SERAPHITA
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To Madame Eveline de Hanska, nee Comtesse Rzewuska.
Madame,--Here is the work which you asked of me. I am happy, in
thus dedicating it, to offer you a proof of the respectful
affection you allow me to bear you. If I am reproached for
impotence in this attempt to draw from the depths of mysticism a
book which seeks to give, in the lucid transparency of our
beautiful language, the luminous poesy of the Orient, to you the
blame! Did you not command this struggle (resembling that of
Jacob) by telling me that the most imperfect sketch of this
Figure, dreamed of by you, as it has been by me since childhood,
would still be something to you?
Here, then, it is,--that something. Would that this book could
belong exclusively to noble spirits, preserved like yours from
worldly pettiness by solitude! THEY would know how to give to it
the melodious rhythm that it lacks, which might have made it, in
the hands of a poet, the glorious epic that France still awaits.
But from me they must accept it as one of those sculptured
balustrades, carved by a hand of faith, on which the pilgrims
lean, in the choir of some glorious church, to think upon the end
of man.
I am, madame, with respect,
Your devoted servant,
De Balzac.
SERAPHITA
CHAPTER I. SERAPHITUS
As the eye glances over a map of the coasts of Norway, can the
imagination fail to marvel at their fantastic indentations and serrated
edges, like a granite lace, against which the surges of the North Sea
roar incessantly? Who has not dreamed of the majestic sights to be seen
on those beachless shores, of that multitude of creeks and inlets and
little bays, no two of them alike, yet all trackless abysses? We may
almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable
hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts
the conformation of a fish’s spine, fishery being the staple commerce of
the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men who
cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen
degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain
existence. Thanks to perils devoid of glory, to year-long snows which
clothe the Norway peaks and guard them from profaning foot of traveller,
these sublime beauties are virgin still; they will be seen to harmonize
with human phenomena, also virgin--at least to poetry--which here took
place, the history of which it is our purpose to relate.
If one of these inlets, mere fissures to the eyes of the eider-ducks, is
wide enough for the sea not to freeze between the prison-walls of
rock against which it surges, the country-people call the little bay
a “fiord,”--a word which geographers of every nation have adopted into
their respective languages. Though a certain resemblance exists
among all these fiords, each has its own characteristics. The sea has
everywhere forced its way as through a breach, yet the rocks about each
fissure are diversely rent, and their tumultuous precipices defy the
rules of geometric law. Here the scarp is dentelled like a saw; there
the narrow ledges barely allow the snow to lodge or the noble crests of
the Northern pines to spread themselves; farther on, some convulsion of
Nature may have rounded a coquettish curve into a lovely valley flanked
in rising terraces with black-plumed pines. Truly we are tempted to call
this land the Switzerland of Ocean.
Midway between Trondhjem and Christiansand lies an inlet called the
Strom-fiord. If the Strom-fiord is not the loveliest of these rocky
landscapes, it has the merit of displaying the terrestrial grandeurs
of Norway, and of enshrining the scenes of a history that is indeed
celestial.
The general outline of the Strom-fiord seems at first sight to be that
of a funnel washed out by the sea. The passage which the waves have
forced present to the eye an image of the eternal struggle between old
Ocean and the granite rock,--two creations of equal power, one through
inertia, the other by ceaseless motion. Reefs of fantastic shape run out
on either side, and bar the way of ships and forbid their entrance. The
intrepid sons of Norway cross these reefs on foot, springing from rock
to rock, undismayed at the abyss--a hundred fathoms deep and only six
feet wide--which yawns beneath them. Here a tottering block of gneiss
falling athwart two rocks gives an uncertain footway; there the
hunters or the fishermen, carrying their loads, have flung the stems of
fir-trees in guise of bridges, to join the projecting reefs, around and
beneath which the surges roar incessantly. This dangerous entrance to
the little bay bears obliquely to the right with a serpentine movement,
and there encounters a mountain rising some twenty-five hundred feet
above sea-level, the base of which is a vertical palisade of solid
rock more than a mile and a half long, the inflexible granite nowhere
yielding to clefts or undulations until it reaches a height of two
hundred feet above the water. Rushing violently in, the sea is driven
back with equal violence by the inert force of the mountain to the
opposite shore, gently curved by the spent force of the retreating
waves.
