immense fortune, who had fallen 
 passionately in love with her sister, and made through her 
 the most splendid proposals. 
 
 "A banker, I rather think," observed Emilie carelessly. 
 "I do not like money dealers." 
 
 "But, Emilie," replied the Baron de Villaine, the husband 
 of the count's second daughter, "you do not like lawyers 
 either; so that if you refuse men of wealth who have not 
 titles, I do not quite see in what class you are to choose a 
 husband." 
 
 "Especially, Emilie, with your standard of slimness," 
 added the lieutenant-general. 
 
 11 1 know what I want," replied the young lady. 
 
 " My sister wants a fine name, a fine young man, fine pros- 
 pects, and a hundred thousand francs a year," said the 
 Baronne de Fontaine. " Monsieur de Marsay, for instance." 
 
 " I know, my dear," retorted Emilie, ' that I do not mean 
 to make such a foolish marriage as some I have seen. More- 
 over, to put an end to these matrimonial discussions, I hereby 
 declare that I shall look on any one who talks to me of 
 marriage as a foe to my peace of mind." 
 
 An uncle of Emilie's, a vice-admiral, whose fortune had 
 just been increased by twenty thousand francs a year in con- 
 sequence of the Act of Indemnity, and a man of seventy, 
 feeling himself privileged to say hard things to his grand- 
 niece, on whom he doted, in order to mollify the bitter tone 
 of the discussion, now exclaimed 
 
300 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 "Do not tease my poor little Emilie; don't you see she is 
 waiting till the Due de Bordeaux comes of age ! " 
 
 The old man's pleasantry was received with general 
 laughter. 
 
 " Take care I don't marry you, old fool ! " replied the young 
 girl, whose last words were happily drowned in the noise. 
 
 "My dear children," said Madame de Fontaine, to soften 
 this saucy retort, " Emilie, like you, will take no advice but 
 her mother's." 
 
 " Bless me ! I shall take no advice but my own in a matter 
 which concerns no one but myself," said Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine very distinctly. 
 
 At this all eyes were turned to the head of the family. 
 Every one seemed anxious as to what he would do to assert 
 his dignity. The venerable gentleman enjoyed much con- 
 sideration, not only in the world ; happier than many fathers, 
 he was also appreciated by his family, all its members having 
 a just esteem for the solid qualities by which he had been able 
 to make their fortunes. Hence he was treated with the deep 
 respect which is shown by English families, and some aristo- 
 cratic houses on the continent, to the living representative of 
 an ancient pedigree. Deep silence had fallen ; and the 
 guests looked alternately from the spoilt girl's proud and 
 sulkly pout to the severe faces of Monsieur and Madame de 
 Fontaine. 
 
 " I have made my daughter Emilie mistress of her own 
 fate," was the reply spoken by the count in a deep voice. 
 
 Relations and guests gazed at Mademoiselle de Fontaine 
 with mingled curiosity and pity. The words seemed to 
 declare that fatherly affection was weary of the contest with a 
 character that the whole family knew to be incorrigible. The 
 sons-in-law muttered, and the brothers glanced at their wives 
 with mocking smiles. From that moment every one ceased 
 to take any interest in the haughty girl's prospects of marriage. 
 Her old uncle was the only person who, as an old sailor, ven- 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 301 
 
 tured to stand on her tack, and take her broadsides, without 
 ever troubling himself to return her fire. 
 
 When the fine weather was settled, and after the budget 
 was voted, the whole family a perfect example of the parlia- 
 mentary families on the northern side of the Channel who 
 have a footing in every government department, and ten votes 
 in the House of Commons flew away like a brood of young 
 birds to the charming neighborhoods of Aulnay, Antony, and 
 Chatenay. The wealthy receiver-general had lately purchased 
 in this part of the world a country-house for his wife, who 
 remained in Paris only during the session. Though the fair 
 Emilie despised the commonalty, her feeling was not carried 
 so far as to scorn the advantages of a fortune acquired in a 
 profession ; so she accompanied her sister to the sumptuous 
 villa, less out of affection for the members of her family who 
 were visiting there, than because fashion has ordained that 
 every woman who has any self-respect must leave Paris in the 
 summer. The green seclusion of Sceaux answered to perfec- 
 tion the requirements of good style and of the duties of an 
 official position. 
 
 As it is extremely doubtful that the fame of the " Bal de 
 Sceaux " should ever have extended beyond the borders of the 
 Department of the Seine, it will be necessary to give some 
 account of this weekly festivity, which at that time was im- 
 portant enough to threaten to become an institution. The 
 environs of the little town of Sceaux enjoy a reputation due to 
 the scenery, which is considered enchanting. Perhaps it is 
 quite ordinary, and owes its fame only to the stupidity of the 
 Paris townsfolk, who, emerging from the stony abyss in which 
 they are buried, would find something to admire in the flats 
 of La Beauce. However, as the poetic shades of Aulnay, the 
 hillsides of Antony, and the valley of the Bievre are peopled 
 with artists who have traveled far, by foreigners who are very 
 hard to please, and by a great many pretty women not devoid 
 of taste, it is to be supposed that the Parisians are right. But 
 
302 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 Sceaux possesses another attraction not less powerful to the 
 Parisian. In the midst of a garden whence there are delight- 
 ful views stands a large rotunda open on all sides, with a 
 light, spreading roof supported on elegant pillars. This rural 
 baldachino shelters a dancing-floor. The most stuck-up land- 
 owners of the neighborhood rarely fail to make an excursion 
 thither once or twice during the season, arriving at this rustic 
 palace of Terpsichore either in dashing parties on horseback, 
 or in the light and elegant carriages which powder the philo- 
 sophical pedestrian with dust. The hope of meeting some 
 women of fashion, and of being seen by them and the hope, 
 less often disappointed, of seeing young peasant girls, as wily 
 as judges crowds the ballroom at Sceaux with numerous 
 swarms of lawyers' clerks, of the disciples of ^Esculapius, and 
 other youths whose complexions are kept pale and moist by 
 the damp atmosphere of Paris back-shops. And a good many 
 bourgeois marriages have had their beginning to the sound 
 of the band occupying the centre of this circular ballroom. 
 If that roof could speak, what love-stories could it not tell ! 
 
 This interesting medley gave the Sceaux balls at that time 
 a spice of more amusement than those of two or three places 
 of the same kind near Paris ; and it had incontestable advan- 
 tages in its rotunda, and the beauty of its situation and its 
 gardens. Emilie was the first to express a wish to play at 
 being "common folk" at this gleeful suburban entertainment, 
 and promised herself immense pleasure in mingling with the 
 crowd. Everybody wondered at her desire to wander through 
 such a mob ; but is there not a keen pleasure to grand people 
 in an incognito? Mademoiselle de Fontaine amused herself 
 frith imagining all these town-bred figures ; she fancied her- 
 self leaving the memory of a bewitching glance and smile 
 stamped on more than one storekeeper heart, laughed before- 
 hand at the damsels' airs, and sharpened her pencils for the 
 scenes she proposed to sketch in her satirical album. Sunday 
 could not come soon enough to satisfy her impatience. 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 3UJ 
 
 The party from the Villa Planat set out on foot, so as not 
 to betray the rank of the personages who were about to honor 
 the ball with their presence. They dined early. And the 
 month of May humored this aristocratic escapade by one of 
 its finest evenings. Mademoiselle de Fontaine was quite sur- 
 prised to find in the rotunda some quadrilles made up of per- 
 sons who seemed to belong to the upper classes. Here and 
 there, indeed, were some young men who look as though they 
 must have saved for a month to shine for a day ; and she per- 
 ceived several couples whose too hearty glee suggested nothing 
 conjugal ; still, she could only glean instead of gathering a 
 harvest. She was amazed to see that pleasure in a cotton 
 dress was so very like pleasure robed in satin, and that the 
 girls of the middle-class danced quite as well as ladies nay, 
 sometimes better. Most of the women were simply and suit- 
 ably dressed. Those who in this assembly represented the 
 ruling power, that is to say, the country-folk, kept apart with 
 wonderful politeness. In fact, Mademoiselle Emilie had to 
 study the various elements that composed the mixture before 
 she could find any subject for pleasantry. But she had not 
 time to give herself up to malicious criticism, nor opportunity 
 for hearing many of the startling speeches which caricaturists 
 so gladly pick up. The haughty young lady suddenly found 
 a flower in this wide field the metaphor is reasonable 
 whose splendor and coloring worked on her imagination with 
 all the fascination of novelty. It often happens that we look 
 at a dress, a hanging, a blank sheet of paper, with so little 
 heed that we do not at first detect a stain or a bright spot 
 which afterward strikes the eye as though it had come there 
 at the very instant when we see it ; and by a sort of moral 
 phenomenon somewhat resembling this, Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine discovered in a young man the external perfections 
 of which she had so long dreamed. 
 
 Seated on one of the clumsy chairs which marked the 
 boundary line of the circular floor, she had placed herself at 
 
304 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 the end of the row formed by the family party, so as to be 
 able to stand up or push forward as her fancy moved her, 
 treating the living pictures and groups in the hall as if she 
 were in a picture gallery ; impertinently turning her eyeglass 
 on persons not two yards away, and making her remarks as 
 though she were criticising or praising a study of a head, a 
 painting of "genre." Her eyes, after wandering over the 
 vast moving picture, was suddenly caught by this figure, 
 which seemed to have been placed on purpose in one corner 
 of the canvas, and in the best light, like a person out of all 
 proportion with the rest. 
 
 The stranger, alone and absorbed in thought, leaned lightly 
 against one of the columns that supported the roof; his arms 
 were folded, and he leaned slightly on one side as though he 
 had placed himself there to have his portrait taken by a 
 painter. His attitude, though full of elegance and dignity, 
 was devoid of affectation. Nothing suggested that he had 
 half turned his head, and bent it a little to the right like Alex- 
 ander, or Lord Byron, and some other great men, for the sole 
 purpose of attracting attention. His fixed gaze followed a girl 
 who was dancing, and betrayed some strong feeling. His 
 slender, easy frame recalled the noble proportions of the 
 Apollo. Fine black hair curled naturally over a high fore- 
 head. At a glance Mademoiselle de Fontaine observed that 
 his linen was fine, his gloves fresh, and evidently bought of a 
 good maker, and his feet small and well shod in shoes of 
 Irish kid. He had none of the vulgar trinkets displayed by 
 the dandies of the National Guard or the Lovelaces of the 
 counting-house. A black riband, to which an eyeglass was 
 attached, hung over a vest of the most fashionable cut. 
 Never had the fastidious Emilie seen a man's eyes shaded by 
 such long, curled lashes. Melancholy and passion were ex- 
 pressed in this face, and the complexion was of a manly olive 
 hue. His mouth seemed ready to smile, unbending the cor- 
 ners of eloquent lips; but this, far from hinting at gayety, 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 305 
 
 revealed on the contrary a sort of pathetic grace. There was 
 too much promise in that head, too much distinction in his 
 whole person, to allow of one's saying: "What a handsome 
 man!" or "What a fine man!" One wanted to know 
 him. The most clear-sighted observer, on seeing this stranger, 
 could not have helped taking him for a clever man attracted 
 to this rural festivity by some powerful motive. 
 
 All these observations cost Emilie only a minute's attention, 
 during which the privileged gentleman under her severe 
 scrutiny became the object of her secret admiration. She 
 did not say to herself: " He must be a peer of France ! " but, 
 
 "Oh, if only he is noble, and he surely must be " 
 
 Without finishing her thought, she suddenly arose, and, 
 followed by her brother the general, she made her way toward 
 the column, affecting to watch the merry quadrilles ; but by 
 a stratagem of the eye, familiar to women, she lost not a 
 gesture of the young man as she went toward him. The 
 stranger politely moved to make way for the new-comers, and 
 went to lean against another pillar. Emilie, as much nettled 
 by his politeness as she might have been by an impertinence, 
 began talking to her brother in a louder voice than good taste 
 enjoined ; she turned and tossed her head, gesticulated eagerly, 
 and laughed for no particular reason, less to amuse her 
 brother than to attract the attention of the imperturbable 
 stranger. None of her little arts succeeded. Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine then followed the direction in which his eyes 
 were fixed, and discovered the cause of his indifference. 
 
 In the midst of the quadrille, close in front of them, a pale 
 girl was dancing; her face was like one of the divinities 
 which Girodet has introduced into his immense composition 
 of French warriors received by Ossian. Emilie fancied that 
 she recognized her as a distinguished " mylady " who for 
 some months had been living on a neighboring estate. Her 
 partner was a lad of about fifteen, with red hands, and dressed 
 in nankeen trousers, a blue coat, and white shoes, which 
 20 
 
306 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 showed that the damsel's love of dancing made her easy to 
 please in the matter of partners. Her movements did not 
 betray her apparant delicacy, but a faint flush already tinged her 
 white cheeks, and her complexion was gaining color. Made- 
 moiselle de Fontaine went nearer, to be able to examine the 
 young lady at the moment when she returned to her place, 
 while the side-couples in their turn danced the figure. But 
 the stranger went up to the pretty dancer and, leaning over, 
 said in a gentle but commanding tone 
 
 " Clara, my child, do not dance any more." 
 
 Clara made a little pouting face, bent her head, and finally 
 smiled. When the dance was over, the young man wrapped 
 her in a cashmere shawl with a lover's care, and seated her 
 in a place sheltered from the wind. Very soon Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine, seeing them rise and walk round the place as if pre- 
 paring to leave, found means to follow them under pretense of 
 admiring the views from the garden. Her brother lent him- 
 self with malicious good-humor to the divagations of her 
 rather eccentric wanderings. Emilie then saw the attractive 
 couple get into an elegant tilbury, by which stood a mounted 
 groom in livery. At the moment when, from his high seat, 
 the young man was drawing the reins even, she caught a 
 glance from his eye such as men cast aimlessly at the crowd ; 
 and then she enjoyed the feeble satisfaction of seeing him 
 twice turn his head to look at her. The young lady did the 
 same. Was it from jealousy ? 
 
 "I imagine you have now seen enough of the garden," said 
 her brother. "We may go back to the dancing." 
 
 " I am ready," said she. " Do you think the girl can be a 
 relation of Lady Dudley's?" 
 
 "Lady Dudley may have some male relation staying with 
 her," said the Baron de Fontaine; "but a young girl! 
 No!" 
 
 Next day Mademoiselle de Fontaine expressed a wish to 
 take a ride. Then she gradually accustomed her old uncle 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 307 
 
 and her brothers to escorting her in very early rides, excellent, 
 she declared, for her health. She had a particular fancy for 
 the environs of the hamlet where Lady Dudley was living. 
 Notwithstanding her cavalry manoeuvres, she did not meet the 
 stranger so soon as the eager search she pursued might have 
 allowed her to hope. She went several times to the " Bal de 
 Sceaux" without seeing the young Englishman who had 
 dropped from the skies to pervade and beautify her dreams. 
 Though nothing spurs on a young girl's infant passion so 
 effectually as an obstacle, there was a time when Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine was on the point of giving up her strange and 
 secret search, almost despairing of the success of an enterprise 
 whose singularity may give some idea of the boldness of her 
 temper. In point of fact, she might have wandered long 
 about the village of Chatenay without meeting her Unknown. 
 The fair Clara since that was the name Emilie had over- 
 heard was not English, and the stranger who escorted her 
 did not dwell among the flowery and fragrant bowers of 
 Chatenay. 
 
 One evening Emilie, out riding with her uncle, who, during 
 the fine weather, had gained a fairly long truce from the gout, 
 met Lady Dudley. The distinguished foreigner had with her 
 in her open carriage Monsieur Vandenesse. Emilie recog- 
 nized the handsome couple, and her suppositions were at once 
 dissipated like a dream. Annoyed, as any woman must be 
 whose expectations are frustrated, she touched up her horse so 
 suddenly that her uncle had the greatest difficulty in following 
 her, she had set off at such a pace. 
 
 " I am too old, it would seem, to understand these youthful 
 spirits," said the old sailor to himself as he put his horse to a 
 canter ; " or, perhaps, young people are not what they used to 
 be. But what ails my niece ? Now she is walking at a foot- 
 pace like a gendarme on patrol in the Paris streets. One 
 might fancy she wanted to outflank that worthy man, who 
 looks to me like an author dreaming over his poetry, for he 
 
308 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 has, I think, a notebook in his hand. My word, I am a great 
 simpleton ! Is not that the very young man we are in search 
 of?" 
 
 At this idea the old admiral moderated his horse's pace so 
 as to follow his niece without making any noise. He had 
 played too many pranks in the years 1771 and soon after, a 
 time of our history when gallantry was held in honor, not to 
 guess at once that by the merest chance Emilie had met the 
 Unknown of the Sceaux gardens. In spite of the film which 
 age had drawn over his gray eyes, the Comte de Kergarouet 
 could recognize the signs of extreme agitation in his niece, 
 under the unmoved expression she tried to give to her features. 
 The girl's piercing eyes were fixed in a sort of dull amazement 
 on the stranger, who quietly walked on in front of her. 
 
 "Ay, that's it," thought the sailor. "She is following 
 him as a pirate follows a merchantman. Then, when she has 
 lost sight of him, she will be in despair at not knowing who 
 it is she is in love with, and whether he is a marquis or a 
 storekeeper. Really these young heads need an old fogey 
 like me always by their side." 
 
 He unexpectedly spurred his horse in such a way as to make 
 his niece's bolt, and rode so hastily between her and the 
 young man on foot that he obliged him to fall back on to the 
 grassy bank which rose from the roadside. Then, abruptly 
 drawing up, the count exclaimed 
 
 " Couldn't you get out of the way? " 
 
 "I beg your pardon, monsieur. But I did not know that 
 it lay with me to apologize to you because you almost rode 
 me down." 
 
 "There, enough of that, my good fellow!" replied the 
 sailor harshly, in a sneering tone that was nothing less than 
 insulting. At the same time the count raised his hunting- 
 crop as if to strike his horse, and touched the young fellow's 
 shoulder, saying: "A Liberal citizen is a reasoner; every 
 reasoner should be prudent." 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 309 
 
 The young man went up the bankside as he heard the 
 sarcasm ; then he crossed his arms, and said in an excited 
 tone of voice, " I cannot suppose, monsieur, as I look at 
 your white hairs, that you still amuse yourself by provoking 
 duels " 
 
 " White hairs ! " cried the sailor, interrupting him. "You 
 lie in your throat. They are only gray." 
 
 A quarrel thus begun had in a few seconds become so fierce 
 that the younger man forgot the moderation he had tried to 
 preserve. Just as the Comte de Kergarouet saw his niece 
 coming back to them with every sign of the greatest uneasi- 
 ness, he told his antagonist his name, bidding him keep 
 silence before the young lady intrusted to his care. The 
 stranger could not help smiling as he gave a visiting card to 
 the old man, desiring him to observe that he was living in a 
 country-house at Chevreuse; and, after pointing this out to 
 him, he hurried away. 
 
 "You very nearly damaged that poor young counter- 
 jumper, my dear," said the count, advancing hastily to meet 
 Emilie. "Do you not know how to hold your horse in? 
 And there you leave me to compromise my dignity in order 
 to screen your folly ; whereas if you had but stopped, one 
 of your looks, or one of your pretty speeches one of those 
 you can make so prettily when you are not pert would have 
 set everything right, even if you had broken his arm." 
 
 " But, my dear uncle, it was your horse, not mine, that 
 caused the accident I really think you can no longer ride ; 
 you are not so good a horseman as you were last year. But 
 instead of talking nonsense " 
 
 "Nonsense, by Gad ! Is it nothing to be so impertinent 
 to your uncle? " 
 
 " Ought we not to go on and inquire if the young man is 
 hurt? He is limping, uncle, only look ! " 
 
 " No, he is running; I rated him soundly." 
 
 " Oh, yes, uncle ; I know you there ! " 
 
810 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 "Stop," said the count, pulling Emilie's horse by the 
 bridle, " I do not see the necessity of making advances to 
 some storekeeper who is only too lucky to have been thrown 
 down by a charming young lady, or the commander of La 
 Belle-Poule." 
 
 " Why do you think he is anything so common, my dear 
 uncle? He seems to me to have very fine manners." 
 
 " Every one has manners nowadays, my dear." 
 
 "No, uncle, not everyone has the air and style which 
 come of the habit of frequenting drawing-rooms, and I am 
 ready to make a bet with you that the young man is of noble 
 birth." 
 
 " You had not long to study him." 
 
 " No, but it is not the first time I have seen him." 
 
 " Nor is it the first time you have looked for him," replied 
 the admiral with a laugh. 
 
 Ernilie colored. Her uncle amused himself for some time 
 with her embarrassment ; then he said : "Emilie, you know 
 that I love you as my own child, precisely because you are 
 the only member of the family who has the legitimate pride 
 of high birth. Devil take it, child, who could have believed 
 that sound principles would become so rare? Well, I will be 
 your confidant. My dear child, I see that this young gentle- 
 man is not indifferent to you. Hush ! All the family would 
 laugh at us if we sailed under the wrong flag. You know 
 what that means. We two will keep our secret, and I promise 
 to bring him straight into the drawing-room." 
 
 "When, uncle?" 
 
 "To-morrow." 
 
 "But, my dear uncle, I am not committed to anything?" 
 
 " Nothing whatever, and you may bombard him, set fire to 
 him, and leave him to founder like an old hulk if you choose. 
 He won't be the first, I fancy?" 
 
 " You are kind, uncle ! " 
 
 As soon as the count got home he put on his glasses, quietly 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 311 
 
 took the card out of his pocket, and read, " Maximilien Lon- 
 gueville, Rue du Sender." 
 
 " Make yourself happy, my dear niece," he said to Emilie, 
 " you may hook him with an easy conscience ; he belongs to 
 one of our historical families, and if he is not a peer of France, 
 he infallibly will be." 
 
 " How do you know so much ? " 
 
 " That is my secret." 
 
 "Then do you know his name?" 
 
 The old man bowed his gray head, which was not unlike a 
 gnarled oak-stump, with a few leaves fluttering about it, with- 
 ered by autumnal frosts ; and his niece immediately began to 
 try the ever-new power of her coquettish arts. Long familiar 
 with the secret of cajoling the old man, she lavished on him 
 the most childlike caresses, the tenderest names; she even 
 went so far as to kiss him to induce him to divulge so import- 
 ant a secret. The old man, who spent his life in playing off 
 these scenes on his niece, often paying for them with a present 
 of jewelry, or by giving her his box at the opera, this time 
 amused himself with her entreaties, and, above all, her 
 caresses. But as he spun out this pleasure too long, Emilie 
 grew angry, passed from coaxing to sarcasm and sulks; then, 
 urged by curiosity, she recovered herself. The diplomatic 
 admiral extracted a solemn promise from his niece that she 
 would for the future be gentler, less noisy, and less willful, 
 that she would spend less, and, above all, tell him everything. 
 The treaty being concluded, and signed by a kiss impressed on 
 Emilie's white brow, he led her into a corner of the room, 
 drew her on to his knee, held the card under his thumbs so 
 as to hide it, and then uncovered the letters, one by one, 
 spelling the name of Longueville ; but he firmly refused to 
 show her anything more. 
 
 This incident added to the intensity of Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine's secret sentiment, and during the chief part of the 
 night she evolved the most brilliant pictures from the dreams 
 
312 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 with which she had fed her hopes. At last, thanks to chance, 
 to which she had so often appealed, Emilie could now see 
 something very unlike a chimera at the fountain-head of the 
 imaginary wealth with which she gilded her married life. 
 Ignorant, as all young girls are, of the perils of love and mar- 
 riage, she was passionately captivated by the externals of 
 marriage and love. Is not this as much as to say that her 
 feeling had birth like all the feelings of extreme youth 
 sweet but cruel mistakes, which exert a fatal influence on the 
 lives of young girls so inexperienced as to trust their own 
 judgment to take care of their future happiness ? 
 
 Next morning, before Emilie was awake, her uncle had 
 hastened to Chevreuse. On recognizing, in the court-yard 
 of an elegant little villa, the young man he had so deter- 
 minedly insulted the day before, he went up to him with the 
 pressing politeness of men of the old Court. 
 
 " Why, my dear sir, who could have guessed that I should 
 have a brush, at the age of seventy-three, with the son, or the 
 grandson, of one of my best friends ? I am a vice-admiral, 
 monsieur; is not that as much as to say that I think no more 
 of fighting a duel than of smoking a cigar ? Why, in my time, 
 no two young men could be intimate till they had seen the 
 color of each other's blood ! But 'sdeath, sir, last evening, 
 sailor-like, I had taken a drop too much grog on board, and I 
 ran you down. Shake hands ; I would rather take a hundred 
 rebuffs from a Longueville than cause his family the smallest 
 regret." 
 
