The Works of Honore de Balzac Part 59

The single window which gave light to the room in the summer was now carefully closed. For a curtain, an old piece of tapestry hung from a rod in heavy folds. There was no attempt at the picturesque or showy--austere simplicity, genuine homeliness, the unpretentiousness of nature, all the habits of domestic life free from troubles and anxieties. Many dwellings leave the impression of a dream; the dazzling flash of transient pleasure seems to hide a ruin under the chill smile of luxury; but this parlor was sublimely real, harmonious in color, and apt to suggest patriarchal ideas of a busy and devout life.

The silence was broken only by the heavy step of the maid preparing the supper, and by the singing in the pan of the dried fish she was frying in salt b.u.t.ter, after the fas.h.i.+on of the country.

"Will you smoke a pipe?" said the pastor presently, when he thought that Wilfrid would heed him.

"No, thank you, dear Pastor Becker," he replied.

"You seem less well than usual this evening," said Minna, struck by the visitor's weak voice.

"I am always so when I have been to the castle."

Minna was startled.

"A strange creature dwells there, Pastor Becker," he went on after a pause.

"I have been six months in the village, and have never dared to question you about her; and to-night I have to do violence to my feelings even to speak of her. At first I greatly regretted to find my travels interrupted by the winter, and to be obliged to remain here; for the last two months, however, the chains binding me to Jarvis have been more closely riveted, and I fear I may end my days here.--You know how I first met Seraphita, and the impression made on me by her eyes and her voice, and how at last I was admitted to visit her though she receives n.o.body. On the very first day, I came to you for information concerning that mysterious creature. Then began for me the series of enchantments----"

"Of enchantments?" exclaimed the pastor, shaking out the ashes of his pipe into a coa.r.s.e pan of sand that served him as a spittoon. "Are enchantments possible?"

"You, certainly, who at this very moment are so conscientiously studying Jean Wier's book of _Incantations_, will understand the account I can give you of my sensations," Wilfrid replied quickly. "If we study nature attentively, alike in its great revolutions and in its minutest works, it is impossible not to admit the possibility of enchantment--giving the word its fullest meaning. Man can create no force; he can but use the only existing force, which includes all others, namely, Motion--the incomprehensible Breath of the Sovereign Maker of the Universe. The elements are too completely separated for the hand of man to combine them; the only miracle he can work consists in the mingling of two hostile substances. Even so, gunpowder is akin to thunder!

"As to effecting an act of creation, and that suddenly!--All creation needs time, and time will neither hurry nor turn backwards at our bidding. Hence, outside us, plastic nature obeys laws whose order and procedure cannot be reversed by any human effort.

"But after conceding this to mere matter, it would be unreasonable to deny the existence, within us, of a vast power, of which the effects are so infinitely various that past generations have not yet completely cla.s.sified them. I will say nothing of man's faculty of abstracting his mind, of comprehending nature in the limits of speech, a stupendous fact, of which common minds think no more than they think out the act of motion, but which led Indian Theosophists to speak of creation by the Word, to which they also attributed the contrary power. The tiniest item of their daily food--a grain of rice, whence proceeds a whole creature, which presently results in a grain of rice again--afforded them so complete a symbol of the creative Word and the synthetical Word, that it seemed a simple matter to apply the system to the creation of worlds.

"Most men would do well to be content with the grain of rice that lies at the origin of every genesis. Saint John, when he said that the Word was in G.o.d, only complicated the difficulty.

"But the fruition, the germination, and the blossoming of our ideas is but a trifle if we compare this property, which is distributed among so many men, with the wholly personal faculty of communicating it to certain more or less efficient forces by means of concentration, and thus raising it to the third, ninth, or twenty-seventh power, giving it a hold on ma.s.ses, and obtaining magical results by concentrating the action of Nature. What I call enchantments are the stupendous dramas played out between two membranes on the canvas of the brain. In the unexplored realms of the spiritual world we meet with certain beings armed with these astounding faculties--comparable only to the terrible powers of gases in the physical world--beings who can combine with other beings, can enter into them as an active cause, and work magic in them, against which their hapless victims are defenceless; they cast a spell on them, override them, reduce them to wretched serfdom, and crush them with the weight and magnificent sway of a superior nature; acting, now like the gymnotus which electrifies and numbs the fisherman; now, again, like a dose of phosphorus which intensifies the sense of life or hastens its projection; sometimes like opium, which lulls corporeal nature, frees the spirit from its bondage, sends it soaring above the world, shows it the universe through a prism, and extracts for it the nourishment that best pleases it; and sometimes like catalepsy, which annuls every faculty to enhance a single vision.