The fiord is closed at the upper end by a vast gneiss formation crowned
with forests, down which a river plunges in cascades, becomes a torrent
when the snows are melting, spreads into a sheet of waters, and then
falls with a roar into the bay,--vomiting as it does so the hoary pines
and the aged larches washed down from the forests and scarce seen amid
the foam. These trees plunge headlong into the fiord and reappear after
a time on the surface, clinging together and forming islets which float
ashore on the beaches, where the inhabitants of a village on the left
bank of the Strom-fiord gather them up, split, broken (though sometimes
whole), and always stripped of bark and branches. The mountain which
receives at its base the assaults of Ocean, and at its summit the
buffeting of the wild North wind, is called the Falberg. Its crest,
wrapped at all seasons in a mantle of snow and ice, is the sharpest peak
of Norway; its proximity to the pole produces, at the height of eighteen
hundred feet, a degree of cold equal to that of the highest mountains of
the globe. The summit of this rocky mass, rising sheer from the fiord
on one side, slopes gradually downward to the east, where it joins the
declivities of the Sieg and forms a series of terraced valleys, the
chilly temperature of which allows no growth but that of shrubs and
stunted trees.
The upper end of the fiord, where the waters enter it as they come down
from the forest, is called the Siegdahlen,--a word which may be held to
mean “the shedding of the Sieg,”--the river itself receiving that name.
The curving shore opposite to the face of the Falberg is the valley
of Jarvis,--a smiling scene overlooked by hills clothed with firs,
birch-trees, and larches, mingled with a few oaks and beeches, the
richest coloring of all the varied tapestries which Nature in these
northern regions spreads upon the surface of her rugged rocks. The eye
can readily mark the line where the soil, warmed by the rays of the sun,
bears cultivation and shows the native growth of the Norwegian flora.
Here the expanse of the fiord is broad enough to allow the sea, dashed
back by the Falberg, to spend its expiring force in gentle murmurs upon
the lower slope of these hills,--a shore bordered with finest sand,
strewn with mica and sparkling pebbles, porphyry, and marbles of a
thousand tints, brought from Sweden by the river floods, together with
ocean waifs, shells, and flowers of the sea driven in by tempests,
whether of the Pole or Tropics.
At the foot of the hills of Jarvis lies a village of some two hundred
wooden houses, where an isolated population lives like a swarm of bees
in a forest, without increasing or diminishing; vegetating happily,
while wringing their means of living from the breast of a stern Nature.
The almost unknown existence of the little hamlet is readily accounted
for. Few of its inhabitants were bold enough to risk their lives
among the reefs to reach the deep-sea fishing,--the staple industry of
Norwegians on the least dangerous portions of their coast. The fish of
the fiord were numerous enough to suffice, in part at least, for the
sustenance of the inhabitants; the valley pastures provided milk and
butter; a certain amount of fruitful, well-tilled soil yielded rye
and hemp and vegetables, which necessity taught the people to protect
against the severity of the cold and the fleeting but terrible heat of
the sun with the shrewd ability which Norwegians display in the two-fold
struggle. The difficulty of communication with the outer world, either
by land where the roads are impassable, or by sea where none but tiny
boats can thread their way through the maritime defiles that guard the
entrance to the bay, hinder these people from growing rich by the sale
of their timber. It would cost enormous sums to either blast a channel
out to sea or construct a way to the interior. The roads from Christiana
to Trondhjem all turn toward the Strom-fiord, and cross the Sieg by a
bridge some score of miles above its fall into the bay. The country to
the north, between Jarvis and Trondhjem, is covered with impenetrable
forests, while to the south the Falberg is nearly as much separated
from Christiana by inaccessible precipices. The village of Jarvis might
perhaps have communicated with the interior of Norway and Sweden by
the river Sieg; but to do this and to be thus brought into contact with
civilization, the Strom-fiord needed the presence of a man of genius.
Such a man did actually appear there,--a poet, a Swede of great
religious fervor, who died admiring, even reverencing this region as one
of the noblest works of the Creator.
Minds endowed by study with an inward sight, and whose quick perceptions
bring before the soul, as though painted on a canvas, the contrasting
scenery of this universe, will now apprehend the general features of
the Strom-fiord. They alone, perhaps, can thread their way through the
tortuous channels of the reef, or flee with the battling waves to the
everlasting rebuff of the Falberg whose white peaks mingle with the
vaporous clouds of the pearl-gray sky, or watch with delight the curving
sheet of waters, or hear the rushing of the Sieg as it hangs for an
instant in long fillets and then falls over a picturesque abatis of
noble trees toppled confusedly together, sometimes upright, sometimes
half-sunken beneath the rocks. It may be that such minds alone can dwell
upon the smiling scenes nestling among the lower hills of Jarvis; where
the luscious Northern vegetables spring up in families, in myriads,
where the white birches bend, graceful as maidens, where colonnades
of beeches rear their boles mossy with the growth of centuries, where
shades of green contrast, and white clouds float amid the blackness of
the distant pines, and tracts of many-tinted crimson and purple shrubs
are shaded endlessly; in short, where blend all colors, all perfumes of
a flora whose wonders are still ignored. Widen the boundaries of this
limited ampitheatre, spring upward to the clouds, lose yourself among
the rocks where the seals are lying and even then your thought cannot
compass the wealth of beauty nor the poetry of this Norwegian coast.
