Louis Lambert — Honoré de Balzac, trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley
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The translator’s English as printed (Katharine Prescott Wormeley). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
‘Fables as delightful to him who reads them in his brain as those of the ‘Arabian Nights’ are to ordinary minds,’’ said her father, smiling.
‘‘Then, did not Satan,’’ she retorted, ‘‘transport the Saviour to the summit of the Temple and show Him the kingdoms at His feet?”
“The Evangelists,’’ replied Becker, “did not se effectually correct their text but that several versions exist.”’
‘You, then, believe in the reality of these apparitions ?”’
Wilfrid asked of Minna.
‘‘Who can doubt that hears him tell of them ?”’
‘**Him?—Who?”’ asked Wilfrid.
‘‘He who dwells there,’’ said Minna, pointing to the castle.
‘*You speak of Seraphita?’’ said Wilfrid, surprised.
The girl hung her head, with a gentle but mischievous glance at him.
‘Yes, you too take pleasure in confusing my mind.—
Who is she? What is your idea of her?”’
‘‘What I feel is inexplicable,’’ said Minna, coloring.
‘*You are both mad!’ said the pastor.
““M™hen we meet to-morrow,’’ said Wilfrid, as he left.
Miadle ln i.»
p. 105
IV
THE CLOUDS OF THE SANCTUARY
HERE ARE spectacles to which all the material magnificence at man’s command is made to contribute. Whole tribes of slaves or divers go forth to seek in the sands of the sea, in the bowels of the rocks, the pearls and diamonds that adorn the spectators. These treasures, handed down from heir to heir, have blazed on crewned heads, and might be the most veracious historians of humanity if they could but speak. Have they not seen the joys and woes of the greatest as well as of the humblest? They have been everywhere—worn with pride at high festivals; carried in despair to the money-lender;
stolen amid blood and pillage; treasured in miracles of artistic workmanship contrived for their safe keeping. Excepting Cleopatra’s pearl, not one has perished.
The great and the rich are assembled to see a king crowned—a monarch whose raiment is the work of men’s hands, but who, in all bis glory, is arrayed in purple less exquisite than that of a humble flower. These festivities, blazing with light, bathed in music through which the words of men strive to be heard in thunder—all these works of main can be crushed by a thought, a feeling. The mind of man can bring to his ken light more glorious, can make him hear more tuneful harmonies, show him among clouds the glittering constellations he may question; and the heart can do yet more! Man may stand face to face
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with a single being and find in a single word, a single look, a burden so heavy to be borne, a light so intense, a sound so piercing, that he can but yield and kneel. The truest splendors are not in outward things, but in ourselves.
To a learned man, is not some secret of science a whole new world of wonders? But do the clarions of force, the gems of wealth, the music of triumph, the concourse of the crowd, do honor to his joy? No. He goes off to some remote nook, where a man, often pale and feeble, whispers a single word in his ear. That word, like a torch in an underground passage, lights up the whole of science.
Every human conception, arrayed in the most attractive forms that mystery can invent, once gathered round a blind man sitting in the mud by a roadside. The three worlds— the Natural, Spiritual, and Divine—were revealed to an unhappy Florentine exile; as he went he'was escorted by the happy and by the suffering, by those who prayed and those who cursed, by angels and by the damned. When He who came from God, who knew and could do all things, appeared to three of His disciples, it was one evening at the common table of a poor little inn; there and then the Light broke forth, bursting material husks, and showing its spiritual power. They saw Him in His glory, and the earth clung to their feet no more than as the sandals they could slip off them.
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