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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Exiles, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Exiles
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Clara Bell and James Waring
+
+Release Date: September, 1999  [Etext #1884]
+Posting Date: March 5, 2010
+Last Updated: November 22, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXILES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+The Exiles
+
+
+By Honore de Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Clara Bell and James Waring
+
+
+
+
+
+ALMAE SORORI
+
+
+In the year 1308 few houses were yet standing on the Island formed by
+the alluvium and sand deposited by the Seine above the Cite, behind the
+Church of Notre-Dame. The first man who was so bold as to build on this
+strand, then liable to frequent floods, was a constable of the watch
+of the City of Paris, who had been able to do some service to their
+Reverences the Chapter of the Cathedral; and in return the Bishop leased
+him twenty-five perches of land, with exemptions from all feudal dues or
+taxes on the buildings he might erect.
+
+Seven years before the beginning of this narrative, Joseph Tirechair,
+one of the sternest of Paris constables, as his name (Tear Flesh) would
+indicate, had, thanks to his share of the fines collected by him for
+delinquencies committed within the precincts of the Cite, had been able
+to build a house on the bank of the Seine just at the end of the Rue du
+Port-Saint-Landry. To protect the merchandise landed on the strand, the
+municipality had constructed a sort of break-water of masonry, which may
+still be seen on some old plans of Paris, and which preserved the piles
+of the landing-place by meeting the rush of water and ice at the upper
+end of the Island. The constable had taken advantage of this for the
+foundation of his house, so that there were several steps up to his
+door.
+
+Like all the houses of that date, this cottage was crowned by a peaked
+roof, forming a gable-end to the front, or half a diamond. To the great
+regret of historians, but two or three examples of such roofs survive in
+Paris. A round opening gave light to a loft, where the constable’s wife
+dried the linen of the Chapter, for she had the honor of washing for the
+Cathedral--which was certainly not a bad customer. On the first floor
+were two rooms, let to lodgers at a rent, one year with another, of
+forty sous _Parisis_ each, an exorbitant sum, that was however justified
+by the luxury Tirechair had lavished on their adornment. Flanders
+tapestry hung on the walls, and a large bed with a top valance of green
+serge, like a peasant’s bed, was amply furnished with mattresses, and
+covered with good sheets of fine linen. Each room had a stove called
+a _chauffe-doux_; the floor, carefully polished by Dame Tirechair’s
+apprentices, shone like the woodwork of a shrine. Instead of stools, the
+lodgers had deep chairs of carved walnut, the spoils probably of some
+raided castle. Two chests with pewter mouldings, and tables on
+twisted legs, completed the fittings, worthy of the most fastidious
+knights-banneret whom business might bring to Paris.
+
+The windows of those two rooms looked out on the river. From one you
+could only see the shores of the Seine, and the three barren islands, of
+which two were subsequently joined together to form the Ile Saint-Louis;
+the third was the Ile de Louviers. From the other could be seen, down a
+vista of the Port-Saint-Landry, the buildings on the Greve, the Bridge
+of Notre-Dame, with its houses, and the tall towers of the Louvre, but
+lately built by Philippe-Auguste to overlook the then poor and squalid
+town of Paris, which suggests so many imaginary marvels to the fancy of
+modern romancers.
+
+The ground floor of Tirechair’s house consisted of a large hall, where
+his wife’s business was carried on, through which the lodgers were
+obliged to pass on their way to their own rooms up a stairway like a
+mill-ladder. Behind this were a kitchen and a bedroom, with a view over
+the Seine. A tiny garden, reclaimed from the waters, displayed at the
+foot of this modest dwelling its beds of cabbages and onions, and a few
+rose-bushes, sheltered by palings, forming a sort of hedge. A little
+structure of lath and mud served as a kennel for a big dog, the
+indispensable guardian of so lonely a dwelling. Beyond this kennel was a
+little plot, where the hens cackled whose eggs were sold to the Canons.
+Here and there on this patch of earth, muddy or dry according to the
+whimsical Parisian weather, a few trees grew, constantly lashed by the
+wind, and teased and broken by the passer-by--willows, reeds, and tall
+grasses.
+
+The Eyot, the Seine, the landing-place, the house, were all overshadowed
+on the west by the huge basilica of Notre-Dame casting its cold gloom
+over the whole plot as the sun moved. Then, as now, there was not in all
+Paris a more deserted spot, a more solemn or more melancholy prospect.
+The noise of waters, the chanting of priests, or the piping of the wind,
+were the only sounds that disturbed this wilderness, where lovers would
+sometimes meet to discuss their secrets when the church-folds and clergy
+were safe in church at the services.
+
+
+
+One evening in April in the year 1308, Tirechair came home in a
+remarkably bad temper. For three days past everything had been in good
+order on the King’s highway. Now, as an officer of the peace, nothing
+annoyed him so much as to feel himself useless. He flung down his
+halbert in a rage, muttered inarticulate words as he pulled off his
+doublet, half red and half blue, and slipped on a shabby camlet jerkin.
+After helping himself from the bread-box to a hunch of bread, and
+spreading it with butter, he seated himself on a bench, looked round
+at his four whitewashed walls, counted the beams of the ceiling, made a
+mental inventory of the household goods hanging from the nails, scowled
+at the neatness which left him nothing to complain of, and looked at his
+wife, who said not a word as she ironed the albs and surplices from the
+sacristy.
+
+“By my halidom,” he said, to open the conversation, “I cannot think,
+Jacqueline, where you go to catch your apprenticed maids. Now, here is
+one,” he went on, pointing to a girl who was folding an altar-cloth,
+clumsily enough, it must be owned, “who looks to me more like a damsel
+rather free of her person than a sturdy country wench. Her hands are as
+white as a fine lady’s! By the Mass! and her hair smells of essences, I
+verily believe, and her hose are as find as a queen’s. By the two horns
+of Old Nick, matters please me but ill as I find them here.”
