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

they think too material, and they have a language of the eye; those of Saturn are persistently tormented by evil spirits; those of the Moon are as small as children of six years old, their voice proceeds from the stomach, and they creep about; those of Venus are of gigantic stature, but very stupid, and live by robbery; part of that planet, however, is inhabited by beings of great gentleness, who live loving to do good. Finally, he describes the customs of the people who dwell on those globes, and gives an account of the general purpose of their existence as part of the universe in terms so precise, adding explanations which agree so well with the effects of their apparent motion in the system of the universe, that some day, perhaps, scientific men will drink of these luminous founts. Here,’’ said the pastor, taking down a volume and opening it at a page where a marker was placed, ‘‘these are the words which conclude this great work: ‘If any one should doubt my haying been transported to so many astral earths, let him remember my remarks as to distances in the other life. They exist only in relation to the external form of man; now 1, having been inwardly constituted like the angelic spirits of those globes, have been enabled to know them.’

‘‘The circumstances to which we owed the residence in this district of Baron Seraphitus, Swedenborg’s dearly loved cousin, made me intimately familiar with every fact of the life of that extraordinary man.

‘‘Not long since he was accused of imposture in some Kuropean newspapers, which reported the following facts as related in a letter from the Chevalier Beylon. Swedenborg, ‘informed,’ it was said, ‘by some senators of a secret correspondence between the late Queen of Sweden and her brother, the Prince of Prussia, revealed the contents to that

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Princess, leaving her to believe that he had acquired the information by supernatural means. A man of the highest credit, Monsieur Charles-Léonard von Stahlhammer, Captain of the King’s Guard and Knight of the Sword, refuted this calumny in a letter.’ ”’

The pastor hunted through some papers in his tabledrawer, found a newspaper, and handed it to Wilfrid, who read aloud the following letter:

“STocoKHoLM, May 13, 1788.

“T have read with astonishment the letter reporting the interview between the famous Swedenborg and Queen Louisa-Ulrica. All the circumstances are falsified; and I hope the writer will pardon me if I show him how greatly he is mistaken, by giving here an exact account, of which the truth can be attested by several personages of distinction who were present, and who are still living.

‘In 1758, not long after the Prince of Prussia’s death, Swedenborg came to Court; he was in the habit of doing so very regularly. No sooner did the Queen see him than she asked, ‘By the way, Baron Assessor, have you seen my brother?’ Swedenborg said he had not, and the Queen replied, ‘If you should see him, greet him from me.’

‘‘She had no idea in saying this but of a jest; it did not occur to her to ask for any information concerning her brother.

‘‘A week later—not twenty-four days, nor for a private audience—Swedenborg came again, but so early that the Queen had not yet left her own apartment, known as the white room, where she was chatting with her ladies of honor and other ladies about the Court. Swedenborg did not wait for the Queen to come out. He went into her private roomp. 62 and spoke in her ear. — The Queen, quite astounded, turned faint, and it took some time to revive her. When she had recovered herself, she said to those about her, ‘God alone and my brother could know what he has just told me!’ And she said he had spoken of her last correspondence with the Prince, of which the subject had been known to themselves only.