dinary spectacle he had witnessed had naturally given rise,
wanted to cross-question David, and came to see him, making
a pretext of his wish for news of Seraphita. Though Pastor
Becker thought the poor old man was childish, the stranger
trusted to his own perspicacity to guide him in discovering
the grains of truth the old serving-man might drop in the tor-
rent of his wandering talk.
David had the rigid but undecided expression of a man of
eighty ; under his white hair his brow showed deep wrinkles,
forming broken stratifications, and his whole face was fur-
rowed like the dry bed of a torrent. All his vitality seemed to
be concentrated in his eyes, where a spark still gleamed ; but
that light even was hidden behind clouds, and might be either
the fitful activity of a feeble mind, or the stupid glare of in-
SERAPHIi^A Ti
toxication. His slow, heavy movements betrayed the chill of
old age, and seemed to communicate it to any one who gazed
at him for long, for he had the strength of inertia. His narrow
intelligence awoke only at the sound of his mistress' voice,
at the sight or the thought of her. She was the soul of this
merely material wreck. When David was alone you would
have thought him a corpse; if Seraphita appeared, or spoke,
or was spoken of, the dead rose from the grave and recovered
motion and speech.
Never were the dry hones that the breath of God shall re-
vive in the valley of Jehoshaphat — ^never was that Apocalyptic
parable more vividly realized than in this Lazarus perennially
called forth from the sepulchre by the voice of this 3'Oung girl.
His mode of speech, always highly figurative, and often in-
comprehensible, kept the villagers from talking to him; but
they greatly respected a mind so far removed from the vulgar
routine; it commands the instinctive reverence of common
folk.
Wilfrid found David in the outer room apparently asleep,
close to the stove. Like a dog recognizing a friend's approach,
the old man opened his eyes, saw the stranger, and did not
stir.
"Well, where is she?"' asked Wilfrid, sitting down by the
old man.
David fluttered his fingers in the air to represent the flight
of a bird.
"She is not still in pain ?" asked Wilfrid.
"None but those beings who are plighted to heaven can
suffer without any diminution of their love; that is the seal of
true faith," said the old man gravely, like an instrument re-
sponding to a chance touch.
"Who tells you to say that?"
"The spirit."
"What happened, after all, last evening? Did you force
your way past the Vertiimni on guard? Did you steal in be-
tween the Mammons ?"
"I'es," replied David, waking as if from a dream.
78 SERAPHITA
The mist before his eye cleared off under a flash that came
from within, and which made it grow gradually as bright as
an eagle's, as intelligent as a poet's.
"What then did you see?" asked Wilfrid, amazed at this
sudden change.
"I saw Species and Shapes, I heard the Spirit of All
Things; I saw the Eebellion of the Wicked, I listened to the
words of the Good. Seven devils appeared, seven archangels
came down to them. The archangels stood afar, they were
veiled, and looked on. The devils were close at hand, they
glittered and moved. Mammon was there in a shell of pearl,
in the guise of a beautiful naked woman; his body was as
dazzling as the snow, no human form can be so perfect; and
he said, 'I am all pleasure, and thou shalt possess me I' —
Lucifer, the Prince of Serpents, came in his royal attire;
he was as a man, as beautiful as an angel, and he said, 'The
human race shall serve thee !' — The Queen of the Covetous,
she who never restores that which she has taken — the Sea
herself appeared in her mantle of green; she opened her
bosom and showed her store of gems, she vomited treasures
and offered them as a gift; she tossed up waves of sapphire
and emerald; her creatures were disturbed, they came forth
from their hiding-places and spoke; the fairest of the pearls
spread butterflies' wings, she listened, and spoke in sea-
melodies, saying, 'We are both daughters of suffering, we
are sisters; wait for me; we will fly together; I have only
to be changed into a woman.' The bird that has the talons
of an eagle and the legs of a lion, the head of a woman and
a horse's quarters — the Animal — crouched before her and
licked her feet, and promised seven hundred years of plenty
to this well-beloved daughter.
"The most formidable of all, the Child, came to her very
knee, weeping, and saying, 'Can you forsake me, so feeble
and helpless ? Mother, stay with me !' He played with
the others, he shed idleness in the air; heaven itself might
have yielded to his lament. The Virgin of pure song brought
music that debauches the soul. The Kings of the East passed
SERAPHITA T9
by with their slaves, their armies, and their women; the
Wounded clamored for help, the Wretched held out their
hands : 'Do not leave us, do not leave us !' was their cry.
