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Seraphita, a novel by Honore de Balzac |
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Chapter 7. The Assumption |
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_ CHAPTER VII. THE ASSUMPTION 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." [THE END] _ |
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