Seraphita

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After listening to Seraphita's answer in which (being earnestly
questioned) she unrolled before their eyes a Divine Perspective,--as
an organ fills a church with sonorous sound and reveals a musical
universe, its solemn tones rising to the loftiest arches and playing,
like light, upon their foliated capitals,--Wilfrid returned to his own
room, awed by the sight of a world in ruins, and on those ruins the
brilliance of mysterious lights poured forth in torrents by the hand
of a young girl. On the morrow he still thought of these things, but
his awe was gone; he felt he was neither destroyed nor changed; his
passions, his ideas awoke in full force, fresh and vigorous. He went
to breakfast with Monsieur Becker and found the old man absorbed in
the "Treatise on Incantations," which he had searched since early
morning to convince his guest that there was nothing unprecedented in
all that they had seen and heard at the Swedish castle. With the
childlike trustfulness of a true scholar he had folded down the pages
in which Jean Wier related authentic facts which proved the
possibility of the events that had happened the night before,--for to
learned men an idea is a event, just as the greatest events often
present no idea at all to them. By the time they had swallowed their
fifth cup of tea, these philosophers had come to think the mysterious
scene of the preceding evening wholly natural. The celestial truths to
which they had listened were arguments susceptible of examination;
Seraphita was a girl, more or less eloquent; allowance must be made
for the charms of her voice, her seductive beauty, her fascinating
motions, in short, for all those oratorical arts by which an actor
puts a world of sentiment and thought into phrases which are often
commonplace.

"Bah!" said the worthy pastor, making a philosophical grimace as he
spread a layer of salt butter on his slice of bread, "the final word
of all these fine enigmas is six feet under ground."

"But," said Wilfrid, sugaring his tea, "I cannot image how a young
girl of seventeen can know so much; what she said was certainly a
compact argument."

"Read the account of that Italian woman," said Monsieur Becker, "who
at the age of twelve spoke forty-two languages, ancient and modern;
also the history of that monk who could guess thought by smell. I can
give you a thousand such cases from Jean Wier and other writers."

"I admit all that, dear pastor; but to my thinking, Seraphita would
make a perfect wife."

"She is all mind," said Monsieur Becker, dubiously.

Several days went by, during which the snow in the valleys melted
gradually away; the green of the forests and of the grass began to
show; Norwegian Nature made ready her wedding garments for her brief
bridal of a day. During this period, when the softened air invited
every one to leave the house, Seraphita remained at home in solitude.
When at last she admitted Minna the latter saw at once the ravages of
inward fever; Seraphita's voice was hollow, her skin pallid; hitherto
a poet might have compared her lustre to that of diamonds,--now it was
that of a topaz.

"Have you seen her?" asked Wilfrid, who had wandered around the
Swedish dwelling waiting for Minna's return.

"Yes," answered the young girl, weeping; "We must lose him!"

"Mademoiselle," cried Wilfrid, endeavoring to repress the loud tones
of his angry voice, "do not jest with me. You can love Seraphita only
as one young girl can love another, and not with the love which she
inspires in me. You do not know your danger if my jealousy were really
aroused. Why can I not go to her? Is it you who stand in my way?"

"I do not know by what right you probe my heart," said Minna, calm in
appearance, but inwardly terrified. "Yes, I love him," she said,
recovering the courage of her convictions, that she might, for once,
confess the religion of her heart. "But my jealousy, natural as it is
in love, fears no one here below. Alas! I am jealous of a secret
feeling that absorbs him. Between him and me there is a great gulf
fixed which I cannot cross. Would that I knew who loves him best, the
stars or I! which of us would sacrifice our being most eagerly for his
happiness! Why should I not be free to avow my love? In the presence
of death we may declare our feelings,--and Seraphitus is about to
die."

"Minna, you are mistaken; the siren I so love and long for, she, whom
I have seen, feeble and languid, on her couch of furs, is not a young
man."

"Monsieur," answered Minna, distressfully, "the being whose powerful
hand guided me on the Falberg, who led me to the saeter sheltered
beneath the Ice-Cap, there--" she said, pointing to the peak, "is not
a feeble girl. Ah, had you but heard him prophesying! His poem was the
music of thought. A young girl never uttered those solemn tones of a
voice which stirred my soul."

"What certainty have you?" said Wilfrid.

"None but that of the heart," answered Minna.

"And I," cried Wilfrid, casting on his companion the terrible glance
of the earthly desire that kills, "I, too, know how powerful is her
empire over me, and I will undeceive you."

