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

‘‘And just then the Shade came back to us, brought thither by an irresistible force which condemned him to parch on the verge of Hell. My divine Guide, guessing my curiosity, touched the unhappy Shade with his palm-_ branch. He, who was perhaps trying to measure the age of sorrow that divided him from that ever-vanishing ‘Tomorrow,’ started and gave a look full of all the tears he had already shed.

‘**You would know my woe?’ said he sadly. ‘Oh, I love to tell it. I am here, Teresa is above; that is all. On earth we were happy, we were always together. When I saw my loved Teresa Donati for the first time, she was ten years old. We loved each other even then, not knowing what love meant. Our lives were one; I[ turned pale if she were pale, I was happy in her joy; we gave ourselves up to the pleasure of thinking and feeling together; and we learned what love was, each through the other. We werep. 852 wedded at Cremona; ‘we never saw each other’s lips but decked with the pearls of a smile; our eyes always shone; our hair, like our desires, flowed together; our heads were always bent over one book when we read, our feet walked in equal step. Life was one long kiss, our home was a nest.

‘‘*One day, for the first time, Teresa turned pale and said, ‘‘I am in pain!’’—And I was not in pain!

‘‘‘She never rose again. I saw her sweet face change, her golden hair fade—and I did not die! She smiled to hide her sufferings, but I could read them in her blue eyes, — of which I could interpret the slightest trembling. ‘‘Honorino, I love you!”’ said she, at the very moment when her lips turned white, and she was clasping my hand still in hers when death chilled them. Sol killed myself that she might not lie alone in her sepulchral bed, under her marble sheet. Teresa is above, and I am here. I could not bear to leave her, but God has divided us. Why, then, did He unite us on earth? He is jealous! Paradise was no doubt so much the fairer on the day when Teresa entered in.

‘“*Do you see her? She is sad in her bliss; she is parted from me! Paradise must be a desert to her.’

‘‘“Master,’ said I with tears, for 1 thought of my love, ‘when this one shall desire Paradise for God’s sake alone, shall he not be delivered?’ And the Father of Poets mildly bowed his head in sign of assent.

‘‘We departed, cleaving the air, and making no more noise than the birds that pass overhead sometimes when we lie in the shade of a tree. It would have been vain to try to check the-hapless Shade in his blasphemy. It is one of the griefs of the angels of darkness that they can never see the ght even when they are surrounded by it. He would not have understood us.”’

p. 853

At this moment the swift approach of many horses rang through the stillness, the dog barked, the constable’s deep growl replied; the horsemen dismounted, knocked at the door; the noise was so unexpected that it seemed like some sudden explosion.

The two exiles, the two poets, fell to earth through all the space that divides us from the skies. The painful shock of this fall rushed through their veins like strange blood, hissing as it seemed, and full of scorching sparks. Their pain was like an electric discharge. The loud, heavy step of a man-at-arms sounded on the stairs with the iron clank of his sword, his cuirass, and spurs; a soldier presently stood before the astonished stranger.

‘*We can return to Florence,’’ said the man, whose bass voice sounded soft as he spoke in Italian.

‘*What is that you say ?’’ asked the old man.

“The Bianchi are triumphant.”’

‘* Are you not mistaken ?’’ asked the poet.

‘‘No, dear Dante!’’ replied the soldier, whose warlike tones rang with the thrill of battle and the exultation of victory.

“To Florence! To Florence! Ah, my Florence!’’ cried Dante Alighieri, drawing himself up, and gazing into the distance. In fancy he saw Italy; he was gigantic.

‘‘But I—when shall I be in Heaven?’’ said Godefroid, kneeling on one knee before the immortal poet, like an angel before the sauctuary.