Can your thought be as vast as the ocean that bounds it? as weird as
the fantastic forms drawn by these forests, these clouds, these shadows,
these changeful lights?
Do you see above the meadows on that lowest slope which undulates around
the higher hills of Jarvis two or three hundred houses roofed with
“noever,” a sort of thatch made of birch-bark,--frail houses, long and
low, looking like silk-worms on a mulberry-leaf tossed hither by the
winds? Above these humble, peaceful dwellings stands the church, built
with a simplicity in keeping with the poverty of the villagers. A
graveyard surrounds the chancel, and a little farther on you see
the parsonage. Higher up, on a projection of the mountain is a
dwelling-house, the only one of stone; for which reason the inhabitants
of the village call it “the Swedish Castle.” In fact, a wealthy Swede
settled in Jarvis about thirty years before this history begins, and did
his best to ameliorate its condition. This little house, certainly not
a castle, built with the intention of leading the inhabitants to build
others like it, was noticeable for its solidity and for the wall that
inclosed it, a rare thing in Norway where, notwithstanding the abundance
of stone, wood alone is used for all fences, even those of fields.
This Swedish house, thus protected against the climate, stood on rising
ground in the centre of an immense courtyard. The windows were sheltered
by those projecting pent-house roofs supported by squared trunks of
trees which give so patriarchal an air to Northern dwellings. From
beneath them the eye could see the savage nudity of the Falberg, or
compare the infinitude of the open sea with the tiny drop of water in
the foaming fiord; the ear could hear the flowing of the Sieg, whose
white sheet far away looked motionless as it fell into its granite
cup edged for miles around with glaciers,--in short, from this vantage
ground the whole landscape whereon our simple yet superhuman drama was
about to be enacted could be seen and noted.
The winter of 1799-1800 was one of the most severe ever known to
Europeans. The Norwegian sea was frozen in all the fiords, where, as a
usual thing, the violence of the surf kept the ice from forming. A wind,
whose effects were like those of the Spanish levanter, swept the ice of
the Strom-fiord, driving the snow to the upper end of the gulf. Seldom
indeed could the people of Jarvis see the mirror of frozen waters
reflecting the colors of the sky; a wondrous site in the bosom of
these mountains when all other aspects of nature are levelled beneath
successive sheets of snow, and crests and valleys are alike mere
folds of the vast mantle flung by winter across a landscape at once so
mournfully dazzling and so monotonous. The falling volume of the Sieg,
suddenly frozen, formed an immense arcade beneath which the inhabitants
might have crossed under shelter from the blast had any dared to risk
themselves inland. But the dangers of every step away from their own
surroundings kept even the boldest hunters in their homes, afraid lest
the narrow paths along the precipices, the clefts and fissures among the
rocks, might be unrecognizable beneath the snow.
Thus it was that no human creature gave life to the white desert where
Boreas reigned, his voice alone resounding at distant intervals. The
sky, nearly always gray, gave tones of polished steel to the ice of the
fiord. Perchance some ancient eider-duck crossed the expanse, trusting
to the warm down beneath which dream, in other lands, the luxurious
rich, little knowing of the dangers through which their luxury has come
to them. Like the Bedouin of the desert who darts alone across the sands
of Africa, the bird is neither seen nor heard; the torpid atmosphere,
deprived of its electrical conditions, echoes neither the whirr of its
wings nor its joyous notes. Besides, what human eye was strong enough to
bear the glitter of those pinnacles adorned with sparkling crystals, or
the sharp reflections of the snow, iridescent on the summits in the rays
of a pallid sun which infrequently appeared, like a dying man seeking to
make known that he still lives. Often, when the flocks of gray clouds,
driven in squadrons athwart the mountains and among the tree-tops, hid
the sky with their triple veils Earth, lacking the celestial lights, lit
herself by herself.
Here, then, we meet the majesty of Cold, seated eternally at the pole
in that regal silence which is the attribute of all absolute monarchy.
Every extreme principle carries with it an appearance of negation and
the symptoms of death; for is not life the struggle of two forces? Here
in this Northern nature nothing lived. One sole power--the unproductive
power of ice--reigned unchallenged. The roar of the open sea no longer
reached the deaf, dumb inlet, where during one short season of the year
Nature made haste to produce the slender harvests necessary for the food
of the patient people. A few tall pine-trees lifted their black pyramids
garlanded with snow, and the form of their long branches and depending
shoots completed the mourning garments of those solemn heights.
Each household gathered in its chimney-corner, in houses carefully
closed from the outer air, and well supplied with biscuit, melted
butter, dried fish, and other provisions laid in for the seven-months
winter. The very smoke of these dwellings was hardly seen, half-hidden
as they were beneath the snow, against the weight of which they were
protected by long planks reaching from the roof and fastened at some
distance to solid blocks on the ground, forming a covered way around
each building.
