Louis Lambert
H >> Honore de Balzac >> Louis Lambert
I remember that, by one of those chances which seems like
predestination, we got hold of a great Martyrology, in which the most
curious narratives are given of the total abeyance of physical life
which a man can attain to under the paroxysms of the inner life. By
reflecting on the effects of fanaticism, Lambert was led to believe
that the collected ideas to which we give the name of feelings may
very possibly be the material outcome of some fluid which is generated
in all men, more or less abundantly, according to the way in which
their organs absorb, from the medium in which they live, the
elementary atoms that produce it. We went crazy over catalepsy; and
with the eagerness that boys throw into every pursuit, we endeavored
to endure pain by thinking of something else. We exhausted ourselves
by making experiments not unlike those of the epileptic fanatics of
the last century, a religious mania which will some day be of service
to the science of humanity. I would stand on Lambert's chest,
remaining there for several minutes without giving him the slightest
pain; but notwithstanding these crazy attempts, we did not achieve an
attack of catalepsy.
This digression seemed necessary to account for my first doubts, which
were, however, completely dispelled by Monsieur Lefebvre.
"When this attack had passed off," said he, "my nephew sank into a
state of extreme terror, a dejection that nothing could overcome. He
thought himself unfit for marriage. I watched him with the care of a
mother for her child, and found him preparing to perform on himself
the operation to which Origen believed he owed his talents. I at once
carried him off to Paris, and placed him under the care of Monsieur
Esquirol. All through our journey Louis sat sunk in almost unbroken
torpor, and did not recognize me. The Paris physicians pronounced him
incurable, and unanimously advised his being left in perfect solitude,
with nothing to break the silence that was needful for his very
improbable recovery, and that he should live always in a cool room
with a subdued light.--Mademoiselle de Villenoix, whom I had been
careful not to apprise of Louis' state," he went on, blinking his
eyes, "but who was supposed to have broken off the match, went to
Paris and heard what the doctors had pronounced. She immediately
begged to see my nephew, who hardly recognized her; then, like the
noble soul she is, she insisted on devoting herself to giving him such
care as might tend to his recovery. She would have been obliged to do
so if he had been her husband, she said, and could she do less for him
as her lover?
"She removed Louis to Villenoix, where they have been living for two
years."
So, instead of continuing my journey, I stopped at Blois to go to see
Louis. Good Monsieur Lefebvre would not hear of my lodging anywhere
but at his house, where he showed me his nephew's room with the books
and all else that had belonged to him. At every turn the old man could
not suppress some mournful exclamation, showing what hopes Louis'
precocious genius had raised, and the terrible grief into which this
irreparable ruin had plunged him.
"That young fellow knew everything, my dear sir!" said he, laying on
the table a volume containing Spinoza's works. "How could so well
organized a brain go astray?"
"Indeed, monsieur," said I, "was it not perhaps the result of its
being so highly organized? If he really is a victim to the malady as
yet unstudied in all its aspects, which is known simply as madness, I
am inclined to attribute it to his passion. His studies and his mode
of life had strung his powers and faculties to a degree of energy
beyond which the least further strain was too much for nature; Love
was enough to crack them, or to raise them to a new form of expression
which we are maligning perhaps, by ticketing it without due knowledge.
In fact, he may perhaps have regarded the joys of marriage as an
obstacle to the perfection of his inner man and his flight towards
spiritual spheres."
"My dear sir," said the old man, after listening to me with attention,
"your reasoning is, no doubt, very sound; but even if I could follow
it, would this melancholy logic comfort me for the loss of my nephew?"
Lambert's uncle was one of those men who live only by their
affections.
I went to Villenoix on the following day. The kind old man accompanied
me to the gates of Blois. When we were out on the road to Villenoix,
he stopped me and said:
"As you may suppose, I do not go there. But do not forget what I have
said; and in Mademoiselle de Villenoix's presence affect not to
perceive that Louis is mad."
He remained standing on the spot where I left him, watching me till I
was out of sight.
I made my way to the chateau of Villenoix, not without deep agitation.
