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

‘Life came up from the red waters and said, ‘I will not desert thee!’ Then, finding Seraphita speechless, she suddenly blazed like the sun, and exclaimed, ‘I am the Light!’ —‘The light is there!’ replied Seraphita, pointing to clouds where the archangels were astir. But she was worn out; Desire had broken ber on the rack; she could only cry aloud, ‘My God!’

‘*How many Angelic Spirits who have climbed the hill, and are on the point of reaching the summit, have stumbled on a stone taat has made them fall and roll back into the depths!—AI! these fallen Spirits marvelled at her constancy; they stood there a motionless chorus, weeping, and saying, ‘Courage!’ At last she had triumphed over Desire, unchained to rend her in every Shape and Species. She remained praying; and when she raised her eyes, she saw the feet of the angels flying back to heaven.”’

‘‘She saw the feet of the angels?” repeated Wilfrid.

‘‘Yes,’’ said the old man.

‘This was a dream that she told you?” asked Wilfrid.

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p. 102

‘CA dream as real as that you are alive,’’ replied David.
‘“‘T was there.”’

The old servant’s calm conviction struck Wilfrid, who went away, wondering whether these visions were at all less extraordinary than those of which Swedenborg wrote, and of which he had read the evening before.

“Tf spirits exist, they must surely act,’’ said he to himself as he went into the manse, where he found the pastor alone.

‘‘My dear Pastor,’’ said he, ‘‘Seraphita is human only in form, and her form is unaccountable. Do not regard me as mad or in love: conviction cannot be argued away. Convert my belief into a scientific hypothesis, and let us try to understand all this. To-morrow we will go to see her together.”’

‘‘And then ?’’ said the minister.

‘‘If her eye knows no limitation of space, if her thought is the sight of the intellect, allowing her to apprehend the essence of things and to connect them with the general evolution of the universe; if, in a word, she knows and sees everything, let us get the Pythoness on to her tripod, and compel the eagle to spread its wings, by threats. Help me! I breathe a consuming fire; I must extinguish it, or be devoured by it. In short, I see my prey; I will have it.”

“It will be a conquest difficult of achievement,’’ said the minister, ‘‘for the poor girl is—’’

‘*Tg— ?’’ said Wilfrid.

‘*Mad,’’ said the pastor.

‘‘T will not dispute her madness,’’ said Wilfrid, ‘‘so long as you do not dispute her superiority. Dear Pastor Becker, she has often put me to the blush by her learning. Has she travelled much ?”’

p. 103

*‘From her house to the fiord.’’

‘She has never been away!’’ cried Wilfrid. ‘Then she must have read a great deal ?’’

‘Not a page, not a jot. I am the only person in Jarvis who has any books. Swedenborg’s writings, the only works in the hamlet, are here; she has never borrowed a single volume.”’

‘‘Have you ever tried to converse with her?’’

“Of what use would it be?”’ =

‘‘No one has dwelt under her roof?”

‘She has no friends but you and Minna; no servant but old David.”’

‘‘And she has never learned anything of Science or
Ari?’

‘‘From whom?’’ said the pastor.

“Then, when she discusses such matters very pertinently, as she has often done with me, what would you infer ?”’

‘That the girl may, perhaps, during all these years of silence, have acquired such faculties as were possessed by Apollonius of Tyana, and by certain so-called wizards, who were burned by the Inquisition, which rejected the idea of second-sight.”’

‘*When she talks Arabic, what can you say?”’

‘‘The history of medicine contains many accredited instances of women who spoke languages they did not understand.”’ .

‘‘What can I do?”’ said Wilfrid. ‘She knows things concerning my past life of which the secret lay in me.”’

‘‘We will see if she can tell me any thoughts that I have never spoken to any one,’’ said Pastor Becker.

Minna came into the room.

p. 104

“Well, my child, and how is your Spirit-friend?”

‘‘He is suffering, father,’’ said she, bowing to Wilfrid. ‘The passions of humanity, tricked out in their false splendor, tortured him in the night, and spread incredible pomp before his eyes.—But you treat all these things as mere fables.’’