Louis Lambert — Honoré de Balzac, trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley

‘“Why these tears?’’ she asked. ‘Yon 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 wouldp. 837 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 wenton. ‘‘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 make a promise, and ought she not to keep it? You know full well that I can never be yours. ‘T'wo 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 themselves 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 proper88 BALZAC’S WORKS re ties they derive from time, space, form, when you regard them mathematically 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?’

**T 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-by.”’

“Stay. 1 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 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, | want you to be happy, and you refuse. Have I then no power ?—Well,

SERAPHITA Be

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.’’