My thoughts were many at each step on this road, which Louis had so
often trodden with a heart full of hopes, a soul spurred on by the
myriad darts of love. The shrubs, the trees, the turns of the winding
road where little gullies broke the banks on each side, were to me
full of strange interest. I tried to enter into the impressions and
thoughts of my unhappy friend. Those evening meetings on the edge of
the coombe, where his lady-love had been wont to find him, had, no
doubt, initiated Mademoiselle de Villenoix into the secrets of that
vast and lofty spirit, as I had learned them all some years before.
But the thing that most occupied my mind, and gave to my pilgrimage
the interest of intense curiosity, in addition to the almost pious
feelings that led me onwards, was that glorious faith of Mademoiselle
de Villenoix's which the good priest had told me of. Had she in the
course of time been infected with her lover's madness, or had she so
completely entered into his soul that she could understand all its
thoughts, even the most perplexed? I lost myself in the wonderful
problem of feeling, passing the highest inspirations of passion and
the most beautiful instances of self-sacrifice. That one should die
for the other is an almost vulgar form of devotion. To live faithful
to one love is a form of heroism that immortalized Mademoiselle
Dupuis. When the great Napoleon and Lord Byron could find successors
in the hearts of women they had loved, we may well admire
Bolingbroke's widow; but Mademoiselle Dupuis could feed on the
memories of many years of happiness, whereas Mademoiselle de
Villenoix, having known nothing of love but its first excitement,
seemed to me to typify love in its highest expression. If she were
herself almost crazy, it was splendid; but if she had understood and
entered into his madness, she combined with the beauty of a noble
heart a crowning effort of passion worthy to be studied and honored.
When I saw the tall turrets of the chateau, remembering how often poor
Lambert must have thrilled at the sight of them, my heart beat
anxiously. As I recalled the events of our boyhood, I was almost a
sharer in his present life and situation. At last I reached a wide,
deserted courtyard, and I went into the hall of the house without
meeting a soul. There the sound of my steps brought out an old woman,
to whom I gave a letter written to Mademoiselle de Villenoix by
Monsieur Lefebvre. In a few minutes this woman returned to bid me
enter, and led me to a low room, floored with black-and-white marble;
the Venetian shutters were closed, and at the end of the room I dimly
saw Louis Lambert.
"Be seated, monsieur," said a gentle voice that went to my heart.
Mademoiselle de Villenoix was at my side before I was aware of her
presence, and noiselessly brought me a chair, which at first I would
not accept. It was so dark that at first I saw Mademoiselle de
Villenoix and Lambert only as two black masses perceived against the
gloomy background. I presently sat down under the influence of the
feeling that comes over us, almost in spite of ourselves, under the
obscure vault of a church. My eyes, full of the bright sunshine,
accustomed themselves gradually to this artificial night.
"Monsieur is your old school-friend," she said to Louis.
He made no reply. At last I could see him, and it was one of those
spectacles that are stamped on the memory for ever. He was standing,
his elbows resting on the cornice of the low wainscot, which threw his
body forward, so that it seemed bowed under the weight of his bent
head. His hair was as long as a woman's, falling over his shoulders
and hanging about his face, giving him a resemblance to the busts of
the great men of the time of Louis XIV. His face was perfectly white.
He constantly rubbed one leg against the other, with a mechanical
action that nothing could have checked, and the incessant friction of
the bones made a doleful sound. Near him was a bed of moss on boards.
"He very rarely lies down," said Mademoiselle de Villenoix; "but
whenever he does, he sleeps for several days."
Louis stood, as I beheld him, day and night with a fixed gaze, never
winking his eyelids as we do. Having asked Mademoiselle de Villenoix
whether a little more light would hurt our friend, on her reply I
opened the shutters a little way, and could see the expression of
Lambert's countenance. Alas! he was wrinkled, white-headed, his eyes
dull and lifeless as those of the blind. His features seemed all drawn
upwards to the top of his head. I made several attempts to talk to
him, but he did not hear me. He was a wreck snatched from the grave, a
conquest of life from death--or of death from life!
