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1— Monsieur, tout cela me paraît bien juste, répondit naïvement la jeune fille. — Comment pouvez-vous le savoir, Minna ? demanda le vieillard. — Ah ! mon père, si vous étiez allé ce matin avec nous sur les sommets du Falberg, et que vous l’eussiez vue priant, vous ne me feriez pas cette question ! Vous diriez, comme monsieur Wilfrid, quand il l’aperçut pour la première fois dans notre temple : — C’est le Génie de la Prière. Ces derniers mots furent suivis d’un moment de silence. — Ah ! certes, reprit Wilfrid, elle n’a rien de commun avec les créatures qui s’agitent dans les trous de ce globe. — Sur le Falberg ? s’écria le vieux pasteur. Comment avez-vous fait pour y parvenir ? — Je n’en sais rien, répondit Minna. Ma course est maintenant pour moi comme un rêve dont le souvenir seul me reste ! Je n’y croirais peut-être point sans ce témoignage matériel.
2Elle tira la fleur de son corsage et la montra. Tous trois restèrent les yeux attachés sur la jolie saxifrage encore fraîche qui, bien éclairée par les lampes, brilla dans le nuage de fumée comme une autre lumière. — Voilà qui est surnaturel, dit le vieillard en voyant une fleur éclose en hiver. — Un abîme ! s’écria Wilfrid exalté par le parfum. — Cette fleur me donne le vertige, reprit Minna. Je crois encore entendre sa parole qui est la musique de la pensée, comme je vois encore la lumière de son regard qui est l’amour. — De grâce, mon cher monsieur Becker, dites-moi la vie de Séraphîta, énigmatique fleur humaine dont l’image nous est offerte par cette touffe mystérieuse. — Mon cher hôte, répondit le vieillard en lâchant une bouffée de tabac, pour vous expliquer la naissance de cette créature, il est nécessaire de vous débrouiller les nuages de la plus obscure de toutes les doctrines chrétiennes ; mais il n’est pas facile d’être clair en parlant de la plus incompréhensible des révélations, dernier éclat de la foi qui ait, dit-on, rayonné sur notre tas de boue. Connaissez-vous Swedenborg ?
3— De nom seulement, mais de lui, de ses livres, de sa religion, je ne sais rien. — Hé ! bien, je vais vous raconter Swedenborg en entier. III SÉRAPHÎTA-SÉRAPHÎTÜS Après une pause pendant laquelle le pasteur parut recueillir ses souvenirs, il reprit en ces termes : Emmanuel de Swedenborg est né à Upsal, en Suède, dans le mois de janvier 1688, suivant quelques auteurs, en 1689, suivant son épitaphe. Son père était évêque de Skara. Swedenborg vécut quatre-vingt-cinq années, sa mort étant arrivée à Londres, le 29 mars 1772. Je me sers de cette expression pour exprimer un simple changement d’état. Selon ses disciples, Swedenborg aurait été vu à Jarvis et à Paris postérieurement à cette date. Permettez, mon cher monsieur Wilfrid, dit monsieur Becker en faisant un geste pour prévenir toute interruption, je raconte des faits sans les affirmer, sans les nier. Écoutez, et après, vous penserez de tout ceci ce que vous voudrez. Je vous préviendrai lorsque je jugerai, critiquerai, discuterai les doctrines, afin de constater ma neutralité intelligentielle entre la raison et lui !
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1“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 marvellous rejl uishlia SERAPHITA 59 sults, was no more than a weaker development of his power of seeing into the skies. ‘‘Of all his visions, those in which he travelled to other 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 Hast 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 Arab fancy.
2‘“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. M. Silverichm has it in writing. Baron Seraphitus sometimes tried to tell me of it; but his memory of his cousin was so vivid that he stopped after a few words, and fell into a revery 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 60 BALZAO’S WORKS
3they 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 apparent motion in the system of the universe, that some day, perhaps, scientific men will drink of these luminous founts. Here,’’ said the pastor, taking down a 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 haying been transported to so many astral earths, let him remember my remarks as to distances in the other life. They exist only in relation to the external form of man; now 1, 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.
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
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