



Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





SERAPHITA


By Honore De Balzac



Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley



                            DEDICATION

  To Madame Eveline de Hanska, nee Comtesse Rzewuska.

  Madame,--Here is the work which you asked of me. I am happy, in
  thus dedicating it, to offer you a proof of the respectful
  affection you allow me to bear you. If I am reproached for
  impotence in this attempt to draw from the depths of mysticism a
  book which seeks to give, in the lucid transparency of our
  beautiful language, the luminous poesy of the Orient, to you the
  blame! Did you not command this struggle (resembling that of
  Jacob) by telling me that the most imperfect sketch of this
  Figure, dreamed of by you, as it has been by me since childhood,
  would still be something to you?

  Here, then, it is,--that something. Would that this book could
  belong exclusively to noble spirits, preserved like yours from
  worldly pettiness by solitude! THEY would know how to give to it
  the melodious rhythm that it lacks, which might have made it, in
  the hands of a poet, the glorious epic that France still awaits.
  But from me they must accept it as one of those sculptured
  balustrades, carved by a hand of faith, on which the pilgrims
  lean, in the choir of some glorious church, to think upon the end
  of man.

  I am, madame, with respect,
  Your devoted servant,
  De Balzac.




SERAPHITA




CHAPTER I. SERAPHITUS


As the eye glances over a map of the coasts of Norway, can the
imagination fail to marvel at their fantastic indentations and serrated
edges, like a granite lace, against which the surges of the North Sea
roar incessantly? Who has not dreamed of the majestic sights to be seen
on those beachless shores, of that multitude of creeks and inlets and
little bays, no two of them alike, yet all trackless abysses? We may
almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable
hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts
the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the staple commerce of
the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men who
cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen
degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain
existence. Thanks to perils devoid of glory, to year-long snows which
clothe the Norway peaks and guard them from profaning foot of traveller,
these sublime beauties are virgin still; they will be seen to harmonize
with human phenomena, also virgin--at least to poetry--which here took
place, the history of which it is our purpose to relate.

If one of these inlets, mere fissures to the eyes of the eider-ducks, is
wide enough for the sea not to freeze between the prison-walls of
rock against which it surges, the country-people call the little bay
a "fiord,"--a word which geographers of every nation have adopted into
their respective languages. Though a certain resemblance exists
among all these fiords, each has its own characteristics. The sea has
everywhere forced its way as through a breach, yet the rocks about each
fissure are diversely rent, and their tumultuous precipices defy the
rules of geometric law. Here the scarp is dentelled like a saw; there
the narrow ledges barely allow the snow to lodge or the noble crests of
the Northern pines to spread themselves; farther on, some convulsion of
Nature may have rounded a coquettish curve into a lovely valley flanked
in rising terraces with black-plumed pines. Truly we are tempted to call
this land the Switzerland of Ocean.

Midway between Trondhjem and Christiansand lies an inlet called the
Strom-fiord. If the Strom-fiord is not the loveliest of these rocky
landscapes, it has the merit of displaying the terrestrial grandeurs
of Norway, and of enshrining the scenes of a history that is indeed
celestial.

The general outline of the Strom-fiord seems at first sight to be that
of a funnel washed out by the sea. The passage which the waves have
forced present to the eye an image of the eternal struggle between old
Ocean and the granite rock,--two creations of equal power, one through
inertia, the other by ceaseless motion. Reefs of fantastic shape run out
on either side, and bar the way of ships and forbid their entrance. The
intrepid sons of Norway cross these reefs on foot, springing from rock
to rock, undismayed at the abyss--a hundred fathoms deep and only six
feet wide--which yawns beneath them. Here a tottering block of gneiss
falling athwart two rocks gives an uncertain footway; there the
hunters or the fishermen, carrying their loads, have flung the stems of
fir-trees in guise of bridges, to join the projecting reefs, around and
beneath which the surges roar incessantly. This dangerous entrance to
the little bay bears obliquely to the right with a serpentine movement,
and there encounters a mountain rising some twenty-five hundred feet
above sea-level, the base of which is a vertical palisade of solid
rock more than a mile and a half long, the inflexible granite nowhere
yielding to clefts or undulations until it reaches a height of two
hundred feet above the water. Rushing violently in, the sea is driven
back with equal violence by the inert force of the mountain to the
opposite shore, gently curved by the spent force of the retreating
waves.

The fiord is closed at the upper end by a vast gneiss formation crowned
with forests, down which a river plunges in cascades, becomes a torrent
when the snows are melting, spreads into a sheet of waters, and then
falls with a roar into the bay,--vomiting as it does so the hoary pines
and the aged larches washed down from the forests and scarce seen amid
the foam. These trees plunge headlong into the fiord and reappear after
a time on the surface, clinging together and forming islets which float
ashore on the beaches, where the inhabitants of a village on the left
bank of the Strom-fiord gather them up, split, broken (though sometimes
whole), and always stripped of bark and branches. The mountain which
receives at its base the assaults of Ocean, and at its summit the
buffeting of the wild North wind, is called the Falberg. Its crest,
wrapped at all seasons in a mantle of snow and ice, is the sharpest peak
of Norway; its proximity to the pole produces, at the height of eighteen
hundred feet, a degree of cold equal to that of the highest mountains of
the globe. The summit of this rocky mass, rising sheer from the fiord
on one side, <DW72>s gradually downward to the east, where it joins the
declivities of the Sieg and forms a series of terraced valleys, the
chilly temperature of which allows no growth but that of shrubs and
stunted trees.