I stayed for about an hour, sunk in unaccountable dreams, and lost in
painful thought. I listened to Mademoiselle de Villenoix, who told me
every detail of this life--that of a child in arms.
Suddenly Louis ceased rubbing his legs together, and said slowly:
"The angels are white."
I cannot express the effect produced upon me by this utterance, by the
sound of the voice I had loved, whose accents, so painfully expected,
had seemed to be lost for ever. My eyes filled with tears in spite of
every effort. An involuntary instinct warned me, making me doubt
whether Louis had really lost his reason. I was indeed well assured
that he neither saw nor heard me; but the sweetness of his tone, which
seemed to reveal heavenly happiness, gave his speech an amazing
effect. These words, the incomplete revelation of an unknown world,
rang in our souls like some glorious distant bells in the depth of a
dark night. I was no longer surprised that Mademoiselle de Villenoix
considered Lambert to be perfectly sane. The life of the soul had
perhaps subdued that of the body. His faithful companion had, no doubt
--as I had at that moment--intuitions of that melodious and beautiful
existence to which we give the name of Heaven in its highest meaning.
This woman, this angel, always was with him, seated at her embroidery
frame; and each time she drew the needle out she gazed at Lambert with
sad and tender feeling. Unable to endure this terrible sight--for I
could not, like Mademoiselle de Villenoix, read all his secrets--I
went out, and she came with me to walk for a few minutes and talk of
herself and of Lambert.
"Louis must, no doubt, appear to be mad," said she. "But he is not, if
the term mad ought only to be used in speaking of those whose brain is
for some unknown cause diseased, and who can show no reason in their
actions. Everything in my husband is perfectly balanced. Though he did
not actively recognize you, it is not that he did not see you. He has
succeeded in detaching himself from his body, and discerns us under
some other aspect--what that is, I know not. When he speaks, he utters
wondrous things. Only it often happens that he concludes in speech an
idea that had its beginning in his mind; or he may begin a sentence
and finish it in thought. To other men he seems insane; to me, living
as I do in his mind, his ideas are quite lucid. I follow the road his
spirit travels; and though I do not know every turning, I can reach
the goal with him.
"Which of us has not often known what it is to think of some futile
thing and be led on to some serious reflection through the ideas or
memories it brings in its train? Not unfrequently, after speaking
about some trifle, the simple starting-point of a rapid train of
reflections, a thinker may forget or be silent as to the abstract
connection of ideas leading to his conclusion, and speak again only to
utter the last link in the chain of his meditations.
"Inferior minds, to whom this swift mental vision is a thing unknown,
who are ignorant of the spirit's inner workings, laugh at the dreamer;
and if he is subject to this kind of obliviousness, regard him as a
madman. Louis is always in this state; he soars perpetually through
the spaces of thought, traversing them with the swiftness of a
swallow; I can follow him in his flight. This is the whole history of
his madness. Some day, perhaps, Louis will come back to the life in
which we vegetate; but if he breathes the air of heaven before the
time when we may be permitted to do so, why should we desire to have
him down among us? I am content to hear his heart beat, and all my
happiness is to be with him. Is he not wholly mine? In three years,
twice at intervals he was himself for a few days; once in Switzerland,
where we went, and once in an island off the wilds of Brittany, where
we took some sea-baths. I have twice been very happy! I can live on
memory."
"But do you write down the things he says?" I asked.
"Why should I?" said she.
I was silent; human knowledge was indeed as nothing in this woman's
eyes.
"At those times, when he talked a little," she added, "I think I have
recorded some of his phrases, but I left it off; I did not understand
him then."
I asked her for them by a look; she understood me. This is what I have
been able to preserve from oblivion.
I
Everything here on earth is produced by an ethereal substance
which is the common element of various phenomena, known
inaccurately as electricity, heat, light, the galvanic fluid, the
magnetic fluid, and so forth. The universal distribution of this
substance, under various forms, constitutes what is commonly known
as Matter.
II
The brain is the alembic to which the Animal conveys what each of
its organizations, in proportion to the strength of that vessel,
can absorb of that Substance, which returns it transformed into
Will.