+
+The girl colored, and stole a look at Jacqueline, full of alarm not
+unmixed with pride. The mistress answered her glance with a smile, laid
+down her work, and turned to her husband.
+
+“Come now,” said she, in a sharp tone, “you need not harry me. Are you
+going to accuse me next of some underhand tricks? Patrol your roads
+as much as you please, but do not meddle here with anything but what
+concerns your sleeping in peace, drinking your wine, and eating what
+I set before you, or else, I warn you, I will have no more to do with
+keeping you healthy and happy. Let any one find me a happier man in all
+the town,” she went on, with a scolding grimace. “He has silver in his
+purse, a gable over the Seine, a stout halbert on one hand, an honest
+wife on the other, a house as clean and smart as a new pin! And he
+growls like a pilgrim smarting from Saint Anthony’s fire!”
+
+“Hey day!” exclaimed the sergeant of the watch, “do you fancy,
+Jacqueline, that I have any wish to see my house razed down, my halbert
+given to another, and my wife standing in the pillory?”
+
+Jacqueline and the dainty journeywoman turned pale.
+
+“Just tell me what you are driving at,” said the washerwoman sharply,
+“and make a clean breast of it. For some days, my man, I have observed
+that you have some maggot twisting in your poor brain. Come up, then,
+and have it all out. You must be a pretty coward indeed if you fear any
+harm when you have only to guard the common council and live under the
+protection of the Chapter! Their Reverences the Canons would lay the
+whole bishopric under an interdict if Jacqueline brought a complaint of
+the smallest damage.”
+
+As she spoke, she went straight up to her husband and took him by the
+arm.
+
+“Come with me,” she added, pulling him up and out on to the steps.
+
+When they were down by the water in their little garden, Jacqueline
+looked saucily in her husband’s face.
+
+“I would have you to know, you old gaby, that when my lady fair goes
+out, a piece of gold comes into our savings-box.”
+
+“Oh, ho!” said the constable, who stood silent and meditative before his
+wife. But he presently said, “Any way, we are done for.--What brings the
+dame to our house?”
+
+“She comes to see the well-favored young clerk who lives overhead,”
+ replied Jacqueline, looking up at the window that opened on to the vast
+landscape of the Seine valley.
+
+“The Devil’s in it!” cried the man. “For a few base crowns you have
+ruined me, Jacqueline. Is that an honest trade for a sergeant’s decent
+wife to ply? And, be she Countess or Baroness, the lady will not be able
+to get us out of the trap in which we shall find ourselves caught sooner
+or later. Shall we not have to square accounts with some puissant and
+offended husband? for, by the Mass, she is fair to look upon!”
+
+“But she is a widow, I tell you, gray gander! How dare you accuse your
+wife of foul play and folly? And the lady has never spoken a word to yon
+gentle clerk, she is content to look on him and think of him. Poor lad!
+he would be dead of starvation by now but for her, for she is as good as
+a mother to him. And he, the sweet cherub! it is as easy to cheat him as
+to rock a new-born babe. He believes his pence will last for ever, and
+he has eaten them through twice over in the past six months.”
+
+“Woman,” said the sergeant, solemnly pointing to the Place de Greve, “do
+you remember seeing, even from this spot, the fire in which they burnt
+the Danish woman the other day?”
+
+“What then?” said Jacqueline, in a fright.
+
+“What then?” echoed Tirechair. “Why, the two men who lodge with us smell
+of scorching. Neither Chapter nor Countess or Protector can serve them.
+Here is Easter come round; the year is ending; we must turn our company
+out of doors, and that at once. Do you think you can teach an old
+constable how to know a gallows-bird? Our two lodgers were on terms with
+la Porette, that heretic jade from Denmark or Norway, whose last cries
+you heard from here. She was a brave witch; she never blenched at the
+stake, which was proof enough of her compact with the Devil. I saw her
+as plain as I see you; she preached to the throng, and declared she was
+in heaven and could see God.
+
+“And since that, I tell you, I have never slept quietly in my bed.
+My lord, who lodges over us, is of a surety more of a wizard than a
+Christian. On my word as an officer, I shiver when that old man passes
+near me; he never sleeps of nights; if I wake, his voice is ringing
+like a bourdon of bells, and I hear him muttering incantations in the
+language of hell. Have you ever seen him eat an honest crust of bread
+or a hearth-cake made by a good Catholic baker? His brown skin has been
+scorched and tanned by hell-fires. Marry, and I tell you his eyes hold
+a spell like that of serpents. Jacqueline, I will have none of those two
+men under my roof. I see too much of the law not to know that it is well
+to have nothing to do with it.--You must get rid of our two lodgers; the
+elder because I suspect him; the youngster, because he is too pretty.
+They neither of them seem to me to keep Christian company. The boy
+is ever staring at the moon, the stars, and the clouds, like a wizard
+watching for the hour when he shall mount his broomstick; the other old
+rogue certainly makes some use of the poor boy for his black art. My
+house stands too close to the river as it is, and that risk of ruin is
+bad enough without bringing down fire from heaven, or the love affairs
+of a countess. I have spoken. Do not rebel.”
+
+In spite of her sway in the house, Jacqueline stood stupefied as she
+listened to the edict fulminated against his lodgers by the sergeant
+of the watch. She mechanically looked up at the window of the room
+inhabited by the old man, and shivered with horror as she suddenly
+caught sight of the gloomy, melancholy face, and the piercing eye that
+so affected her husband, accustomed as he was to dealing with criminals.