During these terrible winter months the women spun and dyed the woollen
stuffs and the linen fabrics with which they clothed their families,
while the men read, or fell into those endless meditations which have
given birth to so many profound theories, to the mystic dreams of the
North, to its beliefs, to its studies (so full and so complete in one
science, at least, sounded as with a plummet), to its manners and its
morals, half-monastic, which force the soul to react and feed upon
itself and make the Norwegian peasant a being apart among the peoples of
Europe.
Such was the condition of the Strom-fiord in the first year of the
nineteenth century and about the middle of the month of May.
On a morning when the sun burst forth upon this landscape, lighting the
fires of the ephemeral diamonds produced by crystallizations of the snow
and ice, two beings crossed the fiord and flew along the base of the
Falberg, rising thence from ledge to ledge toward the summit. What were
they? human creatures, or two arrows? They might have been taken for
eider-ducks sailing in consort before the wind. Not the boldest hunter
nor the most superstitious fisherman would have attributed to human
beings the power to move safely along the slender lines traced beneath
the snow by the granite ledges, where yet this couple glided with the
terrifying dexterity of somnambulists who, forgetting their own weight
and the dangers of the slightest deviation, hurry along a ridge-pole and
keep their equilibrium by the power of some mysterious force.
“Stop me, Seraphitus,” said a pale young girl, “and let me breathe. I
look at you, you only, while scaling these walls of the gulf; otherwise,
what would become of me? I am such a feeble creature. Do I tire you?”
“No,” said the being on whose arm she leaned. “But let us go on, Minna;
the place where we are is not firm enough to stand on.”
Once more the snow creaked sharply beneath the long boards fastened to
their feet, and soon they reached the upper terrace of the first ledge,
clearly defined upon the flank of the precipice. The person whom Minna
had addressed as Seraphitus threw his weight upon his right heel,
arresting the plank--six and a half feet long and narrow as the foot of
a child--which was fastened to his boot by a double thong of leather.
This plank, two inches thick, was covered with reindeer skin, which
bristled against the snow when the foot was raised, and served to stop
the wearer. Seraphitus drew in his left foot, furnished with another
“skee,” which was only two feet long, turned swiftly where he stood,
caught his timid companion in his arms, lifted her in spite of the long
boards on her feet, and placed her on a projecting rock from which he
brushed the snow with his pelisse.
“You are safe there, Minna; you can tremble at your ease.”
“We are a third of the way up the Ice-Cap,” she said, looking at the
peak to which she gave the popular name by which it is known in Norway;
“I can hardly believe it.”
Too much out of breath to say more, she smiled at Seraphitus, who,
without answering, laid his hand upon her heart and listened to its
sounding throbs, rapid as those of a frightened bird.
“It often beats as fast when I run,” she said.
Seraphitus inclined his head with a gesture that was neither coldness
nor indifference, and yet, despite the grace which made the movement
almost tender, it none the less bespoke a certain negation, which in a
woman would have seemed an exquisite coquetry. Seraphitus clasped the
young girl in his arms. Minna accepted the caress as an answer to her
words, continuing to gaze at him. As he raised his head, and threw back
with impatient gesture the golden masses of his hair to free his brow,
he saw an expression of joy in the eyes of his companion.
“Yes, Minna,” he said in a voice whose paternal accents were charming
from the lips of a being who was still adolescent, “Keep your eyes on
me; do not look below you.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“You wish to know why? then look!”
Minna glanced quickly at her feet and cried out suddenly like a child
who sees a tiger. The awful sensation of abysses seized her; one glance
sufficed to communicate its contagion. The fiord, eager for food,
bewildered her with its loud voice ringing in her ears, interposing
between herself and life as though to devour her more surely. From the
crown of her head to her feet and along her spine an icy shudder ran;
then suddenly intolerable heat suffused her nerves, beat in her veins
and overpowered her extremities with electric shocks like those of the
torpedo. Too feeble to resist, she felt herself drawn by a mysterious
power to the depths below, wherein she fancied that she saw some monster
belching its venom, a monster whose magnetic eyes were charming her,
whose open jaws appeared to craunch their prey before they seized it.
“I die, my Seraphitus, loving none but thee,” she said, making a
mechanical movement to fling herself into the abyss.
Seraphitus breathed softly on her forehead and eyes. Suddenly, like
a traveller relaxed after a bath, Minna forgot these keen emotions,
already dissipated by that caressing breath which penetrated her body
and filled it with balsamic essences as quickly as the breath itself had
crossed the air.
“Who art thou?” she said, with a feeling of gentle terror. “Ah, but I
know! thou art my life. How canst thou look into that gulf and not die?”
she added presently.