The Will is a fluid inherent in every creature endowed with
motion. Hence the innumerable forms assumed by the Animal, the
results of its combinations with that Substance. The Animal's
instincts are the product of the coercion of the environment in
which it develops. Hence its variety.
III
In Man the Will becomes a power peculiar to him, and exceeding in
intensity that of any other species.
IV
By constant assimilation, the Will depends on the Substance it
meets with again and again in all its transmutations, pervading
them by Thought, which is a product peculiar to the human Will, in
combination with the modifications of that Substance.
V
The innumerable forms assumed by Thought are the result of the
greater or less perfection of the human mechanism.
VI
The Will acts through organs commonly called the five senses,
which, in fact, are but one--the faculty of Sight. Feeling and
tasting, hearing and smelling, are Sight modified to the
transformations of the Substance which Man can absorb in two
conditions: untransformed and transformed.
VII
Everything of which the form comes within the cognizance of the
one sense of Sight may be reduced to certain simple bodies of
which the elements exist in the air, the light, or in the elements
of air and light. Sound is a condition of the air; colors are all
conditions of light; every smell is a combination of air and
light; hence the four aspects of Matter with regard to Man--sound,
color, smell, and shape--have the same origin, for the day is not
far off when the relationship of the phenomena of air and light
will be made clear.
Thought, which is allied to Light, is expressed in words which
depend on sound. To man, then, everything is derived from the
Substance, whose transformations vary only through Number--a
certain quantitative dissimilarity, the proportions resulting in
the individuals or objects of what are classed as Kingdoms.
VIII
When the Substance is absorbed in sufficient number (or quantity)
it makes of man an immensely powerful mechanism, in direct
communication with the very element of the Substance, and acting
on organic nature in the same way as a large stream when it
absorbs the smaller brooks. Volition sets this force in motion
independently of the Mind. By its concentration it acquires some
of the qualities of the Substance, such as the swiftness of light,
the penetrating power of electricity, and the faculty of
saturating a body; to which must be added that it apprehends what
it can do.
Still, there is in man a primordial and overruling phenomenon
which defies analysis. Man may be dissected completely; the
elements of Will and Mind may perhaps be found; but there still
will remain beyond apprehension the _x_ against which I once used
to struggle. That _x_ is the Word, the Logos, whose communication
burns and consumes those who are not prepared to receive it. The
Word is for ever generating the Substance.
IX
Rage, like all our vehement demonstrations, is a current of the
human force that acts electrically; its turmoil when liberated
acts on persons who are present even though they be neither its
cause nor its object. Are there not certain men who by a discharge
of Volition can sublimate the essence of the feelings of the
masses?
X
Fanaticism and all emotions are living forces. These forces in
some beings become rivers that gather in and sweep away
everything.
XI
Though Space _is_, certain faculties have the power of traversing
it with such rapidity that it is as though it existed not. From
your own bed to the frontiers of the universe there are but two
steps: Will and Faith.
XII
Facts are nothing; they do not subsist; all that lives of us is
the Idea.
XIII
The realm of Ideas is divided into three spheres: that of
Instinct, that of Abstractions, that of Specialism.
XIV
The greater part, the weaker part of visible humanity, dwells in
the Sphere of Instinct. The _Instinctives_ are born, labor, and
die without rising to the second degree of human intelligence,
namely Abstraction.
XV
Society begins in the sphere of Abstraction. If Abstraction, as
compared with Instinct, is an almost divine power, it is
nevertheless incredibly weak as compared with the gift of
Specialism, which is the formula of God. Abstraction comprises all
nature in a germ, more virtually than a seed contains the whole
system of a plant and its fruits. From Abstraction are derived
laws, arts, social ideas, and interests. It is the glory and the
scourge of the earth: its glory because it has created social
life; its scourge because it allows man to evade entering into
Specialism, which is one of the paths to the Infinite. Man
measures everything by Abstractions: Good and Evil, Virtue and
Crime. Its formula of equity is a pair of scales, its justice is
blind. God's justice sees: there is all the difference.