 However coldly the young man tried to behave to the Comte 
 de Kergarouet, he could not long resist the frank cordiality of 
 his manner, and presently gave him his hand. 
 
 "You were going out riding," said the count. " Do not 
 let me detain you. But, unless you have other plans, I beg 
 you will come to dinner to-day at the Villa Planat. My 
 nephew, the Comte de Fontaine, is a man it is essential that 
 you should know. Ah, ha ! And I propose to make up to 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 313 
 
 you for my clumsiness by introducing you to five of the pret- 
 tiest women in Paris. So, so, young man, your brow is clear- 
 ing ! I am fond of young people, and I like to see them 
 happy. Their happiness reminds me of the good times of my 
 youth, when adventures were not lacking, any more than duels. 
 We were gay dogs then ! Nowadays you think and worry 
 over everything, as though there had never been a fifteenth 
 and a sixteenth century." 
 
 "But, monsieur, are we not in the right? The sixteenth 
 century only gave religious liberty to Europe, and the nine- 
 teenth will give it political lib " 
 
 " Oh, we will not talk politics. I am a perfect old woman 
 Ultra, you see. But I do not hinder young men from being 
 revolutionary, so long as they leave the King at liberty to dis- 
 perse their assemblies." 
 
 When they had gone a little way, and the count and his 
 companion were in the heart of the woods, the old sailor 
 pointed out a slender young birch sapling, pulled up his horse, 
 took out one of his pistols, and the bullet was lodged in the 
 heart of the tree, fifteen paces away. 
 
 " You see, my dear fellow, that I am not afraid of a duel," 
 he said with comical gravity, as he looked at Monsieur 
 Longueville. 
 
 " Nor am I," replied the young man, promptly cocking his 
 pistol ; he aimed at the hole made by the comte's bullet, and 
 sent his own in close to it. 
 
 "That is what I call a well-educated man," cried the ad- 
 miral with enthusiasm. 
 
 During this ride with the youth, whom he already regarded 
 as his nephew, he found endless opportunities of catechising 
 him on all the trifles of which a perfect knowledge constituted, 
 according to his private code, an accomplished gentleman. 
 
 " Have you any debts? " he at last asked of his companion, 
 after many other inquiries. 
 
 " No, monsieur." 
 
314 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 " What, you pay for all you have? " 
 
 " Punctually; otherwise we should lose our credit, and every 
 sort of respect." 
 
 " But at least you have more than one mistress ? Ah, you 
 blush, comrade ! Well, manners have changed. All these 
 notions of lawful order, Kantism, and liberty have spoilt the 
 young men. You have no Guimard now, no Duthe, no cred- 
 itors and you know nothing of heraldry ; why, my dear young 
 friend, you are not fully fledged. The man who does not sow 
 his wild oats in the spring sows them in the winter. If I have 
 but eighty thousand francs a year at the age of seventy, it is 
 because I ran through the capital at thirty. Oh ! with my 
 wife in decency and honor. However, your imperfections 
 will not interfere with my introducing you at the Pavilion 
 Planat. Remember you have promised to come, and I shall 
 expect you." 
 
 " What an odd little old man ! " said Longueville to himself. 
 " He is so jolly and hale ; but though he wishes to seem a 
 good fellow, I will not trust him too far." 
 
 Next day, at about four o'clock, when the house party were 
 dispersed in the drawing-rooms and billiard-room, a servant 
 announced to the inhabitants of the Villa Planat, "Monsieur 
 de Longueville." On hearing the name of the old admiral's 
 protege, every one, down to the billiard-player who was 
 about to miss his stroke, rushed in, as much to study Made- 
 moiselle de Fontaine : s countenance as to judge of this phoenix 
 of men, who had earned honorable mention to the detriment 
 of so many rivals. A simple but elegant style of dress, an air 
 of perfect ease, polite manners, a pleasant voice with a ring in 
 it which found a response in the hearer's heart-strings, won the 
 good-will of the family for Monsieur Longueville. He did 
 not seem unaccustomed to the luxury of the receiver-general's 
 ostentatious mansion. Though his conversation was that of a 
 man of the world, it was easy to discern that he had had a 
 brilliant education, and that his knowledge was as thorough 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 315 
 
 as it was extensive. He knew so well the right thing to say 
 in a discussion on naval architecture, trivial, it is true, started 
 by the old admiral, that one of the ladies remarked that he 
 must have passed through the Polytechnic School. 
 
 "And I think, madame," he replied, " that I may regard it 
 as an honor to gain admission." 
 
 In spite of urgent pressing, he refused politely but firmly to 
 be kept to dinner, and put an end to the persistency of the 
 ladies by saying that he was the Hippocrates of his young 
 sister, whose delicate health required great care. 
 
 " Monsieur is perhaps a medical man ? " asked one of Emi- 
 lie's sisters-in-law with ironical meaning. 
 
 "Monsieur has left the Polytechnic," Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine kindly put in ; her face had flushed with richer color, 
 as she learned that the young lady of the ball was Monsieur 
 Longueville's sister. 
 
 "But, my dear, he may be a doctor and yet have been to 
 the Polytechnic School is it not so, monsieur?" 
 
 " There is nothing to prevent it, madame," replied the 
 young man. 
 
 Every eye was on Emilie, who was gazing with uneasy curi- 
 osity at the fascinating stranger. She breathed more freely 
 when he added, not without a smile, " I have not the honor 
 of belonging to the medical profession ; and I even gave up 
 going into the Engineers in order to preserve my independ- 
 ence." 
 
 "And you did well," said the count. "But how can you 
 regard it as an honor to be a doctor ? " added the Breton noble- 
 man. "Ah, my young friend, such a man as you " 
 
 " Monsieur le Comte, I respect every profession that has a 
 useful purpose." 
 
 " Well, in that we agree. You respect those professions, I 
 imagine, as a young man respects a dowager." 
 
 Monsieur Longueville made his visit neither too long nor 
 too short. He left at the moment when he saw that he had 
 
316 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 pleased everybody, and that each one's curiosity about him 
 had been aroused. 
 
 " He is a cunning rascal ! " said the count, coming into the 
 drawing-room after seeing him to the door. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine, who had been in the secret of 
 this call, had dressed with some care to attract the young 
 man's eye; but she had the little disappointment of finding 
 that he did not bestow on her so much attention as she thought 
 she deserved. The family were a good deal surprised at the 
 silence into which she had retired. Emilie generally displayed 
 all her arts for the benefit of new-comers, her witty prattle, 
 and the inexhaustible eloquence of her eyes and attitudes. 
 Whether it was that the young man's pleasing voice and attrac- 
 tive manners had charmed her, that she was seriously in love, 
 and that this feeling had worked a change in her, her de- 
 meanor had lost all its affectations. Being simple and natural, 
 she must, no doubt, have seemed more beautiful. Some of 
 her sisters, and an old lady, a friend of the family, saw in this 
 behavior a refinement of art. They supposed that Emilie, 
 judging the man worthy of her, intended to delay revealing 
 her merits, so as to dazzle him suddenly when she found that 
 she pleased him. Every member of the family was curious to 
 know what this capricious creature thought of the stranger ; 
 but when, during dinner, every one chose to endow Monsieur 
 Longueville with some fresh quality which no one else had 
 discovered, Mademoiselle de Fontaine sat for some time in 
 silence. A sarcastic remark of her uncle's suddenly roused 
 her from her apathy ; she said, somewhat epigrammatically, that 
 such heavenly perfection must cover some great defect, and 
 that she would take good care how she judged so gifted a man 
 at first sight. 
 
 "Those who please everybody, please nobody," she added; 
 " and the worst of all faults is to have none." 
 
 Like all girls who are in love, Emilie cherished the hope of 
 being able to hide her feelings at the bottom of her heart by 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 317 
 
 putting the Argus-eyes that watched on the wrong tack ; but 
 by the end of a fortnight there was not a member of the large 
 family party who was not in this little domestic secret. 
 When Monsieur Longueville called for the third time, Emilie 
 believed that it was chiefly for her sake. This discovery gave 
 her such intoxicating pleasure that she was startled as she 
 reflected on it. There was something in it very painful to 
 her pride. Accustomed as she was to be the centre of her 
 world, she was obliged to recognize a force that attracted her 
 outside herself; she tried to resist, but she could not chase 
 from her heart the fascinating image of the young man. 
 
 Then came some anxiety. Two of Monsieur Longueville' s 
 qualities, very adverse to general curiosity, and especially to 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine's, were unexpected modesty and 
 discretion. He never spoke of himself, of his pursuits, or of 
 his family. The hints Emilie threw out in conversation, and 
 the traps she laid to extract from the young fellow some facts 
 concerning himself, he would evade with the adroitness of a 
 diplomatist concealing a secret. If she talked of painting, 
 he responded as a connoisseur ; if she sat down to play, he 
 showed without conceit that he was a very good pianist ; one 
 evening he delighted all the party by joining his delightful 
 voice to Emilie's in one of Cimarosa's charming duets. But 
 when they tried to find out whether he were a professional 
 singer, he baffled them so pleasantly that he did not afford 
 these women, practiced as they were in the art of reading 
 feelings, the least chance of discovering to what social sphere 
 he belonged. However boldly the old uncle cast the board- 
 ing-hooks over the vessel, Longueville slipped away cleverly, 
 so as to preserve the charm of mystery ; and it was easy to 
 him to remain the " handsome stranger " at the villa, because 
 curiosity never overstepped the bounds of good breeding. 
 
 Emilie, distracted by this reserve, hoped to get more out of 
 the sister than the brother, in the form of confidences. Aided 
 by her uncle, who was as skillful in such manoeuvres as in 
 
318 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 handling a ship, she endeavored to bring upon the scene the 
 hitherto unseen figure of Mademoiselle Clara Longueville. 
 The family party at the Villa Planat soon expressed the 
 greatest desire to make the acquaintance of so amiable a 
 young lady, and to give her some amusement. An informal 
 dance was proposed and accepted. The ladies did not despair 
 of making a young girl of sixteen talk. 
 
 Notwithstanding the little clouds piled up by suspicion 
 and created by curiosity, a light of joy shone in Emilie's soul, 
 for she found life delicious when thus intimately connected 
 with another than herself. She began to understand the re- 
 lations of life. Whether it is that happiness makes us better, 
 or that she was too fully occupied to torment other people, 
 she became less caustic, more gentle, and indulgent. This 
 change, in her temper enchanted and amazed her family. 
 Perhaps, at last, her selfishness was being transformed to love. 
 It was a deep delight to her to look for the arrival of her 
 bashful and unconfessed adorer. Though they had not uttered 
 a word of passion, she knew that she was loved, and with 
 what art did she not lead the stranger to unlock the stores of 
 his information, which proved to be varied ! She perceived 
 that she, too, was being studied, and that made her endeavor 
 to remedy the defects her education had encouraged. Was 
 not this her first homage to love, and a bitter reproach to her- 
 self? She desired to please, ana she was enchanting; she 
 loved, and she was idolized. Her family, knowing that her 
 pride would sufficiently protect her, gave her enough freedom 
 to enjoy the little childish delights which give to first love its 
 charm and its violence. More than once the young man and 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine walked, tete-a-ttte, in the avenues 
 of the garden, where nature was dressed like a woman going 
 to a ball. More than once they had those conversations, 
 aimless and meaningless, in which the emptiest phrases are 
 those which cover the deepest feelings. They often admired 
 together the setting sun and its gorgeous coloring. They 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 319 
 
 gathered daisies to pull the petals off, and sang the most 
 impassioned duets, using the notes set down by Pergolesi or 
 Rossini as faithful interpreters to express their secrets. 
 
 The day of the dance came. Clara Longueville and her 
 brother, whom the servants persisted in honoring with the 
 noble de, were the principal guests. For the first time in her 
 life Mademoiselle de Fontaine felt pleasure in a young girl's 
 triumph. She lavished on Clara in all sincerity the gracious 
 petting and little attentions which women generally give each 
 other only to excite the jealousy of men. Emilie had, indeed, 
 an object in view ; she wanted to discover some secrets. But, 
 being a girl, Mademoiselle Longueville showed even more 
 mother-wit than her brother, for she did not even look as if 
 she were hiding a secret, and kept the conversation to subjects 
 unconnected with personal interests, while, at the same time, 
 she gave it so much charm that Mademoiselle de Fontaine was 
 almost envious, and called her " the Siren." Though Emilie 
 had intended to make Clara talk, it was Clara, in fact, who 
 questioned Emilie; she had meant to judge her, and she was 
 judged by her ; she was constantly provoked to find that she 
 had betrayed her own character in some reply which Clara 
 had extracted from her, while her modest and candid manner 
 prohibited any suspicion of perfidy. There was a moment 
 when Mademoiselle de Fontaine seemed sorry for an ill-judged 
 sally against the commonalty to which Clara de Longueville 
 had led her. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said the sweet child, "I have heard so 
 much of you from Maximilien that I had the keenest desire 
 to know you, out of affection for him ; but is not a wish to 
 know you a wish to love you?" 
 
 "My dear Clara, I feared I might have displeased you by 
 speaking thus of people who are not of noble birth." 
 
 "Oh, be quite easy. That sort of discussion is pointless 
 in these days. As for me, it does not affect me. I am beside 
 the question." 
 
320 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 Ambitious as the answer might seem, it filled Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine with the deepest joy; for, like all infatuated 
 people, she explained it, as oracles are explained, in the sense 
 that harmonized with her wishes ; she began dancing again in 
 higher spirits than ever, as she watched Longueville, whose 
 figure and grace almost surpassed those of her imaginary ideal. 
 She felt added satisfaction in believing him to be well born, 
 her black eyes sparkled, and she danced with all the pleasure 
 that comes of dancing in the presence of the being we love. 
 The couple had never understood each other so well as at this 
 moment ; more than once they felt their finger-tips thrill and 
 tremble as they were married in the figures of the dance. 
 
 The early autumn had come to the handsome pair, in the 
 midst of country festivities and pleasures; they had aban- 
 doned themselves softly to the tide of the sweetest sentiment 
 in life, strengthening it by a thousand little incidents which 
 any one can imagine ; for love is in some respects always the 
 same. They studied each other through it all, as much as 
 lovers can. 
 
 "Well, well; a flirtation never turned so quickly into a 
 love match," said the old uncle, who kept an eye on the 
 two young people as a naturalist watches an insect in the 
 microscope. 
 
 This speech alarmed Monsieur and Madame Fontaine. 
 The old Vendeen had ceased to be so indifferent to his 
 daughter's prospects as he had promised to be. He went to 
 Paris to seek information, and found none. Uneasy at this 
 mystery, and not yet knowing what might be the outcome of 
 the inquiry which he had begged a Paris friend to institute 
 with reference to the family of Longueville, he thought it his 
 duty to warn his daughter to behave prudently. The fatherly 
 admonition was received with mock submission spiced with 
 irony. 
 
 "At least, my dear Emilie, if you love him, do not own it 
 to him." 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 321 
 
 " My dear father, I certainly do love him ; but I will await 
 your permission before I tell him so." 
 
 " But remember, Emilie, you know nothing of his family 
 or his pursuits." 
 
 " I may be ignorant, but I am content to be. But, father, 
 you wished to see me married ; you left me at liberty to make 
 my choice; my choice is irrevocably made what more is 
 needful?" 
 
 "It is needful to ascertain, my dear, whether the man of 
 your choice is the son of a peer of France," the venerable 
 gentleman retorted sarcastically. 
 
 Emilie was silent for a moment. She presently raised her 
 head, looked at her father, and said somewhat anxiously, 
 "Are not the Longuevilles ?" 
 
 "They became extinct in the person of the old Due de 
 Rostein-Limbourg, who perished, under the Terror, on the 
 scaffold in 1793. He was the last representative of the latest 
 and younger branch." 
 
 " But, papa, there are some very good families descended 
 from bastards. The history of France swarms with princes 
 bearing the bar sinister on their shields." 
 
 "Your ideas are much changed," said the old man, with a 
 smile. 
 
 The following day was the last that the Fontaine family 
 were to spend at the Pavilion Planat. Emilie, greatly dis- 
 turbed by her father's warning, awaited with extreme impa- 
 tience the hour at which young Longueville was in the habit 
 of coming, to wring some explanation from him. She went 
 out after dinner, and walked alone across the shrubbery to- 
 ward an arbor fit for lovers, where she knew that the eager 
 youth would seek her; and as she hastened thither she con- 
 sidered of the best way to discover so important a matter 
 without compromising herself a rather difficult thing! 
 Hitherto no direct avowal had sanctioned the feelings which 
 bound her to this stranger. Like Maximilien, she had secretly 
 21 
 
D22 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 enjoyed the sweetness of first love; but both were equally 
 proud, and each feared to confess that love. 
 
 Maximilien Longueville, to whom Clara had communicated 
 her not unfounded suspicions as to Emilie's character, was by 
 turns carried away by the violence of a young man's passion, 
 and held back by a wish to know and test the woman to whom 
 he would be intrusting his happiness. His love had not hin- 
 dered him from perceiving in Emilie the prejudices which 
 marred her young nature ; but before attempting to counter- 
 act them, he wished to be sure that she loved him, for he 
 would no sooner risk the fate of his love than of his life. He 
 had, therefore, persistently kept a silence to which his looks, 
 his behavior, and his smallest actions gave the lie. 
 
 On her side the self-respect natural to a young girl, aug- 
 mented in Mademoiselle de Fontaine by the monstrous vanity 
 founded on her birth and beauty, kept her from meeting the 
 declaration half-way, which her growing passion sometimes 
 urged her to invite. Thus the lovers had instinctively under- 
 stood the situation without explaining to each other their 
 secret motives. There are times in life when such vagueness 
 pleases youthful minds. Just because each had postponed 
 speaking too long, they seemed to be playing a cruel game of 
 suspense. He was trying to discover whether he was beloved, 
 by the effort any confession would cost his haughty mistress ; 
 she every minute hoped that he would break a too respectful 
 silence. 
 
 Emilie, seated on a rustic bench, was reflecting on all that 
 had happened in these three months full of enchantment. 
 Her father's suspicions were the last that could appeal to her ; 
 she even disposed of them at once by two or three of those 
 reflections natural to an inexperienced girl, which, to her, 
 seemed conclusive. Above all, she was convinced that it was 
 impossible that she should deceive herself. All the summer 
 through she had not been able to detect in Maximilien a 
 single gesture, or a single word, which could indicate a vulgar 
 
. 
 
A SLIGHT RUSTLING IN THE LEAVES SHOWED THAT 
 MAXIMILIEN HAD BEEN WATCHING HER. 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 323 
 
 origin or vulgar occupations ; nay more, his manner of dis- 
 cussing things revealed a man devoted to the highest interests 
 of the nation. "Beside," she reflected, "an office clerk, a 
 banker, or a merchant would not be at leisure to spend a 
 whole season in paying his addresses to me in the midst of 
 woods and fields ; wasting his time as freely as a nobleman 
 who has life before him free of all care." 
 
 She had given herself up to meditations far more interest- 
 ing to her than these preliminary thoughts, when a slight 
 rustling in the leaves announced to her that Maximilien 
 had been watching her for a minute, not probably without 
 admiration. 
 
 " Do you know that it is very wrong to take a young girl 
 thus unaware?" she asked him, smiling. 
 
 11 Especially when they are busy with their secrets," re- 
 plied Maximilien archly. 
 
 "Why should I not have my secrets? You certainly have 
 yours." 
 
 " Then you really were thinking of your secrets? " he went 
 on, laughing. 
 
 " No, I was thinking of yours. My own, I know." 
 
 "But perhaps my secrets are yours, and yours mine," cried 
 the young man, softly seizing Mademoiselle de Fontaine's 
 hand and drawing it through his arm. 
 
 After walking a few steps they found themselves under a 
 clump of trees which the hues of the sinking sun wrapped in a 
 haze of red and brown. This touch of natural magic lent a 
 certain solemnity to the moment. The young man's free and 
 eager action, and, above all, the throbbing of his surging 
 heart, whose hurried beating spoke to Emilie's arm, stirred 
 her to an emotion that was all the more disturbing because it 
 was produced by the simplest and most innocent circum- 
 stances. The restraint under which young girls of the upper 
 class live gives incredible force to any explosion of feeling, 
 and to meet an impassioned lover is one of the greatest 
 
324 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 dangers they can encounter. Never had Emilie and Maxi- 
 milien allowed their eyes to say so much that they dared never 
 speak. Carried away by this intoxication, they easily forgot 
 the petty stipulations of pride, and the cold hesitancies of 
 suspicion. At first, indeed, they could only express them- 
 selves by a pressure of hands which interpreted their happy 
 thoughts. 
 
 After slowly pacing a few steps in long silence, Mademoi- 
 selle de Fontaine spoke. " Monsieur, I have a question to 
 ask you," she said, trembling and in an agitated voice. 
 "But, remember, I beg, that it is in a manner compulsory on 
 me, from the rather singular position I am in with regard to 
 my family." 
 
 A pause, terrible to Emilie, followed these sentences, which 
 she had almost stammered out. During the minute while it 
 lasted, the girl, haughty as she was, dared not meet the flash- 
 ing eye of the man she loved, for she was secretly conscious 
 of the meanness of the next words she added: " Are you of 
 noble birth?" 
 
 As soon as the words were spoken she wished herself at the 
 bottom of a lake. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," Longueville gravely replied, and his face 
 assumed a sort cf stern dignity, " I promise to answer you 
 truly as soon as you shall have answered in all sincerity a 
 question I will put to you ! " He released her arm, and the 
 girl suddenly felt alone in the world, as he said: "What is 
 your object in questioning me as to my birth ? " 
 
 She stood motionless, cold, and speechless. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," Maximilien went on, "let us go no fur- 
 ther if we do not understand each other. I love you," he 
 said, in a voice of deep emotion. "Well, then," he added, 
 as he heard the joyful exclamation she could not suppress, 
 " why ask me if I am of noble birth ? " 
 
 " Could he speak so if he were not? " cried a voice within 
 her, which Emilie believed came from the depths of her 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 325 
 
 heart. She gracefully raised her head, seemed to find new 
 life in the young man's gaze, and held out her hand as if to 
 renew the alliance. 
 
 "You thought I cared very much for dignities?" said she 
 with keen archness. 
 
 "I have no titles to offer my wife," he replied, in a half- 
 sportive, half-serious tone. "But if I choose one of high 
 rank, and among women whom a wealthy home has accus- 
 tomed to the luxury and pleasures of a fine fortune, I know 
 what such a choice requires of me. Love gives everything," 
 he added lightly, " but only to lovers. Once married, they 
 need something more than the vault of heaven and the carpet 
 of a meadow." 
 
 "He is rich," she reflected. "As to titles, perhaps he 
 only wants to try me. He has been told that I am mad about 
 titles, and bent on marrying none but a peer's son. My 
 priggish sisters have played me that trick. I assure you, 
 monsieur," she said aloud, " that I have had very extravagant 
 ideas about life and the world; but now," she added point- 
 edly, looking at him in a perfectly distracting way, "I know 
 where true riches are to be found for a wife." 
 
 " I must believe that you are speaking from the depths of 
 your heart," he said, with gentle gravity. "But this winter, 
 my dear Emilie, in less than two months perhaps, I may be 
 proud of what I shall have to offer you if you care for the 
 pleasures of wealth. This is the only secret I shall keep 
 locked here," and he laid his hand on his heart, " for on its 
 success my happiness depends. I dare not say ours." 
 
 "Yes, yes, ours ! " 
 
 Exchanging such sweet nothings, they slowly made their 
 way back to rejoin the company. Mademoiselle de Fontaine 
 had never found her lover more amiable or wittier; his light 
 figure, his engaging manners, seemed to her more charming 
 than ever, since the conversation which had made her to some 
 extent the possessor of a heart worthy to be the envy of every 
 
326 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 woman. They sang an Italian duet with so much expression 
 that the audience applauded enthusiastically. Their adieux 
 were in a conventional tone, which concealed their happiness. 
 In short, this day had been to Emilie like a chain binding her 
 more closely than ever to the stranger's fate. The strength 
 and dignity he had displayed in the scene when they had con- 
 fessed their feelings had perhaps impressed Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine with the respect without which there is no true love. 
 
 When she was left alone in the drawing-room with her 
 father, the old man went up to her affectionately, held her 
 hands, and asked her whether she had gained any light as to 
 Monsieur Longueville's family and fortune. 
 
 "Yes, my dear father," she replied, "and I am happier 
 than I could hope. In short, Monsieur de Longueville is the 
 only man I could ever marry." 
 
