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

expressed by gestures, nor by any of the signs which serve men as a means of communicating their thoughts, but as the soul speaks to itself; for at the moment when Seravhita was revealed in her true nature her ideas were no longer enslaved to human language. ‘The vehemence of her last prayer had broken the bonds. Like a white dove the soul hovered for a moment above this body of which the exhausted materials were about to dissever.

The aspiration of this soul to heaven was so infectious that Wilfrid and Minna failed to discern death as they saw the radiant spark of life.

They had fallen on their knees when Seraphitus had turned to the dawn and they were inspired by his ecsiasy.

The fear of the Lord who creates man anew and purges him of his dross consumed their hearts. Their eyes were closed to the things of the earth and opened to the glories of heaven.

Though surprised by the trembling before God which overcame some of those seers known to men as prophets they still trembled like them when they found themselves within the circle where the glory of the Spirit was shining.

Then the veil of the flesh which had hitherto hidden him from them insensibly faded away revealing the divine substance. They were left in the twilight of the dawn whose pale light prepared them to see the true light and to hear the living word without dying of it.

j i Var en)!. fee =e |.

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In this condition they both began to understand the immeasurable distances that divide the things of earth from the things of heaven.

The life on whose brink they stood, trembling and dazzled in a close embrace, as two children take refuge side by side to gaze at a conflagration—that Life gave no hold to the senses. The Spirit was above them; it shed fragrance without odor, and melody without the help of sound; here, where they knelt, there were neither surfaces, nor angles, nor atmosphere. They dared no longer question him nor gaze on him, but remained under his shadow, as under the burning rays of the tropical sun we dare not raise our eyes for fear of being blinded.

They felt themselves near to him, though they could not tell by what means they thus found themselves, as in a dream, on the border line of the visible and the invisible, nor how they had ceased to see the visible and perceived the invisible.

They said to themselves, ‘‘If he should touch us, we shall die!’’ But the Spirit was in the infinite, and they did not know that in the infinite time and space are not, that they were divided from him by gulfs, though apparently so near. Their souls not being prepared to receive a complete knowledge of the faculties of that life, they only perceived it darkly, apprehending it according to their weakness.

Otherwise, when the Living Word rang forth, of which the distant sound fell on their ear, its meaning entering into their soul as life enters into a body, a single tone of that Word would have swept them away, as a whirl of fire seizes a straw.

Thus they beheld only what their nature, upheld by the
(8)—V ol.-25

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power of the Spirit, allowed them to see; they heard only so much as they were able to hear.

Still, in spite of these mitigations, they shuddered as they heard the voice of the suffering soul, the hymn of the spirit awaiting life, and crying out for it. That cry froze the very marrow in their bones.

The Spirit knocked at the sacred gate.

‘‘What wilt thou?” asked a choir, whose voice rang through all the worlds.

‘“To go to God.”

‘Hast thou conquered ?”’

‘‘T have conquered the flesh by abstinence; [ have vanquished false speech by silence; I have vanquished false knowledge by humility; I have vanquished pride by charity; I have vanquished the earth by love; I have paid my tribute of suffering; I am purified by burning for the faith; I have striven for life by prayer; I wait adoring, and f am resigned.”’

But no reply came.

‘‘The Lord be praised!’’ said the Spirit, believing himself rejected. His tears flowed, and fell in dew on the kneeling witnesses, who shuddered at the judgments of God.