"I too cried, 'Do not leave us ; we will worship, you — only
stay !'
"Flowers burst from their seeds, and wrapped her in per-
fume, which said, 'Stay !' The Giant Anakim cime down
from Jupiter, bringing Gold and his comrades, and all the
Spirits of the astral worlds who had followed him, and they
all said, 'We will be thine for seven hundred years.' At last
Death got off his pale horse and said, 'I will obey thee I' And
they all fell on their faces at her feet ; if you could but have
seen them ! They filled a vast plain, and all cried to her,
'We have fed thee ; thou art our child ; do not forsake us !'
"Life came up from the red waters and said, 'I will not
desert thee !' Then, finding Seraphita speechless, she sud-
denly blazed like the sun, and exclaimed, 'I am the Light !' —
'The light is there !' replied Seraphita, pointing to clouds"
where the archangels were astir. But she was worn out;
Desire had broken her on the rack; she could only cry aloud,
'My God!'
"How many Angelic Spirits who have climbed the hill,
and are on the point of reaching the summit, have stumbled
on a stone that has made them fall . and roll back into the
depths! — All these fallen Spirits marveled at her constancy;
they stood there a motionless chorus, weeping, and saying,
'Courage !' At last she had triumphed over Desire, un-
chained to rend her in every Shape and Species. She re-
mained praying; and when she raised her eyes, she saw the
feet of the angels flying back to heaven."
"She saw the feet of the angels?" repeated Wilfrid.
"Yes," said the old man.
"This was a dream that she told you ?" asked Wilfrid.
"A dream as real as that you are alive," replied David.
"I was there."
The old servant's calm conviction struck Wilfrid, who
went away, wondering whether these visions were at all less
80 SERAPHITA
extraordinary than those of which Swedenborg wrote, and of
which he had read the evening before.
"If spirits exist, they must surely act," said he to himself
as he went into the manse, where he found the pastor alone.
"My dear pastor," said he, "Seraphita is human only in
form, and her form is unaccountable. Do not regard me
as mad or in love : conviction cannot be argued away. Con-
vert my belief into a scientific hypothesis, and let us try to,
understand all this. To-morrow we will go to see her to-
gether."
"And then?" said the minister.
"If her e^'e knows no limitation of space, if her thought
is the sight of the intellect, allowing her to apprehend the
essence of things and to connect them with the general evolu-
tion of the universe; if, in a word, she knows and sees every-
thing, let us get the Pythoness onto her tripod, and compel
the eagle to spread its wings, by threats. Help me ! I breathe
a consuming fire ; I must extinguish it, or be devoured by it.
In short, I see my prey; I will have it."
"It will be a conquest difficult of achievement," said the
minister, "for the poor girl is "
"Is?" said Wilfrid.
"Mad," said the pastor.
"I will not dispute her madness," said Wilfrid, "so long as
you do not dispute her superiority. Dear Pastor Becker, she
has often put me to the blush by her learning. Has she
traveled much?"
"From her house to the fiord."
"She has never been away!" cried Wilfrid. "Then she
must have read a great deal ?"
"Not a page, not a jot. I am the only person in Jarvis
ivho has any books. Swedenborg's writings, the only works
in the hamlet, are here; she has never borrowed a single vol-
ume."
"Have vou ever tried to converse with her ?"
"Of what use would it be ?"
"No one has dwelt under her roof?"
SERAPHITA 81
•'She has no friends but you and Minna; no servant but
old David."
"And she has never learned anything of Science or Art?"
"From whom ?" said the pastor.
"Then, when she discusses such matters very pertinently,
as she has often done with me, what would you infer?"
"That the girl may, perhaps, during all these years of
silence, have acquired such faculties as were possessed by
Apollonius of Tyana, and by certain so-called wizards, who
were burned by the Inquisition, which rejected the idea of
second sight."
"When she talks Arabic, what can you say?"
"The history of medicine contains many accredited in-
stances of women who spoke languages they did not under-
stand."
"What can I do?" said Wilfrid. "She knows things con-
cerning my past life of which the secret lay in me."
"We will see if she can tell me any thoughts that I have
never spoken to any one," said Pastor Becker.
Minna came into the room.
"Well, my child, and how is your Spirit-friend?"
