The last psalm was uttered neither by word, look, nor gesture, nor by
any of those signs which men employ to communicate their thoughts, but
as the soul speaks to itself; for at the moment when Seraphita revealed
herself in her true nature, her thoughts were no longer enslaved by
human words. The violence of that last prayer had burst her bonds. Her
soul, like a white dove, remained for an instant poised above the body
whose exhausted substances were about to be annihilated.
The aspiration of the Soul toward heaven was so contagious that Wilfrid
and Minna, beholding those radiant scintillations of Life, perceived not
Death.
They had fallen on their knees when _he_ had turned toward his Orient,
and they shared his ecstasy.
The fear of the Lord, which creates man a second time, purging away his
dross, mastered their hearts.
Their eyes, veiled to the things of Earth, were opened to the Brightness
of Heaven.
Though, like the Seers of old called Prophets by men, they were filled
with the terror of the Most High, yet like them they continued firm
when they found themselves within the radiance where the Glory of the
_Spirit_ shone.
The veil of flesh, which, until now, had hidden that glory from their
eyes, dissolved imperceptibly away, and left them free to behold the
Divine substance.
They stood in the twilight of the Coming Dawn, whose feeble rays
prepared them to look upon the True Light, to hear the Living Word, and
yet not die.
In this state they began to perceive the immeasurable differences which
separate the things of earth from the things of Heaven.
_Life_, on the borders of which they stood, leaning upon each other,
trembling and illuminated, like two children standing under shelter
in presence of a conflagration, That Life offered no lodgment to the
senses.
The ideas they used to interpret their vision to themselves were to
the things seen what the visible senses of a man are to his soul, the
material covering of a divine essence.
The departing _spirit_ was above them, shedding incense without odor,
melody without sound. About them, where they stood, were neither
surfaces, nor angles, nor atmosphere.
They dared neither question him nor contemplate him; they stood in the
shadow of that Presence as beneath the burning rays of a tropical sun,
fearing to raise their eyes lest the light should blast them.
They knew they were beside him, without being able to perceive how it
was that they stood, as in a dream, on the confines of the Visible and
the Invisible, nor how they had lost sight of the Visible and how they
beheld the Invisible.
To each other they said: “If he touches us, we can die!” But the
_spirit_ was now within the Infinite, and they knew not that neither
time, nor space, nor death, existed there, and that a great gulf lay
between them, although they thought themselves beside him.
Their souls were not prepared to receive in its fulness a knowledge
of the faculties of that Life; they could have only faint and confused
perceptions of it, suited to their weakness.
Were it not so, the thunder of the _Living Word_, whose far-off tones
now reached their ears, and whose meaning entered their souls as life
unites with body,--one echo of that Word would have consumed their being
as a whirlwind of fire laps up a fragile straw.
Therefore they saw only that which their nature, sustained by the
strength of the _spirit_, permitted them to see; they heard that only
which they were able to hear.
And yet, though thus protected, they shuddered when the Voice of the
anguished soul broke forth above them--the prayer of the _Spirit_
awaiting Life and imploring it with a cry.
That cry froze them to the very marrow of their bones.
The _Spirit_ knocked at the _sacred portal_. “What wilt thou?” answered
a _choir_, whose question echoed among the worlds. “To go to God.” “Hast
thou conquered?” “I have conquered the flesh through abstinence, I
have conquered false knowledge by humility, I have conquered pride by
charity, I have conquered the earth by love; I have paid my dues by
suffering, I am purified in the fires of faith, I have longed for Life
by prayer: I wait in adoration, and I am resigned.”
No answer came.
“God’s will be done!” answered the _Spirit_, believing that he was about
to be rejected.
His tears flowed and fell like dew upon the heads of the two kneeling
witnesses, who trembled before the justice of God.
Suddenly the trumpets sounded,--the last trumpets of Victory won by the
_Angel_ in this last trial. The reverberation passed through space
as sound through its echo, filling it, and shaking the universe which
Wilfrid and Minna felt like an atom beneath their feet. They trembled
under an anguish caused by the dread of the mystery about to be
accomplished.
A great movement took place, as though the Eternal Legions, putting
themselves in motion, were passing upward in spiral columns. The worlds
revolved like clouds driven by a furious wind. It was all rapid.