At this moment, while the words were rushing from Wilfrid's lips as
rapidly as the thoughts surged in his brain, they saw Seraphita coming
towards them from the house, followed by David. The apparition calmed
the man's excitement.

"Look," he said, "could any but a woman move with that grace and
langor?"

"He suffers; he comes forth for the last time," said Minna.

David went back at a sign from his mistress, who advanced towards
Wilfrid and Minna.

"Let us go to the falls of the Sieg," she said, expressing one of
those desires which suddenly possess the sick and which the well
hasten to obey.

A thin white mist covered the valleys around the fiord and the sides
of the mountains, whose icy summits, sparkling like stars, pierced the
vapor and gave it the appearance of a moving milky way. The sun was
visible through the haze like a globe of red fire. Though winter still
lingered, puffs of warm air laden with the scent of the birch-trees,
already adorned with their rosy efflorescence, and of the larches,
whose silken tassels were beginning to appear,--breezes tempered by
the incense and the sighs of earth,--gave token of the glorious
Northern spring, the rapid, fleeting joy of that most melancholy of
Natures. The wind was beginning to lift the veil of mist which
half-obscured the gulf. The birds sang. The bark of the trees where the
sun had not yet dried the clinging hoar-frost shone gayly to the eye in
its fantastic wreathings which trickled away in murmuring rivulets as
the warmth reached them. The three friends walked in silence along the
shore. Wilfrid and Minna alone noticed the magic transformation that
was taking place in the monotonous picture of the winter landscape.
Their companion walked in thought, as though a voice were sounding to
her ears in this concert of Nature.

Presently they reached the ledge of rocks through which the Sieg had
forced its way, after escaping from the long avenue cut by its waters
in an undulating line through the forest,--a fluvial pathway flanked
by aged firs and roofed with strong-ribbed arches like those of a
cathedral. Looking back from that vantage-ground, the whole extent of
the fiord could be seen at a glance, with the open sea sparkling on
the horizon beyond it like a burnished blade.

At this moment the mist, rolling away, left the sky blue and clear.
Among the valleys and around the trees flitted the shining fragments,
--a diamond dust swept by the freshening breeze. The torrent rolled on
toward them; along its length a vapor rose, tinted by the sun with
every color of his light; the decomposing rays flashing prismatic
fires along the many-tinted scarf of waters. The rugged ledge on which
they stood was carpeted by several kinds of lichen, forming a noble
mat variegated by moisture and lustrous like the sheen of a silken
fabric. Shrubs, already in bloom, crowned the rocks with garlands.
Their waving foliage, eager for the freshness of the water, drooped
its tresses above the stream; the larches shook their light fringes
and played with the pines, stiff and motionless as aged men. This
luxuriant beauty was foiled by the solemn colonnades of the
forest-trees, rising in terraces upon the mountains, and by the calm
sheet of the fiord, lying below, where the torrent buried its fury and
was still. Beyond, the sea hemmed in this page of Nature, written by
the greatest of poets, Chance; to whom the wild luxuriance of creation
when apparently abandoned to itself is owing.

The village of Jarvis was a lost point in the landscape, in this
immensity of Nature, sublime at this moment like all things else of
ephemeral life which present a fleeting image of perfection; for, by a
law fatal to no eyes but our own, creations which appear complete--the
love of our heart and the desire of our eyes--have but one spring-tide
here below. Standing on this breast-work of rock these three persons
might well suppose themselves alone in the universe.

"What beauty!" cried Wilfrid.

"Nature sings hymns," said Seraphita. "Is not her music exquisite?
Tell me, Wilfrid, could any of the women you once knew create such a
glorious retreat for herself as this? I am conscious here of a feeling
seldom inspired by the sight of cities, a longing to lie down amid
this quickening verdure. Here, with eyes to heaven and an open heart,
lost in the bosom of immensity, I could hear the sighings of the
flower, scarce budded, which longs for wings, or the cry of the eider
grieving that it can only fly, and remember the desires of man who,
issuing from all, is none the less ever longing. But that, Wilfrid, is
only a woman's thought. You find seductive fancies in the wreathing
mists, the light embroidered veils which Nature dons like a coy
maiden, in this atmosphere where she perfumes for her spousals the
greenery of her tresses. You seek the naiad's form amid the gauzy
vapors, and to your thinking my ears should listen only to the virile
voice of the Torrent."

"But Love is there, like the bee in the calyx of the flower," replied
Wilfrid, perceiving for the first time a trace of earthly sentiment in
her words, and fancying the moment favorable for an expression of his
passionate tenderness.

"Always there?" said Seraphita, smiling. Minna had left them for a
moment to gather the blue saxifrages growing on a rock above.