The upper end of the fiord, where the waters enter it as they come down
from the forest, is called the Siegdahlen,--a word which may be held to
mean "the shedding of the Sieg,"--the river itself receiving that name.
The curving shore opposite to the face of the Falberg is the valley
of Jarvis,--a smiling scene overlooked by hills clothed with firs,
birch-trees, and larches, mingled with a few oaks and beeches, the
richest coloring of all the varied tapestries which Nature in these
northern regions spreads upon the surface of her rugged rocks. The eye
can readily mark the line where the soil, warmed by the rays of the sun,
bears cultivation and shows the native growth of the Norwegian flora.
Here the expanse of the fiord is broad enough to allow the sea, dashed
back by the Falberg, to spend its expiring force in gentle murmurs upon
the lower <DW72> of these hills,--a shore bordered with finest sand,
strewn with mica and sparkling pebbles, porphyry, and marbles of a
thousand tints, brought from Sweden by the river floods, together with
ocean waifs, shells, and flowers of the sea driven in by tempests,
whether of the Pole or Tropics.

At the foot of the hills of Jarvis lies a village of some two hundred
wooden houses, where an isolated population lives like a swarm of bees
in a forest, without increasing or diminishing; vegetating happily,
while wringing their means of living from the breast of a stern Nature.
The almost unknown existence of the little hamlet is readily accounted
for. Few of its inhabitants were bold enough to risk their lives
among the reefs to reach the deep-sea fishing,--the staple industry of
Norwegians on the least dangerous portions of their coast. The fish of
the fiord were numerous enough to suffice, in part at least, for the
sustenance of the inhabitants; the valley pastures provided milk and
butter; a certain amount of fruitful, well-tilled soil yielded rye
and hemp and vegetables, which necessity taught the people to protect
against the severity of the cold and the fleeting but terrible heat of
the sun with the shrewd ability which Norwegians display in the two-fold
struggle. The difficulty of communication with the outer world, either
by land where the roads are impassable, or by sea where none but tiny
boats can thread their way through the maritime defiles that guard the
entrance to the bay, hinder these people from growing rich by the sale
of their timber. It would cost enormous sums to either blast a channel
out to sea or construct a way to the interior. The roads from Christiana
to Trondhjem all turn toward the Strom-fiord, and cross the Sieg by a
bridge some score of miles above its fall into the bay. The country to
the north, between Jarvis and Trondhjem, is covered with impenetrable
forests, while to the south the Falberg is nearly as much separated
from Christiana by inaccessible precipices. The village of Jarvis might
perhaps have communicated with the interior of Norway and Sweden by
the river Sieg; but to do this and to be thus brought into contact with
civilization, the Strom-fiord needed the presence of a man of genius.
Such a man did actually appear there,--a poet, a Swede of great
religious fervor, who died admiring, even reverencing this region as one
of the noblest works of the Creator.

Minds endowed by study with an inward sight, and whose quick perceptions
bring before the soul, as though painted on a canvas, the contrasting
scenery of this universe, will now apprehend the general features of
the Strom-fiord. They alone, perhaps, can thread their way through the
tortuous channels of the reef, or flee with the battling waves to the
everlasting rebuff of the Falberg whose white peaks mingle with the
vaporous clouds of the pearl-gray sky, or watch with delight the curving
sheet of waters, or hear the rushing of the Sieg as it hangs for an
instant in long fillets and then falls over a picturesque abatis of
noble trees toppled confusedly together, sometimes upright, sometimes
half-sunken beneath the rocks. It may be that such minds alone can dwell
upon the smiling scenes nestling among the lower hills of Jarvis; where
the luscious Northern vegetables spring up in families, in myriads,
where the white birches bend, graceful as maidens, where colonnades
of beeches rear their boles mossy with the growth of centuries, where
shades of green contrast, and white clouds float amid the blackness of
the distant pines, and tracts of many-tinted crimson and purple shrubs
are shaded endlessly; in short, where blend all colors, all perfumes of
a flora whose wonders are still ignored. Widen the boundaries of this
limited ampitheatre, spring upward to the clouds, lose yourself among
the rocks where the seals are lying and even then your thought cannot
compass the wealth of beauty nor the poetry of this Norwegian coast.
Can your thought be as vast as the ocean that bounds it? as weird as
the fantastic forms drawn by these forests, these clouds, these shadows,
these changeful lights?

