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

‘‘What do I care? I only want you! This is my secret,’’ he replied, going on with his speech. ‘‘I have travelled all over the North, the great workshop where the new races are produced who overspread the earth like floods of humanity sent forth to renew worn-out civilization. I wanted to have begun my work on one of these points, conquering there the ascendency that force and intellect can assert over a small race; to have trained it to battle, to have declared war, and have sent it raging like a conflagration to consume Europe, while shouting to these ‘Liberty!’ to those ‘Plunder!’ to some ‘Glory!’ to others ‘Pleasure!’ I, standing meanwhile like the image of Fate, pitiless and cruel, moving like the storm which assimilates from the atmosphere the atoms of which the lightning is compounded, and feeding on men like a rapacious monster. 1 should then have conquered Europe; she is now at a periodp. 150 when she looks for the coming of the new Messiah, who is to devastate the world and to reform the nations. Europe can believe in no one but Him who will trample her under foot.

‘‘Some day historians and poets would have justified my existence, have magnified me, have ascribed great ideas to me—to me, to whom this huge pleasantry, written in blood, is but revenge.

‘‘But, dear Seraphita, what I have seen has disgusted me with the North; force here is too blind, and I crave for the Indies. A duel with a selfish, cowardly, and mercenary government fascinates me more. Besides, it is easier to arouse the imagination of the races that dwell at the foot of Caucasus than to convince the minds of men in these frozen lands. I am tempted to cross the Russian steppes, to reach the frontiers of Asia, to cover it as far as the Ganges with my victorious flood of human beings, and then IJ shall overthrow the English rule. Seven men, at different periods, have already carried out such a scheme. I shall renew Art, as the Saracens did when Mahomet cast them over Hurope. I will not be so sordid a king as those who now govern the ancient provinces of the Roman Empire, quarrelling with their subjects over custom-house dues. No, nothing shall arrest the flash of my gaze or the storm of my speech! My feet, like those of Genghis Khan, shall cover a third of the globe; my hand shall grasp Asia as did that of Aurung Zeeb.

‘‘Be my partner; take your seat, fair and lovely being, on a throne. I have never doubted my success, but with you to dwell in my heart, I should be certain of it.”’

‘*T have reigned already,’’ said Seraphita.

The words were like the blow dealt by the axe of a

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skilful woodsman at the root of a sapling, felling it at once. Men alone can know what a storm a woman can rouse ina man’s soul when he has been trying to impress her with his strength or his power, his intellect or his superiority, and the capricious fair nods her head and says, ‘‘Oh, that is nothing!’’ or, with a bored smile, observes, ‘‘I know all that,’’ when power is as naught to her.

‘What!’ eried Wilfrid in despair, ‘‘the riches of Art, the wealth of the world, the splendor of a eourt—”’

She checked him by a mere curl of her lips, and said—-
‘‘Beings more powerful than you are have offered me more.”’

‘‘Well, have you no soul, then, that you are not fascinated by the prospect of consoling a great man who will sacrifice everything to dwell with you in a little home by the side of a lake?”’

‘“Why,’’ said she, ‘‘IT am loved with a boundless love.”’

“By whom?’’ cried Wilfrid, going toward Seraphita with a frenzied gesture, as if to fling her into the foaming falls of the Sieg.

She looked at him; his arm dropped; and she pointed to Minna, who came running down, all rose and white, and as pretty as the flowers she carried in her hand.

‘*My child!”’ said Seraphitus, going forward to meet ier:

Wilfrid stood on the edge of the cliff as motionless as a statue, lost in thought, longing to cast himself into the flow of the torrent, like one of the fallen trees that passed under his eyes and vanished in the abyss beneath. .