 "Very well, Emilie," said the count, "then I know what 
 remains for me to do." 
 
 " Do you know of any impediment ? " she asked, in sincere 
 alarm. 
 
 " My dear child, the young man is totally unknown to me ; 
 but unless he is not a man of honor, so long as you love him, 
 he is as dear to me as a son." 
 
 " Not a man of honor ! " exclaimed Emilie. " As to that, 
 I am quite easy. My uncle, who introduced him to us, will 
 answer for him. Say, my dear uncle, has he been a filibuster, 
 an outlaw, a pirate?" 
 
 " I knew I should find myself in this fix ! " cried the old 
 sailor, waking up. He looked round the room, but his niece 
 had vanished "like Saint-Elmo's fires," to use his favorite 
 expression. 
 
 " Well, uncle," Monsieur de Fontaine went on, " how 
 could you hide from us all you knew about this young man ? 
 You must have seen how anxious we have been. Is Monsieur 
 de Longueville a man of family?" 
 
 " I don't know him from Adam or Eve," said the Comte 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 327 
 
 de Kergarouet. "Trusting to that crazy child's tact, I got 
 him here by a method of my own. I know that the boy 
 shoots with a pistol to admiration, hunts well, plays wonder- 
 fully at billiards, at chess, and at backgammon ; he handles 
 the foils, and rides a horse like the late Chevalier de Saint- 
 Georges. He has a thorough knowledge of all our vintages. 
 He is as good an arithmetician as Bareme, draws, dances, and 
 sings well. The devil's in it ! what more do you want ? If 
 that is not a perfect gentleman, find me a bourgeois who 
 knows all this, or any man who lives more nobly than he 
 does. Does he do anything, I ask you ? Does he compro- 
 mise his dignity by hanging about an office, bowing down 
 before the upstarts you call directors-general ? He walks up- 
 right. He is a man. However, I have just found in my vest 
 pocket the card he gave when he fancied I wanted to cut his 
 throat, poor innocent. Young men are very simple-minded 
 nowadays! Here it is." 
 
 "Rue du Sentier, No. 5," said Monsieur de Fontaine, try- 
 ing to recall, among all the information he had received, 
 something which might concern the stranger. " What the 
 devil can it mean ? Messrs. Palma, Werbrust & Co., whole- 
 sale dealers in muslins, calicoes, and printed cotton goods, 
 live there. Stay, I have it : Longueville the deputy has an 
 interest in their house. Well, but so far as I know, Longue- 
 ville has but one son of two-and-thirty, who is not at all like 
 our man, and to whom he gave fifty thousand francs a year 
 that he might marry a minister's daughter; he wants to be 
 made a peer like the rest of *em. I never heard him mention 
 this Maximilien. Has he a daughter? What is this girl 
 Clara ? Beside, it is open to any adventurer to call himself 
 Longueville. But is not the house of Palma, Werbrust & Co. 
 half ruined by some speculation in Mexico or the Indies ? I 
 will clear all this up." 
 
 "You speak a soliloquy as if you were on the stage, and 
 seem to account me a cypher," said the old admiral suddenly. 
 
328 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 " Don't you know that if he is a gentleman, I have more 
 than one bag in my hold that will stop any leak in his for- 
 tune ?" 
 
 " As to that, if he is a son of Longueville's, he will want 
 nothing; but," said Monsieur de Fontaine, shaking his head 
 from side to side, " his father has not even washed off the 
 stains of his origin. Before the Revolution he was an at- 
 torney, and the de he has since assumed no more belongs to 
 him than half of his fortune." 
 
 " Pooh ! pooh ! happy those whose fathers were hanged ! " 
 cried the admiral gayly. 
 
 Three or four days after this memorable day, on one of 
 those fine mornings in the month of November, which show 
 the boulevards cleaned by the sharp cold of an early frost, 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine, wrapped in a new style of fur 
 cape, of which she wished to set the fashion, went out with 
 two of her sisters-in-law, on whom she had been wont to dis- 
 charge her most cutting remarks. The three women were 
 tempted to the drive, less by their desire to try a very elegant 
 carriage, and wear gowns which were to set the fashions for 
 the winter, than by their wish to see a cape which a friend 
 had observed in a handsome lace and linen store at the corner 
 of the Rue de la Paix. As soon as they were in the store the 
 Baronne de Fontaine pulled Emilie by the sleeve, and pointed 
 out to her Maximilien Longueville seated behind the desk, 
 and engaged in paying out the change for a gold-piece to one 
 of the workwomen with whom he seemed to be in consulta- 
 tion. The " handsome stranger " held in his hand a parcel 
 'of patterns, which left no doubt as to his honorable profession. 
 
 Emilie felt an icy shudder, though no one perceived it. 
 Thanks to the good breeding of the best society, she com- 
 pletely concealed the rage in her heart, and answered her 
 sister-in-law with the words, "I knew it," with a fullness of 
 intonation and inimitable decision which the most famous 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 329 
 
 actress of the time might have envied her. She went straight 
 up to the desk. Longueville looked up, put the patterns in 
 his pocket with distracting coolness, bowed to Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine, and came forward, looking at her keenly. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," he said to the shopgirl, who followed 
 him, looking very much disturbed, " I will send to settle that 
 account; my house deals in that way. But here," he whis- 
 pered into her ear, as he gave her a thousand-franc note, 
 " take this it is between ourselves. You will forgive me, I 
 trust, mademoiselle," he added, turning to Emilie. "You 
 will kindly excuse the tyranny of business matters." 
 
 " Indeed, monsieur, it seems to me that it is no concern of 
 mine," replied Mademoiselle de Fontaine, looking at him 
 with a bold expression of sarcastic indifference which might 
 have made any one believe that she now saw him for the first 
 time. 
 
 "Do you really mean it?" asked Maximilien in a broken 
 voice. 
 
 Emilie turned her back upon him with amazing insolence. 
 These few words, spoken in an undertone, had escaped the 
 ears of her two sisters-in-law. When, after buying the cape, 
 the three ladies got into the carriage again, Emilie, seated 
 with her back to the horses, could not resist one last compre- 
 hensive glance into the depths of the odious store, where she 
 saw Maximilien standing with his arms folded, in the attitude 
 of a man superior to the disaster that had so suddenly fallen 
 on him. Their eyes met and flashed implacable looks. Each 
 hoped to inflict a cruel wound on the heart of a lover. In 
 one instant they were as far apart as if one had been in China 
 and the other in Greenland. 
 
 Does not the breath of vanity wither everything? Made- 
 moiselle de Fontaine, a prey to the most violent struggle that 
 can torture the heart of a young girl, reaped the richest har- 
 vest of anguish that prejudice and narrow-mindedness ever 
 sowed in a human soul. Her face, but just now fresh and 
 
330 THE SCEAUX BALL, 
 
 velvety, was streaked with yellow lines and red patches ; the 
 paleness of her cheeks seemed every now and then to turn 
 green. Hoping to hide her despair from ner sisters, she 
 would laugh as she pointed out some ridiculous dress or 
 passer-by; but her laughter was spasmodic. She was more 
 deeply hurt by their unspoken compassion than by any satirical 
 comments for which she might have revenged herself. She 
 exhausted her wit in trying to engage them in a conversation, 
 in which she tried to expend her fury in senseless paradoxes, 
 heaping on all men engaged in trade the bitterest insults and 
 witticisms in the worst taste. 
 
 On getting home, she had an attack of fever, which at first 
 assumed a somewhat serious character. By the end of a 
 month the care of her parents and of the physician restored 
 her to her family. 
 
 Every one hoped that this lesson would be severe enough to 
 subdue Emilie's nature ; but she insensibly fell into her old 
 habits and threw herself again into the world of fashion. She 
 declared that there was no disgrace in making a mistake. If 
 she, like her father, had a vote in the Chamber, she would move 
 for an edict, she said, by which all merchants, and especially 
 dealers in calico, should be branded on the forehead, like 
 Berri sheep, down to the third generation. She wished that 
 none but nobles should have a right to wear the antique 
 French costume, which was so becoming to the courtiers of 
 Louis XV. To hear her, it was a misfortune for France, 
 perhaps, that there was no outward and visible difference 
 between a merchant and a peer of France. And a hundred 
 more such pleasantries, easy to imagine, were rapidly poured 
 out when any accident brought up the subject. 
 
 But those who loved Emilie could see through all her banter 
 a tinge of melancholy. It was clear that Maximilien Longue- 
 ville still reigned over that inexorable heart. Sometimes she 
 would be as gentle as she had been during the brief summer 
 that had seen the birth of her love; sometimes, again, she 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL, 331 
 
 was unendurable. Every one made excuses for her inequality 
 of temper, which had its source in sufferings at once secret 
 and known to all. The Comte de Kergarouet had some 
 influence over her, thanks to his increased prodigality, a kind 
 of consolation which rarely fails of its effect on a Parisian 
 girl. 
 
 The first ball at which Mademoiselle de Fontaine appeared 
 was at the Neapolitan ambassador's. As she took her place 
 in the first quadrille she saw, a few yards away from her, 
 Maximilien Longueville, who nodded slightly to her partner. 
 
 "Is that young man a friend of yours?" she asked, with 
 a scornful air. 
 
 "Only my brother," he replied. 
 
 Emilie could not help starting. "Ah!" he continued, 
 "and he is the noblest soul living " 
 
 "Do you know my name?" asked Emilie, eagerly inter- 
 rupting him. 
 
 " No, mademoiselle. It is a crime, I confess, not to remem- 
 ber a name which is on every lip I ought to say in every 
 heart. But I have a valid excuse. I have but just arrived 
 from Germany. My ambassador, who is in Paris on leave, 
 sent me here this evening to take care of his amiable wife, 
 whom you may see yonder in that corner." 
 
 " A perfect tragic mask ! " said Emilie, after looking at the 
 ambassadress. 
 
 " And yet that is her ballroom face ! " said the young man, 
 laughing. " I shall have to dance with her ! So I thought I 
 might have some compensation." Mademoiselle de Fontaine 
 curtsied. " I was very much surprised," the voluble young 
 secretary went on, "to find my brother here. On arriving 
 from Vienna I heard that the poor boy was ill in bed, and i 
 counted on seeing him before coming to this ball ; but good 
 policy will not always allow us to indulge family affection. 
 The Padrona della casa (or lady in the case) would not give 
 me time to call on my poor Maximilien." 
 
332 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 " Then, monsieur, your brother is not, like you, in diplo- 
 matic employment." 
 
 "No," said the attache, with a sigh, "the poor fellow 
 sacrificed himself for me. He and my sister Clara have 
 renounced their share of my father's fortune to make an eldest 
 son of me. My father dreams of a peerage, like all who vote 
 for the Ministry. Indeed, it is promised him," he added in 
 an undertone. " After saving up a little capital my brother 
 joined a banking firm, and I hear he has just effected a specu- 
 lation in Brazil which may make him a millionaire. You see 
 me in the highest spirits at having been able, by my diplo- 
 matic connections, to contribute to his success. I am impa- 
 tiently expecting a dispatch from the Brazilian Legation, which 
 will help to lift the cloud from his brow. What do you think 
 of him?" 
 
 " Well, your brother's face does not look to me like that of 
 a man busied with money matters." 
 
 The young attache shot a scrutinizing glance at the ap- 
 parently calm face of his partner. 
 
 "What! " he exclaimed, with a smile, "can young ladies 
 read the thoughts of love behind a silent brow ? " 
 
 "Your brother is in love, then?" she asked, betrayed into 
 a movement of curiosity. 
 
 "Yes; my sister Clara, to whom he is as devoted as a 
 mother, wrote to me that he had fallen in love this summer 
 with a very pretty girl ; but I have had no further news of 
 the affair. Would you believe that the poor boy used to get 
 up at five in the morning, and went off to settle his business 
 that he might be back by four o'clock in the country where 
 the lady was ? In fact, he ruined a very nice thoroughbred 
 that I had given him. Forgive my chatter, mademoiselle ; I 
 have but just come home from Germany. For a year I have 
 heard no decent French, I have been weaned from French 
 faces, and satiated with horrid Germans, to such a degree 
 that, I believe, in my patriotic mania, I could talk to the 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 33', 
 
 chimeras on a French candlestick. And if I talk with a lack 
 of reserve unbecoming in a diplomatist, the fault is yours, 
 mademoiselle. Was it not you who pointed out my brother? 
 When he is the theme I become inexhaustible. I should like 
 to proclaim to all the world how good and generous he is. 
 He gave up no less than a hundred thousand francs a year, 
 the income from the Longueville property." 
 
 If Mademoiselle de Fontaine had the benefit of these im- 
 portant revelations, it was partly due to the skill with which 
 she continued to question her confiding partner from the 
 moment when she found that he was the brother of her scorned 
 lover. 
 
 "And could you, without being grieved, see your brother 
 selling muslin and calico?" asked Emilie, at the end of the 
 third figure of the quadrille. 
 
 " How do you know that?" asked the attache". "Thank 
 God, though I pour out a flood of words, I have already ac- 
 quired the art of not telling more than I intend, like all the 
 other diplomatic cadets I know." 
 
 "You told me, I assure you." 
 
 Monsieur de Longueville looked at Mademoiselle de Fon- 
 taine with a surprise that was full of perspicacity. A suspi- 
 cion flashed upon him. He glanced inquiringly from his 
 brother to his partner, guessed everything, clasped his hands, 
 fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and began to laugh, saying, " I 
 am an idiot! You are the handsomest person here; my 
 brother keeps stealing glances at you ; he is dancing in spite 
 of his illness, and you pretend not to see him. Make him 
 happy," he added, as he led her back to her old uncle. " I 
 shall not be jealous, but I shall always shiver a little at calling 
 you my sister " 
 
 The lovers, however, were to prove as inexorable to each 
 other as they were to themselves. At about two in the morn- 
 ins? refreshments were served in an immense corridor, where, 
 to^leave persons of the same coterie free to meet each other, 
 
334 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 the tables were arranged as in a restaurant. By one of those 
 accidents which always happen to lovers, Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine found herself at a table next to that at which the 
 more important guests were seated. Maximilien was one of 
 the group. Emilie, who lent an attentive ear to her neighbors' 
 conversation, overheard one of those dialogues into which a 
 young woman so easily falls with a young man who has 
 the grace and style of Maximilien Longueville. The lady 
 talking to the young banker was a Neapolitan duchess, whose 
 eyes shot lightning flashes, and whose skin had the sheen of 
 satin. The intimate terms on which Longueville affected to 
 be with her stung Mademoiselle de Fontaine all the more be- 
 cause she had just given her lover back twenty times as much 
 tenderness as she had ever felt for him before. 
 
 " Yes, monsieur, in my country true love can make every 
 kind of sacrifice," the duchess was saying, with a simper. 
 
 "You have more passion than Frenchwomen," said Maxi- 
 milien, whose burning gaze fell on Emilie. " They are all 
 vanity." 
 
 "Monsieur," Emilie eagerly interposed, "is it not very 
 wrong to calumniate your own country ? Devotion is to be 
 found in every nation." 
 
 "Do you imagine, mademoiselle," retorted the Italian, 
 with a sardonic smile, "that a Parisian would be capable of 
 following her lover all over the world ? " 
 
 " Oh, madame, let us understand each other. She would 
 follow him to a desert and live in a tent, but not to sit in 
 a store." 
 
 A disdainful gesture completed her meaning. Thus, under 
 the influence of her disastrous education, Emilie for the second 
 time killed her budding happiness and destroyed its prospects 
 of life. Maximilien's apparent indifference, and a woman's 
 smile, had wrung from her one of those sarcasms whose 
 treacherous zest always led her astray. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said Longueville, in a low voice, under 
 
THE SCEAUX fiALL. 333 
 
 cover of the noise made by the ladies as they rose from the 
 table, " no one will ever more ardently desire your happiness 
 than I ; permit me to assure you of this, as I am taking leave 
 of you. I am starting for Italy in a few days." 
 
 " With a duchess, no doubt ? " 
 
 " No, but perhaps with a mortal blow." 
 
 "Is not that pure fancy?" asked Emilie, with an anxious 
 glance. 
 
 " No," he replied. " There are wounds which never heal." 
 
 "You are not to go," said the girl imperiously, and she 
 smiled. 
 
 "I shall go," replied Maximilien, gravely. 
 
 " You will find me married on your return, I warn you," 
 she said coquettishly. 
 
 "I hope so." 
 
 "Impertinent wretch!" she exclaimed. "How cruel a 
 revenge ! " 
 
 A fortnight later Maximilien set out with his sister Clara 
 for the warm and poetic scenes of beautiful Italy, leaving 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine a prey to the most vehement regret. 
 The young secretary to the Embassy took up his brother's 
 quarrel, and contrived to take signal vengeance on Emilie's 
 disdain by making known the occasion of the lovers' separa- 
 tion. He repaid his fair partner with interest all the sarcasm 
 with which she had formerly attacked Maximilien, and often 
 made more than one excellency smile by describing the fair 
 foe of the counting-house, the amazon who preached a crusade 
 against bankers, the young girl whose love had evaporated 
 before a bale of muslin. The Comte de Fontaine was obliged 
 to use his influence to procure an appointment to Russia for 
 Auguste Longueville in order to protect his daughter from 
 the ridicule heaped upon her by this dangerous young perse- 
 cutor. 
 
 Not long after, the Ministry being compelled to raise a levy 
 
336 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 of peers to support the aristocratic party, trembling in the 
 Upper Chamber under the lash of an illustrious writer, gave 
 Monsieur Guiraudin de Longueville a peerage, with the title 
 of Vicomte. Monsieur de Fontaine also obtained a peerage, 
 the reward due as much to his fidelity in evil days as to his 
 name, which claimed a place in the hereditary Chamber. 
 
 About this time Emilie, now of age, made, no doubt, some 
 serious reflections on life, for her tone and manners changed 
 perceptibly. Instead of amusing herself by saying spiteful 
 things to her uncle, she lavished on him the most affectionate 
 attentions ; she brought him his stick with a persevering de- 
 votion that made the cynic smile, she gave him her arm, rode 
 in his carriage, and accompanied him in all his drives ; she 
 even persuaded him that she liked the smell of tobacco, and 
 read him his favorite paper "La Quotidienne " in the midst 
 of clouds of smoke, which the malicious old sailor inten- 
 tionally blew over her ; she learned piquet to be a match for 
 the old count ; and this fantastic damsel even listened without 
 impatience to his periodical narratives of the battles of the 
 Belle-Poule, the manoeuvres of the Ville de Paris, M. de 
 Suffren's first expedition, or the battle of Aboukir. 
 
 Though the old sailor had often said that he knew his longi- 
 tude and latitude too well to allow himself to be captured by a 
 young corvette, one fine morning Paris drawing-rooms heard 
 the news of -the marriage of Mademoiselle de Fontaine to the 
 Comte de Kergarouet. The young comtesse gave splendid 
 entertainments to drown thought ; but she, no doubt, found a 
 void at the bottom of the whirlpool : luxury was ineffectual to 
 disguise the emptiness and grief of her sorrowing soul ; for the 
 most part, in spite of the flashes of assumed gayety, her beauti- 
 ful face expressed unspoken melancholy. Emilie appeared, 
 however, full of attentions and consideration for her old hus- 
 band, who, on retiring to his rooms at night, to the sounds of 
 a lively band, would often say, " I do not know myself. Was 
 I to wait till the age of seventy-two to embark as a pilot on 
 
THE SCEAUX BALL. 337 
 
 board the Belle Emilie after twenty years of matrimonial 
 galleys?" 
 
 The conduct of the young comtesse was marked by such 
 strictness that the most clear-sighted criticism had no fault to 
 find with her. Lookers-on chose to think that the vice-ad- 
 miral had reserved the right of disposing of his fortune to keep 
 his wife more tightly in hand ; but this was a notion as insult- 
 ing to the uncle as to the niece. Their conduct was indeed so 
 delicately judicious that the men who were most interested in 
 guessing the secrets of the couple could never decide whether 
 the old count regarded her as a wife or as a daughter. He 
 was often heard to say that he had rescued his niece as a cast- 
 away after shipwreck ; and that, for his part, he had never 
 taken a mean advantage of hospitality when he had saved an 
 enemy from the fury of the storm. Though the comtesse 
 aspired to reign in Paris and tried to keep pace with Mes- 
 dames the Duchesses de Maufrigneuse and de Chaulieu, the 
 Marquises d'Espard and d'Aiglemont, the Comtesses Feraud, 
 de Montcornet, and de Restaud, Madame de Camps, and 
 Mademoiselle des Touches, she did not yield to the addresses 
 of the young Vicomte de Portenduere, who made her his idol. 
 
 Two years after her marriage, in one of the old drawing- 
 rooms in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where she was admired 
 for her character, worthy of the old school, Emilie heard the 
 Vicomte de Longueville announced. In the corner of the 
 room where she was sitting, playing piquet with the Bishop of 
 Persepolis, her agitation was not observed; she turned her 
 head and saw her former lover come in, in all the freshness of 
 youth. His father's death, and then that of his brother, 
 killed by the severe climate of St. Petersburg, had placed on 
 Maximilien's head the hereditary plumes of the French peer's 
 coronet. His fortune matched his learning and his merits ; 
 only the day before his youthful and fervid eloquence had 
 dazzled the Assembly. At this moment he stood before the 
 comtesse, free, and graced with all the advantages she had 
 22 
 
338 THE SCEAUX BALL. 
 
 formerly required of her ideal. Every mother with a daughter 
 to marry made amiable advances to a man gifted with the 
 virtues which they attributed to him, as they admired his at- 
 tractive person ; but Emilie knew, better than any one, that 
 the Vicomte de Longueville had the steadfast nature in which 
 a wise woman sees a guarantee of happiness. She looked at 
 the admiral, who, to use his favorite expression, seemed likely 
 to hold his course for a long time yet, and cursed the follies 
 of her youth. 
 
 At this moment Monsieur de Persepolis said with episcopal 
 grace: "Fair lady, you have thrown away the king of hearts 
 I have won. But do not regret your money. I keep it for 
 my little seminariens." 
 
 PARIS, December, 1829. 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS 
 
 (Les Comcdiens sans le s avoir). 
 
 Translated by ELLEN MARRIAGK. 
 
 To M. le Comte Jules de Castellane. 
 
 LEON DE LORA, the famous French landscape painter, 
 belongs to one of the noblest families of Roussillon. The 
 Loras came originally from Spain ; and while they are dis- 
 tinguished for their ancient lineage, for the last century they 
 have faithfully kept up the traditions of the hidalgo's pro- 
 verbial poverty. Leon himself came up to Paris on foot from 
 his department of the Eastern Pyrenees with the sum of eleven 
 francs in his pocket for all viaticum ; and in some sort forgot 
 the hardships of childhood and the poverty at home in the 
 later hardships which a young dauber never lacks when his 
 whole fortune consists in an intrepid vocation. Afterward 
 the absorbing cares brought by fame and success still further 
 helped him to forget. 
 
 If you have followed the tortuous and capricious course of 
 these Studies, you may perhaps recollect one of the heroes of 
 "Un Debut dans la vie,"* Schinner's pupil, Mistigris, who 
 reappears from time to time in various Scenes. 
 
 You would not recognize the frisky penniless dauber in the 
 landscape painter of 1845, the rival of Hobbema, Ruysdael, 
 and Claude Lorrain. Lora is a great man. He lives near his 
 old master Hippolyte Schinner in a charming house (his own 
 property) in the Rue de Berlin, not very far from the H6tel de 
 Brambourg, where his friend Bridau lives. He is a member 
 of the Institute and an officer of the Legion of Honor, he 
 has twenty thousand francs a year, his work fetches its weight 
 in gold; and, fact even more extraordinary (as he thinks) 
 
 * "A Start in Life." 
 
 (339) 
 
340 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 than the invitations to court balls which he sometimes receives 
 the fame of a name published abroad over Europe by the 
 press for the last sixteen years at length reached the valley in 
 the Eastern Pyrenees, where three Loras of the old stock were 
 vegetating to wit, his elder brother, his father, and a paternal 
 aunt, Mile. Urraca y Lora. 
 
 On the mother's side no relatives remained to the painter 
 save a cousin, aged fifty, living in a little manufacturing town 
 in the department, but that cousin was the first to remember 
 Leon. So far back as 1840, Leon de Lora received a letter 
 from M. Sylvestre Palafox-Castel-Gazonal (usually known as 
 plain Gazonal), to which letter Lora replied that he really 
 was himself that is to say, that he really was the son of the 
 late Leonie Gazonal, wife of Monsieur the Comte Fernand 
 Didas y Lora.* 
 
 Upon this, in the summer of 1841, Cousin Sylvestre Gazo- 
 nal went to apprise the illustrious but obscure house of Lora 
 of the fact that young Leon had not sailed for the Plate 
 River, nor was he dead, as they supposed ; but he was one of 
 the finest geniuses of the modern French school which they 
 refused to believe. The elder brother, Don Juan de Lora, 
 told his Cousin Gazonal that he, Gazonal, had been hoaxed by 
 some Parisian wag. 
 