Do you see above the meadows on that lowest <DW72> which undulates around
the higher hills of Jarvis two or three hundred houses roofed with
"noever," a sort of thatch made of birch-bark,--frail houses, long and
low, looking like silk-worms on a mulberry-leaf tossed hither by the
winds? Above these humble, peaceful dwellings stands the church, built
with a simplicity in keeping with the poverty of the villagers. A
graveyard surrounds the chancel, and a little farther on you see
the parsonage. Higher up, on a projection of the mountain is a
dwelling-house, the only one of stone; for which reason the inhabitants
of the village call it "the Swedish Castle." In fact, a wealthy Swede
settled in Jarvis about thirty years before this history begins, and did
his best to ameliorate its condition. This little house, certainly not
a castle, built with the intention of leading the inhabitants to build
others like it, was noticeable for its solidity and for the wall that
inclosed it, a rare thing in Norway where, notwithstanding the abundance
of stone, wood alone is used for all fences, even those of fields.
This Swedish house, thus protected against the climate, stood on rising
ground in the centre of an immense courtyard. The windows were sheltered
by those projecting pent-house roofs supported by squared trunks of
trees which give so patriarchal an air to Northern dwellings. From
beneath them the eye could see the savage nudity of the Falberg, or
compare the infinitude of the open sea with the tiny drop of water in
the foaming fiord; the ear could hear the flowing of the Sieg, whose
white sheet far away looked motionless as it fell into its granite
cup edged for miles around with glaciers,--in short, from this vantage
ground the whole landscape whereon our simple yet superhuman drama was
about to be enacted could be seen and noted.

The winter of 1799-1800 was one of the most severe ever known to
Europeans. The Norwegian sea was frozen in all the fiords, where, as a
usual thing, the violence of the surf kept the ice from forming. A wind,
whose effects were like those of the Spanish levanter, swept the ice of
the Strom-fiord, driving the snow to the upper end of the gulf. Seldom
indeed could the people of Jarvis see the mirror of frozen waters
reflecting the colors of the sky; a wondrous site in the bosom of
these mountains when all other aspects of nature are levelled beneath
successive sheets of snow, and crests and valleys are alike mere
folds of the vast mantle flung by winter across a landscape at once so
mournfully dazzling and so monotonous. The falling volume of the Sieg,
suddenly frozen, formed an immense arcade beneath which the inhabitants
might have crossed under shelter from the blast had any dared to risk
themselves inland. But the dangers of every step away from their own
surroundings kept even the boldest hunters in their homes, afraid lest
the narrow paths along the precipices, the clefts and fissures among the
rocks, might be unrecognizable beneath the snow.

Thus it was that no human creature gave life to the white desert where
Boreas reigned, his voice alone resounding at distant intervals. The
sky, nearly always gray, gave tones of polished steel to the ice of the
fiord. Perchance some ancient eider-duck crossed the expanse, trusting
to the warm down beneath which dream, in other lands, the luxurious
rich, little knowing of the dangers through which their luxury has come
to them. Like the Bedouin of the desert who darts alone across the sands
of Africa, the bird is neither seen nor heard; the torpid atmosphere,
deprived of its electrical conditions, echoes neither the whirr of its
wings nor its joyous notes. Besides, what human eye was strong enough to
bear the glitter of those pinnacles adorned with sparkling crystals, or
the sharp reflections of the snow, iridescent on the summits in the rays
of a pallid sun which infrequently appeared, like a dying man seeking to
make known that he still lives. Often, when the flocks of gray clouds,
driven in squadrons athwart the mountains and among the tree-tops, hid
the sky with their triple veils Earth, lacking the celestial lights, lit
herself by herself.

Here, then, we meet the majesty of Cold, seated eternally at the pole
in that regal silence which is the attribute of all absolute monarchy.
Every extreme principle carries with it an appearance of negation and
the symptoms of death; for is not life the struggle of two forces? Here
in this Northern nature nothing lived. One sole power--the unproductive
power of ice--reigned unchallenged. The roar of the open sea no longer
reached the deaf, dumb inlet, where during one short season of the year
Nature made haste to produce the slender harvests necessary for the food
of the patient people. A few tall pine-trees lifted their black pyramids
garlanded with snow, and the form of their long branches and depending
shoots completed the mourning garments of those solemn heights.

Each household gathered in its chimney-corner, in houses carefully
closed from the outer air, and well supplied with biscuit, melted
butter, dried fish, and other provisions laid in for the seven-months
winter. The very smoke of these dwellings was hardly seen, half-hidden
as they were beneath the snow, against the weight of which they were
protected by long planks reaching from the roof and fastened at some
distance to solid blocks on the ground, forming a covered way around
each building.

During these terrible winter months the women spun and dyed the woollen
stuffs and the linen fabrics with which they clothed their families,
while the men read, or fell into those endless meditations which have
given birth to so many profound theories, to the mystic dreams of the
North, to its beliefs, to its studies (so full and so complete in one
science, at