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1Il s’élança : l’immense envergure de son scintillant plumage couvrit les deux Voyants comme d’une ombre bienfaisante qui leur permit de lever les yeux et de le voir emporté dans sa gloire, accompagné du joyeux archange. Il monta comme un soleil radieux qui sort du sein des ondes ; mais, plus majestueux que l’astre et promis à de plus belles destinées, il ne devait pas être enchaîné comme les créations inférieures dans une vie circulaire ; il suivit la ligue de l’infini, et tendit sans déviation vers le centre unique pour s’y plonger dans sa vie éternelle, pour y recevoir dans ses facultés et dans son essence le pouvoir de jouir par l’amour, et le don de comprendre par la sagesse. Le spectacle qui se dévoila soudain aux yeux des deux Voyants les écrasa sous son immensité, car ils se sentaient comme des points dont la petitesse ne pouvait se comparer qu’à la moindre fraction que l’infini de la divisibilité permette à l’homme de concevoir, mise en présence de l’infini des Nombres que Dieu seul peut envisager comme il s’envisage lui-même.
2Quel abaissement et quelle grandeur en ces deux points, la Force et l’Amour, que le premier désir du Séraphin plaçait comme deux anneaux pour unir l’immensité des univers inférieurs à l’immensité des univers supérieurs ! Ils comprirent les invisibles liens par lesquels les mondes matériels se rattachaient aux mondes spirituels. En se rappelant les sublimes efforts des plus beaux génies humains, ils trouvèrent le principe des mélodies en entendant les chants du ciel qui donnaient les sensations des couleurs, des parfums, de la pensée, et qui rappelaient les innombrables détails de toutes les créations, comme un chant de la terre ranime d’infirmes souvenirs d’amour. Arrivés par une exaltation inouïe de leurs facultés à un point sans nom dans le langage, ils purent jeter pendant un moment les yeux sur le Monde Divin. Là était la fête.
3Des myriades d’Anges accoururent tous du même vol, sans confusion, tous pareils, tous dissemblables, simples comme la rose des champs, immenses comme les mondes. Wilfrid et Minna ne les virent ni arriver ni s’enfuir, ils ensemencèrent soudain l’infini de leur présence, comme les étoiles brillent dans l’indiscernable éther. Le scintillement de leurs diadèmes réunis s’alluma dans les espaces, comme les feux du ciel au moment où le jour paraît dans nos montagnes. De leurs chevelures sortaient des ondes de lumière, et leurs mouvements excitaient des frémissements onduleux semblables aux flots d’une mer phosphorescente. Les deux Voyants aperçurent le Séraphin tout obscur au milieu des légions immortelles dont les ailes étaient comme l’immense panache des forêts agitées par une brise.
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.
1On 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 apprehending 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 SERAPHITa 171 by a mad whirlwind. 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.
2At the communication of the Light, which changed the Spirit into a seraph, the garb of heavenly armor that clothed 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 unclouded 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 day 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 un172 BALZAC’S WORKS — known power that laid a hand on the two seers did fora moment annihilate their physical bodies, or whether it released their spirit to ‘soar free, they were aware of a separation in themselves of the pure from the impure.
3Then 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. Hach species had its centre in the vast celestial region that is in communion with the inexhaustible 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 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.
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
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