 Time went on, and the said Gazonal found himself involved 
 in a lawsuit, which the prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees sum- 
 marily stopped on a question of disputed jurisdiction and 
 transferred to the Council of State. Gazonal proposed to 
 himself to go to Paris to watch his case, and at the same time 
 to clear up this matter, and to call the Parisian painter to 
 account for his impertinence. To this end, M. Gazonal 
 sallied forth from his furnished lodging in the Rue Croix des 
 Petits Champs, and was astonished at the sight of the palace 
 in the Rue de Berlin ; and, learning on inquiry that its owner 
 was traveling in Italy, renounced for the time being the inten- 
 
 * In Spain the mother's surname is given the children. 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 341 
 
 tion of asking him for satisfaction. His mind misgave him 
 whether the great man would consent to own his mother's 
 nephew. 
 
 Through 1843 and 1844 Gazonal followed the fortunes of 
 his lawsuit. The local authorities, supported by the riparian 
 owners, proposed to remove a weir on the river. The very 
 existence of Gazonal's factory was threatened. In 1845 ne 
 looked on the case as lost beyond hope. The secretary of 
 the master of requests, who drew up the report, told him in 
 confidence that it was unfavorable to his claims, and his own 
 barrister confirmed the news. Gazonal, at home a com- 
 mandant of the National Guard, and as shrewd a manufac- 
 turer as you would find in his department, in Paris felt so 
 utterly insignificant, and found the cost of living so high, that 
 he kept close in his shabby lodging. 
 
 The child of the South, deprived of the sun, poured male- 
 dictions upon Paris, that "rheumatism factory," as he called 
 it ; and, when he came to reckon up the expenses of his stay, 
 vowed to himself to poison the prefect or to " minotaurise "* 
 him on his return. In gloomier moments he slew the prefect 
 outright ; then he cheered up a little, and contented himself 
 with " minotaurising " the culprit. 
 
 One morning after breakfast, inwardly storming, he snatched 
 the newspaper up savagely, and the following lines caught his 
 eye at the end of a paragraph : " Our great landscape painter, 
 Ldon de Lora, returned from Italy a month ago. He is send- 
 ing a good deal of his work to the Salon this year, so we may 
 
 look forward to a very brilliant exhibition " The words 
 
 rang in Gazonal's ears like the inner voice which tells the 
 gambler that he will win. With southern impetuosity, Gazo- 
 nal dashed out of the house, hailed a cab, and went to his 
 cousin's house in the Rue de Berlin. 
 
 Leon de Lora happened to be engaged at the moment, but 
 he sent a message asking his relative to breakfast with him the 
 * Chew him up : from Minotaure, a dragon-like animal. 
 
342 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 next day at tha Cafe de Paris. Gazonal, like a man of the 
 South, poured out his woes to the valet. 
 
 Next morning, overdressed for the occasion in a coat of 
 corn-cockle blue, with gilt buttons, a frilled shirt, white vest, 
 and yellow kid gloves, Gazonal fidgeted up and down the 
 boulevard for an hour and a half, after learning from the 
 cafetier (so provincials call the proprietor of a cafe) that gen- 
 tlemen usually breakfasted between eleven and twelve. 
 
 "About half-past eleven," so he used to tell the story after- 
 ward to everybody at home, " two Parisians in plain surtouts, 
 looking like nobodies, came along the boulevard, and cried out 
 as soon as- they saw me, ' Here comes your Gazonal ! ' ' 
 
 The second comer was Bixiou, brought on purpose to " draw 
 out " Leon's cousin. 
 
 "And then," he would continue, " young Leon hugged me 
 in his arms and cried, ' Do not be cross, dear cousin ; I am 
 very much yours.' The breakfast was sumptuous. I rubbed 
 my eyes when I saw so many gold-pieces put down on the 
 bill. These fellows must be making their weight in gold, for 
 my cousin gave the waiter thirty sols (sous) a whole day's 
 wages ! " 
 
 Over that monster breakfast, in the course of which they 
 consumed six dozen Ostend oysters, half a dozen cutlets a la 
 Soubise, a chicken a la Marengo, a lobster mayonaise, mush- 
 rooms on toast, and green peas, to say nothing of hors t? ceuvrcs 
 (side-dishes), washed down with three bottles of bordeaux, 
 three of champagne, several cups of coffee and liqueurs, Gazo- 
 nal launched forth into magnificent invective on the subject 
 of Paris. The noble manufacturer complained of the length 
 of the four-pound loaves, of the height of the houses, of the 
 callous indifference toward each other displayed by the passers- 
 by, of the cold, of the rain, of the fares charged by the " demi- 
 fiacres" and all so amusingly, that the pair of artists warmed 
 toward him and asked for the story of his lawsuit. 
 
 "The histor-r-ry of my lawsuit," said he, rolling his r's 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 343 
 
 and accentuating every word in Provencal fashion, " the his- 
 tor-r-ry of my lawsuit is quite simple. They want my factory. 
 I find a fool of a barrister, I give him twenty francs every 
 time to keep his eyes open, and always find him fast asleep. 
 He is a shell-less snail that rolls about in a carriage while I go 
 on foot. They have swindled me shamefully ; I do nothing 
 but go from one to another, and I see that I ought to have 
 gone in a carriage. They will not look at you here unless 
 you hide yourself out of sight in a carriage. On the other 
 hand, in the Council of State they are a pack of do-nothings 
 that leave a set of little rascals in our prefect's pay to do their 
 
 work for them That is the history of my lawsuit. They 
 
 want my factory ! And, well ! they will get it. And they 
 can fight it out with my workpeople, a hundred strong, that 
 will give them a cudgeling which will make them change their 
 minds " 
 
 "Come now, cousin, how long have you been here?" in- 
 quired the landscape painter. 
 
 " For two whole years. Oh, that prefect and his 'disputed 
 jurisdiction,' he shall pay dear for it ; I will have his life, and 
 give mine for it at the Assize Court " 
 
 " Which councilor is chairman of your committee?" 
 
 " An ex-journalist, not worth ten sols, though they call him 
 Massol." 
 
 Lora and Bixiou exchanged glances. 
 
 "And the commissioner?" 
 
 " Funnier still ! It is a master of requests, a professor of 
 something or other at the Sorbonne ; he used to write for 
 some, review. I p-r-rofess the deepest disrespect for him " 
 
 " Claud Vignon ?" suggested Bixiou. 
 
 "That is the name Massol and Vignon, that is the style 
 of the unstable firm of bandits (Trestailtons) in league with 
 my prefect." 
 
 "There is hope for it yet," said Lon de Lora. "You 
 can do anything, you see, in Paris, cousin anything, good 
 
344 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 or bad, just or unjust. Anything can be done or undone, or 
 done over again here." 
 
 " I will be hanged if I will stop in it for another ten sec- 
 onds ; it is the dullest place in France." 
 
 As he spoke, the three were pacing up and down that 
 stretch of asphalt on which you can scarcely walk of an after- 
 noon without meeting somebody whose name has been pro- 
 claimed from Fame's trumpet, for good or ill. The ground 
 shifts. Once it used to be the Place Royale, then the Pont 
 Neuf possessed a privilege transferred in our day to the Boule- 
 vard des Italiens. 
 
 The landscape painter held forth for his cousin's benefit. 
 " Paris," said he, " is an instrument which a man must learn 
 to play. If we stop here for ten minutes, I will give you a 
 lesson. There ! look," he continued, raising his cane to 
 point out a couple that issued from the Passage de 1' Opera. 
 
 "What is it?" inquired Gazonal. 
 
 "It " was an elderly woman dressed in a very showy gown, 
 a faded tartan shawl, and a bonnet that had spent six months 
 in a store-window. Her face told of a twenty years' residence 
 in a damp porter's lodge, and her bulging market-basket 
 showed no less clearly that the ex-portress had not improved 
 her social position. By her side walked a slim and slender 
 damsel. Her eyes, shaded with dark lashes, had lost their 
 expression of innocence, her complexion was spoiled with 
 overwork, but her features were prettily cut, her face was 
 fresh, her hair looked thick, her brows pert and engaging, 
 her figure lacked fullness in two words, it was a green apple. 
 
 "It," answered Bixiou, "is a 'rat'* equipped with her 
 mother." 
 
 "Ar-r-rat? What! What?" 
 
 Leon favored Mile. Ninette with a little friendly nod. 
 
 "The 'rat' may win your lawsuit for you," he said. Gazonax 
 
 * Rat, raton, is given to many various things : police-spies, lorettes, 
 dandies, a jocular term between men, a pet name for infants, etc. 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 345 
 
 started, but Bixiou had him by the arm. It had struck him 
 as they left the cafe that the southern countenance was a trifle 
 flushed. 
 
 " The rat has just come from a rehearsal at the opera. It 
 is on its way home to its scanty dinner. In three hours' time 
 it will come back to dress, if it comes on this evening in the 
 ballet, that is, for to-day is Monday. The rat has reached the 
 age of thirteen ; it is an old rat already. In two years' time 
 the creature's market-price will be sixty thousand francs; she 
 will be everything or nothing, a great dancer or a super, she 
 will have a name in the world or she will be a degraded harlot. 
 Her working life began at the age of eight. Such as you see 
 her to-day she is exhausted ; she overtired herself this morning 
 at the dancing class ; she has just come out of a rehearsal as 
 full of head-splitting ins-and-outs as a Chinese puzzle; and 
 she will come back again to-night. The rat is one of the 
 foundation stones of the opera ; the rat is to the leading lady 
 of the ballet as the little clerk is to the notary. The rat is 
 Hope." 
 
 "Who brings the rat into the world?" asked Gazonal. 
 
 " Porters, poor folk, actors, and dancers," said Bixiou. 
 " Nothing but the direst poverty could induce an eight-year- 
 old child to bear such torture of feet and joints, to lead a 
 well-conducted life till she is sixteen or eighteen years old 
 (simply as a business speculation), and to keep a hideous old 
 woman always with her like stable-litter about some choice 
 plant. You will see genius of every kind go past artists in 
 the bud and artists run to seed all of them engaged in rearing 
 that ephemeral monument to the glory of France, called the 
 opera; a daily renewed combination of physical and mental 
 strength, will and genius, found nowhere but in Paris." 
 
 " I have already seen the opera," Gazonal remarked with a 
 self-sufficient air. 
 
 "Yes, from your bench at three francs sixty centimes, as 
 you have seen Paris from the Rue Croix des Petits Champs 
 
346 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 without knowing anything about it. What did they give at 
 the opera when you went ? " 
 
 " William Tell.' " 
 
 "Good," returned L6on, "you must have enjoyed Ma- 
 thilde's great duet. Well, what do you suppose the prima 
 donna did as soon as she went off the stage ? " 
 
 "Did? What?" 
 
 "Sat down to two mutton cutlets, underdone, which her 
 servant had prepared for her " 
 
 "Ah! foolery!" 
 
 "Malibran kept herself up with brandy it was that that 
 killed her. Now for something else. You have seen the 
 ballet ; now you have just seen the ballet go past in plain 
 morning dress, not knowing that your lawsuit depends upon 
 those feet?" 
 
 "My lawsuit?" 
 
 "There, cousin, there goes a marcheuse, as she is called." 
 
 Leon pointed out one of the superb creatures that have 
 lived sixty years of life at five-and-twenty; a beauty so un- 
 questioned, so certain to be sought, that she keeps in the 
 shade. She was tall, she walked well, with a dandy's assured 
 air, and her toilet was striking by reason of its ruinous sim- 
 plicity. 
 
 "That is Carabine," said Bixiou, as he and the painter 
 nodded slightly, and Carabine answered with a smile. 
 
 " There goes another who can cashier your prefect." 
 
 "A marcheuse is often a very handsome 'rat ' sold by her 
 real or pretended mother so soon as it is certain that she can 
 neither rank as a first, nor second, nor third-rate dancer ; or 
 else she prefers her calling of coryphee to any other, perhaps 
 because she has spent her youth in learning to dance and 
 knows how to do nothing else. She met no doubt with rebuffs 
 at the minor theatres; she cannot hope to succeed in the 
 three French cities which maintain a corps de ballet, she has 
 no money, or no wish to go abroad, for you must know that 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 347 
 
 the great Paris school trains dancers for the rest of the civil- 
 ized world. If a rat becomes a marcheuse, that is to say, a 
 figurante, she must have had some weighty reason for staying 
 in Paris some rich man whom she did not love, that is to 
 say, or a poor young fellow whom she loved too well. The 
 one that passed just now will dress or undress three times in 
 an evening as a princess, a peasant-girl, a Tyrolese, and the 
 like, and gets perhaps two hundred francs a month." 
 " She is better dressed than our pr-r-refect's wife." 
 " If you went to call on her, you would find a maid, a cook, 
 and a manservant in her splendid establishment in the Rue 
 Saint-Georges," said Bixiou. "But, after all, as modern in- 
 comes are to the revenues of the eighteenth-century noblesse, 
 so is she to the eighteenth-century opera-girl, a mere wreck 
 of former greatness. Carabine is a power in the land. At 
 this moment she rules du Tillet, a banker with a good deal of 
 
 influence in the Chamber " 
 
 "And the higher ranks of the ballet, how about them?" 
 "Look!" said Lora, pointing out an elegant carriage 
 which crossed the boulevard and disappeared down the Rue 
 de la Grange-Bateliere, "there goes one of our leading ladies 
 of the ballet ; put her name on the placards, and she will 
 draw all Paris ; she is making sixty thousand francs per 
 annum, she lives like a princess. The price of your factory 
 would not buy you the right of wishing her a good-morning 
 thirty times." 
 
 " Eh, well ! I can easily say it to myself; it will cost less." 
 " Do you see that good-looking young man on the front 
 seat ? He is a vicomte bearing a great name, and he is her 
 first gentleman of the chamber; he arranges with the news- 
 papers for her ; he carries peace or declares war of a morning 
 on the manager of the opera; or he makes it his business to 
 superintend the applause when she come on or off the stage." 
 " My good sirs, this beats everything; I had not a suspicion 
 of Paris as it is." 
 
348 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 " Oh well, at any rate you may as well find out what may 
 be seen in ten minutes in the Passage de 1' Opera. There ! " 
 exclaimed Bixiou. 
 
 Two persons, a man and a woman, came out as he spoke. 
 The woman was neither pretty nor plain ; there was a certain 
 distinction that revealed the artist in the fashion and color of 
 her gown. The man looked rather like a minor canon. 
 
 "That is a double-bass and a second premier sujet" con- 
 tinued Bixiou. " The double-bass is a tremendous genius ; but 
 the double-bass, being a mere accessory in the score, scarcely 
 makes as much as the dancer. The second sujet made a great 
 name before Taglioni and Elssler appeared ; she preserved the 
 traditions of the character dance among us ; she would have 
 been in the first rank to-day if the other two had not come to 
 reveal undreamed-of poetry in the dance ; as it is, she is only 
 in the second rank, and yet she draws her thirty thousand 
 francs, and has a faithful friend in a peer of France with great 
 influence in the Chamber. Look ! here comes the third-rate 
 dancer, a dancer that owes her (professional) existence to the 
 omnipotent press. If her engagement had not been renewed, 
 the men in office would have had one more enemy on their 
 backs. The corps de ballets is the great power at the opera ; 
 for which reason, in the upper ranks of dandyism and politics, 
 it is much better form to make a connection among the 
 dancers than among the singers. 'Monsieur goes in for 
 music,' is a kind of a joke among the frequenters of the 
 opera in the orchestra." 
 
 A short, ordinary-looking, plainly-dressed man went past. 
 
 "At last here comes the other half of the receipts the 
 tenor. There is no poetry, no music, no acting possible with- 
 out a famous tenor that can take a certain high note. The 
 tenor means the element of love, a voice that reaches the heart, 
 that thrills the soul ; and when this voice resolves itself into 
 figures, it means a larger income than a cabinet minister's. A 
 hundred thousand francs for a throat, a hundred thousand for 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 349 
 
 a pair of ankles behold the two financial scourges of the 
 opera." 
 
 " It fills me with amazement to see so many hundred thou- 
 sand francs walking about," said Gazonal. 
 
 " You will soon see a great deal more, dear cousin of mine. 
 Come with us. We will take Paris as an artist takes up the 
 violoncello, and show you how to play the great instrument, 
 show you how we amuse ourselves in Paris in fact." 
 
 "It is a kaleidoscope seven leagues round," cried Gazonal. 
 
 " Before we begin to pilot this gentleman, I must see Gail- 
 lard," began Bixiou. 
 
 "And Gaillard may help us in the cousin's affairs." 
 
 "What is the new scene ?" 
 
 "It is not a scene, but a scene-shifter. Gaillard is a friend 
 of ours ; he has come at last to be the managing director of a 
 newspaper; his character, like his cash-box, is chiefly remark- 
 able for its tidal ebb and flow. Gaillard possibly may help to 
 win your lawsuit." 
 
 " It is lost " 
 
 " Just the time to win it then ! " returned Bixiou. 
 
 Arrived at Theodore Gaillard's house in the Ruede Mnars, 
 the friends were informed by the footman that his master was 
 engaged. It was a private interview. 
 
 "With whom?" inquired Bixiou. 
 
 " With a man that is driving a bargain to imprison a debtor 
 that cannot be caught," said a voice, and a very handsome 
 woman appeared in a dainty morning gown. 
 
 "In that case, dear Suzanne, the rest of us may walk 
 in " 
 
 " Oh ! what a lovely creature ! " cried Gazonal. 
 
 "That is Madame Gaillard" said Leon de Lora; and, 
 lowering his voice for his cousin's ear, he added: "You see 
 before you, dear fellow, as modest a woman as you will find 
 in Paris ; she has retired from public life, and is contented 
 with one husband." 
 
350 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 "What can I do for you, my lords?" said the facetious 
 managing director, imitating Frederick Lemaltre. 
 
 Theodore Gaillard had been a clever man ; but, as so often 
 happens in Paris, he had grown stupid with staying too long 
 in the same groove. The principal charm of his conversation 
 consisted in tags of quotation with which it was garnished, 
 bits from popular plays mouthed after the manner of some 
 well-known actor. 
 
 " We have come for a chat," said Le"on. 
 
 " 'Enctirc, jetinc hdmej a la Odry." [Correctly : Encore,, 
 jeune homme ; meaning: Again, young man.] 
 
 "This time we shall have him for certain," said Gaillard's 
 interlocutor by way of conclusion. 
 
 "Are you quite sure of that, Daddy Fromenteau ? This is 
 the eleventh time that we have had him fast at night, and in 
 the morning he was gone." 
 
 "What can you do? I never saw such a debtor. He is 
 like a locomotive, he goes to sleep in Paris and wakes up in 
 Seine-et-Oise. He is a puzzle for a locksmith." 
 
 Seeing Gaillard smile, he added, " That is how we talk in 
 our line. You ' nab ' a man or you lock him up ; that means 
 you arrest him. They talk differently in the criminal police. 
 Vidocq used to say to his man, ' They have it ready for you ! ' 
 which was all the funnier because 'it' meant the guillotine." 
 
 Bixiou jogged Gazonal's elbow, and at once the visitor be- 
 came all eyes and ears. "Does monsieur give palm oil?" 
 continued Fromenteau, quite quietly, though there was a per- 
 ceptible shade of menace in the tone. 
 
 "It is a matter of fifty centimes," said Gaillard (a reminis- 
 cence of Odry in Les Saltimbanques), as he handed over five 
 francs to Fromenteau. 
 
 "And for the blackguards?" the man went on. 
 
 "Who are they?" 
 
 " Those in my employ," Fromenteau replied imperturbably. 
 
 " Is there any one lower yet ? " asked Bixiou. 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 351 
 
 "Oh, yes, sir," the detective replied. "There are some 
 that give us information unconsciously and get no pay for it. 
 I put flats and noodles lower than blackguards." 
 
 " The blackguards are often very good-looking and clever," 
 exclaimed Leon. 
 
 "Then do you belong to the police?" asked Gazonal, 
 uneasily and curiously eyeing this little weazened, impassive 
 person, dressed like an attorney's under-clerk. 
 
 "Which kind do you mean ?" returned Fromenteau. 
 
 " Are their several kinds ? " 
 
 "As many as five," said Fromenteau. "There is the 
 Criminal Department (Vidocq used to be at the head of it); 
 the Secret Superintendence (no one knows the chief); the 
 Political Department (Fouche's own) ; and the Chateau, the 
 system directly in the employ of the Emperor and Louis 
 XVIII., and so on. The Chateau was always squabbling with 
 the other department at the Quai Malaquais. That came to 
 an end with M. Decazes. I used to belong to Louis XVIII. ; 
 I have been on the force ever since 1793 along with poor 
 Contenson." 
 
 The listeners looked at one another, each with one thought 
 in their minds " How many men's heads has he cut off ? " 
 
 "And now they want to do without us tomfoolery!" 
 added the little man that had grown so terrific all on a sud- 
 den. " Since 1830 they will only employ respectable people 
 at the prefecture ; I sent in my resignation, and learned my 
 little knack of nabbing prisoners for debt." 
 
 " He is the right hand of the commercial police," said 
 Gaillard, lowering his voice for Bixiou ; " but you can never 
 tell whether debtor or creditor pays him most." 
 
 "The dirtier the business, the more need for strict hon- 
 esty," said Fromenteau sententiously ; "lam for those that 
 pay best. You want to recover fifty thousand francs, and 
 you higgle over centimes. Give me five hundred francs, and 
 to-morrow morning we will have him in the stone jug." 
 
352 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 "Five hundred francs for you yourself! " cried Theodore 
 Gaillard. 
 
 " Lisette wants a shawl," answered the detective without 
 moving a muscle of his countenance. "I call her 'Lisette' 
 because of Beranger." 
 
 " You have a Lisette, and still you stay in your line ! " 
 cried the virtuous Gazonal. 
 
 " It is so amusing. Talk of field sports ; it is far more 
 interesting to run a man to earth in Paris ! " 
 
 " They must be uncommonly clever to do it, and that is a 
 fact," said Gazonal, thinking alo'ud. 
 
 "Oh, if I were to reckon up all the qualities that a man 
 needs if he is to make his mark in our line, you would think 
 I was describing a man of genius," replied Fromenteau, tak- 
 ing Gazonal's measure at a glance. "You must be lynx- 
 eyed, must you not ? Bold for you must drop into a house 
 like a bombshell, walk up to people as if you had known them 
 all your life, and propose the never-refused dirty business, and 
 so on. You must have Memory, Sagacity, Invention for 
 you must be quick to think of expedients, and never repeat 
 yourself; espionage must always be moulded on the individual 
 character of those with whom you have to do but invention 
 is a gift of heaven. Then you need agility, strength, and so 
 on. All these faculties, gentlemen, are painted up over the 
 door of Amoros' Gymnasium as virtues. All these things we 
 must possess under penalty of forfeiting the salary of a hun- 
 dred francs per month paid us by the Government, in the 
 Rue de Jerusalem, or the commercial police." 
 
 "And you appear to me to be a remarkable man," said 
 Gazonal. Fromenteau looked at him, but he neither an- 
 swered nor showed any sign of feeling, and went away with- 
 out taking leave, an unmistakable sign of genius. 
 
 "Well, cousin, you have just seen the police incarnate," 
 said Leon. 
 
 "I have had quite as much as I want," returned the honest 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 353 
 
 manufacturer. Gaillard and Bixiou chatted together mean- 
 while in an undertone. 
 
 " I will send round an answer to-night to Carabine's," 
 Gaillard said aloud ; and, sitting down to his desk, he took 
 no further notice of Gazonal. 
 
 "Insolence ! " fumed the child of the South on the thresh- 
 old. 
 
 " His paper has twenty-two thousand subscribers," said 
 Leon de Lora. " He is one of the great powers of the age ; 
 he has not time to be polite of a morning." 
 
 " If go we must to the Chamber to arrange this lawsuit, let 
 us take the longest way round," said Leon. 
 
 "Great men's sayings are just like gilded silver," retorted 
 Bixiou; "use wears the gilt off the silver, and all the sparkle 
 goes out of the sayings if they are repeated. But where are 
 we going?" 
 
 " To see our hatter near by," returned Leon. 
 
 " Bravo ! If we go on like this, we may perhaps have some 
 fun." 
 