Seraphitus left her clinging to the granite rock and placed himself at
the edge of the narrow platform on which they stood, whence his eyes
plunged to the depths of the fiord, defying its dazzling invitation. His
body did not tremble, his brow was white and calm as that of a marble
statue,--an abyss facing an abyss.
“Seraphitus! dost thou not love me? come back!” she cried. “Thy danger
renews my terror. Who art thou to have such superhuman power at thy
age?” she asked as she felt his arms inclosing her once more.
“But, Minna,” answered Seraphitus, “you look fearlessly at greater
spaces far than that.”
Then with raised finger, this strange being pointed upward to the blue
dome, which parting clouds left clear above their heads, where
stars could be seen in open day by virtue of atmospheric laws as yet
unstudied.
“But what a difference!” she answered smiling.
“You are right,” he said; “we are born to stretch upward to the
skies. Our native land, like the face of a mother, cannot terrify her
children.”
His voice vibrated through the being of his companion, who made no
reply.
“Come! let us go on,” he said.
The pair darted forward along the narrow paths traced back and forth
upon the mountain, skimming from terrace to terrace, from line to line,
with the rapidity of a barb, that bird of the desert. Presently they
reached an open space, carpeted with turf and moss and flowers, where no
foot had ever trod.
“Oh, the pretty saeter!” cried Minna, giving to the upland meadow its
Norwegian name. “But how comes it here, at such a height?”
“Vegetation ceases here, it is true,” said Seraphitus. “These few plants
and flowers are due to that sheltering rock which protects the meadow
from the polar winds. Put that tuft in your bosom, Minna,” he added,
gathering a flower,--“that balmy creation which no eye has ever seen;
keep the solitary matchless flower in memory of this one matchless
morning of your life. You will find no other guide to lead you again to
this saeter.”
So saying, he gave her the hybrid plant his falcon eye had seen amid the
tufts of gentian acaulis and saxifrages,--a marvel, brought to bloom
by the breath of angels. With girlish eagerness Minna seized the tufted
plant of transparent green, vivid as emerald, which was formed of little
leaves rolled trumpet-wise, brown at the smaller end but changing tint
by tint to their delicately notched edges, which were green. These
leaves were so tightly pressed together that they seemed to blend and
form a mat or cluster of rosettes. Here and there from this green ground
rose pure white stars edged with a line of gold, and from their throats
came crimson anthers but no pistils. A fragrance, blended of roses and
of orange blossoms, yet ethereal and fugitive, gave something as it
were celestial to that mysterious flower, which Seraphitus sadly
contemplated, as though it uttered plaintive thoughts which he alone
could understand. But to Minna this mysterious phenomenon seemed a mere
caprice of nature giving to stone the freshness, softness, and perfume
of plants.
“Why do you call it matchless? can it not reproduce itself?” she asked,
looking at Seraphitus, who colored and turned away.
“Let us sit down,” he said presently; “look below you, Minna. See! At
this height you will have no fear. The abyss is so far beneath us that
we no longer have a sense of its depths; it acquires the perspective
uniformity of ocean, the vagueness of clouds, the soft coloring of the
sky. See, the ice of the fiord is a turquoise, the dark pine forests are
mere threads of brown; for us all abysses should be thus adorned.”
Seraphitus said the words with that fervor of tone and gesture seen
and known only by those who have ascended the highest mountains of the
globe,--a fervor so involuntarily acquired that the haughtiest of men
is forced to regard his guide as a brother, forgetting his own superior
station till he descends to the valleys and the abodes of his kind.
Seraphitus unfastened the skees from Minna’s feet, kneeling before her.
The girl did not notice him, so absorbed was she in the marvellous view
now offered of her native land, whose rocky outlines could here be seen
at a glance. She felt, with deep emotion, the solemn permanence of those
frozen summits, to which words could give no adequate utterance.
“We have not come here by human power alone,” she said, clasping her
hands. “But perhaps I dream.”
“You think that facts the causes of which you cannot perceive are
supernatural,” replied her companion.
“Your replies,” she said, “always bear the stamp of some deep thought.
When I am near you I understand all things without an effort. Ah, I am
free!”
“If so, you will not need your skees,” he answered.
“Oh!” she said; “I who would fain unfasten yours and kiss your feet!”
“Keep such words for Wilfrid,” said Seraphitus, gently.
“Wilfrid!” cried Minna angrily; then, softening as she glanced at her
companion’s face and trying, but in vain, to take his hand, she added,
“You are never angry, never; you are so hopelessly perfect in all
things.”
“From which you conclude that I am unfeeling.”
Minna was startled at this lucid interpretation of her thought.
“You prove to me, at any rate, that we understand each other,” she said,
with the grace of a loving woman.
Seraphitus softly shook his head and looked sadly and gently at her.
“You, who know all things,” said Minna, “tell me why it is that the
timidity I felt below is over now that I have mounted higher. Why do I
dare to look at you for the first time face to face, while lower down I
scarcely dared to give a furtive glance?”