"He is suffering, father," said she, bowing to Wilfrid.
"The passions of humanity, tricked out in their false splen-
dor, tortured him in the night, and spread incredible pomp
before his eyes. — But you treat all these things as mere
fables."
"Fables as delightful to him who reads them in his brain
as those of the Arahiaii Nights are to ordinary minds," said
her father, smiling.
"Then, did not Satan," she retorted, "transport the Saviour
to the summit of the Temple and show Him the kingdoms at
His feet?"
"The Evangelists," replied Becker, "did not so effectually
correct their text but that several versions exist."
"You, then, believe in the reality of these apparitions?"
Wilfrid asked of Minna.
"Who can doubt that hears him tell of them ?"
82 SBRAPHITA
"Him?— Who?" asked Wilfrid.
"He who dwells there," said Minna, pointing to the castle.
"You speak of Seraphita?" said Wilfrid, surprised.
The girl hung her head, with a gentle but mischievous
glance at him.
"Yes, you too take pleasure in confusing my mind. — Who
is she? What is your idea of her?"
"What I feel is inexplicable," said Minna, coloring.
"You are both mad !" said the pastor.
"Then we meet to-morrow," said Wilfrid, as he left.
IV
THE CLOUDS OF THE SAjSTCTUARY
There are spectacles to which all the material magnificence
at man's command is made to contribute. Whole tribes of
slaves or divers go forth to seek in the sands of the sea, in
the bowels of the rocks, the pearls and diamonds that adorn
the spectators. These treasures, handed down from heir to
heir, have blazed on crowned heads, and might be the most
veracious historians' of humanity if they could but speak.
Have they not seen the joys and woes of the greatest as well
as of the humblest ? They have been everywhere — worn with
pride at high festivals; carried in despair to the money-
lender; stolen amid blood and pillage; treasured in miracles
of artistic workmanship contrived for their safe keeping.
Excepting Cleopatra's pearl, not one has perished.
The great and the rich are assembled to see a king crowned
— a monarch whose raiment is the work of men's hands, but
who, in all his glory, is arrayed in purple less exquisite than
that of a humble flower. These festivities, blazing with light,
bathed in music through which the words of men strive to be
heard in thunder, — all these works of man can be crushed
by a thought, a feeling. The mind of man can bring
SERAPH IT A 83
to his ken light more glorious, can make him hear more tune-
ful harmonies, show him among clouds the glittering con-
stellations he may question ; and the heart can do yet more !
Man may stand face to face with a single being and find in a
single word, a single look, a burden so heavy to be borne, a
light so intense, a sound so piercing, that he can but yield
and kneel. The truest splendors are not in outward things,
but in ourselves.
To a learned man, is not some secret of science a whole new
world of wonders? But do the clarions of force, the gems
of wealth, the music of triumph, the concourse of the crowd,
do honor to his joy? ISTo. He goes off to some remote nook,
where a man, often pale and feeble, v/hispers a single word
in his car. That word, like a torch in an underground pas-
sage, lights up the whole of science.
Every human conception, arrayed in the most attractive
forms that mystery can invent, once gathered round a blind
man sitting in the mud by a roadside. The three worlds —
the Natural, Spiritual, and Divine — were revealed to an un-
happy Florentine exile; as he went he was escorted by the
happy and by the suffering, by those who prayed and those
who cursed, by angels and by the damned. When He who
came from God, who knew and could do all things, appeared
to three of His disciples, it was one evening at the common
table of a poor little inn ; there and then the Light broke
forth, bursting material husks, and showing its spiritual
power. They saw Him in His glory, and the earth clung to
their feet no more than as the sandals they could slip off them.
The pastor, Wilfrid, and Minna were all three excited to
alarm at going to the house of the extraordinary being they
proposed to question. To each of them the Swedish castle
was magnified into the scene of a stupendous spectacle, like
those of which the composition and color are so skilfully ar-
ranged by poets, where the actors, though imaginary to men,
are real to those who are beginning to enter into the spiritual
world. On the seats of that amphitheatre the pastor beheld
arrayed the dark legions of doubt, his gloomy ideas, his vicious
84 SERAPHITA
syllogisms in argument ; he called up t]ie various philosophical
and religious sects, ever contentious, Jind all embodied in the
shape of a fleshless system, as lean as the figure of Time as
imagined b}^ man — the old mower who with one hand raises
the scythe, and in the other carries a meagre world, the world
of human life.
