Seraphita

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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."