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

On a sudden, the trumpets sounded for the victory of the Angel in this last test; their music filled space, like a sound met by an echo; it rang through it, making the universe tremble. Wilfrid and Minna felt the world shrink under their feet. They shivered, shaken by the terrors of apprehending the mystery that was to be accomplished.

There was, in fact, a vast stir, as though the eternal legions were forming to march, and gathering in spiral order. The worlds spun round, like clouds swept away

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by a mad whirlwind. It was all in a moment. The veils were rent; they saw far above them, as it were, a star immeasurably brighter than the brightest star in the skies; it fell from its place like a thunderbolt, still flashing like the lightning, paling in its flight all that they had ever hitherto thought to be light.

This was the messenger bearing the good tidings, and the plume in his helmet was a flame of life. He left behind him a wake, filled up at once by the waves of the luminous flood he passed through.

He bore a palm and a sword; with the palm he touched the Spirit, and it was transfigured; its white wings spread without a sound.

At the communication of the Light, which changed the Spirit into a seraph, the garb of heavenly armor that clothed its glorious form, shed such radiance that the two seers were blinded. And, like the three apostles to whose sight Jesus appeared, Wilfrid and Minna were conscious of the burden of their bodies, which hindered them from complete and unclouded intuition of the Word and the True Life.

They saw the nakedness of their souls, and could measure their lack of brightness by comparison with the halo of the seraph, in which they stood as a shameful spot. They felt an ardent desire to rush back into the mire of the universe, to endure trial there, so as to be able some day to utter at the sacred gate the answer spoken by the glorified Spirit.

That seraph knelt down at the gate of the sanctuary, which he could at last see face to face, and said, pointing to them—

‘‘Grant them to see more clearly. They will love the
Lord, and proclaim His Word.”’

In answer to this prayer, a veil fell. Whether the un172 BALZAC’S WORKS — known power that laid a hand on the two seers did fora moment annihilate their physical bodies, or whether it released their spirit to ‘soar free, they were aware of a separation in themselves of the pure from the impure.

Then the seraph’s tears rose round them in the form of a vapor which hid the lower worlds from their eyes, and wrapped them round and carried them away, and gave them oblivion of earthly meanings, and the power of understanding the sense of divine things. The True Light appeared; it shed light on all creation, which, to them, looked barren indeed when they saw the source whence the worlds, earthly, spiritual, and divine, derive motion.

Each world had a centre to which tended every atom of the sphere;: these worlds were themselves each an atom tending to the centre of their species. Hach species had its centre in the vast celestial region that is in communion with the inexhaustible and flaming motor power of all that exists. Thus, from the most vast to the smallest of the worlds, and from the smallest sphere to the minutest atom of the creation that constitutes it, each thing was an individual, and yet all was one.

What, then, was the purpose of the Being, immutable in Essence and Faculty, but able to communicate them without loss, able to manifest them as phenomena without separating them from Himself, and causing everything outside Himself to be a creation immutable in its essence and mutable in its form? The two guests bidden to this high festival could only see the order and arrangement of beings, and wonder at their immediate ends. None but angels could go beyond that, and know the means and understand the purpose.