"Always," repeated Wilfrid. "Hear me," he said, with a masterful
glance which was foiled as by a diamond breast-plate. "You know not
what I am, nor what I can be, nor what I will. Do not reject my last
entreaty. Be mine for the good of that world whose happiness you bear
upon your heart. Be mine that my conscience may be pure; that a voice
divine may sound in my ears and infuse Good into the great enterprise
I have undertaken prompted by my hatred to the nations, but which I
swear to accomplish for their benefit if you will walk beside me. What
higher mission can you ask for love? what nobler part can woman aspire
to? I came to Norway to meditate a grand design."

"And you will sacrifice its grandeur," she said, "to an innocent girl
who loves you, and who will lead you in the paths of peace."

"What matters sacrifice," he cried, "if I have you? Hear my secret. I
have gone from end to end of the North,--that great smithy from whose
anvils new races have spread over the earth, like human tides
appointed to refresh the wornout civilizations. I wished to begin my
work at some Northern point, to win the empire which force and
intellect must ever give over a primitive people; to form that people
for battle, to drive them to wars which should ravage Europe like a
conflagration, crying liberty to some, pillage to others, glory here,
pleasure there!--I, myself, remaining an image of Destiny, cruel,
implacable, advancing like the whirlwind, which sucks from the
atmosphere the particles that make the thunderbolt, and falls like a
devouring scourge upon the nations. Europe is at an epoch when she
awaits the new Messiah who shall destroy society and remake it. She
can no longer believe except in him who crushes her under foot. The
day is at hand when poets and historians will justify me, exalt me,
and borrow my ideas, mine! And all the while my triumph will be a
jest, written in blood, the jest of my vengeance! But not here,
Seraphita; what I see in the North disgusts me. Hers is a mere blind
force; I thirst for the Indies! I would rather fight a selfish,
cowardly, mercantile government. Besides, it is easier to stir the
imagination of the peoples at the feet of the Caucasus than to argue
with the intellect of the icy lands which here surround me. Therefore
am I tempted to cross the Russian steps and pour my triumphant human
tide through Asia to the Ganges, and overthrow the British rule. Seven
men have done this thing before me in other epochs of the world. I
will emulate them. I will spread Art like the Saracens, hurled by
Mohammed upon Europe. Mine shall be no paltry sovereignty like those
that govern to-day the ancient provinces of the Roman empire,
disputing with their subjects about a customs right! No, nothing can
bar my way! Like Genghis Khan, my feet shall tread a third of the
globe, my hand shall grasp the throat of Asia like Aurung-Zeb. Be my
companion! Let me seat thee, beautiful and noble being, on a throne! I
do not doubt success, but live within my heart and I am sure of it."

"I have already reigned," said Seraphita, coldly.

The words fell as the axe of a skilful woodman falls at the root of a
young tree and brings it down at a single blow. Men alone can
comprehend the rage that a woman excites in the soul of a man when,
after showing her his strength, his power, his wisdom, his
superiority, the capricious creature bends her head and says, "All
that is nothing"; when, unmoved, she smiles and says, "Such things are
known to me," as though his power were nought.

"What!" cried Wilfrid, in despair, "can the riches of art, the riches
of worlds, the splendors of a court--"

She stopped him by a single inflexion of her lips, and said, "Beings
more powerful than you have offered me far more."

"Thou hast no soul," he cried,--"no soul, if thou art not persuaded by
the thought of comforting a great man, who is willing now to sacrifice
all things to live beside thee in a little house on the shores of a
lake."

"But," she said, "I am loved with a boundless love."

"By whom?" cried Wilfrid, approaching Seraphita with a frenzied
movement, as if to fling her into the foaming basin of the Sieg.

She looked at him and slowly extended her arm, pointing to Minna, who
now sprang towards her, fair and glowing and lovely as the flowers she
held in her hand.

"Child!" said Seraphitus, advancing to meet her.

Wilfrid remained where she left him, motionless as the rock on which
he stood, lost in thought, longing to let himself go into the torrent
of the Sieg, like the fallen trees which hurried past his eyes and
disappeared in the bosom of the gulf.

"I gathered them for you," said Minna, offering the bunch of
saxifrages to the being she adored. "One of them, see, this one," she
added, selecting a flower, "is like that you found on the Falberg."

Seraphitus looked alternately at the flower and at Minna.

"Why question me? Dost thou doubt me?"

"No," said the young girl, "my trust in you is infinite. You are more
beautiful to look upon than this glorious nature, but your mind
surpasses in intellect that of all humanity. When I have been with you
I seem to have prayed to God. I long--"

"For what?" said Seraphitus, with a glance that revealed to the young
girl the vast distance which separated them.