Suddenly the veils were rent away. They saw on high as it were a star,
incomparably more lustrous than the most luminous of material stars,
which detached itself, and fell like a thunderbolt, dazzling as
lightning. Its passage paled the faces of the pair, who thought it to be
_the Light_ Itself.
It was the Messenger of good tidings, the plume of whose helmet was a
flame of Life.
Behind him lay the swath of his way gleaming with a flood of the lights
through which he passed.
He bore a palm and a sword. He touched the _Spirit_ with the palm, and
the _Spirit_ was transfigured. Its white wings noiselessly unfolded.
This communication of _the Light_, changing the _Spirit_ into a _Seraph_
and clothing it with a glorious form, a celestial armor, poured down
such effulgent rays that the two Seers were paralyzed.
Like the three apostles to whom Jesus showed himself, they felt the
dead weight of their bodies which denied them a complete and cloudless
intuition of _the Word_ and _the True Life_.
They comprehended the nakedness of their souls; they were able
to measure the poverty of their light by comparing it--a humbling
task--with the halo of the _Seraph_.
A passionate desire to plunge back into the mire of earth and suffer
trial took possession of them,--trial through which they might
victoriously utter at the _sacred gates_ the words of that radiant
_Seraph_.
The _Seraph_ knelt before the _Sanctuary_, beholding it, at last, face
to face; and he said, raising his hands thitherward, “Grant that these
two may have further sight; they will love the Lord and proclaim His
word.”
At this prayer a veil fell. Whether it were that the hidden force which
held the Seers had momentarily annihilated their physical bodies, or
that it raised their spirits above those bodies, certain it is that they
felt within them a rending of the pure from the impure.
The tears of the _Seraph_ rose about them like a vapor, which hid the
lower worlds from their knowledge, held them in its folds, bore them
upwards, gave them forgetfulness of earthly meanings and the power of
comprehending the meanings of things divine.
The True Light shone; it illumined the Creations, which seemed to them
barren when they saw the source from which all worlds--Terrestrial,
Spiritual, and Divine-derived their Motion.
Each world possessed a centre to which converged all points of its
circumference. These worlds were themselves the points which moved
toward the centre of their system. Each system had its centre in great
celestial regions which communicated with the flaming and quenchless
_motor of all that is_.
Thus, from the greatest to the smallest of the worlds, and from the
smallest of the worlds to the smallest portion of the beings who compose
it, all was individual, and all was, nevertheless, One and indivisible.
What was the design of the Being, fixed in His essence and in His
faculties, who transmitted that essence and those faculties without
losing them? who manifested them outside of Himself without separating
them from Himself? who rendered his creations outside of Himself fixed
in their essence and mutable in their form? The pair thus called to the
celestial festival could only see the order and arrangement of created
beings and admire the immediate result. The Angels alone see more. They
know the means; they comprehend the final end.
But what the two Elect were granted power to contemplate, what they were
able to bring back as a testimony which enlightened their minds forever
after, was the proof of the action of the Worlds and of Beings; the
consciousness of the effort with which they all converge to the Result.
They heard the divers parts of the Infinite forming one living
melody; and each time that the accord made itself felt like a mighty
respiration, the Worlds drawn by the concordant movement inclined
themselves toward the Supreme Being who, from His impenetrable centre,
issued all things and recalled all things to Himself.
This ceaseless alternation of voices and silence seemed the rhythm of
the sacred hymn which resounds and prolongs its sound from age to age.
Wilfrid and Minna were enabled to understand some of the mysterious
sayings of Him who had appeared on earth in the form which to each of
them had rendered him comprehensible,--to one Seraphitus, to the other
Seraphita,--for they saw that all was homogeneous in the sphere where he
now was.
Light gave birth to melody, melody gave birth to light; colors were
light and melody; motion was a Number endowed with Utterance; all
things were at once sonorous, diaphanous, and mobile; so that each
interpenetrated the other, the whole vast area was unobstructed and the
Angels could survey it from the depths of the Infinite.
They perceived the puerility of human sciences, of which he had spoken
to them.
The scene was to them a prospect without horizon, a boundless space into
which an all-consuming desire prompted them to plunge. But, fastened to
their miserable bodies, they had the desire without the power to fulfil
it.
The _Seraph_, preparing for his flight, no longer looked towards them;
he had nothing now in common with Earth.