+
+At that period, great and small, priests and laymen, all trembled before
+the idea of any supernatural power. The word “magic” was as powerful as
+leprosy to root up feelings, break social ties, and freeze piety in the
+most generous soul. It suddenly struck the constable’s wife that she
+had never, in fact, seen either of her lodgers exercising any human
+function. Though the younger man’s voice was as sweet and melodious as
+the tones of a flute, she so rarely heard it that she was tempted to
+think his silence the result of a spell. As she recalled the strange
+beauty of that pink-and-white face, and saw in memory the fine hair and
+moist brilliancy of those eyes, she believed that they were indeed the
+artifices of the Devil. She remembered that for days at a time she
+had never heard the slightest sound from either room. Where were the
+strangers during all those hours?
+
+Suddenly the most singular circumstances recurred to her mind. She was
+completely overmastered by fear, and could even discern witchcraft in
+the rich lady’s interest in the young Godefroid, a poor orphan who had
+come from Flanders to study at the University of Paris. She hastily put
+her hand into one of her pockets, pulled out four livres of Tournay in
+large silver coinage, and looked at the pieces with an expression of
+avarice mingled with terror.
+
+“That, at any rate, is not false coin,” said she, showing the silver
+to her husband. “Besides,” she went on, “how can I turn them out after
+taking next year’s rent paid in advance?”
+
+“You had better inquire of the Dean of the Chapter,” replied Tirechair.
+“Is not it his business to tell us how we should deal with these
+extraordinary persons?”
+
+“Ay, truly extraordinary,” cried Jacqueline. “To think of their cunning;
+coming here under the very shadow of Notre-Dame! Still,” she went on,
+“or ever I ask the Dean, why not warn that fair and noble lady of the
+risk she runs?”
+
+As she spoke, Jacqueline went into the house with her husband, who had
+not missed a mouthful. Tirechair, as a man grown old in the tricks
+of his trade, affected to believe that the strange lady was in fact a
+work-girl; still, this assumed indifference could not altogether cloak
+the timidity of a courtier who respects a royal incognity. At this
+moment six was striking by the clock of Saint-Denis du Pas, a small
+church that stood between Notre-Dame and the Port-Saint-Landry--the
+first church erected in Paris, on the very spot where Saint-Denis was
+laid on the gridiron, as chronicles tell. The hour flew from steeple to
+tower all over the city. Then suddenly confused shouts were heard on
+the left bank of the Seine, behind Notre-Dame, in the quarter where the
+schools of the University harbored their swarms.
+
+At this signal, Jacqueline’s elder lodger began to move about his room.
+The sergeant, his wife, and the strange lady listened while he opened
+and shut his door, and the old man’s heavy step was heard on the steep
+stair. The constable’s suspicions gave such interest to the advent of
+this personage, that the lady was startled as she observed the strange
+expression of the two countenances before her. Referring the terrors
+of this couple to the youth she was protecting--as was natural in a
+lover--the young lady awaited, with some uneasiness, the event thus
+heralded by the fears of her so-called master and mistress.
+
+The old man paused for a moment on the threshold to scrutinize the three
+persons in the room, and seemed to be looking for his young companion.
+This glance of inquiry, unsuspicious as it was, agitated the three.
+Indeed, nobody, not even the stoutest man, could deny that Nature
+had bestowed exceptional powers on this being, who seemed almost
+supernatural. Though his eyes were somewhat deeply shaded by the wide
+sockets fringed with long eyebrows, they were set, like a kite’s eyes,
+in eyelids so broad, and bordered by so dark a circle sharply defined on
+his cheek, that they seemed rather prominent. These singular eyes had
+in them something indescribably domineering and piercing, which took
+possession of the soul by a grave and thoughtful look, a look as bright
+and lucid as that of a serpent or a bird, but which held one fascinated
+and crushed by the swift communication of some tremendous sorrow, or of
+some super-human power.
+
+Every feature was in harmony with this eye of lead and of fire, at once
+rigid and flashing, stern and calm. While in this eagle eye earthly
+emotions seemed in some sort extinct, the lean, parched face also bore
+traces of unhappy passions and great deeds done. The nose, which was
+narrow and aquiline, was so long that it seemed to hang on by the
+nostrils. The bones of the face were strongly marked by the long,
+straight wrinkles that furrowed the hollow cheeks. Every line in the
+countenance looked dark. It would suggest the bed of a torrent where
+the violence of former floods was recorded in the depth of the
+water-courses, which testified to some terrible, unceasing turmoil.
+Like the ripples left by the oars of a boat on the waters, deep lines,
+starting from each side of his nose, marked his face strongly, and
+gave an expression of bitter sadness to his mouth, which was firm and
+straight-lipped. Above the storm thus stamped on his countenance, his
+calm brow rose with what may be called boldness, and crowned it as with
+a marble dome.
+
+The stranger preserved that intrepid and dignified manner that is
+frequently habitual with men inured to disaster, and fitted by nature to
+stand unmoved before a furious mob and to face the greatest dangers. He
+seemed to move in a sphere apart, where he poised above humanity. His
+gestures, no less than his look, were full of irresistible power; his
+lean hands were those of a soldier; and if your own eyes were forced to
+fall before his piercing gaze, you were no less sure to tremble when by
+word or action he spoke to your soul. He moved in silent majesty that
+made him seem a king without his guard, a god without his rays.
+
+His dress emphasized the ideas suggested by the peculiarities of his
+mien and face. Soul, body, and garb were in harmony, and calculated to
+impress the coldest imagination. He wore a sort of sleeveless gown of
+black cloth, fastened in front, and falling to the calf, leaving the
+neck bare with no collar. His doublet and boots were likewise black.
+On his head was a black velvet cap like a priest’s, sitting in a close
+circle above his forehead, and not showing a single hair. It was the
+strictest mourning, the gloomiest habit a man could wear. But for a
+long sword that hung by his side from a leather belt which could be
+seen where his surcoat hung open, a priest would have hailed him as a
+brother. Though of no more than middle height, he appeared tall; and,
+looking him in the face he seemed a giant.
