The Works of Honore de Balzac Part 58

"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 be addressed heart to heart."

"Wilfrid, it is kind of you to soothe my griefs with such sweet words--which you have spoken to others."

"Good-bye."

"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 for ever this sphere of trial 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. Incomprehensible 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 G.o.ddess 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.

"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 for ever? Is not love for a lifetime only sheer suffering? Have you not felt a longing for eternal love? Do you not now 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 seash.o.r.e. 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 reach your journey's end, you will hear the trumpet call of omnipotence 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, admire, 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, "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 go. 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 castle.

"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? Have I not yet opened my sleeping eyes, those eyes before whose sight luminous s.p.a.ces stretch into infinitude, eyes that can discern those s.p.a.ces?--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 efforts; but when he had got out of the precincts of the house, he recovered his freedom of will, walked quickly to the parsonage, 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, Pastor 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 ma.s.ses 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 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; then he always made his way to the manse, attracted to Minna by his thirst for the scenes of homely life, as an European traveler thirsts for his 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 sh.e.l.ls.

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 soberer tone. At the further end, opposite the door, was an enormous wrought-iron stove, carefully rubbed by the maid-servant till it shone like polished 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-m.u.f.f, while he read from a folio supported on other books to form a sort of desk. On his right stood a beer-jug and a gla.s.s; 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 judical 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 binding. He gravely held a long meerschaum pipe in his mouth, blowing off the tobacco smoke at regular intervals, and watching its fantastic spirals with a speculative eye, while endeavoring, no doubt, to a.s.similate and digest by meditation the ideas of the author whose works 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 towards 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 st.i.tches 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. Wilfrid, 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.