"To suffer in your stead."

"Ah, dangerous being!" cried Seraphitus in his heart. "Is it wrong, oh
my God! to desire to offer her to Thee? Dost thou remember, Minna,
what I said to thee up there?" he added, pointing to the summit of the
Ice-Cap.

"He is terrible again," thought Minna, trembling with fear.

The voice of the Sieg accompanied the thoughts of the three beings
united on this platform of projecting rock, but separated in soul by
the abysses of the Spiritual World.

"Seraphitus! teach me," said Minna in a silvery voice, soft as the
motion of a sensitive plant, "teach me how to cease to love you. Who
could fail to admire you; love is an admiration that never wearies."

"Poor child!" said Seraphitus, turning pale; "there is but one whom
thou canst love in that way."

"Who?" asked Minna.

"Thou shalt know hereafter," he said, in the feeble voice of a man who
lies down to die.

"Help, help! he is dying!" cried Minna.

Wilfrid ran towards them. Seeing Seraphita as she lay on a fragment of
gneiss, where time had cast its velvet mantle of lustrous lichen and
tawny mosses now burnished in the sunlight, he whispered softly, "How
beautiful she is!"

"One other look! the last that I shall ever cast upon this nature in
travail," said Seraphitus, rallying her strength and rising to her
feet.

She advanced to the edge of the rocky platform, whence her eyes took
in the scenery of that grand and glorious landscape, so verdant,
flowery, and animated, yet so lately buried in its winding-sheet of
snow.

"Farewell," she said, "farewell, home of Earth, warmed by the fires of
Love; where all things press with ardent force from the centre to the
extremities; where the extremities are gathered up, like a woman's
hair, to weave the mysterious braid which binds us in that invisible
ether to the Thought Divine!

"Behold the man bending above that furrow moistened with his tears,
who lifts his head for an instant to question Heaven; behold the woman
gathering her children that she may feed them with her milk; see him
who lashes the ropes in the height of the gale; see her who sits in
the hollow of the rocks, awaiting the father! Behold all they who
stretch their hands in want after a lifetime spent in thankless toil.
To all peace and courage, and to all farewell!

"Hear you the cry of the soldier, dying nameless and unknown? the wail
of the man deceived who weeps in the desert? To them peace and
courage; to all farewell!

"Farewell, you who die for the kings of the earth! Farewell, ye people
without a country and ye countries without a people, each, with a
mutual want. Above all, farewell to Thee who knew not where to lay Thy
head, Exile divine! Farewell, mothers beside your dying sons!
Farewell, ye Little Ones, ye Feeble, ye Suffering, you whose sorrows I
have so often borne! Farewell, all ye who have descended into the
sphere of Instinct that you may suffer there for others!

"Farewell, ye mariners who seek the Orient through the thick darkness
of your abstractions, vast as principles! Farewell, martyrs of
thought, led by thought into the presence of the True Light. Farewell,
regions of study where mine ears can hear the plaint of genius
neglected and insulted, the sigh of the patient scholar to whom
enlightenment comes too late!

"I see the angelic choir, the wafting of perfumes, the incense of the
heart of those who go their way consoling, praying, imparting
celestial balm and living light to suffering souls! Courage, ye choir
of Love! you to whom the peoples cry, 'Comfort us, comfort us, defend
us!' To you courage! and farewell!

"Farewell, ye granite rocks that shall bloom a flower; farewell,
flower that becomes a dove; farewell, dove that shalt be woman;
farewell, woman, who art Suffering, man, who art Belief! Farewell, you
who shall be all love, all prayer!"

Broken with fatigue, this inexplicable being leaned for the first time
on Wilfrid and on Minna to be taken home. Wilfrid and Minna felt the
shock of a mysterious contact in and through the being who thus
connected them. They had scarcely advanced a few steps when David met
them, weeping. "She will die," he said, "why have you brought her
hither?"

The old man raised her in his arms with the vigor of youth and bore
her to the gate of the Swedish castle like an eagle bearing a white
lamb to his mountain eyrie.



CHAPTER VI

THE PATH TO HEAVEN

The day succeeding that on which Seraphita foresaw her death and bade
farewell to Earth, as a prisoner looks round his dungeon before
leaving it forever, she suffered pains which obliged her to remain in
the helpless immobility of those whose pangs are great. Wilfrid and
Minna went to see her, and found her lying on her couch of furs. Still
veiled in flesh, her soul shone through that veil, which grew more and
more transparent day by day. The progress of the Spirit, piercing the
last obstacle between itself and the Infinite, was called an illness,
the hour of Life went by the name of death. David wept as he watched
her sufferings; unreasonable as a child, he would not listen to his
mistress's consolations. Monsieur Becker wished Seraphita to try
remedies; but all were useless.