 "Gazonal," began Leon, "I will draw him out for your 
 benefit. Only you must look as solemn as a king on a five- 
 franc piece, for you are going to see gratis an uncommonly 
 queer quiz; the man's self-importance has turned his head. 
 In these days, my dear fellow, everybody wants to cover 
 himself with glory, and a good many cover themselves with 
 ridicule, and hence we have entirely new living carica- 
 tures " 
 
 "When everybody is glorious together, how is a man to 
 distinguish himself?" asked Gazonal. 
 
 " Distinguish yourself? " repeated Bixiou. " Be a noodle. 
 Your cousin wears a ribbon ; I am well dressed, and people 
 look at me, not at him." 
 
 After this remark, which may perhaps explain why so many 
 orators and other great politicians never appear in the streets 
 with a ribbon in their button-holes, Lon de Lora pointed out 
 23 
 
354 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 a name painted in gilt letters over a store-front. It was the 
 illustrious name of an author of a pamphlet on hats, a person 
 who pays newspaper proprietors as much for advertisements as 
 any three vendors of sugar-plums or patent pills. It ran : 
 VITAL (LATE FINOT), HAT MANUFACTURER not plain HATTER, 
 as heretofore. 
 
 Bixiou called Gazonal's attention to the glories of the store- 
 window. " Vital, my dear boy, is making forty thousand 
 francs per annum." 
 
 "And he is still in business as a hatter!" exclaimed 
 Gazonal, nearly breaking Bixiou's arm with a violent wrench. 
 
 " You shall see the man directly," added Leon ; " you want 
 a hat, you shall have one gratis." 
 
 " Is Monsieur Vital not in ? " asked Bixiou, seeing no one 
 at the desk. 
 
 "Monsieur is correcting proofs in his private office," said 
 the assistant. 
 
 " What do you think of that, hey? " said Leon, turning to 
 his cousin. Then to the assistant, " Can we speak to him 
 without disturbing his inspirations?" 
 
 "Let the gentlemen come in," called a voice a bourgeois 
 voice, a voice to inspire confidence in voters, a powerful voice, 
 suggestive of a good steady income, and Vital vouchsafed to 
 show himself. He was dressed in black from head to foot, 
 and carried a diamond pin in his resplendent shirt-frill. Be- 
 yond him the three friends caught a glimpse of a young and 
 pretty woman sitting at a desk with a piece of embroidery in 
 her hands. 
 
 Vital was between thirty and forty years of age ; native 
 joviality had been repressed in him by ambitions. It is the 
 privilege of a fine organization to be neither tall nor short, 
 and Vital enjoyed that advantage. He was tolerably stout, 
 and careful of his appearance ; and if the hair had grown 
 rather thin on his forehead, he turned the partial baldness 
 to account, to give himself the airs of a man consumed by 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 355 
 
 thought. You could see by the way that his wife looked at 
 him that she admired her husband for a great man and a 
 genius. Vital loved artists. Not that he had himself any 
 taste for the arts, but he felt that he was one of the confra- 
 ternity ; he believed that he was an artist, and brought the fact 
 home to you by sedulously disclaiming all right to that noble 
 title, and constantly relegating himself to an enormous dis- 
 tance from the arts to draw out the remark, " Why, you have 
 raised the manufacture of hats to the dignity of a science." 
 
 " Have you found the hat for me at last?" inquired Leon 
 de Lora. 
 
 ''What, sir, in one fortnight! A hat for you/" remon- 
 strated Vital. " Why, two months will scarcely be long 
 enough to strike out a shape to suit you ! Look, here is your 
 lithograph, there it lies. I have studied you very carefully 
 already. I would not take so much trouble for a prince, but 
 you are something more, you are an artist. And you under- 
 stand me, my dear sir." 
 
 " Here is one of our great inventors ; he would be as great 
 a man as Jacquart if he would but consent to die for a bit," 
 said Bixiou, introducing Gazonal. "Our friend here is a 
 cloth weaver, the inventor of a way of restoring the indigo 
 color in old clothes ; he wanted to see you as a great phe- 
 nomenon, for it was you who said : ' The hat is the man.' It 
 sent this gentleman into ecstasies. Ah! Vital, you have 
 faith ! You believe in something ; you have a passion for 
 your work ! " 
 
 Vital scarcely heard the words, his face had grown pale 
 with joy. 
 
 "Rise, wife. This gentleman is one of the princes of 
 
 science ! " 
 
 Mme. Vital rose at a sign from her husband; Gazonal 
 
 bowed. 
 
 "Shall I have the honor of finding a hat for you?" con- 
 tinued Vital, radiant and officious. 
 
366 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 "At my price," said Bixiou. 
 
 '< Quite so. I ask nothing but the pleasure of an occasional 
 mention from you, gentlemen. Monsieur must have a pic- 
 turesque hat, something in Monsieur Lousteau's style," he 
 continued, looking at Bixiou with the air of one laying down 
 the law. " I will think of a shape." 
 
 "You take a great deal of trouble," said Gazonal. 
 
 " Oh ! only for a few persons; only for those who can ap- 
 preciate the value of the pains that I take. Why, among the 
 aristocracy there is but one man who really understands a hat 
 the Prince de Bethune. How is it that men do not see, as 
 women do, that the hat is the first thing to strike the eye ? 
 Why do they not think of changing the present state of things, 
 which is disgraceful, it must be said. But a Frenchman, of 
 all people, is the most persistent in his folly. I quite know 
 the difficulties, gentlemen ! I am not speaking now of my 
 writings on a subject which I believe I have approached in a 
 philosophical spirit ; but simply as a practical hatter I have 
 discovered the means of individualizing the hideous headgear 
 which Frenchmen are privileged to wear until I can succeed 
 in abolishing it altogether." 
 
 He held up an example of the hideous modern hat. 
 
 "Behold the enemy, gentlemen. To think that the most 
 intelligent nation under the sun should consent to put this 
 ' stove-pipe ' (as one of our own writers has said), this ' stove- 
 pipe ' upon their heads ! Here you see the various curves 
 
 which I have introduced into those dreadful lines," he added, 
 pointing out one of his own "creations." " Yet, although I 
 understand how to suit the hat to the wearer as you see, for 
 here is a doctor's hat, this is for a tradesman, and that for a 
 dandy or an artist, a stout man, a thin man still, the hat in 
 itself is always hideous. There, do you fully grasp my whole 
 idea?" 
 
 He took up a broad-brimmed hat with a low crown. 
 
 " This is an old hat belonging to Claud Vignon, the great 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 357 
 
 critic, independent writer, and free liver, etc. He has gone 
 to the suppport of the Ministry, he is a professor and librarian, 
 he only writes for the ' Debats ' now, he has gained the post 
 of master of requests. He has an income of sixteen thousand 
 francs, he makes four thousand francs by his journalistic work, 
 he wears a ribbon at his button-hole. Well, here is his new 
 hat." 
 
 Vital exhibited a head covering, the juste milieu (impartial 
 magistrate) visible in every line. 
 
 " You ought to have made him a harlequin's hat," exclaimed 
 Gazonal. 
 
 "Your genius rises over other people's heads, Monsieur 
 Vital," said Leon. 
 
 Vital bowed, unsuspicious of the joke. 
 
 " Can you tell me why your stores are the last of all to close 
 here in Paris ? They are open even later than the cafes and 
 drinking bars. It really tickles my curiosity," said Gazonal. 
 
 "In the first place, our windows look their best when 
 lighted up at night ; and for one hat that we sell in the day- 
 time, we sell five at night." 
 
 " Everything is queer in Paris," put in Leon. 
 
 "Well, in spite of my efforts and my success" (Vital pur- 
 sued his panegyric), " we must come to the round crown. I 
 am working in that direction." 
 
 ''What hinders you?" asked Gazonal. 
 
 '- Cheapness, sir. You start with a stock of fine silk hats at 
 fifteen francs the price would kill the trade ; Parisians never 
 have fifteen francs of ready money to invest in a new hat. A 
 beaver costs thirty francs, but the problem is the same as ever. 
 Beaver, I say, though there are not ten pounds' weight of 
 real beaver-skins bought in France in a year. The article is 
 worth three hundred and fifty francs per pound, and an ounce 
 is needed for a hat. And, beside, the beaver hat is not good 
 for much ; the skin dyes badly ; it turns rusty in the sunshine 
 in ten minutes ; it subsides at once in the heat. What we call 
 
358 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 ' beaver ' is really nothing but hare-skin ; the best hats are 
 made from the backs, the second quality from the sides, and 
 the third from the bellies. I am telling you trade-secrets, you 
 are men of honor. But whether you carry beaver or hare-skin 
 on your head, the problem is equally insoluble how to find 
 fifteen or thirty francs of ready money. A man must pay cash 
 for his hat you behold the consequences ! The honor of the 
 garb of Gaul will be saved when a round gray hat shall cost a 
 hundred francs. When that day comes we shall give credit, 
 like the tailors. To that end people must be persuaded to 
 wear the buckle, the gold galoon, the plumes, and satin-lined 
 brims of the times of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. Our busi- 
 ness would expand ten times over if we went into the fancy 
 line. France would be the hat-mart of the world, just as 
 Paris always sets the fashion in women's dress. The present 
 hat may be made anywhere. Ten million francs of export 
 trade to be secured for Paris is involved in the ques- 
 tion " 
 
 "A revolution ! " cried Bixiou, working up enthusiasm. 
 
 "Yes, a radical revolution. The form must be re- 
 modeled." 
 
 "You are happy after Luther's fashion," said Leon, al- 
 ways on the lookout for a pun. " You are dreaming of a 
 reformation." 
 
 "Yes, sir. Ah ! if the twelve or fifteen artists, capitalists, 
 or dandies that set the fashion would but have courage for 
 twenty-four hours, there would be a great commercial victory 
 won for France. See here ! as I tell my wife, I would give 
 my fortune to succeed. Yes, it is my one ambition to re- 
 generate the hat and to disappear." 
 
 "The man is stupendous," remarked Gazonal, when they 
 had left the store, " but all your eccentrics have a touch of the 
 South about them, I do assure you " 
 
 "Let us go along the Rue Saint-Marc," said Bixiou. 
 
 " Are we to see something else ? " 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 339 
 
 "Yes, you are going to see a money-lender a money- 
 lender among the ' rats ' and marchcuses. A. woman that has 
 more hideous secrets in her keeping than gowns in her store- 
 windows," said Bixiou. 
 
 He pointed as he spoke to a dirty-looking store like a blot 
 on the dazzling expanse of modern street. It had last been 
 painted somewhere about the year 1820, a subsequent bank- 
 ruptcy must have left it in a dubious condition on the owner's 
 hands, and now the color was obscured by a thick coating of 
 grime and dust. The windows were filthy, the door-handle 
 had that significant trick of turning of its own accord, char- 
 acteristic of every place which people enter in a hurry, only 
 to leave more promptly still. 
 
 "What do you say to this? Death's cousin-german, is 
 she not?" L6on muttered in Gazonal's ear, pointing out a 
 terrific figure behind the counter. " She is Madame Nour- 
 risson ? ' ' 
 
 " How much for the guipure,* madame? " asked Gazonal, 
 not to be behindhand. 
 
 "To you, monsieur, only a hundred crowns, as you come 
 from so far." Then remarking a certain southern start of 
 surprise, she added, with a touch of pathos in her voice, " It 
 belonged to the Princesse de Lamballe, poor thing." 
 
 "What! here! right under the Tuileries?" cried Bixiou. 
 
 "Monsieur, 'they' don't believe it," said she. 
 
 " We did not come here as buyers, madame," Bixiou began 
 valiantly. 
 
 "So I see, monsieur," retorted Mme. Nourrisson. 
 
 "We have several things to sell," continued the illustrious 
 caricaturist. "I live at Number 112 Rue de Richelieu, sixth 
 floor. If you like to look in, in a moment, you may pick up 
 a famous bargain " 
 
 "Perhaps monsieur would like a bit of muslin; it is very 
 much worn just now? " smiled she. 
 
 * The name of a lace. 
 
360 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 "No. It is a matter of a wedding-dress," L6on de Lota 
 said with much gravity. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later, Mme. Nourrisson actually appeared 
 at Bixiou's rooms. Leon and Gazonal had come home with 
 him to see the end of the jest, and Mme. Nourrisson found 
 the trio looking as sober as three authors whose work (written 
 in collaboration) has not met with that success which it de- 
 served. 
 
 Bixiou unblushingly produced a pair of lady's slippers. 
 "These, madame, belonged to the Empress Josephine," said 
 he, giving Mme. Nourrisson, as in duty bound, the small 
 change for her Princesse de Lamballe. 
 
 " That?" cried she. "Why, it was new this year; 
 
 look at the mark on the sole." 
 
 " Can you not guess that the pair of slippers is a prelude to 
 the romance," said Leon ; " and not, as usual, the sequel." 
 
 "My friend here from the South," put in Bixiou, "wishes 
 to marry a certain young lady, very well-to-do and well con- 
 nected ; but he would like to know beforehand (huge family 
 interests being at stake) whether there has been any slip in 
 the past." 
 
 " How much is monsieur willing to pay?" she asked, eye- 
 ing the prospective bridegroom. 
 
 "A hundred francs," said Gazonal, no longer astonished 
 at anything. 
 
 " Many thanks," said she, with a grimace which a monkey 
 might despairingly envy. 
 
 " Come, now, how much do you want, Madame Nour- 
 risson?" asked Bixiou, putting his arm round her waist. 
 
 "First of all, my dear gentlemen, never since I have been 
 in business have I seen any one, man or woman, beating down 
 the price of happiness. And, in the second place, you are 
 all three of you chaffing me," she added, and a smile that 
 stole over her hard lips was reinforced by a gleam of cat-like 
 suspicion in her eyes. "Now, if your happiness is not in- 
 
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, MME. NOURRISSON ACTUALLY 
 APPEARED AT BIXIOU'S ROOMS. 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 361 
 
 volved, your fortune is at stake, and a man that lives up so 
 many flights of stairs is still less the person to haggle over a 
 rich match. Come, now, what is it all about, my lambs?" 
 with sudden affability. 
 
 " We want to know about the firm of Beunier and Com- 
 pany," said Bixiou, very well pleased to pick up some infor- 
 mation concerning a person in whom he was interested. 
 
 " Oh 1 a louis will be enough for that " 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 " I have all the mother's jewels. She is hard up from one 
 quarter to another ; why, it is all she can do to pay interest 
 on the money she owes me. Are you looking for a wife in 
 that quarter ? You noodle ! Hand me over forty francs and 
 I will give you a good hundred crowns' worth of gossip." 
 
 Gazonal brought a forty-franc piece to light, and Mine. 
 Nourrisson gave them some startling stories of the straits to 
 which some so-called ladies are reduced. The old wardrobe- 
 dealer grew lively as she talked, sketching her own portrait 
 in the course of the conversation. Without betraying a 
 single confidence, without letting fall a single name, she made 
 her audience shudder by allowing them to see how much 
 prosperity in Paris is based on the quaking foundation of 
 borrowed money. In her drawers she had keepsakes set in 
 gold and brilliants, memorials of grandmothers long dead 
 and gone, of children still in life, of husbands or grand- 
 children laid in the grave. She had heard ghastly stories 
 wrung from anger, passion, or pique, told, it may be, by one 
 customer of another, or drawn from borrowers in the necessary 
 course of sedative treatment which ends in a loan. 
 
 "Why did you enter this line of business?" asked Gazonal. 
 
 "For my son's sake," she replied simply. 
 
 Women that go up and down back stairs to ply their trade 
 in are always brimful of excuses based on the best of motives. 
 Mme. Nourrisson, by her own account, had lost three matches, 
 three daughters that turned out very badly, and all her illu- 
 
362 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 sions to boot. She produced pawn-tickets for some of her 
 best goods, she said, just to show the risks of the trade. How 
 she should meet the end of the month, she did not know ; 
 people " robbed " her to such a degree. 
 
 The word was a little too strong. The artists exchanged 
 glances. 
 
 "Look here, boys, I will just show you how we get taken 
 in. This did not happen to me, but to my neighbor over the 
 way, Madame Mahuchet, a ladies' shoemaker. I had been 
 lending money to a countess, a woman with more crazes than 
 she can afford. She swaggers it with a fine house and grand 
 furniture ; she has At Homes, she makes a deuce of a dash. 
 
 "Well, she owed her shoemaker three hundred francs, and 
 was giving a dinner and a party no further back than the day 
 before yesterday. Madame Mahuchet, hearing of this from 
 the cook, came to me about it, and we got excited over the 
 news. She was for making a fuss, but for my own part 
 'My dear Mother Mahuchet,' I said, 'where is the use of it? 
 Just to get a bad name ; it is better to get good security. It 
 is diamond cut diamond, and you save your bile.' But go 
 she would ; she asked me to back her up, and we went together. 
 ' Madame is not at home.' ' Go on ! ' said Mother Mahuchet. 
 ' We will wait for her if I stop here till midnight ! ' So we 
 camped down in the antechamber and chatted together. 
 Well, doors opened and shut ; by-and-by there was a sound 
 of little footsteps and low voices ; and, for my own part, I 
 felt sorry. The company was coming to dinner. You can 
 judge of the turn things took. 
 
 " The countess sent in her own woman to wheedle la Mahu- 
 chet ' You shall be paid to-morrow ' and all the rest of the 
 ways of trying it on. No go. Then the countess, in her 
 Sunday best, as you may say, comes into the dining-room. 
 La Mahuchet hears her, flings open the door, and walks in. 
 Lord ! at the sight of the dinner-table, all sparkling like a 
 jewel-case, the dish-covers and the plate and the candle- 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 363 
 
 sconces, she went off like a soda-water bottle. She flings out 
 her bomb ' Those that spend other people's money have no 
 business to give dinner-parties; they ought to live quietly. 
 You a countess ! and you owe a hundred crowns to a poor 
 shoemaker's wife with seven children ! ' You can imagine how 
 she ran on, an uneducated woman as she is. At the first word 
 of excuse ' No money ' from the countess, la Mahuche! 
 cries out, ' Eh ! my lady, but there is plate here ! Pawn your 
 spoons and forks and pay me ! ' 'Take them yourself,' says 
 the countess, catching up half-a-dozen and slipping them into 
 her hand, and we hurried away downstairs pellmell. What a 
 success ! Bah ! no. Out in the street tears came into la 
 Mahuchet's eyes, she is a good soul ; she took the things back, 
 and apologized. She found out the depths of the countess' 
 poverty and they were German silver ! " 
 
 " Dishcovered that she had no cover," commented Leon de 
 Lora, in whom the Mistigris of old was apt to reappear. 
 
 The pun flashed a sudden light across Mme. Nourrisson's 
 brain. " Aha ! my dear sir, you are an artist, a dramatic 
 writer, you live in the Rue du Helder, you have kept com- 
 pany with Madame Antonia, I know a few of your little ways! 
 Ah ! Come, now, do you want something out of the common 
 in the grand style, Carabine or Mousqueton, for instance, or 
 Malaga or Jenny Cadine ? " 
 
 " Malaga and Carabine, forsooth ! when we have made them 
 what they are ! " cried Leon. 
 
 "My dear Madame Nourrisson, I solemnly swear to you 
 that we wanted nothing but the pleasure of making your ac- 
 quaintance ; and as we wish to hear about your antecedents, 
 we should like to know how you came to drop into your way 
 of business," said Bixiou. 
 
 " I was a confidential servant in the household of a marshal 
 of Fr?.nce," she said, posing like a Dorine; "he was the 
 Prince d'Ysembourg. One morning one of the finest ladies 
 at the Emperor's court came to speak privately with the 
 
864 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 marshal. I at once took care to be within hearing. Well, 
 my countess burst into tears, and tells that simpleton of a 
 marshal (the Prince d' Ysembourg, the Conde of the Republic, 
 and a simpleton to boot), she tells him that her husband was 
 away at the wars in Spain, and had left her without a single 
 bill for a thousand francs, and that unless she can have one or 
 two at once, her children must starve, she had literally nothing 
 for to-morrow. Well, my marshal, being tolerably free-handed 
 in those days, takes a couple of thousand-franc notes out of 
 his desk. I watched the fair countess down the stairs. She did 
 not see me ; she was laughing to herself with not altogether 
 motherly glee, so I slipped out and heard her tell the driver 
 in a low voice to drive to Leroy's. I rushed around. My 
 mother of a family goes to the famous store in the Rue de 
 Richelieu you know the place and orders and pays for a 
 dress that cost fifteen hundred francs. You used to pay for 
 one dress by ordering another then. Two nights afterward 
 she could appear at an ambassador's ball, decked out as a 
 woman must be when she wishes to snme for all the world 
 and for one beside. That very day said I to myself, ' Here is 
 an opening for me ! When I am no longer young, I will lend 
 money to fine ladies on their things,; passion cannot reckon, 
 and pays blindly.' If it is a subject for a comedy that you 
 want, I will let you have some for a consideration 
 
 And making an end of a harangue, colored by all the phases 
 of her past life, she departed, leaving Gazonal in dismay, 
 caused partly by the matter of her discourse, but at least as 
 much by an exhibition of five yellow teeth which she meant 
 for a smile. 
 
 " What are we to do next ? " he inquired. 
 
 "Find some bank-bills," said Bixiou, whistling for his porter; 
 " I want money, and I am going to teach you the uses of a 
 porter. You imagine that they are meant to open doors; 
 whereas their real use is to help vagrants like me out of diffi- 
 culties, and to assist the artists whom they take under their 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS, 865 
 
 protection, for which reason mine will take the Montyon 
 prize* some of these days." 
 
 The common expression, "eyes like saucers," found suffi- 
 cient illustration in Gazonal's countenance at that moment. 
 
 The man that suddenly appeared in the doorway was of no 
 particular age, a something between a private detective and a 
 merchant's clerk, but more unctuous and sleeker than either ; 
 his hair was greasy, his person paunchy, his complexion of 
 the moist and unwholesome kind that you observe in the 
 superiors of convents. He wore a blue cloth jacket, drab 
 trousers, and list slippers. 
 
 "What do you want, sir?" inquired this personage, with 
 a half-patronizing, half-servile manner. 
 
 "Oh, Ravenouillet (his name is Ravenouillet)," said Bix- 
 iou, turning to Gazonal "have you your 'notes receivable* 
 about you?" 
 
 Ravenouillet felt in a side-pocket, and produced the stick- 
 iest book that Gazonal had ever seen in his life. 
 
 "Just enter a note of these two notes for five hundred 
 francs at three months, and put your name to them for me." 
 
 Bixiou brought out a couple of notes made payable to his 
 order as he spoke. Ravenouillet accepted them forthwith, 
 and noted them down on the greasy page among his wife's 
 entries of various sums due from other lodgers. 
 
 "Thanks, Ravenouillet. Stay, here is an order for the 
 Vaudeville." 
 
 " Ah, my child will enjoy herself very much to-night," said 
 Ravenouillet, as he went away 
 
 " There are seventy-one of us in the house," said Bixiou, 
 " among us, on an average, we owe Ravenouillet six thousand 
 francs per month, eighteen thousand francs per quarter for 
 advances and postage, to say nothing of rent. He is oui 
 Providence at thirty per cent. We pay him that without 
 being so much as asked." 
 
 * Awarded annually for faithful service. 
 
366 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 "Oh, Paris ! Paris ! " exclaimed Gazonal. 
 
 "On the way," said Bixiou, filling in his signature "(for 
 I am going to show you another actor, Cousin Gazonal, and a 
 charming scene he shall play, gratis, for you) " 
 
 " Where ? " Gazonal broke in. 
 
 "In a money-lender's office. On the way, I repeat, I will 
 tell you how friend Ravenouillet started in Paris." 
 
 As they passed the door of the lodge, Gazonal heard Mile. 
 Lucienne Ravenouillet, a student at the Conservatoire, prac- 
 ticing her scales, her father was reading the newspaper, and 
 Mme. Ravenouillet came out with letters in her hand for the 
 lodgers above. 
 
 "Thank you for the order, Monsieur Bixiou," called the 
 little one. 
 
 " That is not a ' rat,' " said Leon ; " it is a grasshopper in 
 the larva state." 
 
 "It seems that here, as all the world over, you win the 
 favor of those in office by good offices," began Gazonal. 
 Leon was charmed with the pun. 
 
 " He is coming on in our society ! " he cried. 
 