"Miracles, spells, incantations, witchcrafts, in short all the facts that are incorrectly called supernatural, can only be possible and accounted for by the authority with which some other mind compels us to accept the effects of a mysterious law of optics which magnifies, or diminishes, or exalts creation, enables it to move within us independently of our will, distorts or embellishes it, s.n.a.t.c.hes us up to heaven, or plunges us into h.e.l.l--the two terms by which we express the excess of rapture or of pain.

These phenomena are within us, not outside us.

"The being we call Seraphita seems to me to be one of those rare and awe-inspiring spirits to whom it is given to constrain men, to coerce nature, and share the occult powers of G.o.d. The course of her enchantments on me began by her compelling me to silence. Every time I dared wish to question you about her, it seemed to me that I was about to reveal a secret of which I was bound to be the impeccable guardian; whenever I was about to speak, a burning seal was set on my lips, and I was the involuntary slave of this mysterious prohibition. You see me now, for the hundredth time, crushed, broken, by having played with the world of hallucinations that dwells in that young thing, to you so gentle and frail, to me the most ruthless magician. Yes--to me she is a sorceress who bears in her right hand an invisible instrument to stir the world with, and in her left the thunderbolt that dissolves everything at her command. In short, I can no longer behold her face; it is unendurably dazzling.

"I have for the last few days been wandering round this abyss of madness too helplessly to keep silence any longer. I have, therefore, seized a moment when I find courage enough to resist the monster that drags me to her presence without asking whether I have strength enough to keep up with his flight.--Who is she? Did you know her as a child? Was she ever born?

Had she parents? Was she conceived by the union of sun and ice?--She freezes and she burns; she comes forth and then vanishes like some coy truth; she attracts and repels me; she alternately kills and vivifies me; I love her and I hate her!--I cannot live thus. I must be either in heaven altogether, or in h.e.l.l."

Pastor Becker, his refilled pipe in one hand and in the other the stopper, listened to Wilfrid with a mysterious expression, glancing occasionally at his daughter, who seemed to understand this speech, in harmony with the being it referred to. Wilfrid was as splendid as Hamlet struggling against his father's ghost, to whom he speaks when it rises visible to him alone amid the living.

"This is very much the tone of a man in love," said the good man simply.

"In love!" cried Wilfrid, "yes, to ordinary apprehensions; but, my dear Mr.

Becker, no words can describe the frenzy with which I rush to meet this wild creature."

"Then you do love her?" said Minna reproachfully.

"Mademoiselle, I endure such strange agitation when I see her, and such deep dejection when I see her not, that in any other man they would be symptoms of love; but love draws two beings ardently together, while between her and me a mysterious gulf constantly yawns, which chills me through when I am in her presence, but of which I cease to be conscious when we are apart. I leave her each time in greater despair; I return each time with greater ardor, like a scientific inquirer seeking for Nature's secrets and for ever baffled; like a painter who yearns to give life to his canvas, and wrecks himself and every resource of art in the futile attempt."

"Yes, that strikes me as very true," said the girl.

"How should you know, Minna?" asked the old man.

"Ah! father, if you had been with us this morning to the summit of the Falberg, and had seen her praying, you would not ask me. You would say, as Wilfrid did the first time he saw her in our place of wors.h.i.+p, 'She is the Spirit of Prayer!'"

A few moments of silence ensued.

"It is true!" cried Wilfrid. "She has nothing in common with the creatures who writhe in the pits of this world."

"On the Falberg!" the old pastor exclaimed. "How did you manage to get there?"

"I do not know," said Minna. "The expedition is to me now like a dream of which only the remembrance survives. I should not believe in it, perhaps, but for this substantial proof."

She drew the flower from her bosom and showed it to him. They all three fixed their eyes on the pretty saxifrage, still quite fresh, which under the gleam of the lamps shone amid the clouds of smoke like another light.

"This is supernatural," said the old man, seeing a flower in bloom in the winter.

"An abyss!" cried Wilfrid, fevered by the perfume.

"The flower fills me with rapture," said Minna. "I fancy I can still hear his speech, which is the music of the mind, as I still see the light of his gaze, which is love."