Wilfrid saw there his first illusions and his last hopes; he
imagined human destin}^ incarnate there and all its struggles;
religion and its triumphant hierarchies.
Minna vaguely found heaven there, seen through a vista;
love held up a curtain embroidered with mystical figures, and
the harmonious sounds that fell on her ears increased her
curiosity. Hence this evening was to them what the supper
at Emmaus was to the three travelers, what a vision was to
Dante, what an inspiration was to Homer; to them, too, the
three aspects of the world were to he revealed, veils rent,
doubts dispelled, darkness lightened. Human nature in all
its phases, and awaiting illumination, could find no better
representatives than this young girl, this man, and these
two elders, one of them learned enough to be sceptical, the
other ignorant enough to believe. No scene could be simpler
in appearance or more stupendous in fact.
On entering, shown in by old David, they found Seraphita
standing by the table, on which were spread the various items
constituting a Tea, a meal which takes the place in the north
of the pleasures of wine-drinking, reserved for southern lands.
Nothing certainly betrayed in her — or in him — a wondrous
being who had the power of appearing under two distinct
forms, nothing that showed the various forces she could com-
mand. With a homely desire to make her three guests com-
fortable, Seraphita bid David to feed the stove with wood.
"Good-evening, neighbors," said she. "Dear Pastor Becker,
you did well to come ; you see me alive, perhaps, for the last
time. This winter has killed me. — Be seated, pray," she
added to Wilfrid. — "And you, Minna, sit there," and she
pointed to an armchair near the young man. "You have
brought your work, I see. Did you find out the stitch ? ' The
SERAPHITA 85
pattern is ver}' pretty. For whom is it to be? For your
father or for this gentleman?" and she turned to Wilfrid.
"We must not allow him to leave without, some remembrance
of the damsels of Norway."
"Then you were in pain again yesterday?" asked Wilfrid.
"That is nothing," she replied. "Such pain makes me
glad ; it is indispensable to escape from life."
"Then you are not afraid of dying?" said the minister,
smiling, for he did not believe in her illness.
"Xo, dear pastor; there are two ways of dying — to some
death means victory, to some it is defeat."
"And you think you have won ?" said Minna.
"I do not know," said she. "Perhaps it is only a step
more."
The milky radiance of her brow seemed to fade, her eyes
fell under her lids, which slowly closed. This simple cir-
cumstance distressed the three inquirers, who sat quite still.
The pastor was the boldest.
"My dear girl," said he, "you are candor itself; you are
also divinely kind. I want more of you this evening than
the dainties of your tea-table. If we may believe what some
people say, you know some most wonderful things ; and if so,
would it not be an act of charity to clear up some of our
doubts ?"
"Oh yes !" said Seraphita, with a smile. "They say that
I walk on the clouds; I am on familiar terms with the eddies
in the fiord; the sea is a horse I have saddled and bridled;
I know where the singing flower grows, where the talking
light shines, where living colors blaze that scent the air; I
have Solomon's ring; I am a fairy; I give my orders to the
wind, and it obeys me like a submissive slave; I can see the
treasures in the mine; I am the virgin whom pearls rush to
meet, and "
' "And we walk unharmed on the Falberg," Minna put in.
"What, you too ?" replied the Being with a luminous glance
at the girl, which quite upset her. "If I had not the power
of reading through your brows the wish that has brought you
86 SERAPHITA
here, should I be what you think I am?" she went on, in-
chiding them all in her captivating gaze, to David's great
satisfaction, and he went off rubbing his hands. — "Yes," she
went on after a pause, "you all came overflowing with childish
curiosity. You, my dear pastor, wondered whether it were
possible that a girl of seventeen should know even one of the
thousand secrets which learned men seek diligently with their
noses to the ground instead of with their eyes raised to
heaven ! Now, if I were to show you how and where plant
life and animal life mingle, you would begin to doubt your
doubts. — You plotted to cross-question me, confess?"
"Yes, beloved Seraphita," said Wilfrid. "But is not such
a desire natural to man ?"
"And do you want to worry this child?" she said, laying
her hand on Minna's hair with a caressing gesture.
The girl looked up, and seemed to long to be merged in the
Being before her.
"The word is given for all," the mysterious Being went
on very gravely. "Woe to him who should keep silence even
in the midst of the desert, thinking that none would hear.