 "Now for Ravenouillet's history," said Bixiou, when the 
 three stood outside on the boulevard. " In 1831, Massoi 
 (your chairman of committee, Gazonal) was a journalist- 
 barrister. At that time he merely intended to be keeper of 
 the seals some day ; he scorned to oust Louis-Philippe from 
 the throne : pardon his ambition, he comes from Carcassonne. 
 One fine morning a young fellow-countryman turned up. 
 ' Monsu Massoi,' he said, ' you know me very well, my father 
 is your neighbor the grocer ; I have just come from down 
 yonder, for they tell us that every one who comes here gets a 
 place.' At those words a cold shiver ran through Massoi. 
 He thought within himself that if he were so ill advised as to 
 oblige a compatriot, who for that matter was a perfect stranger, 
 he should have the whole department tumbling in upon him. 
 He thought of the wear and tear to bell-pulls, door hinges, 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 867 
 
 and carpets, he saw his only servant giving notice, he had 
 visions of trouble with his landlord, of complaints from the 
 other tenants of the combined odors of garlic and diligence 
 introduced into the house. So he fixed upon his petitioner 
 such an eye as a butcher turns upon a sheep brought into the 
 shambles. In vain. His fellow-countryman survived that 
 gaze, or rather that stab, and continued his discourse much on 
 this wise, according to Massol's report of it: 
 
 " 'I have my ambitions, like every one else,' said he; 'I 
 shall not go back again until I am rich, if indeed I go back 
 at all, for Paris is the antechamber of Paradise. They tell 
 me that you write for the newspapers, and do anything you 
 like with people here, and that for you it is ask and have with 
 the Government. I have abilities, like all of us down yonder, 
 but I know myself : I ha^e no education ; I cannot write 
 (which is a pity, for I have ideas) ; so I do not think of com- 
 ing into competition with you ; I know myself; I should not 
 make anything out. But since you can do anything, and we 
 are brothers, as you may say, having played together as chil- 
 dren, I count upon you to give me a start in life, and to use 
 your influence for me. Oh, you must. I want a place, the 
 kind of place to suit my talents, a place that I, being I, am 
 fitted to fill, with a chance of making my fortune ' 
 
 " Massol was just on the point of brutally thrusting his 
 fellow-countryman out at the door with a rough word in his 
 ear, when the said countryman concluded thus : 
 
 " ' So I do not ask for a place in the civil service, where a 
 man gets on as slowly as a tortoise ; for there is your cousin 
 that has been a tax-collector these twenty years, and is a tax- 
 collector still no; I simply thought of going ?' 'On 
 
 the stage? ' put in Massol, greatly relieved by the turn things 
 were taking. ' No. It is true, I have the figure for it, and 
 the memory, and the gesticulation ; but it takes too much out 
 of you. I should prefer the career of a janitor. ' Massol kept 
 his countenance 'It will take far more out of you,' he said, 
 
368 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 'but you are not so likely, at any rate, to perform to an 
 empty house.' So he found Ravenouillet's 'first-door-string' 
 for him, as he says." 
 
 " I was the first to take an interest in janitors as a class," 
 said Leon. "Your moral humbugs, your charlatans from 
 vanity, your latter-day sycophants, your Septembrists dis- 
 guised in trappings of decorous solemnity, your discoverers of 
 problems palpitating with present importance, are all preach- 
 ing the emancipation of the negro, the improvement of the 
 juvenile offender, and philanthropic efforts on behalf of the 
 ticket-of-leave man ; while they leave their janitors in a worse 
 plight than the Irish, living in dens more loathsome than 
 dark cells, upon a scantier pittance than the Government 
 grants per head for convicts. I have done but one good deed 
 in my life, and that is my porter's lodge." 
 
 "Yes," said Bixiou. " Suppose that a man has built a set 
 of huge cages, divided up like a beehive or a menagerie, into 
 hundreds of cells or dens, in which living creatures of every 
 species are intended to ply their various industries; suppose 
 that this animal, with the face of an owner of house-property, 
 should come to a man of science and say ' Sir, I want a speci- 
 men of the order JBtmana, which will live in a sink ten feet 
 square, filled with old boots and plague-stricken rags. I want 
 him to live in it all his life, and rear a family of children as 
 pretty as cherubs; he must use it as a workshop, kitchen, and 
 promenade ; he must sing and grow flowers in it, and never go 
 out ; he must shut his eyes, and yet see everything that goes 
 on in the house.' Assuredly the man of science could not in- 
 vent the janitor; Paris alone, or the devil if you like to have 
 it so, was equal to the feat." 
 
 " Parisian industrialism has gone even further into the re- 
 gions of the Impossible," added Gazonal. "You in Paris 
 exhibit all kinds of manufactures ; but there are by-products 
 of which you really know nothing. There are your working 
 classes. They bear the brunt of competition with foreign in- 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 369 
 
 dustries, hardship against hardship, just as the regiments bore 
 the brunt of Napoleon's duel with Europe." 
 
 " Here we are. This is where our friend Vauvinet lives," 
 said Bixiou. " People who paint contemporary manners are 
 too apt to copy old portraits; it is one of their greatest mis- 
 takes. In our own time every calling has been transformed. 
 Tradesmen are peers of France, artists are capitalists, writers 
 of vaudevilles have money in the Funds. Some few figures re- 
 main as before ; but, generally speaking, most professions have 
 dropped their manners and customs along with their distinc- 
 tive dress. Gobseck, Gigonnet, Chaboisseau, and Samanon 
 were the last of the Romans ; to-day we rejoice in the posses- 
 sion of our Vauvinet, the good fellow, the dandy-denizen of 
 the greenroom, the frequenter of the society of lorettes, the 
 owner of a neat little one-horse brougham. Watch my man 
 carefully, friend Gazonal, and you shall see a comedy of 
 money. First: the cool, indifferent man that will not give a 
 penny; and second : the hot and eager man smelling a profit. 
 Of all things, listen to him." 
 
 With that, the three mounted to a third-floor lodging in a 
 very fine house on the Boulevard des Italiens, and at once 
 found themselves amid elegant surroundings in the height of 
 the fashion. A young man of eight-and-twenty, or thereabout, 
 came forward almost laughingly at sight of Leon de Lora, 
 held out a hand to all appearance in the friendliest possible 
 way to Bixiou, gave Gazonal a distant bow, and brought the 
 three into his private office. All the man's bourgeois tastes 
 lurked beneath the artistic decorations of the room in spite of 
 the unimpeachable statuettes and numberless trifles appro- 
 priated to the uses of Parisian petits apparicments* by modern 
 art, grown petty to supply the demand. Like most, young 
 men of business, Vauvinet was extremely and carefully 
 dressed, a man's clothes being as it were a kind of prospectus 
 
 among them. 
 
 * Small suites of rooms. 
 24 
 
370 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 " I have come to you for money," said Bixiou, laughing as 
 he held out his bills. 
 
 Vauvinet's countenance immediately grew so grave that 
 Gazonal was amused at the difference between the smiles of a 
 minute ago and the professional bill-discounting visage he 
 turned on Bixiou. 
 
 " I would oblige you with the greatest pleasure, my dear 
 fellow," said he, " but I have no cash at the moment." 
 
 "Oh, pshaw! " 
 
 " No. I have paid it all away, you know where. Poor old 
 Lousteau is going to run a theatre. He has gone into part- 
 nership with an ancient playwright that stands very well with 
 the Ministry Ridal, his name is they wanted thirty thou- 
 sand francs of me yesterday. I am drained dry, so dry indeed 
 that I am just about to borrow a hundred louis of Cerizet to 
 pay for my losses this morning at lansquenet, at Jenny Ca- 
 dine's." 
 
 " You must be drained dry indeed if you cannot oblige poor 
 Bixiou," put in Leon de Lora, "for he can say very nasty 
 things when he is driven to it." 
 
 " I can only speak well of a man so well off," said Bixiou, 
 in return. 
 
 " My dear fellow, even if I had the money, it would be 
 quite impossible to discount bills accepted by your porter, 
 even at fifty percent. There is no demand for Ravenouillet's 
 paper. He is not exactly Rothschild. I warn you that this 
 sort of thing is played out. You ought to try another firm. 
 Look up an uncle, for the friend that will back your bills is 
 extinct, materialism is so frightfully on the increase." 
 
 Bixiou turned to Gazonal. 
 
 "I have a friend here," he said, "one of the best known 
 cloth manufacturers in the South. His name is Gazonal. His 
 hair wants cutting," continued Bixiou, surveying the provin- 
 cial's luxuriant and somewhat disheveled crop, "but I am 
 just about to take him to Marius, and his resemblance to a 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 371 
 
 poodle, so deleterious to his credit and ours, will presently 
 disappear." 
 
 "A southern name is not good enough for me, without 
 offense to this gentleman be it said," returned Vauvinet, and 
 Gazonal was so much relieved that he passed over the inso- 
 lence of the remark. Being extremely acute, he thought that 
 Bixiou and the painter meant to make him pay a thousand 
 francs for the breakfast at the Cafe de Paris by way of teaching 
 him to know the town. He had not yet gotten rid of the sus- 
 picion in which the provincial, visiting the city, always in- 
 trenches himself. 
 
 " How should I do business in the Pyrenees, six hundred 
 miles away ? " added Vauvinet. 
 
 41 So there is no more to be said ? " returned Bixiou. 
 
 "I have twenty francs at home." 
 
 "I am sorry for you," said the author of the hoax. "I 
 thought I was worth a thousand francs," he added drily. 
 
 " You are worth a hundred thousand francs," Vauvinet re- 
 joined ; "sometimes you are even beyond all price but I am 
 drained dry." 
 
 " Oh, well, we will say no more about it. I had contrived 
 as good a bit of business as you could wish at Carabine's to- 
 night do you know?" 
 
 Vauvinet's answer was a wink. So does one dealer in horse- 
 flesh convey to another the information that he is not to be 
 deceived. 
 
 11 You have forgotten how you took me by the waist, exactly 
 as if I were a pretty young woman, and said with coaxing 
 words and looks, < I will do anything for you, if only you will 
 get me shares at par in this railway that du Tillet and Nucingen 
 are bringing out,' said you. Very well, my dear fellow, Maxima 
 and Nucingen are coming to-night to meet several political 
 folk at Carabine's. You are losing a fine chance, old man. 
 Come. Good-day, dabbler." 
 
 And Bixiou rose to go, leaving Vauvinet to all appearance 
 
372 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 indifferent, but in reality as vexed as a man can be with him- 
 self after a blunder of his own making. 
 
 " One moment, my dear fellow. I have credit if I have no 
 cash. If I can get nothing for your bills, I can keep them 
 till they fall due, and give you other bills in exchange from 
 my portfolio. After all, we might possibly come to an under- 
 standing about those railway shares ; we could divide the 
 profits in a certain proportion, and I would give you a draft 
 on myself on account of the prof " 
 
 " No, no," returned Bixiou, " I must have money; I must 
 cash my Ravenouillet elsewhere " 
 
 "And Ravenouillet is a good man," resumed Vauvinet; 
 " he has an account at the savings bank ; a very good man " 
 
 " Better than you are," said Leon ; " he has no rent to 
 pay he does not squander his money on lorettes, nor does he 
 rush into speculation and shake in his shoes with every rise 
 and fall." 
 
 "You are pleased to laugh, great man. You have given 
 us the quintessence of La Fontaine's fable of the ' Oak and 
 the Reed,' " said Vauvinet, grown jovial and insinuating all 
 at once. " Come, Gubetta, my old fellow-conspirator, he 
 continued, taking Bixiou by the waist, " you want money, do 
 you ? Very well, I may just as well borrow three as two 
 thousand francs of my friend Cerizet. And ' Cinna, let us be 
 
 friends ! ' Hand us over those two leaves that grow 
 
 from the root of all evil. If I refused at first, it was because 
 it is very hard on a man that can only do his bit of business 
 by passing on bills to the bank to make him keep your Rave- 
 nouillets locked up in the drawer of his desk. It is hard ; 
 very hard " 
 
 "What discount?" 
 
 "Next to nothing," said Vauvinet. "At three months it 
 will cost you a miserable fifty francs." 
 
 "You shall be my benefactor, as Emile Blondet used to 
 say." 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 373 
 
 " It is borrowing money at twenty per cent, per annum, 
 
 interest included " Gazonal began in a whisper, but for 
 
 all answer he received a blow from Bixiou's elbow directed at 
 his windpipe. 
 
 " I say," said Vauvinet, opening a drawer, " I perceive an 
 odd note for five hundred francs sticking to the cloth. I did 
 not know I was so rich. I was looking for a bill to offer you. 
 I have one almost due for four hundred and fifty. Cerizet 
 will take it off you for a trifle; and that makes up the amount. 
 But no tricks, Bixiou. I am going to Carabine's to-night, 
 eh ? Will you swear ? " 
 
 "Are*we not friends again?" asked Bixiou, taking the 
 banknote and the bill. " I give you my word of honor that 
 you shall meet du Tillet to-night and plenty of others that 
 have a mind to make their (rail)way." 
 
 Vauvinet came out upon the landing with the three friends, 
 cajoling Bixiou to the last. 
 
 Bixiou listened with much seriousness while Gazonal on the 
 way downstairs tried to open his eyes to the nature of the 
 transaction just completed. Gazonal proved to him that if 
 Cerizet, this crony of Vauvinet's, charged no more than 
 twenty francs for discounting a bill for four hundred and fifty 
 francs, then he (Bixiou) was borrowing money at the rate of 
 forty per cent, per annum. 
 
 Out upon the pavement Bixiou burst into a laugh, the 
 laugh of a Parisian over a successful hoax, a soundless, joyless 
 chuckle, a labial northeaster which froze Gazonal into silence. 
 
 " The grant of the concession to the railway will be post- 
 poned at the Chamber," he said j "we knew that yesterday 
 from the marcheuse whom we met just now. And if I win 
 five or six thousand francs at lansquenet, what is a loss of 
 sixty or seventy francs so long as you have something to 
 stake?" 
 
 " Lansquenet is another of the thousand facets of Paris life 
 to-day," said Leon. "Wherefore, cousin, count upon our 
 
374 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 introducing you to one of the duchesses of the Rue Saint 
 Georges. In her house you see the aristocracy of lorettes, 
 and may perhaps gain your lawsuit. But you cannot possibly 
 show yourself with that Pyrenean crop, you look like a hedge- 
 hog ; we will take you to Marius, close by in the Place de la 
 Bourse. He is another of our mummers." 
 
 " What is the new mummer? " 
 
 "Here comes the anecdote," said Bixiou. "In 1800 a 
 young wigmaker named Cabot came from Toulouse, and set 
 up shop (to use your jargon) in Paris. This genius he 
 retired afterward with an income of twenty thousand francs 
 to Libourne this genius, consumed with ambition, saw that 
 the name of Cabot could never be famous. Monsieur Parny, 
 whom he attended professionally, called him Marius, a name 
 infinitely superior to the 'Armands' and 'Hippolytes' 
 beneath which other victims of that hereditary complaint 
 endeavor to conceal the patronymic. All Cabot's successors 
 have been named Marius. The present Marius is Marius V.; 
 his family name is Mougin. This is the way with many trades, 
 with Eau de Botot, for example, and La Petite-Vertu's ink. 
 In Paris, a man's name becomes a part of the business, and 
 at length confers a certain status; the signboard ennobles. 
 Marius left pupils behind him, too, and created (it is said) 
 the first school of hairdressing in the world." 
 
 " I noticed before this as I traveled across France a great 
 many names upon signboards So-and-so, FROM MARIUS." 
 
 "All his pupils are bound to wash their hands after each 
 customer," continued Bixiou; "and Marius will not take 
 every one, a pupil must have a shapely hand and tolerably 
 good looks. The most remarkable of these, for figure or 
 eloquence, are sent out to people's houses ; Marius only puts 
 himself about for titled ladies. He has a cab and a ' groom.' ' 
 
 "But, after all, he is only a barber (merlan)" Gazonal 
 cried indignantly. 
 
 " A barber ! " repeated Bixiou. " You must know that he is 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. C73 
 
 a captain in the National Guard, and wears the cross because 
 he was the first to leap a barricade in 1832." 
 
 " Be careful. He is neither a hairdresser nor a wigmaker; 
 he is the manager of salons de coiffure" (tonsorial parlors), 
 said L6on on the sumptuously carpeted staircase between the 
 mahogany hand-rails and cut-glass balusters. 
 
 "And, look here, do not disgrace us," added Bixiou. 
 "The lackeys in the antechamber will take off your coat 
 and hat to brush them, open the door of the salon and close 
 it after you. Which is worth knowing, my friend Gazonal," 
 Bixiou continued slyly, " or you might cry 4 Thieves ! ' " 
 
 "The three salons are three boudoirs," said L^on ; "the 
 manager has filled them with all that modern luxury can 
 devise. There are fringed lambrequins over the windows, 
 flower-stands everywhere, and silken couches, on -which you 
 await your turn and read the newspapers if all the dressing- 
 rooms are occupied. As you come in, you begin to finger your 
 waistcoat pockets, and imagine that they will charge you five 
 francs at least ; but no pocket is mulcted of more than half 
 a franc if the hair is curled, or a franc if the hairdresser cuts 
 it. Elegant toilet-tables stand among the flowers, there are 
 jets of water playing, you see yourself reflected everywhere in 
 huge mirrors. So try to look as if you were used to it. 
 When the client comes in CMarius uses the elegant term 
 ' client ' instead of the common word ' customer '), when 
 the client appears on the threshold, Manus appraises him at a 
 glance ; for him you are ' a head ' more or less worthy of his 
 interest. From Marius' point of view, there are no men 
 only heads." 
 
 "We will tune Marius to concert-pitch for you," said 
 Bixiou, " if you will follow our lead." 
 
 When Gazonal appeared upon the scene, Marius at once 
 gave him an approving glance. " Regulus ! " cried he, 
 " take this head. Clip with the small shears first of all." 
 
 At a sign from Bixiou, Gazonal turned to the pupil. 
 
376 . THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 "Pardon- me," he said, "I wish to have Monsieur Marius 
 himself." 
 
 Greatly flattered by this speech, Marius came forward, 
 leaving the head on which he was engaged. 
 
 "I am at your service, I am just at an end. Be quite 
 easy, my pupil will prepare you, I myself will decide on the 
 style." 
 
 Marius, a little man, his face seamed with the smallpox, 
 his hair frizzed after Rubini's fashion, was dressed in black 
 from head to foot. He wore white cuffs and a diamond in 
 his shirt-frill. He recognized Bixiou, and saluted him as an 
 equal power. 
 
 "A commonplace head," he remarked to Leon, indicating 
 the subject under his fingers, " a philistine. But what can 
 one do? If one lived by art alone, one would end raving 
 mad at Bicetre " (a lunatic asylum). And he returned to his 
 client with an inimitable gesture and a parting injunction to 
 Regulus, " Be careful with that gentleman, he is evidently an 
 artist." 
 
 "A journalist," said Bixiou. 
 
 At that word Marius passed the comb two or three times 
 over the "commonplace head," swooped down upon Gazonal 
 just as the small shears were brought into play, and caught 
 Regulus by the arm with 
 
 "I will take this gentleman. Look, see yourself in the 
 large mirror, sir (if the glass can stand it)," he said, address- 
 ing the relinquished philistine. " Ossian ! " 
 
 A lackey came in and carried off the "client." 
 
 "Pay at the desk, sir," said Marius, as the bewildered 
 customer drew out his purse. 
 
 " Is it any use, my dear fellow, to proceed to this operation 
 with the small shears? " asked Bixiou. 
 
 " A head never comes under my hands until it has been 
 brushed," said the great man ; "but on your account I will 
 take this gentleman from beginning to end. The blocking 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 377 
 
 out I leave to my pupils, I do not care to take it. Every- 
 body, like you, is for ' Monsieur Marius himself; ' I can only 
 give the finishing touches. For what paper does monsieur 
 write?" 
 
 "In your place I would have three or four editions of 
 Marius." 
 
 "Ah! monsieur is a feuilletoniste (gossip writer), I see," 
 said Marius. "Unluckily, a hairdresser must do his work 
 himself, it cannot be done by a deputy Pardon me." 
 
 He left Gazonal to give an eye to Regulus, now engaged 
 with a newly arrived head, and made a disapproving comment 
 thereon, an inarticulate sound produced by tongue and palate, 
 which may be rendered thus " titt, titt, titt." 
 
 " Goodness gracious ! come now, that is not broad enough, 
 
 your scissors are leaving furrows behind them Stay a bit ; 
 
 look here, Regulus, you are not clipping poodles, but men 
 men with characters of their own ; and if you continue to 
 gaze at the ceiling instead of dividing your attention between 
 the glass and the face, you will be a disgrace to ' my house.' ' 
 
 " You are severe, Monsieur Marius." 
 
 " I must do my duty by them, and teach them the mysteries 
 of the art " 
 
 "Then it is an art, is it?" 
 
 Marius stopped in indignation, the scissors in one hand, 
 the comb in the other, and contemplated Gazonal in the 
 glass. 
 
 " Monsieur, you talk like a child. And yet, from 
 
 your accent, you seem to come from the South, the land of 
 men of genius." 
 
 "Yes. It requires taste of a kind, I know," returned 
 Gazonal. 
 
 " Pray say no more, monsieur ! I looked for better things 
 from you. I mean to say that a hairdresser (I do not say a 
 good hairdresser, for one is either a hairdresser or one is not\ 
 a hairdresser is not so easily found as what shall I say? 
 
378 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 as I really hardly know as a Minister (sit still) no, that 
 will not do, for you cannot judge of the value of a Minister, 
 the streets are full of them. A Paganini ? no, that will not 
 quite do. A hairdresser, monsieur, a man that can read your 
 character and your habits, must have that in him which makes 
 a philosopher. And for the women ! But there, women ap- 
 preciate us, they know our value ; they know that their tri- 
 umphs are due to us when they come to us to prepare them 
 
 for conquest which is to say that a hairdresser is but 
 
 no one knows what he is. I myself, for instance, you will 
 scarcely find a well, without boasting, people know what I 
 am. Ah ! well, no, I think there should be a better yet. 
 Execution, that is the thing ! Ah, if women would but 
 give me a free hand ; if I could but carry out all the ideas that 
 occur to me ! for I have a tremendous imagination, you see 
 but women will not cooperate with you, they have notions 
 of their own, they will run their fingers or their combs through 
 the exquisite creations that ought to be engraved and recorded, 
 for our works only live for a few hours, you see, sir. Ah ! a 
 great hairdresser should be something like what Careme and 
 Vestris are in their lines. (Your head this way, if you please, 
 I am catching the expression. That will do.) Bunglers, in- 
 capable of understanding their epoch or their art, are the ruin 
 of our profession. They deal in wigs, for instance, or hair- 
 restorers, and think of nothing but selling you a bottle of 
 stuff, making a trade of the profession ; it makes one sorry to 
 see it. The wretches cut your hair and brush it anyhow. 
 Now, when I came here from Toulouse, it was my ambition 
 to succeed to the great Marius, to be a true Marius, and in 
 my person to add such lustre to the name as it had not known 
 with the other four. ' Victory or death ! ' said I to myself. 
 (Sit up, I have nearly finished.) I was the first to aim at 
 elegance. My salons excited curiosity. I scorn advertise- 
 ments; I' spend the cost of advertisements on comfort, mon- 
 sieur, on improvements. Next year I shall have a quartette 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 379 
 
 in a little salon ; I shall have music, and the best music. Yes, 
 one must beguile the tedium of the time spent in the dressing- 
 room. I do not shut my eyes to the unpleasant aspects of the 
 operation. (Look at yourself.) A visit to the hairdresser 
 is, perhaps, quite as tiring as sitting for a portrait. Monsieur 
 knows the famous Monsieur de Humboldt ? (I managed to 
 make the most of the little hair that America spared to him, 
 for science has this much in common with the savage she is 
 sure to scalp her man.) Well, the great man said, as monsieur 
 perhaps knows, that if it was painful to go to be hanged, it 
 was only less painful to sit for your portrait. I myself am of 
 the opinion of a good many women, that a visit to the hair- 
 dresser is more trying than a visit to the studio. Well, mon- 
 sieur, I want people to come here for pleasure. (You have a 
 rebellious tuft of hair.) A Jew suggested Italian opera-singers 
 to pluck out the gray hairs of young fellows of forty in the 
 intervals ; but his signoras turned out to be young persons 
 from the Conservatoire, or pianoforte teachers from the Rue 
 Montmartre. Now, monsieur, your hair is worthy of a man 
 of talent. Ossian ! " (to the lackey in livery) "brush this 
 gentleman's coat, and go to the door with him. Who comes 
 next?" he added majestically, glancing round a group of 
 customers waiting for their turn. 
 
 " Do not laugh, Gazonal," said Lon as they reached the 
 foot of the stairs. " I can see one of our great men down 
 yonder," he continued, exploring the Place de la Bourse with 
 his eyes. " You shall have an opportunity of making a com- 
 parison ; when you have heard him talk, you shall tell me 
 which is the queerer of the two he or the hairdresser." 
 