One morning she sent for the two beings whom she loved, telling them
that this would be the last of her bad days. Wilfrid and Minna came in
terror, knowing well that they were about to lose her. Seraphita
smiled to them as one departing to a better world; her head drooped
like a flower heavy with dew, which opens its calyx for the last time
to waft its fragrance on the breeze. She looked at these friends with
a sadness that was for them, not for herself; she thought no longer of
herself, and they felt this with a grief mingled with gratitude which
they were unable to express. Wilfrid stood silent and motionless, lost
in thoughts excited by events whose vast bearings enabled him to
conceive of some illimitable immensity.

Emboldened by the weakness of the being lately so powerful, or perhaps
by the fear of losing him forever, Minna bent down over the couch and
said, "Seraphitus, let me follow thee!"

"Can I forbid thee?"

"Why will thou not love me enough to stay with me?"

"I can love nothing here."

"What canst thou love?"

"Heaven."

"Is it worthy of heaven to despise the creatures of God?"

"Minna, can we love two beings at once? Would our beloved be indeed
our beloved if he did not fill our hearts? Must he not be the first,
the last, the only one? She who is all love, must she not leave the
world for her beloved? Human ties are but a memory, she has no ties
except to him! Her soul is hers no longer; it is his. If she keeps
within her soul anything that is not his, does she love? No, she loves
not. To love feebly, is that to love at all? The voice of her beloved
makes her joyful; it flows through her veins in a crimson tide more
glowing far than blood; his glance is the light that penetrates her;
her being melts into his being. He is warm to her soul. He is the
light that lightens; near to him there is neither cold nor darkness.
He is never absent, he is always with us; we think in him, to him, by
him! Minna, that is how I love him."

"Love whom?" said Minna, tortured with sudden jealousy.

"God," replied Seraphitus, his voice glowing in their souls like fires
of liberty from peak to peak upon the mountains,--"God, who does not
betray us! God, who will never abandon us! who crowns our wishes; who
satisfies His creatures with joy--joy unalloyed and infinite! God, who
never wearies but ever smiles! God, who pours into the soul fresh
treasures day by day; who purifies and leaves no bitterness; who is
all harmony, all flame! God, who has placed Himself within our hearts
to blossom there; who hearkens to our prayers; who does not stand
aloof when we are His, but gives His presence absolutely! He who
revives us, magnifies us, and multiplies us in Himself; _God_! Minna, I
love thee because thou mayst be His! I love thee because if thou come
to Him thou wilt be mine."

"Lead me to Him," cried Minna, kneeling down; "take me by the hand; I
will not leave thee!"

"Lead us, Seraphita!" cried Wilfrid, coming to Minna's side with an
impetuous movement. "Yes, thou hast given me a thirst for Light, a
thirst for the Word. I am parched with the Love thou hast put into my
heart; I desire to keep thy soul in mine; thy will is mine; I will do
whatsoever thou biddest me. Since I cannot obtain thee, I will keep
thy will and all the thoughts that thou hast given me. If I may not
unite myself with thee except by the power of my spirit, I will cling
to thee in soul as the flame to what it laps. Speak!"

"Angel!" exclaimed the mysterious being, enfolding them both in one
glance, as it were with an azure mantle, "Heaven shall by thine
heritage!"

Silence fell among them after these words, which sounded in the souls
of the man and of the woman like the first notes of some celestial
harmony.

"If you would teach your feet to tread the Path to heaven, know that
the way is hard at first," said the weary sufferer; "God wills that
you shall seek Him for Himself. In that sense, He is jealous; He
demands your whole self. But when you have given Him yourself, never,
never will He abandon you. I leave with you the keys of the kingdom of
His Light, where evermore you shall dwell in the bosom of the Father,
in the heart of the Bridegroom. No sentinels guard the approaches, you
may enter where you will; His palaces, His treasures, His sceptre, all
are free. 'Take them!' He says. But--you must _will_ to go there. Like
one preparing for a journey, a man must leave his home, renounce his
projects, bid farewell to friends, to father, mother, sister, even to
the helpless brother who cries after him,--yes, farewell to them
eternally; you will no more return than did the martyrs on their way
to the stake. You must strip yourself of every sentiment, of
everything to which man clings. Unless you do this you are but
half-hearted in your enterprise.