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

‘‘At the age of nine the child began to be absorbed in prayer. Prayer is her life; you saw her in our churcb on Christmas Day, the only day she ever comes there. She is placed apart from the other worshippers by a considerable distance. If this space is not left about her, she is ill. Indeed, she spends most of her time indoors. The details of her life are, however, unknown; she never shows herself; her faculties, her feelings are essentially inward; she is commonly in the state of mystical contemplation, which, as Papist writers tell us, was familiar to the first Christian recluses, in whom dwelt the tradition of Christ’s teaching. Her understanding, her soul, her body, everything about her, is as virginal as the snow on our mountains. At ten years old she was what you see her now.

‘*When she was nine her father and mother died at the same instant without pain, without any visible malady, after naming the hour at which they should cease to breathe. She, standing at their feet, looked on them with a calm eye, displaying neither grief, nor pain, nor joy, nor curiosity; her father and mother smiled at her.

‘“When we went in to carry away the two bodies, she said—

‘**Take them away!’

p. 85

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““‘Seraphita,” said I, for we called her by that name,
‘are you not grieved by your father’s and mother’s death?
They loved you so well.’

“**Dead ?’ said she. ‘No, they are still in me. This is nothing,’ she added, pointing to the bodies they were taking away.

“This was the third time I had seen her since her birth. It is difficult to see her in church; she stands near the pillar that supports the pulpit, in such a dark corner that it 1s hardly possible to discern her features.

“Of all the servants of the house, none were left at the time of that event but old David, who, though he is eightytwo years old, manages to do all his mistress needs. Some of the people of Jarvis have strange tales about the girl. Their stories having assumed some consistency in a land that is greatly addicted to mysteries, [ set to work to study Jean Wier’s ‘Treatise on Sorcery,’ and other works on demonology, in which the effects on man of the supernatural (so called) are recorded, in search of facts analogous to what are ascribed to her—’’

‘“‘Then you do not believe in her?’’ asked Wilfrid.

“Indeed, yes,’’ said the pastor with simplicity, ‘‘in so far that I regard her as a most fantastic creature, spoiled by her parents, who have a her brain by the Telions notions I have set forth to you.’

Minna shook her head in a gentle expression of negation.

“Poor girl!’’ the pastor went on, ‘“‘she has inherited from her parents the fatal enthusiasm which misleads mystics and makes them more or less crazy. She fasts in a way that drives poor David to despair. The good old man is like some frail plant that trembles at a breath of wind and basks in the smallest gleam of sunshine. His mis86 BALZAC’S WORKS tress, whose incomprehensible language he has adopted, is to him the breeze and sunshine; to him her feet are diamonds, her forehead crowned with stars; she moves environed by a white and luminous halo; her voice has an accompaniment of music; she has the gift of becoming invisible. Ask to see her; he will tell you that she is wandering through astral worlds. It is difficult to believe such fables. Every such miracle, you know, is more or less like the story of the Golden Tooth: we have a Golden Tooth at Jarvis, that is all.

‘For instance, Duncker, the fisherman, declares that he has seen her plunging into the fiord and coming to the surface in the form of an eider-duck, or walking on the waves during astorm. Fergus, who tends the herds on the seter, says that, in rainy weather, he has seen the sky always clear over the Swedish castle, and always blue over Seraphita’s head if she goes out. Several women hear the chords of an immense organ when Seraphita comes to church, and ask their neighbors quite seriously if they also do not hear it.