“Perhaps because we are withdrawn from the pettiness of earth,” he
answered, unfastening his pelisse.
“Never, never have I seen you so beautiful!” cried Minna, sitting down
on a mossy rock and losing herself in contemplation of the being who
had now guided her to a part of the peak hitherto supposed to be
inaccessible.
Never, in truth, had Seraphitus shone with so bright a radiance,--the
only word which can render the illumination of his face and the aspect
of his whole person. Was this splendor due to the lustre which the pure
air of mountains and the reflections of the snow give to the complexion?
Was it produced by the inward impulse which excites the body at the
instant when exertion is arrested? Did it come from the sudden contrast
between the glory of the sun and the darkness of the clouds, from whose
shadow the charming couple had just emerged? Perhaps to all these causes
we may add the effect of a phenomenon, one of the noblest which human
nature has to offer. If some able physiologist had studied this being
(who, judging by the pride on his brow and the lightning in his eyes
seemed a youth of about seventeen years of age), and if the student had
sought for the springs of that beaming life beneath the whitest skin
that ever the North bestowed upon her offspring, he would undoubtedly
have believed either in some phosphoric fluid of the nerves shining
beneath the cuticle, or in the constant presence of an inward luminary,
whose rays issued through the being of Seraphitus like a light through
an alabaster vase. Soft and slender as were his hands, ungloved to
remove his companion’s snow-boots, they seemed possessed of a strength
equal to that which the Creator gave to the diaphanous tentacles of the
crab. The fire darting from his vivid glance seemed to struggle with the
beams of the sun, not to take but to give them light. His body, slim and
delicate as that of a woman, gave evidence of one of those natures which
are feeble apparently, but whose strength equals their will, rendering
them at times powerful. Of medium height, Seraphitus appeared to grow in
stature as he turned fully round and seemed about to spring upward. His
hair, curled by a fairy’s hand and waving to the breeze, increased
the illusion produced by this aerial attitude; yet his bearing, wholly
without conscious effort, was the result far more of a moral phenomenon
than of a corporal habit.
Minna’s imagination seconded this illusion, under the dominion of which
all persons would assuredly have fallen,--an illusion which gave to
Seraphitus the appearance of a vision dreamed of in happy sleep. No
known type conveys an image of that form so majestically made to Minna,
but which to the eyes of a man would have eclipsed in womanly grace the
fairest of Raphael’s creations. That painter of heaven has ever put
a tranquil joy, a loving sweetness, into the lines of his angelic
conceptions; but what soul, unless it contemplated Seraphitus himself,
could have conceived the ineffable emotions imprinted on his face? Who
would have divined, even in the dreams of artists, where all things
become possible, the shadow cast by some mysterious awe upon that brow,
shining with intellect, which seemed to question Heaven and to pity
Earth? The head hovered awhile disdainfully, as some majestic bird whose
cries reverberate on the atmosphere, then bowed itself resignedly, like
the turtledove uttering soft notes of tenderness in the depths of the
silent woods. His complexion was of marvellous whiteness, which brought
out vividly the coral lips, the brown eyebrows, and the silken lashes,
the only colors that trenched upon the paleness of that face, whose
perfect regularity did not detract from the grandeur of the sentiments
expressed in it; nay, thought and emotion were reflected there, without
hindrance or violence, with the majestic and natural gravity which we
delight in attributing to superior beings. That face of purest marble
expressed in all things strength and peace.
Minna rose to take the hand of Seraphitus, hoping thus to draw him to
her, and to lay on that seductive brow a kiss given more from admiration
than from love; but a glance at the young man’s eyes, which pierced her
as a ray of sunlight penetrates a prism, paralyzed the young girl. She
felt, but without comprehending, a gulf between them; then she turned
away her head and wept. Suddenly a strong hand seized her by the waist,
and a soft voice said to her: “Come!” She obeyed, resting her head,
suddenly revived, upon the heart of her companion, who, regulating his
step to hers with gentle and attentive conformity, led her to a spot
whence they could see the radiant glories of the polar Nature.
“Before I look, before I listen to you, tell me, Seraphitus, why you
repulse me. Have I displeased you? and how? tell me! I want nothing for
myself; I would that all my earthly goods were yours, for the riches
of my heart are yours already. I would that light came to my eyes only
though your eyes just as my thought is born of your thought. I should
not then fear to offend you, for I should give you back the echoes of
your soul, the words of your heart, day by day,--as we render to God the
meditations with which his spirit nourishes our minds. I would be thine
alone.”
“Minna, a constant desire is that which shapes our future. Hope on! But
if you would be pure in heart mingle the idea of the All-Powerful with
your affections here below; then you will love all creatures, and your
heart will rise to heights indeed.”
“I will do all you tell me,” she answered, lifting her eyes to his with
a timid movement.