+
+“The clock has struck, the boat is waiting; will you not come?”
+
+At these words, spoken in bad French, but distinctly audible in the
+silence, a little noise was heard in the other top room, and the young
+man came down as lightly as a bird.
+
+When Godefroid appeared, the lady’s face turned crimson; she trembled,
+started, and covered her face with her white hands.
+
+Any woman might have shared her agitation at the sight of this youth of
+about twenty, of a form and stature so slender that at a first glance he
+might have been taken for a mere boy, or a young girl in disguise. His
+black cap--like the _beret_ worn by the Basque people--showed a brow
+as white as snow, where grace and innocence shone with an expression
+of divine sweetness--the light of a soul full of faith. A poet’s
+fancy would have seen there the star which, in some old tale, a mother
+entreats the fairy godmother to set on the forehead of an infant
+abandoned, like Moses, to the waves. Love lurked in the thousand fair
+curls that fell over his shoulders. His throat, truly a swan’s throat,
+was white and exquisitely round. His blue eyes, bright and liquid,
+mirrored the sky. His features and the mould of his brow were refined
+and delicate enough to enchant a painter. The bloom of beauty, which
+in a woman’s face causes men such indescribable delight, the exquisite
+purity of outline, the halo of light that bathes the features we love,
+were here combined with a masculine complexion, and with strength as
+yet but half developed, in the most enchanting contrast. His was one of
+those melodious countenances which even when silent speak and attract
+us. And yet, on marking it attentively, the incipient blight might have
+been detected which comes of a great thought or a passion, the faint
+yellow tinge that made him seem like a young leaf opening to the sun.
+
+No contrast could be greater or more startling than that seen in the
+companionship of these two men. It was like seeing a frail and graceful
+shrub that has grown from the hollow trunk of some gnarled willow,
+withered by age, blasted by lightning, standing decrepit; one of those
+majestic trees that painters love; the trembling sapling takes shelter
+there from storms. One was a god, the other was an angel; one the poet
+that feels, the other the poet that expresses--a prophet in sorrow, a
+levite in prayer.
+
+They went out together without speaking.
+
+“Did you mark how he called him to him?” cried the sergeant of the watch
+when the footsteps of the couple were no longer audible on the strand.
+“Are not they a demon and his familiar?”
+
+“Phooh!” puffed Jacqueline. “I felt smothered! I never marked our two
+lodgers so carefully. ‘Tis a bad thing for us women that the Devil can
+wear so fair a mien!”
+
+“Ay, cast some holy water on him,” said Tirechair, “and you will see him
+turn into a toad.--I am off to tell the office all about them.”
+
+On hearing this speech, the lady roused herself from the reverie into
+which she had sunk, and looked at the constable, who was donning his
+red-and-blue jacket.
+
+“Whither are you off to?” she asked.
+
+“To tell the justices that wizards are lodging in our house very much
+against our will.”
+
+The lady smiled.
+
+“I,” said she, “am the Comtesse de Mahaut,” and she rose with a dignity
+that took the man’s breath away. “Beware of bringing the smallest
+trouble on your guests. Above all, respect the old man; I have seen him
+in the company of your Lord the King, who entreated him courteously;
+you will be ill advised to trouble him in any way. As to my having been
+here--never breathe a word of it, as you value your life.”
+
+She said no more, but relapsed into thought.
+
+Presently she looked up, signed to Jacqueline, and together they went up
+into Godefroid’s room. The fair Countess looked at the bed, the carved
+chairs, the chest, the tapestry, the table, with a joy like that of
+the exile who sees on his return the crowded roofs of his native town
+nestling at the foot of a hill.
+
+“If you have not deceived me,” she said to Jacqueline, “I promise you a
+hundred crowns in gold.”
+
+“Behold, madame,” said the woman, “the poor angel is confiding--here is
+all his treasure.”
+
+As she spoke, Jacqueline opened a drawer in the table and showed some
+parchments.
+
+“God of mercy!” cried the Countess, snatching up a document that caught
+her eye, on which she read, _Gothofredus Comes Gantiacus_ (Godefroid,
+Count of Ghent).
+
+She dropped the parchment, and passed her hand over her brow; then,
+feeling, no doubt, that she had compromised herself by showing so much
+emotion, she recovered her cold demeanor.
+
+“I am satisfied,” said she.
+
+She went downstairs and out of the house. The constable and his wife
+stood in their doorway, and saw her take the path to the landing-place.
+
+A boat was moored hard by. When the rustle of the Countess’ approach was
+audible, a boatman suddenly stood up, helped the fair laundress to take
+her seat in it, and rowed with such strength as to make the boat fly
+like a swallow down the stream.
+
+“You are a sorry fellow,” said Jacqueline, giving the officer’s shoulder
+a familiar slap. “We have earned a hundred gold crowns this morning.”
+
+“I like harboring lords no better than harboring wizards. And I know
+not, of the two, which is the more like to bring us to the gallows,”
+ replied Tirechair, taking up his halbert. “I will go my rounds over by
+Champfleuri; God protect us, and send me to meet some pert jade out in
+her bravery of gold rings to glitter in the shade like a glow-worm!”
+
+Jacqueline, alone in the house, hastily went up to the unknown lord’s
+room to discover, if she could, some clue to this mysterious business.
+Like some learned men who give themselves infinite pains to complicate
+the clear and simple laws of nature, she had already invented a chaotic
+romance to account for the meeting of these three persons under her
+humble roof. She hunted through the chest, examined everything, but
+could find nothing extraordinary. She saw nothing on the table but a
+writing-case and some sheets of parchment; and as she could not read,
+this discovery told her nothing. A woman’s instinct then took her into
+the young man’s room, and from thence she descried her two lodgers
+crossing the river in the ferry boat.