 " ' Do not laugh, Gazonal,' " added Bixiou, imitating 
 Leon's manner. " What is Marius' business, do you think? " 
 
 " He is a hairdresser." 
 
 " He has gradually made a monopoly of the wholesale trade 
 in human hair, just as the provision dealer of whom we shall 
 shortly buy a Strasbourg pie for three francs has the truffle 
 
380 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 trade entirely in his hands. He discounts bills in his line of 
 business, he lends money to customers at a pinch, he deals in 
 annuities, he speculates on 'Change, he is a shareholder in all 
 the fashion papers ; and finally, under the name of a chemist, 
 he sells an abominable drug which brings him in thirty thou- 
 sand francs per annum as his share of the profits, and costs a 
 hundred thousand francs in advertisements." 
 
 " Is it possible ? " 
 
 "Bear this in mind," Bixiou replied with gravity, "in 
 Paris there is no such thing as a small trade ; everything here 
 is done on a large scale, be it frippery or matches. The bar- 
 keeper standing with a napkin under his arm to watch you 
 enter his saloon very likely has an income of fifty thousand 
 francs from investments in the Funds. The waiter has a vote, 
 and may offer himself for election ; a man whom you might 
 take for a beggar in the street carries a hundred thousand 
 francs' worth of unmounted diamonds in his waistcoat pocket, 
 and does not steal them." 
 
 The three, inseparable for that day at least, were piloted 
 by Lon de Lora in such sort that at the corner of the Rue 
 Vivienne they ran against a man of forty or thereabout with a 
 ribbon in his button-hole. 
 
 "My dear Dubourdieu, what are you dreaming about? 
 Some beautiful allegorical composition?" asked Leon. "My 
 dear cousin, I have the pleasure of introducing you to the 
 well-known painter Dubourdieu, celebrated no less for his 
 genius than for his humanitarian convictions. Dubourdieu, 
 my cousin Palafox J " 
 
 Dubourdieu, a pallid little man with melancholy blue eyes, 
 nodded slightly, while Gazonal bowed low to the man of 
 genius. 
 
 " So you have nominated Stidmann instead of " 
 
 "How could I help it 1 I was away,' 1 returned Lon de 
 Lora. 
 
 "You are lowering the standard of the Academy," resumed 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 381 
 
 the painter. " To think of choosing such a man as that I I 
 do not wish to say any harm of him, but he is really a crafts- 
 man. What is to become of the first and most permanent of 
 all the arts, of sculpture that reveals the life of a nation when 
 everything else, even the memory of its existence, has passed 
 away of sculpture that sets the seal of eternity upon the 
 great man ? The sculptor's office is sacred. He sums up the 
 thought of his age, and you, forsooth, fill the ranks of the 
 priesthood by taking in a bungling mantelpiece maker, a de- 
 signer of drawing-room ornaments, one of those that buy and 
 sell in the Temple ! Ah ! as Chamfort said, ' If you are to 
 endure life in Paris, you must begin by swallowing a viper 
 
 every morning ' After all, Art remains to us; no one 
 
 can prevent us from cultivating Art." 
 
 "And beside, my dear fellow, you have a consolation 
 which few among artists possess the future is yours," put in 
 Bixiou. "When every one is converted to our doctrine, you 
 will be the foremost man in your art, for the ideas which you 
 put into your work will be comprehensible to all when they 
 are common property. In fifty years' time you will be for the 
 world at large what you are now for us a great man. It is 
 only a question of holding out till then." 
 
 The artist's face smoothed itself out, after the wont of mortal 
 man when flattered on his weak side. " I have just finished 
 an allegorical figure of Harmony," he said. " If you care to 
 come to see it, you will understand at once how I managed 
 to put two years' work into it. It is all there. At a glance 
 you see the Destiny of the Globe. She is a queen holding a 
 bishop's crosier, the symbol of the aggrandizement of races 
 useful to man ; on her head she wears the cap of Liberty, and 
 after the Egyptian fashion (the ancient Egyptians seem to 
 have had foreshadowings of Fourier) she has six breasts. Her 
 feet rest upon two clasped hands, which inclose the globe 
 between them, to signify the brotherhood of man ; beneath 
 her lie broken fragments of cannon, because all war is abol- 
 
382 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 ished, and I have tried to give her the serenity of Agriculture 
 Triumphant. At her feet, beside, I have put an enormous 
 Savoy cabbage, the Master's symbol of Concord. Oh, it is 
 not Fourier's least claim to our veneration that he revived the 
 association of plants and ideas ; every detail in creation is 
 linked to the rest by its significance as a part of a whole, and 
 no less by its special language. In a hundred years' time the 
 globe will be much larger than it is now " 
 
 "And how will that come to pass?" inquired Gazonal, 
 amazed to hear a man outside a lunatic asylum talking in this 
 way. 
 
 "By the increase of production. If people make up their 
 minds to apply the System, it should react upon the stars ; it 
 is not impossible " 
 
 "And in that case what will become of painting?" asked 
 Gazonal. 
 
 " Painting will be greater than ever." 
 
 "And will our eyes be larger?" continued Gazonal, look- 
 ing significantly at his friends. 
 
 " Man will be once more as in the days before his degra- 
 dation ; our six-foot men will be dwarfs when that time 
 comes " 
 
 "How about your picture," interrupted Leon; "is it 
 finished?" 
 
 " Quite finished," said Dubourdieu. " I tried to see Hiclar 
 about a symphony. I should like those who see the picture 
 to hear music in Beethoven's manner at the same time ; the 
 music would develop the ideas, which would thus reach the 
 intelligence through the avenues of sight and sound. Ah ! if 
 the Government would only lend me one of the halls in the 
 Louvre " 
 
 "But I will mention it if you like. Nothing that can strike 
 people's minds should be left undone." 
 
 " Oh ! my friends are preparing articles, but I am afraid 
 that they may go too far." 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 3$3 
 
 "Pshaw ! " said Bixiou, "they will go nothing like as far 
 as the Future " 
 
 Dubourdieu eyed Bixiou askance and went on his way. 
 
 " Why, the man is a lunatic," said Gazonal, " moonstruck 
 and mad." 
 
 " He has technical skill and knowledge," said Leon, "but 
 Fourier has been the ruin of him. You have just seen one 
 way in which ambition affects an artist. Too often here in 
 Paris, in his desire to reach fame (which for an artist means 
 fortune) by some short cut, he will borrow wings of circum- 
 stance ; he will think to increase his stature by identifying 
 himself with some Cause or advocating some system, hoping 
 in time to widen his coterie into a public. Such an one sets 
 up to be a Republican, such another a Saint-Simonian, an 
 aristocrat or a Catholic, or he is for the juste milieu, or the 
 Middle Ages, or for Germany. But while opinions cannot give 
 talent, they inevitably spoil it ; witness this unfortunate being 
 whom you have just seen. An artist's opinion ought to be a 
 faith in works ; and his one way to success is to work while 
 Nature gives him the sacred fire." 
 
 "Let us fly, Lion is moralizing," said Bixiou. 
 
 "And did the man seriously mean what he said?" cried 
 Gazonal ; he had not yet recovered from his amazement. 
 
 "Very seriously," replied Bixiou; " he was quite as much 
 in earnest as the king of hairdressers just now." 
 
 " He is crazy," said Gazonal. 
 
 "He is not the only man driven crazy by Fourier's 
 notions," returned Bixiou. "You know nothing of Paris. 
 Ask for a hundred thousand francs to carry out some idea 
 most likely to be useful to the species (to try a steam-engine, 
 for instance), you will die, like Salomon de Caus, at Bicgtre; 
 but when it comes to a paradox, any one will be cut in pieces 
 for it he and his fortune. Well, here it is with systems as 
 with practical matters. Impossible newspapers have con- 
 sumed millions of francs in the last fifteen years. The very 
 
384 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 fact that you are in the right of it makes your lawsuit so 
 difficult to win ; taken together with the other fact that your 
 prefect has his own private ends to gain, as you say." 
 
 " Can you understand how a clever man can live anywhere 
 but in Paris when once he knows the psychology of the city?" 
 asked Leon. 
 
 " Suppose that we take Gazonal to Mother Fontaine," 
 suggested Bixiou, beckoning a hackney cab, " it would be a 
 transition from the severe to the fantastic. Drive to the Rue 
 Vieille-du-Temple," he called to the man, and the three drove 
 away in the direction of the Marais. 
 
 " What are you taking me to see ? " 
 
 "Ocular demonstration of Bixiou's remarks," said Leon; 
 " you are to be shown a woman who makes twenty thousand 
 francs per annum by exploiting an idea." 
 
 "A fortune-teller," explained Bixiou, construing Gazonal's 
 expression as a question. "Among folk that wish to know 
 the future, Madame Fontaine is held to be even wiser than the 
 late Mademoiselle Lenormand." 
 
 " She must be very rich ! " 
 
 " She has fallen a victim to her idea since lotteries came 
 into existence. In Paris, you see, great receipts always mean 
 e large expenditure. Every hard head has a crack in it some- 
 where, like a safety-valve, as it were, for the steam. Every 
 one that makes a great deal of money has his weaknesses or 
 his fancies, a provision of nature probably to keep the bal- 
 ance." 
 
 "And now that lotteries are abolished?" 
 
 " Oh, well, she has a nephew, and is saving for him." 
 
 Arrived in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, the three friends 
 entered one of the oldest houses in the street, and discovered 
 a tremulous staircase, with wooden steps laid on a foundation 
 of concrete. Up they went in the perpetual twilight, through 
 the fetid atmosphere peculiar to houses with a passage entry, 
 till they reached the third story, and a door which can only 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 385 
 
 be described by a drawing ; any attempt to give an adequate 
 idea of it in words would consume too much midnight oil. 
 
 An old crone, so much in keeping with the door that she 
 might have been its living counterpart, admitted the three 
 into a room which did duty as an antechamber, icy cold as a 
 crypt, while the streets outside were sweltering in the heat. 
 Puffs of damp air came up from an inner court, a sort of huge 
 breathing-hole in the building; a box full of sickly-looking 
 plants stood on the window-ledge. A gray daylight filled the 
 room. Everything was glazed over with a greasy fuliginous 
 deposit ; the chairs and table, the whole room, in fact, was 
 squalid ; the damp oozed up through the brick floor like water 
 through the sides of a Moorish jar. There was not a single 
 detail which did not harmonize with the hook-nosed, pallid, 
 repulsive old hag in the much-mended rags, who asked them 
 to be seated, and informed them that MADAME never saw 
 more than one person at a time. 
 
 Gazonal screwed up his courage and went boldly forward. 
 
 The woman whom he confronted looked like one of those 
 whom Death has forgotten, or more probably left as a copy 
 of himself in the land of the living. Two gray eyes, so im- 
 movable that it tired you to look at them, glittered in a flesh- 
 less countenance on either side of a sunken, snuff-bedabbled 
 nose. A set of knuckle-bones, firmly mounted with sinews 
 almost like bone, made as though they were human hands, 
 thrumming like a piece of machinery thrown out of gear upon 
 a pack of cards. The body, a broomstick decently draped 
 with a gown, enjoyed the advantages of still-life to the full ; 
 it did not move a hair's-breadth. A black velvet cap rose 
 above the automaton's forehead. Mme. Fontaine, for she 
 was really a woman, sat with a black fowl on her right hand 
 and a fat toad named Ashtaroth on her left. Gazonal did not 
 notice the creature at first. 
 
 The toad, an animal of portentous size, was less alarming 
 in himself than by reason of a couple of topazes, each as large 
 25 
 
388 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 as a fifty-centime piece, that glowed like lamps in his head. 
 Their gaze was intolerable. "The toad is a mysterious 
 creature," as the late M. Lassailly used to say, after lying 
 out in the fields to have the last word with a toad that fasci- 
 nated him. Perhaps, all creation, man included, is summed 
 up in the toad ; for Lassailly tells us that it lives on almost 
 indefinitely, and it is well known that, of all animals, its 
 mating lasts the longest. 
 
 The black fowl's cage stood two feet away from a table 
 covered with a green cloth ; a plank like a drawbridge lay 
 between. 
 
 When the woman, the least real of the strange company 
 about a table worthy of Hoffmann, bade Gazonal " Cut ! " 
 the honest manufacturer shuddered in spite of himself. The 
 secret of the formidable power of such creatures lies in the 
 importance of the thing we seek to learn of them. Men 
 and women come to buy hope of them ; and they know it. 
 
 The sibyl's cave was a good deal darker than the ante- 
 chamber, so much so, in fact, that you could not distinguish 
 the color of the wall-paper. The smoke-begrimed ceiling, so 
 far from reflecting, seemed rather to absorb such feeble light 
 as struggled in through a window blocked up with bleached 
 sickly-looking plant-life; but all the dim daylight in the 
 place fell full upon the table at which the sorceress sat. Her 
 armchair and a chair for Gazonal completed the furniture of 
 a little room cut in two by a garret, where Mme. Fontaine 
 evidently slept. A little door stood ajar, and the murmur of 
 a pot boiling on the fire reached Gazonal's ears. The sounds 
 from the kitchen, the compound of odors in which effluvia 
 from the sink predominated, called up an incongruous asso- 
 ciation of ideas the necessities of every-day life and the sense 
 of the supernatural. Disgust was mingled with curiosity. 
 Gazonal caught sight of the lowest step of the deal staircase 
 which led to the garret ; he saw all these particulars at a 
 glance, and his gorge rose. The kind of terror inspired by 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 387 
 
 similar scenes in romances and German plays was somehow 
 so different ; the absence of illusion, the prosaic sensation 
 caught him by the throat. He felt heavy and dizzy in that 
 atmosphere ; the gloom set his nerves on edge. With the 
 very coxcombry of courage, he turned his eyes on the toad, 
 and, with sickening sensation of heat in the pit of the stomach, 
 felt a sort of panic such as a criminal might feel at sight of a 
 policeman. Then he sought comfort in a scrutiny of Mme. 
 Fontaine, and found a pair of colorless, almost white eyes, 
 with intolerable unwavering black pupils. The silence grew 
 positively appalling. 
 
 "What does monsieur wish?" asked Mme. Fontaine. 
 " His fortune for five francs, or ten francs, or the grand j nil " 
 (great game). 
 
 "Five francs is quite dear enough," said the Provencal, 
 making unspeakable efforts to fight against the influences of 
 the place. But just as he strove for self-possession a diaboli- 
 cal cackle made him start on his chair. The black hen 
 emitted a sound. 
 
 "Go away, my girl. Monsieur only wishes to spend five 
 francs." 
 
 The hen seemed to understand, for when she stood within 
 a step of the cards she turned and walked solemnly back to 
 her place. 
 
 "Which is your favorite flower?" asked the old crone 
 in a voice hoarse with the accumulation of phlegm in her 
 throat. 
 
 "The rose." 
 
 " Your favorite color? " 
 
 "Blue." 
 
 " What animal do you like best?" 
 
 " The horse. Why do you ask ? " queried Gazonal in turn. 
 
 " Man is linked to other forms of life by his own previous 
 existence," she said sententiously, " hence his instincts, and 
 his instincts control his destiny. Which kind of food do you 
 
388 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 like best fish, game, grain, butcher meat, sweet things, fruit, 
 or vegetables?" 
 
 "Game." 
 
 " In what month were you born?" 
 
 "September." 
 
 " Hold out your hand." 
 
 Mme. Fontaine scanned the palm put forth for her inspec- 
 tion with close attention. All this was done in a business- 
 like way, with no attempt to give a supernatural color to the 
 proceedings ; a notary asking a client's wishes with regard to 
 the drafting of a lease could not have been more straightfor- 
 ward. The cards being sufficiently shuffled, she asked Gazonal 
 to cut and make them up into three packs. This done, she 
 took up the packs, spread them out one above another, and 
 eyed them as a gambler eyes the thirty-six numbers at roulette 
 before he stakes his money. 
 
 Gazonal felt a cold chill freeze the marrow of his bones ; 
 he scarcely knew where he was; but his surprise grew more 
 and more when this repulsive hag in the greasy, flabby, green 
 skull-cap, and false front that exhibited more black silk than 
 hair curled into points of interrogation, began to tell him, in 
 her rheumy voice, of all the events, even the most intimate 
 history of his past life. She told him his tastes, his habits, 
 his character, his ideas even as a child; she knew all that 
 might have influenced his life. There was his projected mar- 
 riage, for instance ; she told him why and by whom it was 
 broken off, giving him an exact jescription of the woman he 
 had loved ; and finally she named his district, and told him 
 about his lawsuit, and so on, and so on. 
 
 Gazonal thought at first that the whole thing was a hoax 
 got up for his benefit by his cousin ; but the absurdity of this 
 theory struck him almost at once, and he sat in gaping aston- 
 ishment. Opposite sat the infernal power incarnate, a power 
 that, from among all human shapes, had borrowed that one 
 which has struck the imagination of poets and painters through- 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 389 
 
 out all time as the most appalling a cold-blooded, shrunken, 
 asthmatic, toothless hag, with hard lips, flat nose, and pale 
 eyes. Nothing was alive about Mme. Fontaine's face save 
 the eyes ; some gleam from the depths of the future or the 
 fires of hell sparkled in them. 
 
 Gazonal, scarcely knowing what he said, interrupted her to 
 ask the uses of the fowl and the toad. 
 
 < ' To foretell the future. The ' consultant ' himself scatters 
 some seeds over the cards ; Cleopatra comes to pick them up ; 
 and Ashtaroth creeps over them to seek the food that the 
 client gives him. Their wonderful intelligence is never de- 
 ceived. Would you like to see them at work and hear your 
 future read? It costs a hundred francs." 
 
 But Gazonal, dismayed by Ashtaroth's expression, bade the 
 terrible Mme. Fontaine good-day, and fled into the next 
 room. He was damp with perspiration ; he seemed to feel an 
 unclean spirit brooding over him. 
 
 "Let us go out of this," he said. " Has either of you ever 
 consulted this witch?" 
 
 '" I never think of taking a step in life until Ashtaroth has 
 given his opinion," said Leon, "and I am always the better 
 for it." 
 
 "I am still expecting the honest competence promised me 
 by Cleopatra," added Bixiou. 
 
 " I am in a fever ! " cried the child of the South. "If I 
 believed all that you tell me, I should believe in witchcraft, 
 in a supernatural power." 
 
 "It can only be natural," put in Bixiou. "Half the 
 artists alive, one-third of the lorettes, and one-fourth of the 
 statesmen consult Madame Fontaine. It is well known that 
 she acts as Egeria* to a certain statesman." 
 
 " Did she tell you your fortune? " inquired Lon. 
 "No. I had quite enough of it with the past." A sudden 
 idea struck Gazonal. " But if she and her disgusting collab- 
 * The nymph who gave the laws to the Romans. 
 
390 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 orators can foretell the future," he said, " how is it that she 
 is unlucky in the lottery?" 
 
 " Ah 1 there you have set your finger on one of the great 
 mysteries of occult science," answered Leon. "So soon as 
 the personal element dims the surface of that inward mirror, 
 as it were, which reflects past and future, so soon as you 
 introduce any motive foreign to the exercise of this power 
 that they possess, the sorcerer or sorceress at once loses the' 
 power of vision. It is the same with the artist who systemati- 
 cally prostitutes art to gain advancement or alien ends ; he 
 loses his gift. Madame Fontaine once had a rival, a man 
 who told fortunes on the cards ; he fell into criminal courses, 
 yet he never foresaw his own arrest, conviction, and sentence. 
 Madame Fontaine is right eight times out of ten, yet she 
 never could tell that she should lose her stake in the lottery." 
 
 " It is the same with magnetism," Bixiou remarked. "A 
 man cannot magnetize himself." 
 
 " Good ! Now comes magnetism. What next ! Do you 
 really know everything?" 
 
 " My friend Gazonal, before you can laugh at everything, 
 you must know everything," said Bixiou with gravity. " For 
 my own part, I have known Paris since I was a boy, and my 
 pencil helps me to laugh for a livelihood at the rate of five 
 caricatures per month. So I very often laugh at an idea in 
 which I have faith." 
 
 " Now, let us go in for something else," said Leon. " Let 
 us drive to the Chamber and arrange the cousin's business." 
 
 "This," continued Bixiou, burlesquing Odry and Gaillard, 
 "is High Comedy; we will draw out the first great speaker 
 that we meet in the Salle des Pas Perdus ; and there, as every- 
 where else, you shall hear the Parisian harping upon two 
 eternal strings Self-interest and Vanity." 
 
 As they stepped into the cab again, Le"on noticed a man 
 driving rapidly past, and signaled his wish to speak a word 
 with the new-comer. 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 391 
 
 " It is Publicola Masson," he told Bixiou ; " I will just ask 
 him for an interview this evening at five o'clock when the 
 House rises. The cousin shall see the queerest of all charac- 
 ters." 
 
 "Who is it?" asked Gazonal, while Leon went across to 
 speak to his man. 
 
 "A chiropodist, that will cut your corns by contract, an 
 author of a treatise on chiropody. If the Republicans triumph 
 for six months, he will without doubt have a place in history." 
 
 " And does he keep a carriage ? " 
 
 " No one but a millionaire can afford to go about on foot 
 here, my friend." 
 
 " The Chamber 1 " L6on called to the driver. 
 
 "Which, sir?" 
 
 "The Chamber of Deputies," said L6on, exchanging a 
 smile with Bixiou. 
 
 " Paris is beginning to confuse me," sighed Gazonal. 
 
 " To show you its immensity moral, political, and literary 
 we are copying the Roman cicerone that shows you a thumb 
 of the statue of St. Peter, which you take for a life-size figure 
 until you find out that a finger is more than a foot long. 
 You have not so much as measured one of the toes of Paris 
 yet " 
 
 "And observe, Cousin Gazonal, that we are taking things 
 as they come, we are not selecting." 
 
 "You shall have a Belshazzar's feast to-night; you shall 
 see Paris, our Paris, playing at lansquenet, staking a hundred 
 thousand francs without winking an eye." 
 
 Fifteen minutes later their hack set them down by the flight 
 of steps before the Chamber of Deputies on that side of the 
 Pont de la Concorde which leads to discord. 
 
 "I thought the Chambers were unapproachable," said 
 Gazonal, surprised to find himself in the great Salle des Pas 
 Perdus. 
 
 "That depends," said Bixiou. " Physically speaking, it 
 
392 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 costs you thirty sous in cab-hire ; politically speaking, rather 
 more. A poet says that the swallows think that the Arc de 
 Triomphe de 1'Etoile was built for them ; and we artists be- 
 lieve that this public monument was built to console the 
 failures on the stage of the Theatre-Fran cais and to amuse 
 us ; but these state-paid play-actors are more expensive than 
 the others, and it is not every day that we get our money's 
 worth." 
 
 " So this is the Chamber ! " repeated Gazonal. He strode 
 through the great hall, almost empty now, looking about him 
 with an expression which Bixiou noted down in his memory 
 for one of the famous caricatures in which he rivals Gavarni. 
 Leon on his side walked up to one of the ushers who come 
 and go constantly between the Salle des Seances itself and 
 the lobby, where the reporters of the " Moniteur " are at 
 work while the House is sitting, with some persons attached 
 to the Chamber. 
 
 "The Minister is here," the usher was telling Leon as 
 Gazonal came up, " but I do not know whether Monsieur 
 
 Giraud has gone or not ; I will see " He opened one of 
 
 the folding doors through which no one is allowed to pass 
 save deputies, ministers, or royal commissioners, when a man 
 came out, young as yet, as it seemed to Gazonal, in spite of 
 his forty-eight years. To this new-comer the usher pointed 
 out Leon de Lora. 
 
 " Aha ! you here ! " he said, shaking hands with Leon and 
 Bixiou. "You rascals! what do you want in the innermost 
 sanctuary of law ? " 
 
 " Gad ! we have come for a lesson in the art of humbug," 
 said Bixiou. " One gets rusty if one does not." 
 
 " Then let us go out into the garden," said the new-comer, 
 not knowing that Gazonal was one of the company. 
 
 Gazonal was at a loss how to classify the well-dressed 
 stranger in plain black from head to foot, with a ribbon and 
 an order ; but he followed to the terrace by the river once 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 393 
 
 known as the Quai Napoleon. Out in the garden the ci- 
 devant (erstwhile) young man gave vent to a laugh, suppressed 
 since his appearance in the Salle des Pas Perdus. 
 
 " Why, what is the matter with you ? " asked L6on de Lora 
 of the new-comer. 
 
