The Exiles

H >> Honore de Balzac >> The Exiles


Presently the vast clamor of Paris, brought down on the current, was
hushed; lights were extinguished one by one in the houses; silence
spread over all; and the huge city slept like a tired giant.

Midnight struck. The least noise, the fall of a leaf, or the flight
of a jackdaw changing its perching-place among the pinnacles of
Notre-Dame, would have been enough to bring the stranger's mind to
earth again, to have made the youth drop from the celestial heights
to which his soul had soared on the wings of rapture.

And then the old man heard with dismay a groan mingling with the sound
of a heavy fall--the fall, as his experienced ear assured him, of a
dead body. He hastened into Godefroid's room, and saw him lying in a
heap with a long rope tight round his neck, the end meandering over
the floor.

When he had untied it, the poor lad opened his eyes.

"Where am I?" he asked, with a hopeful gleam.

"In your own room," said the elder man, looking with surprise at
Godefroid's neck, and at the nail to which the cord had been tied, and
which was still in the knot.

"In heaven?" said the boy, in a voice of music.

"No; on earth!"

Godefroid rose and walked along the path of light traced on the floor
by the moon through the window, which stood open; he saw the rippling
Seine, the willows and plants on the island. A misty atmosphere hung
over the waters like a smokey floor.

On seeing the view, to him so heartbreaking, he folded his hands over
his bosom, and stood in an attitude of despair; the Exile came up to
him with astonishment on his face.

"You meant to kill yourself?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Godefroid, while the stranger passed his hand about his
neck again and again to feel the place where the rope had tightened on
it.

But for some slight bruises, the young man had been but little hurt.
His friend supposed that the nail had given way at once under the
weight of the body, and the terrible attempt had ended in a fall
without injury.

"And why, dear lad, did you try to kill yourself?"

"Alas!" said Godefroid, no longer restraining the tears that rolled
down his cheeks, "I heard the Voice from on high; it called me by
name! It had never named me before, but this time it bade me to
Heaven! Oh, how sweet is that voice!--As I could not fly to Heaven,"
he added artlessly, "I took the only way we know of going to God."

"My child! oh, sublime boy!" cried the old man, throwing his arms
round Godefroid, and clasping him to his heart. "You are a poet; you
can boldly ride the whirlwind! Your poetry does not proceed from your
heart; your living, burning thoughts, your creations, move and grow in
your soul.--Go, never reveal your ideas to the vulgar! Be at once the
altar, the priest, and the victim!

"You know Heaven, do you not? You have seen those myriads of angels,
white-winged, and holding golden sistrums, all soaring with equal
flight towards the Throne, and you have often seen their pinions
moving at the breath of God as the trees of the forest bow with one
consent before the storm. Ah, how glorious is unlimited space! Tell
me."

The stranger clasped Godefroid's hand convulsively, and they both
gazed at the firmament, whence the stars seemed to shed gentle poetry
which they could bear.

"Oh, to see God!" murmured Godefroid.

"Child!" said the old man suddenly, in a sterner voice, "have you so
soon forgotten the holy teaching of our good master, Doctor Sigier? In
order to return, you to your heavenly home, and I to my native land on
earth, must we not obey the voice of God? We must walk on resignedly
in the stony paths where His almighty finger points the way. Do not
you quail at the thought of the danger to which you exposed yourself?
Arriving there without being bidden, and saying, 'Here I am!' before
your time, would you not have been cast back into a world beneath that
where your soul now hovers? Poor outcast cherub! Should you not rather
bless God for having suffered you to live in a sphere where you may
hear none but heavenly harmonies? Are you not as pure as a diamond, as
lovely as a flower?

"Think what it is to know, like me, only the City of Sorrows!
--Dwelling there I have worn out my heart.--To search the tombs for
their horrible secrets; to wipe hands steeped in blood, counting them
over night after night, seeing them rise up before me imploring
forgiveness which I may not grant; to mark the writhing of the
assassin and the last shriek of his victim; to listen to appalling
noises and fearful silence, the silence of a father devouring his dead
sons; to wonder at the laughter of the damned; to look for some human
form among the livid heaps wrung and trampled by crime; to learn words
such as living men may not hear without dying; to call perpetually on
the dead, and always to accuse and condemn!--Is that living?"

"Cease!" cried Godefroid; "I cannot see you or hear you any further!
My reason wanders, my eyes are dim. You light a fire within me which
consumes me."

"And yet I must go on!" said the senior, waving his hand with a
strange gesture that worked on the youth like a spell.

For a moment the old man fixed Godefroid with his large, weary,
lightless eyes; then he pointed with one finger to the ground. A gulf
seemed to open at his bidding. He remained standing in the doubtful
light of the moon; it lent a glory to his brow which reflected an
almost solar gleam. Though at first a somewhat disdainful expression
lurked in the wrinkles of his face, his look presently assumed the
fixity which seems to gaze on an object invisible to the ordinary
organs of sight. His eyes, no doubt, were seeing then the remoter
images which the grave has in store for us.