+
+“They stand like two statues,” said she to herself. “Ah, ha! They are
+landing at the Rue du Fouarre. How nimble he is, the sweet youth! He
+jumped out like a bird. By him the old man looks like some stone saint
+in the Cathedral.--They are going to the old School of the Four Nations.
+Presto! they are out of sight.--And this is where he lives, poor
+cherub!” she went on, looking about the room. “How smart and winning he
+is! Ah! your fine gentry are made of other stuff than we are.”
+
+And Jacqueline went down again after smoothing down the bed-coverlet,
+dusting the chest, and wondering for the hundredth time in six months:
+
+“What in the world does he do all the blessed day? He cannot always be
+staring at the blue sky and the stars that God has hung up there like
+lanterns. That dear boy has known trouble. But why do he and the old man
+hardly ever speak to each other?”
+
+Then she lost herself in wonderment and in thoughts which, in her
+woman’s brain, were tangled like a skein of thread.
+
+The old man and his young companion had gone into one of the schools for
+which the Rue du Fouarre was at that time famous throughout Europe. At
+the moment when Jacqueline’s two lodgers arrived at the old School des
+Quatre Nations, the celebrated Sigier, the most noted Doctor of Mystical
+Theology of the University of Paris, was mounting his pulpit in a
+spacious low room on a level with the street. The cold stones were
+strewn with clean straw, on which several of his disciples knelt on
+one knee, writing on the other, to enable them to take notes from the
+Master’s improvised discourse, in the shorthand abbreviations which are
+the despair of modern decipherers.
+
+The hall was full, not of students only, but of the most distinguished
+men belonging to the clergy, the court, and the legal faculty. There
+were some learned foreigners, too--soldiers and rich citizens. The broad
+faces were there, with prominent brows and venerable beards, which fill
+us with a sort of pious respect for our ancestors when we see their
+portraits from the Middle Ages. Lean faces, too, with burning, sunken
+eyes, under bald heads yellow from the labors of futile scholasticism,
+contrasted with young and eager countenances, grave faces, warlike
+faces, and the ruddy cheeks of the financial class.
+
+These lectures, dissertations, theses, sustained by the brightest
+geniuses of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, roused our
+forefathers to enthusiasm. They were to them their bull-fights, their
+Italian opera, their tragedy, their dancers; in short, all their drama.
+The performance of Mysteries was a later thing than these spiritual
+disputations, to which, perhaps, we owe the French stage. Inspired
+eloquence, combining the attractions of the human voice skilfully used,
+with daring inquisition into the secrets of God, sufficed to satisfy
+every form of curiosity, appealed to the soul, and constituted the
+fashionable entertainment of the time. Not only did Theology include
+the other sciences, it was science itself, as grammar was science to the
+Ancient Greeks; and those who distinguished themselves in these duels,
+in which the orators, like Jacob, wrestled with the Spirit of God, had
+a promising future before them. Embassies, arbitrations between
+sovereigns, chancellorships, and ecclesiastical dignities were the meed
+of men whose rhetoric had been schooled in theological controversy. The
+professor’s chair was the tribune of the period.
+
+This system lasted till the day when Rabelais gibbeted dialectics by
+his merciless satire, as Cervantes demolished chivalry by a narrative
+comedy.
+
+To understand this amazing period and the spirit which dictated its
+voluminous, though now forgotten, masterpieces, to analyze it, even to
+its barbarisms, we need only examine the Constitutions of the University
+of Paris and the extraordinary scheme of instruction that then obtained.
+Theology was taught under two faculties--that of Theology properly so
+called, and that of Canon Law. The faculty of Theology, again, had three
+sections--Scholastic, Canonical, and Mystic. It would be wearisome to
+give an account of the attributes of each section of the science, since
+one only, namely, Mystic, is the subject of this _Etude_.
+
+Mystical Theology included the whole of Divine Revelation and the
+elucidation of the Mysteries. And this branch of ancient theology has
+been secretly preserved with reverence even to our own day; Jacob Boehm,
+Swendenborg, Martinez Pasqualis, Saint-Martin, Molinos, Madame Guyon,
+Madame Bourignon, and Madame Krudener, the extensive sect of the
+Ecstatics, and that of the Illuminati, have at different periods duly
+treasured the doctrines of this science, of which the aim is indeed
+truly startling and portentous. In Doctor Sigier’s day, as in our own,
+man has striven to gain wings to fly into the sanctuary where God hides
+from our gaze.
+
+This digression was necessary to give a clue to the scene at which the
+old man and the youth from the island under Notre-Dame had come to be
+audience; it will also protect this narrative from all blame on the
+score of falsehood and hyperbole, of which certain persons of hasty
+judgment might perhaps suspect me.
+
+Doctor Sigier was a tall man in the prime of life. His face, rescued
+from oblivion by the archives of the University, had singular analogies
+with that of Mirabeau. It was stamped with the seal of fierce, swift,
+and terrible eloquence. But the Doctor bore on his brow the expression
+of religious faith that his modern double had not. His voice, too, was
+of persuasive sweetness, with a clear and pleasing ring in it.
+
+At this moment the daylight, that was stintingly diffused through the
+small, heavily-leaded window-panes, tinted the assembly with capricious
+tones and powerful contrasts from the chequered light and shade. Here,
+in a dark corner, eyes shone brightly, their dark heads under the
+sunbeams gleamed light above faces in shadow, and various bald heads,
+with only a circlet of white hair, were distinguished among the crowd
+like battlements silvered by moonlight. Every face was turned towards
+the Doctor, mute but impatient. The drowsy voices of other lecturers
+in the adjoining schools were audible in the silent street like the
+murmuring of the sea; and the steps of the two strangers, as they now
+came in, attracted general attention. Doctor Sigier, ready to begin, saw
+the stately senior standing, looked round for a seat for him, and then
+finding none, as the place was full, came down from his place, went to
+the newcomer, and with great respect, led him to the platform of
+his professor’s chair, and there gave him his stool to sit upon. The
+assembly hailed this mark of deference with a murmur of approval,
+recognizing the old man as the orator of a fine thesis admirably argued
+not long since at the Sorbonne.