 " My dear friend, we are driven to tell terrific lies with 
 incredible coolness to prove the sincerity of the constitutional 
 government. Now I myself have my moods. There are days 
 when I can lie like a political programme, and others when I 
 cannot keep my countenance. This is one of my hilarious 
 days. Now the Opposition has called upon the chief secretary 
 to disclose secrets of diplomacy which he would not impart if 
 they were in office, and at this moment he is on his legs pre- 
 paring to go through a gymnastic performance. And as he is 
 an honest man that will not lie on his own account, he said 
 confidentially to me before he mounted to the breach, ' I have 
 not a notion what to tell them.' So, when I saw him there, 
 an uncontrollable desire to laugh seized me, and I went out, 
 for you cannot very well have your laugh out on the Minis- 
 terial benches, where my youth occasionally revisits me un- 
 seasonably." 
 
 "At last!" cried Gazonal. "At last! I have found an 
 honest man in Paris. You must be indeed great ! " he con- 
 tinued, looking at the stranger. 
 
 " I say, who is this gentleman ? " inquired the other, scrut- 
 inizing Gazonal as he spoke. 
 
 " A cousin of mine," L6on put in hastily. " I can answer 
 for his silence and loyalty as for my own. We have come 
 here on his account ; he has a lawsuit on hand, it depends on 
 your department ; his prefect simply wishes to ruin him, and 
 we have come to see you about it and to prevent the Council 
 of State from confirming injustice." 
 
 " Who is the chairman ? " 
 
 "Massol." 
 
 "Good." 
 
394 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS 
 
 "And our friends Claud Vignon and Giraud are on the 
 committee," added Bixiou. 
 
 "Just say a word to them, and let them come to Carabine's 
 to-night," said Leon. " Du Tillet is giving a party, ostensi- 
 bly a meeting of railway shareholders, for they rob you more 
 than ever on the highways now." 
 
 " But, I say, is this in the Pyrenees? " inquired the young- 
 looking stranger, grown serious by this time. 
 
 "Yes," said Gazonal. 
 
 "And you do not vote for us at the general election," he 
 continued, fixing his eyes on Gazonal. 
 
 "No; but the remarks you made just now have corrupted 
 me. On the honor of a Commandant of the National Guard, 
 I will see that your candidate is returned " 
 
 "Very well. Can you further guarantee your cousin?" 
 asked the young-looking man, addressing L6on. 
 
 "We are forming him," said Bixiou, in a very comical 
 tone. 
 
 " Well, I shall see," said the other, and he hurried back to 
 the Salle des Seances. 
 
 " I say, who is that?" 
 
 " The Comte de Rastignac ; he is the head of the depart- 
 ment in which your affair is going on." 
 
 "A Minister! Is that all ?" 
 
 " He is an old friend of ours as well, and he has three hun- 
 dred thousand livres a year, and he is a peer of France, and 
 the King has given him the title of count. He is Nucingen's 
 son-in-law, and one of the two or three statesmen produced 
 by the Revolution of July. Now and then, however, he finds 
 office dull, and comes out to have a laugh with us." 
 
 " But, look here, cousin, you did not tell us that you were 
 on the other side down yonder," said Leon, taking Gazonal 
 by the arm. " How stupid you are ! One deputy more or 
 less to the Right or Left, will you sleep any the softer for 
 that?" 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 395 
 
 " We are on the side of the others " 
 
 "Let them be," said Bixiou Monrose himself could not 
 have spoken the words more comically " let them be, they 
 have Providence on their side, and Providence will look after 
 them without your assistance and in spite of themselves. A 
 manufacturer is bound to be a necessarian." 
 
 ''Good! here comes Maxime with Canalis and Giraud," 
 cried Leon. 
 
 " Come, friend Gazonal ; the promised actors are arriving 
 on the scene." 
 
 The three went toward the new-comers, who to all appear- 
 ance were lounging on the terrace. 
 
 " Have they sent you about your business that you are do- 
 ing like this?" inquired Bixiou, addressing Giraud. 
 
 " No. We have come out for a breath of air till the ballot 
 is over." 
 
 " And how did the chief secretary get out of it ? " 
 " He was magnificent ! " said Canalis. 
 " Magnificent ! " from Giraud. 
 " Magnificent ! " from Maxime. 
 " I say ! Right, Left, and Centre all of one mind ! " 
 " Each of us has a different idea in his head though," 
 Maxime de Trailles remarked. (Maxime was a Ministerialist.) 
 " Yes," laughed Canalis. Canalis had once been in office, 
 but he was now edging away toward the Right. . 
 
 "You have just enjoyed a great triumph," Maxime said, 
 addressing Canalis, for you drove the Minister 
 
 "Yes, and to lie like a charlatan," returned Canalis. 
 " A glorious victory ! " commented honest Giraud. 
 would you have done in his place?" 
 " I should have lied likewise." 
 
 "Nobody calls it 'lying,'" said Maxime; "it is cal 
 'covering the Crown,'" and he drew Canalis a few pac 
 
 aside. 
 
 Leon turned to Giraud. 
 
396 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 " Canalis is a very good speaker," he said. 
 
 "Yes and no," returned the State councilor. "He is an 
 empty drum, an artist in words rather than a speaker. In 
 short, 'tis a fine instrument, but it is not music, and therefore 
 he has not had and never will have ' the ear of the House.' 
 He thinks that France cannot do without him ; but whatever 
 happens, he cannot, really cannot, possibly be ' the man of 
 the situation.' ' 
 
 Canalis and Maxima rejoined the group just as Giraud, 
 deputy of the Centre-Left, delivered himself of this verdict. 
 Maxime took Giraud by the arm and drew him away, proba- 
 bly to give the same confidences that Canalis had received. 
 
 "What an honest, worthy fellow he is ! " said Leon, indi- 
 cating Giraud. 
 
 " That kind of honesty is the ruin of a government," re- 
 plied Canalis. 
 
 "Is he a good speaker, in your opinion?" 
 
 "Yes and no," said Canalis. "He is wordy and prosy. 
 He is a plodding reasoner, a good logician ; but he does not 
 comprehend the wider logic the logic of events and of affairs 
 for which reason he has not and never will have ' the ear 
 of the House' " 
 
 Canalis was in the midst of his summing-up when the sub- 
 ject of his remarks came toward them with Maxime; and, 
 forgetting that there was a stranger present whose discretion 
 was not so certain as Leon's or Bixiou's, he took Canalis' 
 hand significantly. 
 
 "Very good," said he, "I agree to Monsieur le Comte de 
 Tiailles' proposals. I will ask the question, but it will be 
 pressed hard." 
 
 " Then we shall have the House with us on the question, 
 for a man of your capacity and eloquence always has ' the ear 
 of the House,'" returned Canalis. "I will undertake to 
 crush you and no mistake." 
 
 " You very likely will bring about a change of ministry, for 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 397 
 
 on such grounds you can do anything you like with the 
 House, and you will be ' the man of the situation ' " 
 
 " Maxime has hocussed them both," said Leon, turning to 
 his cousin. " That fine fellow is as much at home in parlia- 
 mentary intrigue as a fish in water." 
 
 "Who is he?" asked Gazonal. 
 
 " He was a scamp ; he is in a fair way to be an ambas- 
 sador," answered Bixiou. 
 
 "Giraud," said Leon, "do not go until you have asked 
 Rastignac to say something, as he promised me he would, 
 about a lawsuit that will come up for decision before you the 
 day after to-morrow ; it affects my cousin here. I will come 
 round to-morrow morning to see you about it." And the 
 three friends followed the three politicians, at a certain dis- 
 tance, to the Salle des Pas Perdus. 
 
 " Now, cousin, look at the two yonder," said Lon, point- 
 ing out a retired and very famous Minister and the leader of 
 the Left Centre, "those are two speakers that always have 
 the ' ear of the House ; ' they have been called in joke the 
 leaders of his majesty's Opposition ; they have the ear of the 
 House, so much so indeed that they very often pull it." 
 
 "It is four o'clock. Let us go back to the Rue de Berlin," 
 said Bixiou. 
 
 " Yes. You have just seen the heart of the Government; 
 now you ought to see the parasites and ascarides, the tapeworm, 
 or, since one must call him by his given name the Repub- 
 lican." 
 
 The friends were no sooner packed into their cab than 
 Gazonal looked maliciously at his cousin and Bixiou ; there 
 was a pent-up flood of southern and splenetic oratory within 
 him. 
 
 "I had my suspicions before of this great jade of a city," 
 he burst out in his thick southern accent, "but after this morn- 
 ing I despise it. The poor country district, for so shabby as 
 she is, is an honest girl ; but Paris is a prostitute, rapacious, 
 
398 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 deceitful, artificial, and I am very glad to escape with my 
 skin " 
 
 "The day is not over yet," Bixiou said sententiously, with 
 a wink at Leon. 
 
 "And why complain like a fool of a so-called prostitution 
 by which you will gain your case ? " added Leon. " Do you 
 think yourself a better man, less hypocritical than we are, less 
 rapacious, less ready to make a descent of any sort, less taken 
 up with vanity than all those whom we have set dancing like 
 marionettes? " 
 
 "Try to tempt me." 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " shrugged Leon. " Have you not promised 
 your vote and influence, as it is, to Rastignac ? " 
 
 " Yes ; because he is the only one among them that laughed 
 at himself." 
 
 "Poor fellow!" echoed Bixiou. "And you distrust me 
 when I have done nothing but laugh ! You remind me of a 
 cur snapping at a tiger. Ah, if you had but seen us making 
 game of somebody or other. Do you realize that we are ca- 
 pable of driving a sane man out of his wits? " 
 
 At this point they reached Leon's house. The splendor of 
 its furniture cut Gazonal short and put an end to the dispute. 
 Rather later in the day it began to dawn upon him that Bixiou 
 had been drawing him out. 
 
 At half-past five, Leon de Lora was dressing for the evening, 
 to Gazonal's great bewilderment. He counted up his cousin's 
 thousand-and-one superfluities, and admired the valet's serious- 
 ness, when "monsieur's chiropodist" was announced, and 
 Publicola Masson entered the room, bowed to Gazonal and 
 Bixiou, set down a little case of instruments, and took a low- 
 chair opposite Leon. The new-comer, a little man of fifty, 
 bore a certain resemblance to Marat. 
 
 " How are things going?" inquired Leon, holding out a 
 foot, previously washed by the servant. 
 
 " Well, I am compelled to take a couple of pupils, two 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 890 
 
 young fellows that have given up surgery in despair and taken 
 to chiropody. They were starving, and yet they are not 
 without brains " 
 
 " Oh, I was not speaking of matters pedestrian ; I was ask- 
 ing after your political programme " 
 
 Masson's glance at Gazonal was more expressive than any 
 spoken inquiry. 
 
 " Oh ! speak out ; that is my cousin, and he is all but one 
 of you ; he fancies that he is a Legitimist." 
 
 " Oh, well, we are getting on ; we are getting on. All 
 Europe will be with us in five years' time. Switzerland and 
 Italy are in full ferment, and we are ready for the opportunity 
 if it comes. Here, for instance, we have fifty thousand 
 armed men, to say nothing of two hundred thousand penniless 
 citizens " 
 
 " Pooh ! '* said Leon, " how about the fortifications?" 
 
 " Pie-crusts made to be broken," Masson retorted. "In 
 the first place, we shall never allow artillery to come within 
 range ; and, in the second, we have a little contrivance more 
 effectual than all the fortifications in the world, an invention 
 which we owe to the doctor who cured folk faster than all the 
 rest of the faculty could kill them while his machine was in 
 operation." 
 
 "What a rate you are going!" said Gazonal. The sight 
 of Publicola made his flesh creep. 
 
 " Oh, there is no help for it. We come after Robespierre 
 and Saint-Just, to improve upon them. They were timid, and 
 you see what came of it an emperor, the elder branch and 
 then the younger. The Mountain did not prune the social 
 tree sufficiently.*' 
 
 " Look here, you that will be consul, or tribune, or some- 
 thing like it, don't forget that I have asked for your protec- 
 tion any time these ten years," said Bixiou. 
 
 " Nothing will happen to vou. We shall need jesters, and 
 you could take up Barere's job." 
 
400 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 "And I?" queried L<on. 
 
 "Oh, you are my client; that will save you; for genius 
 is an odious privileged class that receives far too much here 
 in France. We shall be forced to demolish a few of our great 
 men to teach the rest the lesson that they must be simple 
 citizens." 
 
 This was said with a mixture of jest and earnest that sent a 
 shudder through Gazonal. 
 
 "Then will there be an end of religion?" he asked. 
 
 "An end of a State religion" said Masson, laying a stress 
 on the two last words; "every one will have his own belief. 
 It is a very lucky thing that the Government just now is pro- 
 tecting the convents ; they are accumulating the wealth for 
 our Government. Everybody is conspiring to help us. For 
 instance, all those who pity the people, and bawl so much 
 over the proletariat and the wage-earning classes, or write 
 against the Jesuits, or interest themselves in the amelioration 
 of anybody whatsoever communists, humanitarians, philan- 
 thropists, you understand all these folk are our advanced 
 guard. While we lay in powder they are braiding the fuse, 
 and the spark of circumstance will set fire to it." 
 
 "Now, pray, what do you want for the welfare of the 
 country?" 
 
 "Equality among the citizens, cheap commodities of every 
 kind. There shall be no starving folk on one hand, no 
 millionaires on the other; no blood-suckers, no victims 
 that is what we want." 
 
 "Which is to say the maximum and the minimum?" 
 queried Gazonal. 
 
 "You have spoken," the other returned laconically. 
 
 " An end of manufacturers? " 
 
 "Manufactures will be carried on for the benefit of the 
 State ; we shall all have a life-interest in France. Every 
 man will have his rations served out as if he were on board 
 ship, and everybody will do the work for which he is fitted." 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 401 
 
 " Good. And meanwhile, until you can cut your aristocrats' 
 heads off " 
 
 "I pare their nails," said the Republican-Radical, shutting 
 up his case of instruments and finishing the joke himself. 
 Then with a very polite bow he withdrew. 
 
 " Is it possible ? In 1845 ?" cried Gazonal. 
 
 "If we had time we could show you all the characters of 
 1793; and you should talk with them. You have just seen 
 Marat. Well, we know Fouquier-Tinville, Collot-d'Herbois, 
 Robespierre, Chabot, Fouche, Barras, and even a magnificent 
 Madame Roland." 
 
 "Ah, well, tragedy has not been left unrepresented on thij 
 stage," said Gazonal. 
 
 " It is six o'clock. We will take you to see Odry in 'Les 
 Saltimbanques ' this evening, but first we must call upon 
 Madame Cadine, an actress, very intimate with Massol your 
 chairman ; you must pay your court assiduously to her to- 
 night." 
 
 "As it is absolutely necessary that you should conciliate 
 this power, I will just give you a few hints," added Bixiou. 
 
 " Do you employ women in your factory ? " 
 
 "Assuredly." 
 
 " That was all that I wanted to know," said Bixiou. " You 
 are not a married man, you are a great " 
 
 " Yes," interrupted Gazonal. " You have guessed ; women 
 are my weak point." 
 
 " Very good. If you decide to execute a little manauvre 
 which I will teach you, you shair know something of the 
 charm of intimacy with an actress without spending one cen- 
 time." 
 
 Bixiou, intent on playing a mischievous trick upon t 
 cautious Gazonal, had scarcely finished tracing out his part 
 for him, when they reached Mme. Cadine's house in the Rue 
 de la Victoire. But a hint was enough for the southern 
 brain, as will shortly be seen. 
 26 
 
402 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 They climbed the stair of a tolerably fine house, and dis- 
 covered Jennie Cadine finishing her dinner. She was to play 
 in the second piece at the Gyranase. Gazonal introduced to 
 the power, Leon and Bixiou went aside ostensibly to see a 
 new piece of furniture, really to leave the two alone together; 
 but not before Bixiou had whispered to her that " this was 
 Leon's cousin, a manufacturer worth millions of francs. He 
 wants to gain his lawsuit against the prefect in the Council of 
 State," he added, "so he wishes to win you first, to have 
 Massol on his side." 
 
 All Paris knows Jennie Cadine's great beauty ; no one can 
 wonder, therefore, that Gazonal stood dumfounded at sight of 
 her. She had received him almost coldly at first, but during 
 those few minutes that he spent alone with her she was very 
 gracious to him. Gazonal looked contemptuously round at 
 the drawing-room furniture through the door left ajar by his 
 fellow-conspirators, and made a mental estimate of the con- 
 tents of the dining-room. 
 
 " How any man can leave such a woman as you in such a 
 dog-hole as this ! " he began. 
 
 " Ah ! there it is. It cannot be helped. Massol is not 
 rich. I am waiting until he is a Minister " 
 
 " Happy man ! " exclaimed Gazonal, heaving a sigh from 
 the depths of a provincial heart. 
 
 "Good," thought the actress, "I shall have new furniture; 
 I can rival Carabine now." 
 
 Leon came in. "Well, dear child," he said, "you are 
 coming to Carabine's this evening, are you not ? Supper and 
 lansquenet." 
 
 "Will monsieur be there?" Jenny asked artlessly and 
 sweetly. 
 
 " Yes, madame," said Gazonal, dazzled by his rapid success. 
 
 "But Massol will be there too," rejoined Bixiou. 
 
 "Well, and what has that to do with it?" retorted Jenny. 
 " Now let us go, my treasures, I must be off to my theatre." 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 403 
 
 Gazonal handed her down to the cab that was waiting for 
 her at the door, and squeezed her hands so tenderly that 
 Jenny wrung her fingers. 
 
 " Eh ! " she cried, " I have not a second set." 
 
 Once in the carriage, Gazonal tried to hug Bixiou. " She 
 is hooked ! " he cried; " you are a most unmitigated scoun- 
 drel ! " 
 
 " So the women say," returned Bixiou. 
 
 At half-past eleven, after the play, a hack brought the trio 
 to Mile. Seraphine Sinet's abode. Every well-known lorette 
 either takes a pseudonym, or somebody bestows one upon her, 
 and Seraphine is better known as Carabine, possibly because 
 she never fails to bring down her "pigeon." She had come 
 to be almost indispensable to du Tillet the famous banker, 
 and member of the Left Centre, and at that time she was liv- 
 ing in charming rooms in the Rue Saint-Georges. There are 
 certain houses in Paris that seem fated to carry on a tradition ; 
 this particular house had already seen seven reigns of cour- 
 tesans. A stockbroker had installed Suzanne de Val-Noble 
 in it somewhere about the year 1827. The notorious Esther 
 had here driven the Baron de Nucingen * to commit the only 
 follies of his life. Here Florine, and she whom some face- 
 tiously call the "late Madame Schontz," had shone in turn, 
 and finally when du Tillet tired of his wife he had taken the 
 little modern house and established Carabine in it ; her lively 
 wit, her off-hand manners, her brilliant shamelessness provided 
 him with a counterpoise for the cares of life, domestic, public, 
 and financial. 
 
 Ten covers were always laid; dinner was served (and 
 splendidly) whether du Tillet and Carabine were at home 
 or not. Artists, men of letters, journalists, and frequenters 
 of the house dined there, and there was play of an evening. 
 More than one member of the Chamber came hither to seek 
 the pleasure that is paid for in Paris by its weight in gold. A 
 * See " The Harlot's Progress." 
 
404 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 few feminine eccentrics, certain falling stars of doubtful signif- 
 icance that sparkle in the Parisian firmanent, appeared here 
 in all the splendor of their toilettes. The conversation was 
 good, for talk was unrestrained, and anything might be said 
 and was said. Carabine, a rival of the no less celebrated 
 Malaga, had fallen heir as it were to several salons ; the 
 coteries belonging to Florine (now Mme. Nathan), Tullia 
 (afterward Comtesse du Bruel), and Madame Schontz* (who 
 became the wife of President du Ronceret) had all rallied to 
 Carabine. 
 
 Gazonal made but one remark as he came in, but his obser- 
 vation was both legitimate and Legitimist "It is finer than 
 the Tuileries," said he; and, indeed, his provincial eyes 
 found so much employment with satins, velvets, brocades, and 
 gilding that he did not see Jenny Cadine in a dress that com- 
 manded respect, hidden behind Carabine. She was taking 
 mental notes of her litigant's entry while she chatted with her 
 hostess. 
 
 "This is my cousin, my dear," said Leon, addressing 
 Carabine; " he is a manufacturer; he dropped in upon me 
 this morning from the Pyrenees. He knows nothing as yet 
 of Paris ; he wants Massol's help in a case that has gone up 
 to the Council of State ; so we have taken the liberty of bring- 
 ing him here to supper, beseeching you at the same time to 
 leave him in full possession of his faculties " 
 
 "As he pleases ; wine is dear," said Carabine, scanning the 
 provincial, who struck her as in no wise remarkable. 
 
 As for Gazonal, dazzled by the women's dresses, the lights, 
 the gilding, and the chatter of various groups, all concerned, 
 as he supposed, with him and his affairs, he could only stam- 
 mer out incoherent words. 
 
 " Madame madame you are you are very kind." 
 
 "What do you manufacture?" asked the mistress of the 
 house, smiling at him. 
 
 * See " Beatrix." 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 405 
 
 "Say lace," prompted Bixiou in a whisper, "and offer her 
 pillow- lace or guipures." 
 
 "P-p-pill " 
 
 " Pills ! " said Carabine. " I say, Cadine, child, you have 
 been taken in." 
 
 "Lace," Gazonal got out, comprehending that he must 
 pay for his supper. " It will give me the greatest pleasure to 
 offer you er a dress a scarf a mantilla of my own manu- 
 facture." 
 
 " What, three things ! Well, well, you are nicer than you 
 look," returned Carabine. 
 
 "Paris has caught me," said Gazonal to himself, as he 
 caught sight of Jenny Cadine, and went to pay his respects 
 to her. 
 
 "And what should / have?" asked the actress. 
 
 " Why, my whole fortune ! " cried Gazonal, shrewdly of the 
 opinion that to offer all was to offer nothing. 
 
 Massol, Claud Vignon, du Tillet, Maxime de Trailles, 
 Nucingen, Du Bruel, Malaga, M. and Mme. Gaillard, Vau- 
 vinet, and a host of others crowded in. 
 
 In the course of conversation, Massol and Gazonal went to 
 the bottom of the dispute ; the former, without committing 
 himself, remarked that the report was not yet drawn up, and 
 that citizens might put confidence in the lights and the inde- 
 pendent opinion of the Council of State. After this cut-and- 
 dried response, Gazonal, losing hope, judged it necessary to 
 win over the charming Jenny Cadine, with whom he fell head 
 over ears in love. Le'on de Lora and Bixiou left their victim 
 in the clutches of the most mischief-loving woman in their 
 singular set, for Jenny Cadine was the famous Dejazet's sole 
 rival. 
 
 At the supper-table Gazonal was fascinated by the work of 
 Froment Meurice, the modern Benvenuto Cellini by costly 
 plate, with contents worth the interest on the wrought silver 
 that held them. The two perpetrators of the hoax had taken 
 
406 THE UNCONSCIOUS MUMMERS. 
 
 care to sit as far away from him as possible ; but furtively 
 they watched the wily actress' progress. Ensnared by that 
 insidious hint of new furniture, she had set herself to carry 
 Gazonal home with her; and never did lamb in the Fete- 
 Dieu procession submit to be led by his St. John the Baptist 
 with a better grace than Gazonal showed in his obedience to 
 this siren. 
 
 Three days afterward, Leon and Bixiou having meanwhile 
 seen and heard nothing of their friend, repaired to his lodging 
 about two o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 "Well, cousin, the decision has been given in your favor." 
 
 "Alas! it makes no difference now, cousin," Gazonal an- 
 swered, turning his melancholy eyes upon them; "I have 
 turned Republican again." 
 
 " Wh what ? " asked Leon. 
 
 "I have nothing left, not even enough to pay my counsel. 
 Madame Jenny Cadine holds bills of mine for more than I 
 am worth " 
 
 "It is a fact that Cadine is rather expensive, but- 
 
 " Oh ! I have had my money's worth. Ah ! what a woman ! 
 After all, Paris is too much for a provincial. I am about to 
 retire to La Trappe." 
 
 "Good," said Bixiou. "Now you talk sensibly. Here, 
 acknowledge the sovereign power of the capital " 
 
 "And of capital!" cried Leon, holding out Gazonal's 
 bills. 
 
 Gazonal stared at the papers in bewilderment. 
 
 "You cannot say that we have no notion of hospitality; 
 we have educated you, rescued you from want, treated you, 
 and amused you," said Bixiou. 
 
 "And nothing to pay ! " added Leon, with the gesture by 
 which a street boy conveys the idea that somebody has been 
 successfully "done." 
 
 PARIS, November, 1845. 
 
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