Upward he rose; the shadow of his luminous presence covered the two
Seers like a merciful veil, enabling them to raise their eyes and see
him, rising in his glory to Heaven in company with the glad Archangel.
He rose as the sun from the bosom of the Eastern waves; but, more
majestic than the orb and vowed to higher destinies, he could not be
enchained like inferior creations in the spiral movement of the worlds;
he followed the line of the Infinite, pointing without deviation to the
One Centre, there to enter his eternal life,--to receive there, in his
faculties and in his essence, the power to enjoy through Love, and the
gift of comprehending through Wisdom.
The scene which suddenly unveiled itself to the eyes of the two Seers
crushed them with a sense of its vastness; they felt like atoms, whose
minuteness was not to be compared even to the smallest particle which
the infinite of divisibility enabled the mind of man to imagine, brought
into the presence of the infinite of Numbers, which God alone can
comprehend as He alone can comprehend Himself.
Strength and Love! what heights, what depths in those two entities, whom
the _Seraph’s_ first prayer placed like two links, as it were, to unite
the immensities of the lower worlds with the immensity of the higher
universe!
They comprehended the invisible ties by which the material worlds are
bound to the spiritual worlds. Remembering the sublime efforts of human
genius, they were able to perceive the principle of all melody in the
songs of heaven which gave sensations of color, of perfume, of thought,
which recalled the innumerable details of all creations, as the songs of
earth revive the infinite memories of love.
Brought by the exaltation of their faculties to a point that cannot
be described in any language, they were able to cast their eyes for an
instant into the Divine World. There all was Rejoicing.
Myriads of angels were flocking together, without confusion; all alike
yet all dissimilar, simple as the flower of the fields, majestic as the
universe.
Wilfrid and Minna saw neither their coming nor their going; they
appeared suddenly in the Infinite and filled it with their presence, as
the stars shine in the invisible ether.
The scintillations of their united diadems illumined space like the
fires of the sky at dawn upon the mountains. Waves of light flowed from
their hair, and their movements created tremulous undulations in space
like the billows of a phosphorescent sea.
The two Seers beheld the _Seraph_ dimly in the midst of the immortal
legions. Suddenly, as though all the arrows of a quiver had darted
together, the Spirits swept away with a breath the last vestiges of the
human form; as the _Seraph_ rose he became yet purer; soon he seemed
to them but a faint outline of what he had been at the moment of his
transfiguration,--lines of fire without shadow.
Higher he rose, receiving from circle to circle some new gift, while the
sign of his election was transmitted to each sphere into which, more and
more purified, he entered.
No voice was silent; the hymn diffused and multiplied itself in all its
modulations:--
“Hail to him who enters living! Come, flower of the Worlds! diamond from
the fires of suffering! pearl without spot, desire without flesh, new
link of earth and heaven, be Light! Conquering spirit, Queen of the
world, come for thy crown! Victor of earth, receive thy diadem! Thou art
of us!”
The virtues of the _Seraph_ shone forth in all their beauty.
His earliest desire for heaven re-appeared, tender as childhood.
The deeds of his life, like constellations, adorned him with their
brightness. His acts of faith shone like the Jacinth of heaven, the
color of sidereal fires. The pearls of Charity were upon him,--a chaplet
of garnered tears! Love divine surrounded him with roses; and the
whiteness of his Resignation obliterated all earthly trace.
Soon, to the eyes of the Seers, he was but a point of flame, growing
brighter and brighter as its motion was lost in the melodious
acclamations which welcomed his entrance into heaven.
The celestial accents made the two exiles weep.
Suddenly a silence as of death spread like a mourning veil from the
first to the highest sphere, throwing Wilfrid and Minna into a state of
intolerable expectation.
At this moment the _Seraph_ was lost to sight within the _sanctuary_,
receiving there the gift of Life Eternal.
A movement of adoration made by the Host of heaven filled the two Seers
with ecstasy mingled with terror. They felt that all were prostrate
before the Throne, in all the spheres, in the Spheres Divine, in the
Spiritual Spheres, and in the Worlds of Darkness.
The Angels bent the knee to celebrate the _Seraph’s_ glory; the Spirits
bent the knee in token of their impatience; others bent the knee in the
dark abysses, shuddering with awe.