+
+The stranger looked down from his raised position on the crowd below
+with that deep glance that held a whole poem of sorrow, and those who
+met his eye felt an indescribable thrill. The lad, following the old
+man, sat down on one of the steps, leaning against the pulpit in a
+graceful and melancholy attitude. The silence was now profound, and the
+doorway and even the street were blocked by scholars who had deserted
+the other classes.
+
+Doctor Sigier was to-day to recapitulate, in the last of a series of
+discourses, the views he had set forth in the former lectures on the
+Resurrection, Heaven, and Hell. His strange doctrine responded to
+the sympathies of the time, and gratified the immoderate love of the
+marvelous, which haunts the mind of man in every age. This effort of
+man to clutch the infinite, which for ever slips through his ineffectual
+grasp, this last tourney of thought against thought, was a task worthy
+of an assembly where the most stupendous human imagination ever known,
+perhaps, at that moment shone.
+
+The Doctor began by summing up in a mild and even tone the principal
+points he had so far established:
+
+“No intellect was the exact counterpart of another. Had man any right to
+require an account of his Creator for the inequality of powers bestowed
+on each? Without attempting to penetrate rashly into the designs of
+God, ought we not to recognize the fact that by reason of their general
+diversity intelligences could be classed in spheres? From the sphere
+where the least degree of intelligence gleamed, to the most translucent
+souls who could see the road by which to ascend to God, was there not
+an ascending scale of spiritual gift? And did not spirits of the same
+sphere understand each other like brothers in soul, in flesh, in mind,
+and in feeling?”
+
+From this the Doctor went on to unfold the most wonderful theories of
+sympathy. He set forth in Biblical language the phenomena of love, of
+instinctive repulsion, of strong affinities which transcend the laws
+of space, of the sudden mingling of souls which seem to recognize each
+other. With regard to the different degrees of strength of which our
+affections are capable, he accounted for them by the place, more or less
+near the centre, occupied by beings in their respective circles.
+
+He gave mathematical expression to God’s grand idea in the co-ordination
+of the various human spheres. “Through man,” he said, “these spheres
+constituted a world intermediate between the intelligence of the brute
+and the intelligence of the angels.” As he stated it, the divine Word
+nourishes the spiritual Word, the spiritual Word nourishes the living
+Word, the living Word nourishes the animal Word, the animal Word
+nourishes the vegetable Word, and the vegetable Word is the expression
+of the life of the barren Word. These successive evolutions, as of a
+chrysalis, which God thus wrought in our souls, this infusorial life,
+so to speak, communicated from each zone to the next, more vivid, more
+spiritual, more perceptive in its ascent, represented, rather dimly no
+doubt, but marvelously enough to his inexperienced hearers, the impulse
+given to Nature by the Almighty. Supported by many texts from the Sacred
+Scriptures, which he used as a commentary on his own statements to
+express by concrete images the abstract arguments he felt to be wanting,
+he flourished the Spirit of God like a torch over the deep secrets of
+creation, with an eloquence peculiar to himself, and accents that urged
+conviction on his audience. As he unfolded his mysterious system and
+all its consequences, he gave a key to every symbol and justified the
+vocation, the special gifts, the genius, the talent of each human being.
+
+Then, instinctively becoming physiological, he remarked on the
+resemblance to certain animals stamped on some human faces, accounting
+for them by primordial analogies and the upward tendency of all
+creation. He showed his audience the workings of Nature, and assigned
+a mission and a future to minerals, plants, and animals. Bible in
+hand, after thus spiritualizing Matter and materializing Spirit, after
+pointing to the Will of God in all things, and enjoining respect for
+His smallest works, he suggested the possibility of rising by faith from
+sphere to sphere.
+
+This was the first portion of his discourse, and by adroit
+digressions he applied the doctrine of his system to feudalism. The
+poetry--religious and profane--and the abrupt eloquence of that
+period had a grand opening in this vast theory, wherein the Doctor had
+amalgamated all the philosophical systems of the ancients, and from
+which he brought them out again classified, transfigured, purified. The
+false dogmas of two adverse principles and of Pantheism were demolished
+at his word, which proclaimed the Divine Unity, while ascribing to
+God and His angels the knowledge, the ends to which the means shone
+resplendent to the eyes of man. Fortified by the demonstrations that
+proved the existence of the world of Matter, Doctor Sigier constructed
+the scheme of a spiritual world dividing us from God by an ascending
+scale of spheres, just as the plant is divided from man by an infinite
+number of grades. He peopled the heavens, the stars, the planets, the
+sun.
+
+Quoting Saint Paul, he invested man with a new power; he might rise,
+from globe to globe, to the very Fount of eternal life. Jacob’s mystical
+ladder was both the religious formula and the traditional proof of the
+fact. He soared through space, carrying with him the passionate souls of
+his hearers on the wings of his word, making them feel the infinite, and
+bathing them in the heavenly sea. Then the Doctor accounted logically
+for hell by circles placed in inverse order to the shining spheres that
+lead to God, in which torments and darkness take the place of the
+Spirit and of light. Pain was as intelligible as rapture. The terms of
+comparison were present in the conditions of human life and its various
+atmospheres of suffering and of intellect. Thus the most extraordinary
+traditions of hell and purgatory were quite naturally conceivable.
+
+He gave the fundamental _rationale_ of virtue with admirable clearness.