"Let me entreat you, my dear Pastor Becker, to relate the life of Seraphita--that enigmatical flower of humanity whose image I see in this mysterious blossom."

"My dear guest," said the minister, blowing a puff of tobacco-smoke, "to explain the birth of this being, it will be necessary to disentangle for you the obscurest of all Christian creeds; but it is not easy to be clear when discussing the most incomprehensible of all revelations, the latest flame of faith, they say, that has blazed on our ball of clay.--Do you know anything of Swedenborg?"

"Nothing but his name. Of himself, his writings, his religion, I am wholly ignorant."

"Well, then, I will tell you all about Swedenborg."

III

SERAPHITA--SERAPHITUS

After a pause, while the pastor seemed to be collecting his thoughts, he went on as follows:--

"Emanuel von Swedenborg was born at Upsala, in Sweden, in the month of January 1688, as some authors say, or, according to his epitaph, in 1689.

His father was bishop of Skara. Swedenborg lived to the age of eighty-five, and died in London on the 29th March 1772. I use the word 'died' to express a change of condition only. According to his disciples, Swedenborg has been at Jarvis and in Paris since that time.--Permit me, my dear friend," said the pastor, with a gesture to check interruption, "I am relating the tale without affirming or denying the facts. Listen, and when I have done you can think what you choose. I will warn you when I myself judge, criticise, or dispute the doctrines, so as to show my intellectual neutrality between reason and the man himself.

"Emanuel Swedenborg's life was divided into two distinct phases," Becker went on. "From 1688 till 1745 Baron Emanuel von Swedenborg was known in the world as a man of vast learning, esteemed and beloved for his virtues, always blameless, and invariably helpful. While filling important public posts in Sweden, he published, between 1709 and 1740, several important books on mineralogy, physics, mathematics, and astronomy, which were of value in the scientific world. He invented a method of constructing docks to receive vessels; he treated many very important questions, from the height of the flood-tide to the position of the earth in s.p.a.ce. He discovered the way to construct more efficient locks on ca.n.a.ls, as well as simpler methods for the smelting of metals. In short, he never took up a science without advancing it.

"In his youth he studied Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and the Oriental languages, and became so familiar with these tongues that several celebrated professors constantly consulted him, and he was enabled to discover in Tartary some traces of the earliest book of G.o.d's Word, called the _Book of the Wars of Jehovah_, and of the Judgments mentioned by Moses (Numbers xxi.

14, 15), by Joshua, Jeremiah, and Samuel. The wars of the Lord are said to be the historical portion, and the Judgments the prophetic portion, of this book, written prior to _Genesis_. Swedenborg even a.s.serted that the Book of Jasher, or of the Upright, mentioned by Joshua, existed in Eastern Tartary with the wors.h.i.+p by Correspondences. A Frenchman, I have been told, has recently confirmed Swedenborg's antic.i.p.ations by announcing the discovery at Bagdad of several parts of the Bible unknown in Europe.

"In 1785, on the occasion of the discussion on animal magnetism started in Paris, and raised almost throughout Europe, in which most men of science took an eager part, Monsieur de Thome defended Swedenborg's memory in a reply to the a.s.sertions so rashly made by the Commissioners appointed by the King of France to inquire into this subject. These gentlemen stated that there was no theory accounting for the action of the lodestone, whereas Swedenborg had made it his study so early as in 1720. Monsieur de Thome took the opportunity to point out the reasons for the neglect in which the most celebrated savants had left the name of the learned Swede, so as to be free to plunder his volumes and use his treasures in their own works. 'Some of the most ill.u.s.trious,' said Monsieur de Thome, alluding to Buffon's _Theory of the Earth_, 'are mean enough to dress in the peac.o.c.k's plumage without giving him the credit.' Finally, by several convincing quotations from Swedenborg's encyclopaedic writings, he proved that this great prophet had outstripped by many centuries the slow progress of human learning; and, indeed, to read his works is enough to carry conviction on this point.

"In one pa.s.sage he is the precursor of the present system of chemistry, announcing that the products of organic nature can all be decomposed and resolved into two pure elements; that water, air, and fire are not elements; in another he goes in a few words to the heart of magnetic mystery, and thus antic.i.p.ates Mesmer.--In short," said the minister, pointing to a long shelf between the stove and the window, on which were books of various sizes, "there are seventeen works by him; one of them, published in 1734, _Studies in Philosophy and Mineralogy_, consists of three folio volumes.