“I cannot be your companion,” said Seraphitus sadly.
He seemed to repress some thoughts, then stretched his arms towards
Christiana, just visible like a speck on the horizon and said:--
“Look!”
“We are very small,” she said.
“Yes, but we become great through feeling and through intellect,”
answered Seraphitus. “With us, and us alone, Minna, begins the knowledge
of things; the little that we learn of the laws of the visible world
enables us to apprehend the immensity of the worlds invisible. I know
not if the time has come to speak thus to you, but I would, ah, I would
communicate to you the flame of my hopes! Perhaps we may one day be
together in the world where Love never dies.”
“Why not here and now?” she said, murmuring.
“Nothing is stable here,” he said, disdainfully. “The passing joys of
earthly love are gleams which reveal to certain souls the coming of
joys more durable; just as the discovery of a single law of nature leads
certain privileged beings to a conception of the system of the universe.
Our fleeting happiness here below is the forerunning proof of another
and a perfect happiness, just as the earth, a fragment of the world,
attests the universe. We cannot measure the vast orbit of the Divine
thought of which we are but an atom as small as God is great; but we
can feel its vastness, we can kneel, adore, and wait. Men ever mislead
themselves in science by not perceiving that all things on their globe
are related and co-ordinated to the general evolution, to a constant
movement and production which bring with them, necessarily, both
advancement and an End. Man himself is not a finished creation; if he
were, God would not Be.”
“How is it that in thy short life thou hast found the time to learn so
many things?” said the young girl.
“I remember,” he replied.
“Thou art nobler than all else I see.”
“We are the noblest of God’s greatest works. Has He not given us the
faculty of reflecting on Nature; of gathering it within us by thought;
of making it a footstool and stepping-stone from and by which to rise
to Him? We love according to the greater or the lesser portion of heaven
our souls contain. But do not be unjust, Minna; behold the magnificence
spread before you. Ocean expands at your feet like a carpet; the
mountains resemble ampitheatres; heaven’s ether is above them like the
arching folds of a stage curtain. Here we may breathe the thoughts of
God, as it were like a perfume. See! the angry billows which engulf the
ships laden with men seem to us, where we are, mere bubbles; and if we
raise our eyes and look above, all there is blue. Behold that diadem of
stars! Here the tints of earthly impressions disappear; standing on this
nature rarefied by space do you not feel within you something deeper far
than mind, grander than enthusiasm, of greater energy than will? Are you
not conscious of emotions whose interpretation is no longer in us? Do
you not feel your pinions? Let us pray.”
Seraphitus knelt down and crossed his hands upon his breast, while Minna
fell, weeping, on her knees. Thus they remained for a time, while
the azure dome above their heads grew larger and strong rays of light
enveloped them without their knowledge.
“Why dost thou not weep when I weep?” said Minna, in a broken voice.
“They who are all spirit do not weep,” replied Seraphitus rising; “Why
should I weep? I see no longer human wretchedness. Here, Good appears
in all its majesty. There, beneath us, I hear the supplications and the
wailings of that harp of sorrows which vibrates in the hands of captive
souls. Here, I listen to the choir of harps harmonious. There, below,
is hope, the glorious inception of faith; but here is faith--it reigns,
hope realized!”
“You will never love me; I am too imperfect; you disdain me,” said the
young girl.
“Minna, the violet hidden at the feet of the oak whispers to itself:
‘The sun does not love me; he comes not.’ The sun says: ‘If my rays
shine upon her she will perish, poor flower.’ Friend of the flower, he
sends his beams through the oak leaves, he veils, he tempers them, and
thus they color the petals of his beloved. I have not veils enough,
I fear lest you see me too closely; you would tremble if you knew me
better. Listen: I have no taste for earthly fruits. Your joys, I know
them all too well, and, like the sated emperors of pagan Rome, I have
reached disgust of all things; I have received the gift of vision. Leave
me! abandon me!” he murmured, sorrowfully.
Seraphitus turned and seated himself on a projecting rock, dropping his
head upon his breast.
“Why do you drive me to despair?” said Minna.
“Go, go!” cried Seraphitus, “I have nothing that you want of me. Your
love is too earthly for my love. Why do you not love Wilfrid? Wilfrid is
a man, tested by passions; he would clasp you in his vigorous arms and
make you feel a hand both broad and strong. His hair is black, his
eyes are full of human thoughts, his heart pours lava in every word he
utters; he could kill you with caresses. Let him be your beloved, your
husband! Yes, thine be Wilfrid!”
Minna wept aloud.
“Dare you say that you do not love him?” he went on, in a voice which
pierced her like a dagger.
“Have mercy, have mercy, my Seraphitus!”