+A pious man, toiling onward in poverty, proud of his good conscience,
+at peace with himself, and steadfastly true to himself in his heart
+in spite of the spectacle of exultant vice, was a fallen angel doing
+penance, who remembered his origin, foresaw his guerdon, accomplished
+his task, and obeyed his glorious mission. The sublime resignation of
+Christians was then seen in all its glory. He depicted martyrs at the
+burning stake, and almost stripped them of their merit by stripping
+them of their sufferings. He showed their inner angel as dwelling in the
+heavens, while the outer man was tortured by the executioner’s sword.
+He described angels dwelling among men, and gave tokens by which to
+recognize them.
+
+He next strove to drag from the very depths of man’s understanding the
+real sense of the word fall, which occurs in every language. He appealed
+to the most widely-spread traditions in evidence of this one true
+origin, explaining, with much lucidity, the passion all men have for
+rising, mounting--an instinctive ambition, the perennial revelations of
+our destiny.
+
+He displayed the whole universe at a glance, and described the nature
+of God Himself circulating in a full tide from the centre to the
+extremities, and from the extremities to the centre again. Nature was
+one and homogeneous. In the most seemingly trivial, as in the most
+stupendous work, everything obeyed that law; each created object
+reproduced in little an exact image of that nature--the sap in the
+plant, the blood in man, the orbits of the planets. He piled proof on
+proof, always completing his idea by a picture musical with poetry.
+
+And he boldly anticipated every objection. He thundered forth an
+eloquent challenge to the monumental works of science and human
+excrescences of knowledge, such as those which societies use the
+elements of the earthly globe to produce. He asked whether our wars, our
+disasters, our depravity could hinder the great movement given by God to
+all the globes; and he laughed human impotence to scorn by pointing
+to their efforts everywhere in ruins. He cried upon the manes of Tyre,
+Carthage, and Babylon; he called upon Babel and Jerusalem to appear;
+and sought, without finding them, the transient furrows made by the
+ploughshare of civilization. Humanity floated on the surface of the
+earth as a ship whose wake is lost in the calm level of ocean.
+
+These were the fundamental notions set forth in Doctor Sigier’s address,
+all wrapped in the mystical language and strange school Latin of the
+time. He had made a special study of the Scriptures, and they supplied
+him with the weapons with which he came before his contemporaries to
+hasten their progress. He hid his boldness under his immense learning,
+as with a cloak, and his philosophical bent under a saintly life. At
+this moment, after bringing his hearers face to face with God, after
+packing the universe into an idea, and almost unveiling the idea of the
+world, he gazed down on the silent, throbbing mass, and scrutinized the
+stranger with a look. Then, spurred on, no doubt, by the presence of
+this remarkable personage, he added these words, from which I have
+eliminated the corrupt Latinity of the Middle Ages:--
+
+“Where, think you, may a man find these fruitful truths if not in the
+heart of God Himself?--What am I?--The humble interpreter of a single
+line left to us by the greatest of the Apostles--a single line out of
+thousands all equally full of light. Before us, Saint Paul said, ‘_In
+Deo vivimus movemur et sumus_.’ In our day, less believing and more
+learned, or better instructed and more sceptical, we should ask the
+Apostle, ‘To what end this perpetual motion? Whither leads this life
+divided into zones? Wherefore an intelligence that begins with the
+obscure perfection of marble and proceeds from sphere to sphere up to
+man, up to the angel, up to God? Where is the Fount, where is the ocean,
+if life, attaining to God across worlds and stars, through Matter and
+Spirit, has to come down again to some other goal?’
+
+“You desire to see both aspects of the universe at once. You would adore
+the Sovereign on condition of being suffered to sit for an instant
+on His throne. Mad fools that we are! We will not admit that the most
+intelligent animals are able to understand our ideas and the object of
+our actions; we are merciless to the creatures of the inferior spheres,
+and exile them from our own; we deny them the faculty of divining human
+thoughts, and yet we ourselves would fain master the highest of all
+ideas--the Idea of the Idea!
+
+“Well, go then, start! Fly by faith up from globe to globe, soar through
+space! Thought, love, and faith are its mystical keys. Traverse the
+circles, reach the throne! God is more merciful than you are; He opens
+His temple to all His creatures. Only, do not forget the pattern of
+Moses; put your shoes from off your feet, cast off all filth, leave
+your body far behind; otherwise you shall be consumed; for God--God is
+Light!”
+
+Just as Doctor Sigier spoke these grand words, his face radiant, his
+hand uplifted, a sunbeam pierced through an open window, like a magic
+jet from a fount of splendor, a long triangular shaft of gold that lay
+like a scarf over the whole assembly. They all clapped their hands, for
+the audience accepted this effect of the sinking sun as a miracle. There
+was a universal cry of:
+
+“_Vivant_! _Vivant_!”
+
+The very sky seemed to shed approval. Godefroid, struck with reverence,
+looked from the old man to Doctor Sigier; they were talking together in
+an undertone.
+
+“All honor to the Master!” said the stranger.
+
+“What is such transient honor?” replied Sigier.
+
+“I would I could perpetuate my gratitude,” said the older man.
+
+“A line written by you is enough!” said the Doctor. “It would give me
+immortality, humanly speaking.”
+
+“Can I give what I have not?” cried the elder.
+
+Escorted by the crowd, which followed in their footsteps, like courtiers
+round a king, at a respectful distance, Godefroid, with the old man and
+the Doctor, made their way to the oozy shore, where as yet there were no
+houses, and where the ferryman was waiting for them. The Doctor and the
+stranger were talking together, not in Latin nor in any Gallic tongue,
+but in an unknown language, and very gravely. They pointed with their
+hands now to heaven and now to the earth. Sigier, to whom the paths by
+the river were familiar, guided the venerable stranger with particular
+care to the narrow planks which here and there bridged the mud; the
+following watched them inquisitively; and some of the students envied
+the privileged boy who might walk with these two great masters of
+speech. Finally, the Doctor took leave of the stranger, and the
+ferry-boat pushed off.