Everything speaks, everything hears here below. The word
moves worlds. — I hope, Pastor Becker, not to speak in vain.
I know what difficulties trouble you most : would it not be a
miracle if I could at once apprehend all the past experiences
of your conscience ? Well, that miracle will be accomplished.
— Listen to me : you have never confessed your doubts in their
full extent; I alone, immovable in my faith, can set them
before you, and frighten you at your own image. You are
on the darkest declivity of doubt. Yoii do not believe in
God, and everything on earth is of secondary importance
to the man who attacks the first cause of everything.
"Let us set aside the discussions thrashed out without re-'
suit by false philosophers. Generations of Spiritualists have
made no less vain efforts to disprove the existence of matter
than generations of Materialists have made to disprove the
existence of the Spirit. Wliy these contests ? Does not man,
as he is, afford undeniable proofs of both? Is he not an
SERAPHITA 87
union of matter and spirit? Only a madman can refuse to
find an atom of matter in the human frame; when it is de-
composed, natural science finds no difference between its ele-
ments and those of other animals. The idea which is pro-
duced in man by the power of comparing several different
objects, on the other hand, does not seem to come within the
domain of matter. On this I give no opinion ; we have to deal
with your doubts, not with my convictions.
"But to you, as to most thoughtful men, the relations
which you have the faculty of discerning between things,
of which the real existence is made certain to you through
your senses, do not, I suppose, seem material. The natural
Universe, then, of things and beings meets in man with the
supernatural Universe of likeness or difference which he can
discern between the innumerable forms in nature — relations
so various that they seem to be infinite ; for if, till the present
day, no one has been able to enumerate the created things
of this earth only, what man can ever enumerate their rela-
tions to each other? Is not the small fraction with which
you are familiar, in regard to the grand total, as an unit to the
infinite?
"Hence here you find yourself already made aware of the
existence of the infinite, and this necessarily leads you to con-
ceive of a purely spiritual sphere. Hence, too, man is in
himself sufficient evidence of these two modes of life : Matter
and Spirit. In him ends a finite, visible universe; in him
begins an infinite and invisible universe — two worlds that
do not know each other. Have the pebbles of the fiord
any cognizance of their relative shapes, are they conscious
of the colors seen in them by the eye of man, do they hear the
music of the ripples that dance over them ? Let us then
leap the gulf we cannot fathom, the unthinkable union of a
material with a spiritual universe, the concept of a visible,
ponderable, tangible creation, conterminous with an invisible,
imponderable, intangible creation; absolutely dissimilar,
separated by a void, united by indisputable points of contact,
and meeting in a being who belongs to both ! Let us, I say.
88 SEKAPHITA
mingle in one world these two worlds, which, in your philoso-
phy, can never coalesce, and which, in fact, do coalesce.
'"However abstract man may call it, the relation which
binds two things together must stamp its mark. Where?
On what? We have not now to inquire to what degree of
rarity matter may be reduced. If that were indeed the ques-
tion, I do not see. why He who has linked the stars together
at immeasurable distances by physical laws, to veil His face
withal, should not have created substances that could think,
nor why you will not allow that He should have given thought
a body.
"To you, then, your invisible, moral, or mental universe,
and your visible, physical universe, constitute one and the
same matter. We will not divide bodies from their prop-
erties, nor objects from their relations. Everything that
exists, that weighs upon and overwhelms us from above and
beneath us, before us or within us; all that our eyes or our
minds apprehend, all that is named or nameless, must, to
reduce the problem of Creation to the standard of your
logic, be a finite mass of matter; if it were infinite, God
could not be its master. Thus, according to you, dear pastor,
by whatever scheme you propose to introduce God, who is
infinite, into this finite mass of matter, God could no longer
exist with such attributes as are ascribed to Him by man.
If we seek Him through facts. He is not; if we seek Him
through reason, still He is not; both spiritually and ma-
terially God is impossible. Let us hearken to the word of
human reason driven to its utmost consequences.
"If we now conceive of God face to face with this stupen-
dous whole, we find only two conditions of relationship pos-
sible: Either God and Matter were contemporaneous, or
God was alone and pre-existent. If all the wisdom that
has enlightened the human race from the first day of its ex-
istence could be collected in one vast brain, that monstrous
brain could invent no third mode of being, short of denying