“Love him, poor child of Earth to which thy destiny has indissolubly
bound thee,” said the strange being, beckoning Minna by a gesture, and
forcing her to the edge of the saeter, whence he pointed downward to a
scene that might well inspire a young girl full of enthusiasm with the
fancy that she stood above this earth.
“I longed for a companion to the kingdom of Light; I wished to show you
that morsel of mud, I find you bound to it. Farewell. Remain on earth;
enjoy through the senses; obey your nature; turn pale with pallid men;
blush with women; sport with children; pray with the guilty; raise your
eyes to heaven when sorrows overtake you; tremble, hope, throb in all
your pulses; you will have a companion; you can laugh and weep, and give
and receive. I,--I am an exile, far from heaven; a monster, far from
earth. I live of myself and by myself. I feel by the spirit; I breathe
through my brow; I see by thought; I die of impatience and of longing.
No one here below can fulfil my desires or calm my griefs. I have
forgotten how to weep. I am alone. I resign myself, and I wait.”
Seraphitus looked at the flowery mound on which he had seated Minna;
then he turned and faced the frowning heights, whose pinnacles were
wrapped in clouds; to them he cast, unspoken, the remainder of his
thoughts.
“Minna, do you hear those delightful strains?” he said after a pause,
with the voice of a dove, for the eagle’s cry was hushed; “it is like
the music of those Eolian harps your poets hang in forests and on the
mountains. Do you see the shadowy figures passing among the clouds,
the winged feet of those who are making ready the gifts of heaven? They
bring refreshment to the soul; the skies are about to open and shed the
flowers of spring upon the earth. See, a gleam is darting from the pole.
Let us fly, let us fly! It is time we go!”
In a moment their skees were refastened, and the pair descended the
Falberg by the steep slopes which join the mountain to the valleys of
the Sieg. Miraculous perception guided their course, or, to speak more
properly, their flight. When fissures covered with snow intercepted
them, Seraphitus caught Minna in his arms and darted with rapid motion,
lightly as a bird, over the crumbling causeways of the abyss. Sometimes,
while propelling his companion, he deviated to the right or left to
avoid a precipice, a tree, a projecting rock, which he seemed to see
beneath the snow, as an old sailor, familiar with the ocean, discerns
the hidden reefs by the color, the trend, or the eddying of the
water. When they reached the paths of the Siegdahlen, where they could
fearlessly follow a straight line to regain the ice of the fiord,
Seraphitus stopped Minna.
“You have nothing to say to me?” he asked.
“I thought you would rather think alone,” she answered respectfully.
“Let us hasten, Minette; it is almost night,” he said.
Minna quivered as she heard the voice, now so changed, of her guide,--a
pure voice, like that of a young girl, which dissolved the fantastic
dream through which she had been passing. Seraphitus seemed to be laying
aside his male force and the too keen intellect that flames from his
eyes. Presently the charming pair glided across the fiord and reached
the snow-field which divides the shore from the first range of houses;
then, hurrying forward as daylight faded, they sprang up the hill
toward the parsonage, as though they were mounting the steps of a great
staircase.
“My father must be anxious,” said Minna.
“No,” answered Seraphitus.
As he spoke the couple reached the porch of the humble dwelling where
Monsieur Becker, the pastor of Jarvis, sat reading while awaiting his
daughter for the evening meal.
“Dear Monsieur Becker,” said Seraphitus, “I have brought Minna back to
you safe and sound.”
“Thank you, mademoiselle,” said the old man, laying his spectacles on
his book; “you must be very tired.”
“Oh, no,” said Minna, and as she spoke she felt the soft breath of her
companion on her brow.
“Dear heart, will you come day after to-morrow evening and take tea with
me?”
“Gladly, dear.”
“Monsieur Becker, you will bring her, will you not?”
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
Seraphitus inclined his head with a pretty gesture, and bowed to the old
pastor as he left the house. A few moments later he reached the great
courtyard of the Swedish villa. An old servant, over eighty years of
age, appeared in the portico bearing a lantern. Seraphitus slipped off
his snow-shoes with the graceful dexterity of a woman, then darting into
the salon he fell exhausted and motionless on a wide divan covered with
furs.
“What will you take?” asked the old man, lighting the immensely tall
wax-candles that are used in Norway.
“Nothing, David, I am too weary.”
Seraphitus unfastened his pelisse lined with sable, threw it over him,
and fell asleep. The old servant stood for several minutes gazing with
loving eyes at the singular being before him, whose sex it would have
been difficult for any one at that moment to determine. Wrapped as he
was in a formless garment, which resembled equally a woman’s robe and a
man’s mantle, it was impossible not to fancy that the slender feet
which hung at the side of the couch were those of a woman, and equally
impossible not to note how the forehead and the outlines of the head
gave evidence of power brought to its highest pitch.
“She suffers, and she will not tell me,” thought the old man. “She is
dying, like a flower wilted by the burning sun.”
And the old man wept.