There must be intermediate Beings, then, dividing the sphere of
Instinct from the sphere of Abstractions, in whom the two elements
mingle in an infinite variety of proportions. Some have more of
one, some more of the other. And there are also some in which the
two powers neutralize each other by equality of effect.
XVI
Specialism consists in seeing the things of the material universe
and the things of the spiritual universe in all their
ramifications original and causative. The greatest human geniuses
are those who started from the darkness of Abstraction to attain
to the light of Specialism. (Specialism, _species_, sight;
speculation, or seeing everything, and all at once; _Speculum_, a
mirror or means of apprehending a thing by seeing the whole of
it.) Jesus had the gift of Specialism; He saw each fact in its
root and in its results, in the past where it had its rise, and in
the future where it would grow and spread; His sight pierced into
the understanding of others. The perfection of the inner eye gives
rise to the gift of Specialism. Specialism brings with it
Intuition. Intuition is one of the faculties of the Inner Man, of
which Specialism is an attribute. Intuition acts by an
imperceptible sensation of which he who obeys it is not conscious:
for instance, Napoleon instinctively moving from a spot struck
immediately afterwards by a cannon ball.
XVII
Between the sphere of Abstraction and that of Specialism, as
between those of Abstraction and Instinct, there are beings in
whom the attributes of both combine and produce a mixture; these
are men of genius.
XVIII
Specialism is necessarily the most perfect expression of man, and
he is the link binding the visible world to the higher worlds; he
acts, sees, and feels by his inner powers. The man of Abstraction
thinks. The man of Instinct acts.
XIX
Hence man has three degrees. That of Instinct, below the average;
that of Abstraction, the general average; that of Specialism,
above the average. Specialism opens to man his true career; the
Infinite dawns on him; he sees what his destiny must be.
XX
There are three worlds--the Natural, the Spiritual, and the
Divine. Humanity passes through the Natural world, which is not
fixed either in its essence and unfixed in its faculties. The
Spiritual world is fixed in its essence and unfixed in its
faculties. The Divine world is necessarily a Material worship, a
Spiritual worship, and a Divine worship: three forms expressed in
action, speech, and prayer, or, in other words, in deed,
apprehension, and love. Instinct demands deed; Abstraction is
concerned with Ideas; Specialism sees the end, it aspires to God
with presentiment or contemplation.
XXI
Hence, perhaps, some day the converse of _Et Verbum caro factum
est_ will become the epitome of a new Gospel, which will proclaim
that The Flesh shall be made the Word and become the Utterance of
God.
XXII
The Resurrection is the work of the Wind of Heaven sweeping over
the worlds. The angel borne on the Wind does not say: "Arise, ye
dead"; he says, "Arise, ye who live!"
Such are the meditations which I have with great difficulty cast in a
form adapted to our understanding. There are some others which Pauline
remembered more exactly, wherefore I know not, and which I wrote from
her dictation; but they drive the mind to despair when, knowing in
what an intellect they originated, we strive to understand them. I
will quote a few of them to complete my study of this figure; partly,
too, perhaps, because, in these last aphorisms, Lambert's formulas
seem to include a larger universe than the former set, which would
apply only to zoological evolution. Still, there is a relation between
the two fragments, evident to those persons--though they be but few
--who love to dive into such intellectual deeps.
I
Everything on earth exists solely by motion and number.
II
Motion is, so to speak, number in action.
III
Motion is the product of a force generated by the Word and by
Resistance, which is Matter. But for Resistance, Motion would have
had no results; its action would have been infinite. Newton's
gravitation is not a law, but an effect of the general law of
universal motion.
IV
Motion, acting in proportion to Resistance, produces a result
which is Life. As soon as one or the other is the stronger, Life
ceases.
V
No portion of Motion is wasted; it always produces number; still,
it can be neutralized by disproportionate resistance, as in
minerals.
VI
Number, which produces variety of all kinds, also gives rise to
Harmony, which, in the highest meaning of the word, is the
relation of parts to the whole.