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

“The being we call Seraphita seems to me to be one of those rare and awe-inspiring spirits to whom it is given to constrain men, to coerce nature, and share the occult powers of God. The course of her enchantments on me began by her compelling me to silence. Every time I dared wish to question you about her, it seemed to me that I was about to reveal a secret of which I was bound to be the impeccable guardian; whenever I was about to speak, a burning seal was set on my lips, and I was the involuntary slave of this mysterious prohibition. You see me now, for the hundredth time, crushed, broken, by having played with the world of hallucinations that dwells in that young thing, to you so gentle and frail, to me the most ruthless magician. Yes— to me she is a sorceress who bears in her right hand an invisible instrument to stir the world with, and in her left the thunderbolt that dissolves everything at her command. In short, I can no longer behold her face; it is unendurably dazzling.

‘*T have for the last few days been wandering round this abyss of madness too helplessly to keep silence any longer. I have, therefore, seized a moment when [ find courage enough to resist the monster that drags me to her presence without asking whether I have strength enough to keep up with his flight.—Who is she? Did you know her as a child? Was she ever born? Had she parents? Was she conceived by the union of sun and ice ?—She freezes and she burns; she comes forth and then vanishes like some coy truth; she attracts and repels me; she alternately kills and vivifies me; I love her and I hate her!—I cannot live thus. 1 must be either in heaven altogether, or in hell.”’

Pastor Becker, his refilled pipe in one hand and in the other the stopper, listened to Wilfrid with a mysteriousp. 52 expression, glancing i occasionally at his daughter, who seemed to understand this speech, in harmony with the being it referred to. Wilfrid was as splendid as Hamlet struggling against his father’s ghost, to whom he speaks when it rises visible to him alone amid the living.

‘‘This is very much the tone of a man in love,’’ said the good man simply. .

‘In love!’’ cried Wilfrid, ‘tyes, to ordinary apprehensions; but, my dear Mr. Becker, no words can describe the frenzy with which I rush to meet this wild creature.’’

‘“‘Then you do love her?’’ said Minna reproachfully.

‘‘Mademoiselle, I endure such strange agitation when I see her, and such deep dejection when I see her not, that in any other man they would be symptoms of love; but love draws two beings ardently together, while between her and me a mysterious gulf constantly yawns, which chills me through when [ am in her presence, but of which I cease to be conscious when we are apart. I leave her each time in greater despair; I return each time with greater ardor, like a scientific inquirer seeking for Nature’s secrets and forever baffled; like a painter who yearns to give life to his canvas, and wrecks himself and every resource of art in the futile attempt.”’

‘‘Yes, that strikes me as very true,”’

said the girl. ‘‘How should you know, Minna?”’ asked the old man. ‘Ah! father, if you had been with us this morning to the summit of the Falberg, and had seen her praying, you would not ask me. You would say, as Wilfrid did the first time he saw her in our place of worship, ‘She is the Spirit of Prayer!’ ”’ A few moments of silence ensued.

‘Tt is true!l’’ cried Wilfrid. ‘‘She has nothing in

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common with the creatures who writhe in the pits of this world.”

“On the Falberg!”’ the old pastor exclaimed. -‘‘How did you manage to get there?”’

“TI do not know,”’ said Minna. ‘The expedition is to me now like a dream of which only the remembrance survives. I should not believe in it, perhaps, but for this substantial proof.’’