+
+At the moment when the boat was afloat on the wide river, communicating
+its motion to the soul, the sun pierced the clouds like a conflagration
+blazing up on the horizon, and poured forth a flood of light, coloring
+slate roof-tops and humbler thatch with a ruddy glow and tawny
+reflections, fringed Philippe Auguste’s towers with fire, flooded the
+sky, dyed the waters, gilded the plants, and aroused the half-sleeping
+insects. The immense shaft of light set the clouds on fire. It was like
+the last verse of the daily hymn. Every heart was thrilled; nature in
+such a moment is sublime.
+
+As he gazed at the spectacle, the stranger’s eyes moistened with the
+tenderest of human tears: Godefroid too was weeping; his trembling
+hand touched that of the elder man, who, looking round, confessed his
+emotion. But thinking his dignity as a man compromised, no doubt, to
+redeem it, he said in a deep voice:
+
+“I weep for my native land. I am an exile! Young man, in such an hour as
+this I left my home. There, at this hour, the fireflies are coming
+out of their fragile dwellings and clinging like diamond sparks to the
+leaves of the iris. At this hour the breeze, as sweet as the sweetest
+poetry, rises up from a valley bathed in light, bearing on its wings
+the richest fragrance. On the horizon I could see a golden city like
+the Heavenly Jerusalem--a city whose name I may not speak. There, too,
+a river winds. But that city and its buildings, that river of which
+the lovely vistas, and the pools of blue water, mingled, crossed,
+and embraced each other, which gladdened my sight and filled me with
+love--where are they?
+
+“At that hour the waters assumed fantastic hues under the sunset sky,
+and seemed to be painted pictures; the stars dropped tender streaks of
+light, the moon spread its pleasing snares; it gave another life to
+the trees, to the color and form of things, and a new aspect to the
+sparkling water, the silent hills, the eloquent buildings. The city
+spoke, it glittered, it called to me to return!
+
+“Columns of smoke rose up by the side of the ancient pillars, whose
+marble sheen gleamed white through the night; the lines of the horizon
+were still visible through the mists of evening; all was harmony and
+mystery. Nature would not say farewell; she desired to keep me there.
+Ah! It was all in all to me; my mother and my child, my wife and my
+glory! The very bells bewailed my condemnation. Oh, land of marvels!
+It is as beautiful as heaven. From that hour the wide world has been my
+dungeon. Beloved land, why hast thou rejected me?
+
+“But I shall triumph there yet!” he cried, speaking with an accent
+of such intense conviction and such a ringing tone, that the boatman
+started as at a trumpet call.
+
+The stranger was standing in a prophetic attitude and gazing southwards
+into the blue, pointing to his native home across the skyey regions.
+The ascetic pallor of his face had given place to a glow of triumph, his
+eyes flashed, he was as grand as a lion shaking his mane.
+
+“But you, poor child,” he went on, looking at Godefroid, whose cheeks
+were beaded with glittering tears, “have you, like me, studied life from
+blood-stained pages? What can you have to weep for, at your age?”
+
+“Alas!” said Godefroid, “I regret a land more beautiful than any land
+on earth--a land I never saw and yet remember. Oh, if I could but cleave
+the air on beating wings, I would fly----”
+
+“Whither?” asked the exile.
+
+“Up there,” replied the boy.
+
+On hearing this answer, the stranger seemed surprised; he looked darkly
+at the youth, who remained silent. They seemed to communicate by an
+unspeakable effusion of the spirit, hearing each other’s yearnings
+in the teeming silence, and going forth side by side, like two doves
+sweeping the air on equal wing, till the boat, touching the strand of
+the island, roused them from their deep reverie.
+
+Then, each lost in thought, they went together to the sergeant’s house.
+
+“And so the boy believes that he is an angel exiled from heaven!”
+ thought the tall stranger. “Which of us all has a right to undeceive
+him? Not I--I, who am so often lifted by some magic spell so far above
+the earth; I who am dedicate to God; I who am a mystery to myself. Have
+I not already seen the fairest of the angels dwelling in this mire? Is
+this child more or less crazed than I am? Has he taken a bolder step
+in the way of faith? He believes, and his belief no doubt will lead him
+into some path of light like that in which I walk. But though he is
+as beautiful as an angel, is he not too feeble to stand fast in such a
+struggle?”
+
+Abashed by the presence of his companion, whose voice of thunder
+expressed to him his own thoughts, as lightning expresses the will of
+Heaven, the boy was satisfied to gaze at the stars with a lover’s eyes.
+Overwhelmed by a luxury of sentiment, which weighed on his heart, he
+stood there timid and weak--a midge in the sunbeams. Sigier’s discourse
+had proved to them the mysteries of the spiritual world; the tall, old
+man was to invest them with glory; the lad felt them in himself,
+though he could in no way express them. The three represented in living
+embodiment Science, Poetry, and Feeling.
+
+
+
+On going into the house, the Exile shut himself into his room, lighted
+the inspiring lamp, and gave himself over to the ruthless demon of Work,
+seeking words of the silence and ideas of the night. Godefroid sat down
+in his window sill, by turns gazing at the moon reflected in the water,
+and studying the mysteries of the sky. Lost in one of the trances that
+were frequent to him, he traveled from sphere to sphere, from vision to
+vision, listening for obscure rustlings and the voices of angels, and
+believing that he heard them; seeing, or fancying that he saw, a divine
+radiance in which he lost himself; striving to attain the far-away goal,
+the source of all light, the fount of all harmony.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Exiles, by Honore de Balzac
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