Never, perhaps, had this man presented so grand an aspect. A terrible
struggle was going on in his soul, and reacted on his outer frame;
strong man as he seemed to be, he bent as a reed bows under the breeze
that comes before a storm. Godefroid stood motionless, speechless,
spellbound; some inexplicable force nailed him to the floor; and, as
happens when our attention takes us out of ourselves while watching a
fire or a battle, he was wholly unconscious of his body.

"Shall I tell you the fate to which you were hastening, poor angel of
love? Listen! It has been given to me to see immeasurable space,
bottomless gulfs in which all human creations are swallowed up, the
shoreless sea whither flows the vast stream of men and of angels. As I
made my way through the realms of eternal torment, I was sheltered
under the cloak of an immortal--the robe of glory due to genius, and
which the ages hand on--I, a frail mortal! When I wandered through the
fields of light where the happy souls play, I was borne up by the love
of a woman, the wings of an angel; resting on her heart, I could taste
the ineffable pleasures whose touch is more perilous to us mortals
than are the torments of the worser world.

"As I achieved my pilgrimage through the dark regions below I had
mounted from torture to torture, from crime to crime, from punishment
to punishment, from awful silence to heartrending cries, till I
reached the uppermost circle of Hell. Already, from afar, I could see
the glory of Paradise shining at a vast distance; I was still in
darkness, but on the borders of day. I flew, upheld by my Guide, borne
along by a power akin to that which, during our dreams, wafts us to
spheres invisible to the eye of the body. The halo that crowned our
heads seared away the shades as we passed, like impalpable dust. Far
above us the suns of all the worlds shone with scarce so much light as
the twinkling fireflies of my native land. I was soaring towards the
fields of air where, round about Paradise, the bodies of light are in
closer array, where the azure is easy to pass through, where worlds
innumerable spring like flowers in a meadow.

"There, on the last level of the circles where those phantoms dwell
that I had left behind me, like sorrows one would fain forget, I saw a
vast shade. Standing in an attitude of aspiration, that soul looked
eagerly into space; his feet were riveted by the will of God to the
topmost point of the margin, and he remained for ever in the painful
strain by which we project our purpose when we long to soar, as birds
about to take wing. I saw the man; he neither looked at us nor heard
us; every muscle quivered and throbbed; at each separate instant he
seemed to feel, though he did not move, all the fatigue of traversing
the infinite that divided him from Paradise where, as he gazed
steadfastly, he believed he had glimpses of a beloved image. At this
last gate of Hell, as at the first, I saw the stamp of despair even in
hope. The hapless creature was so fearfully held by some unseen force,
that his anguish entered into my bones and froze my blood. I shrank
closer to my Guide, whose protection restored me to peace and silence.

"Suddenly the Shade gave a cry of joy--a cry as shrill as that of the
mother bird that sees a hawk in the air, or suspects its presence. We
looked where he was looking, and saw, as it were, a sapphire, floating
high up in the abysses of light. The glowing star fell with the
swiftness of a sunbeam when it flashes over the horizon in the morning
and its first rays shoot across the world. The Splendor became clearer
and grew larger; presently I beheld the cloud of glory in which the
angels move--a shining vapor that emanates from their divine
substance, and that glitters here and there like tongues of flame. A
noble face, whose glory none may endure that have not won the mantle,
the laurel, and the palm--the attribute of the Powers--rose above this
cloud as white and pure as snow. It was Light within light. His wings
as they waved shed dazzling ripples in the spheres through which he
descended, as the glance of God pierces through the universe. At last
I saw the archangel in all his glory. The flower of eternal beauty
that belongs to the angels of the Spirit shone in him. In one hand he
held a green palm branch, in the other a sword of flame: the palm to
bestow on the pardoned soul, the sword to drive back all the hosts of
Hell with one sweep. As he approached, the perfumes of Heaven fell
upon us as dew. In the region where the archangel paused, the air took
the hues of opal, and moved in eddies of which he was the centre. He
paused, looked at the Shade, and said:

"'To-morrow.'

"Then he turned heavenwards once more, spread his wings, and clove
through space as a vessel cuts through the waves, hardly showing her
white sails to the exiles left on some deserted shore.

"The Shade uttered appalling cries, to which the damned responded from
the lowest circle, the deepest in the immensity of suffering, to the
more peaceful zone near the surface on which we were standing. This
worst torment of all had appealed to all the rest. The turmoil was
swelled by the roar of a sea of fire which formed a bass to the
terrific harmony of endless millions of suffering souls.

"Then suddenly the Shade took flight through the doleful city, and
down to its place at the very bottom of Hell; but as suddenly it came
up again, turned, soared through the endless circles in every
direction, as a vulture, confined for the first time in a cage,
exhausts itself in vain efforts. The Shade was free to do this; he
could wander through the zones of Hell icy, fetid, or scorching
without enduring their pangs; he glided into that vastness as a
sunbeam makes its way into the deepest dark.