A mighty cry of joy gushed forth, as the spring gushes forth to its
millions of flowering herbs sparkling with diamond dew-drops in the
sunlight; at that instant the _Seraph_ reappeared, effulgent, crying,
“_Eternal! Eternal! Eternal_!”
The universe heard the cry and understood it; it penetrated the spheres
as God penetrates them; it took possession of the infinite; the Seven
Divine Worlds heard the Voice and answered.
A mighty movement was perceptible, as though whole planets, purified,
were rising in dazzling light to become Eternal.
Had the _Seraph_ obtained, as a first mission, the work of calling to
God the creations permeated by His Word?
But already the sublime _hallelujah_ was sounding in the ear of the
desolate ones as the distant undulations of an ended melody. Already
the celestial lights were fading like the gold and crimson tints of a
setting sun. Death and Impurity recovered their prey.
As the two mortals re-entered the prison of flesh, from which their
spirit had momentarily been delivered by some priceless sleep, they felt
like those who wake after a night of brilliant dreams, the memory
of which still lingers in their soul, though their body retains no
consciousness of them, and human language is unable to give utterance to
them.
The deep darkness of the sphere that was now about them was that of the
sun of the visible worlds.
“Let us descend to those lower regions,” said Wilfrid.
“Let us do what he told us to do,” answered Minna. “We have seen the
worlds on their march to God; we know the Path. Our diadem of stars is
There.”
Floating downward through the abysses, they re-entered the dust of the
lesser worlds, and saw the Earth, like a subterranean cavern, suddenly
illuminated to their eyes by the light which their souls brought with
them, and which still environed them in a cloud of the paling harmonies
of heaven. The sight was that which of old struck the inner eyes
of Seers and Prophets. Ministers of all religions, Preachers of all
pretended truths, Kings consecrated by Force and Terror, Warriors and
Mighty men apportioning the Peoples among them, the Learned and the Rich
standing above the suffering, noisy crowd, and noisily grinding them
beneath their feet,--all were there, accompanied by their wives and
servants; all were robed in stuffs of gold and silver and azure studded
with pearls and gems torn from the bowels of Earth, stolen from the
depths of Ocean, for which Humanity had toiled throughout the centuries,
sweating and blaspheming. But these treasures, these splendors,
constructed of blood, seemed worn-out rags to the eyes of the two
Exiles. “What do you there, in motionless ranks?” cried Wilfrid. They
answered not. “What do you there, motionless?” They answered not.
Wilfrid waved his hands over them, crying in a loud voice, “What do you
there, in motionless ranks?” All, with unanimous action, opened their
garments and gave to sight their withered bodies, eaten with worms,
putrefied, crumbling to dust, rotten with horrible diseases.
“You lead the nations to Death,” Wilfrid said to them. “You have
depraved the earth, perverted the Word, prostituted justice. After
devouring the grass of the fields you have killed the lambs of the fold.
Do you think yourself justified because of your sores? I will warn my
brethren who have ears to hear the Voice, and they will come and drink
of the spring of Living Waters which you have hidden.”
“Let us save our strength for Prayer,” said Minna. “Wilfrid, thy mission
is not that of the Prophets or the Avenger or the Messenger; we are
still on the confines of the lowest sphere; let us endeavor to rise
through space on the wings of Prayer.”
“Thou shalt be all my love!”
“Thou shalt be all my strength!”
“We have seen the Mysteries; we are, each to the other, the only being
here below to whom Joy and Sadness are comprehensible; let us pray,
therefore: we know the Path, let us walk in it.”
“Give me thy hand,” said the Young Girl, “if we walk together, the way
will be to me less hard and long.”
“With thee, with thee alone,” replied the Man, “can I cross the awful
solitude without complaint.”
“Together we will go to Heaven,” she said.
The clouds gathered and formed a darksome dais. Suddenly the pair found
themselves kneeling beside a body which old David was guarding from
curious eyes, resolved to bury it himself.
Beyond those walls the first summer of the nineteenth century shone
forth in all its glory. The two lovers believed they heard a Voice
in the sun-rays. They breathed a celestial essence from the new-born
flowers. Holding each other by the hand, they said, “That illimitable
ocean which shines below us is but an image of what we saw above.”
“Where are you going?” asked Monsieur Becker.
“To God,” they answered. “Come with us, father.”