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

“Ply, 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.

p. 42

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 [ 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, [ think, too arrogant to-day.—Now go. Tull 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 forp. 43 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 ight and lovee AmTawake? Dol still slumber? Have I not yet opened my sleeping eyes, those eyes before whose sight luminous spaces stretch into infinitude, eyes that can discern those spaces ?—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.’’