"'God has not condemned him to any torment,' said the Master; 'but
not one of the souls you have seen suffering their various punishments
would exchange his anguish for the hope that is consuming this soul.'

"And just then the Shade came back to us, brought thither by an
irresistible force which condemned him to perch on the verge of Hell.
My divine Guide, guessing my curiosity, touched the unhappy Shade with
his palm-branch. He, who was perhaps trying to measure the age of
sorrow that divided him from that ever-vanishing 'To-morrow,' started
and gave a look full of all the tears he had already shed.

"'You would know my woe?' said he sadly. 'Oh, I love to tell it. I am
here, Teresa is above; that is all. On earth we were happy, we were
always together. When I saw my loved Teresa Donati for the first time,
she was ten years old. We loved each other even then, not knowing what
love meant. Our lives were one; I turned pale if she were pale, I was
happy in her joy; we gave ourselves up to the pleasure of thinking and
feeling together; and we learned what love was, each through the
other. We were wedded at Cremona; we never saw each other's lips but
decked with pearls of a smile; our eyes always shone; our hair, like
our desires, flowed together; our heads were always bent over one book
when we read, our feet walked in equal step. Life was one long kiss,
our home was a nest.

"'One day, for the first time, Teresa turned pale and said, "I am in
pain!"--And I was not in pain!

"'She never rose again. I saw her sweet face change, her golden hair
fade--and I did not die! She smiled to hide her sufferings, but I
could read them in her blue eyes, of which I could interpret the
slightest trembling. "Honorino, I love you!" said she, at the very
moment when her lips turned white, and she was clasping my hand still
in hers when death chilled them. So I killed myself that she might not
lie alone in her sepulchral bed, under her marble sheet. Teresa is
above and I am here. I could not bear to leave her, but God has
divided us. Why, then, did He unite us on earth? He is jealous!
Paradise was no doubt so much the fairer on the day when Teresa
entered in.

"'Do you see her? She is sad in her bliss; she is parted from me!
Paradise must be a desert to her.'

"'Master,' said I with tears, for I thought of my love, 'when this
one shall desire Paradise for God's sake alone, shall he not be
delivered?' And the Father of Poets mildly bowed his head in sign of
assent.

"We departed, cleaving the air, and making no more noise than the
birds that pass overhead sometimes when we lie in the shade of a tree.
It would have been vain to try to check the hapless shade in his
blasphemy. It is one of the griefs of the angels of darkness that they
can never see the light even when they are surrounded by it. He would
not have understood us."



At this moment the swift approach of many horses rang through the
stillness, the dog barked, the constable's deep growl replied; the
horsemen dismounted, knocked at the door; the noise was so unexpected
that it seemed like some sudden explosion.

The two exiles, the two poets, fell to earth through all the space
that divides us from the skies. The painful shock of this fall rushed
through their veins like strange blood, hissing as it seemed, and full
of scorching sparks. Their pain was like an electric discharge. The
loud, heavy step of a man-at-arms sounded on the stairs with the iron
clank of his sword, his cuirass, and spurs; a soldier presently stood
before the astonished stranger.

"We can return to Florence," said the man, whose bass voice sounded
soft as he spoke in Italian.

"What is that you say?" asked the old man.

"The _Bianchi_ are triumphant."

"Are you not mistaken?" asked the poet.

"No, dear Dante!" replied the soldier, whose warlike tones rang with
the thrill of battle and the exultation of victory.

"To Florence! To Florence! Ah, my Florence!" cried Dante Alighieri,
drawing himself up, and gazing into the distance. In fancy he saw
Italy; he was gigantic.

"But I--when shall I be in Heaven?" said Godefroid, kneeling on one
knee before the immortal poet, like an angel before the sanctuary.

"Come to Florence," said Dante in compassionate tones. "Come! when you
see its lovely landscape from the heights of Fiesole you will fancy
yourself in Paradise."

The soldier smiled. For the first time, perhaps for the only time in
his life, Dante's gloomy and solemn features wore a look of joy; his
eyes and brows expressed the happiness he has depicted so lavishly in
his vision of Paradise. He thought perhaps that he heard the voice of
Beatrice.

A light step, and the rustle of a woman's gown, were audible in the
silence. Dawn was now showing its first streaks of light. The fair
Comtesse de Mahaut came in and flew to Godefroid.

"Come, my child, my son! I may at last acknowledge you. Your birth is
recognized, your rights are under the protection of the King of
France, and you will find Paradise in your mother's heart."

"I hear, I know, the voice of Heaven!" cried the youth in rapture.

The exclamation roused Dante, who saw the young man folded in the
Countess' arms. He took leave of them with a look, and left his young
companion on his mother's bosom.

"Come away!" he cried in a voice of thunder. "Death to the Guelphs!"



PARIS, October 1831.