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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Christ in Flanders, 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: Christ in Flanders
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: October, 1999  [Etext #1940]
+Posting Date: March 6, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRIST IN FLANDERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST IN FLANDERS
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+  To Marcelline Desbordes-Valmore, a daughter of Flanders, of whom
+  these modern days may well be proud, I dedicate this quaint legend
+  of old Flanders.
+
+  DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHRIST IN FLANDERS
+
+
+At a dimly remote period in the history of Brabant, communication
+between the Island of Cadzand and the Flemish coast was kept up by a
+boat which carried passengers from one shore to the other. Middelburg,
+the chief town in the island, destined to become so famous in the annals
+of Protestantism, at that time only numbered some two or three hundred
+hearths; and the prosperous town of Ostend was an obscure haven, a
+straggling village where pirates dwelt in security among the fishermen
+and the few poor merchants who lived in the place.
+
+But though the town of Ostend consisted altogether of some score of
+houses and three hundred cottages, huts or hovels built of the driftwood
+of wrecked vessels, it nevertheless rejoiced in the possession of a
+governor, a garrison, a forked gibbet, a convent, and a burgomaster, in
+short, in all the institutions of an advanced civilization.
+
+Who reigned over Brabant and Flanders in those days? On this point
+tradition is mute. Let us confess at once that this tale savors strongly
+of the marvelous, the mysterious, and the vague; elements which Flemish
+narrators have infused into a story retailed so often to gatherings of
+workers on winter evenings, that the details vary widely in poetic merit
+and incongruity of detail. It has been told by every generation, handed
+down by grandames at the fireside, narrated night and day, and the
+chronicle has changed its complexion somewhat in every age. Like some
+great building that has suffered many modifications of successive
+generations of architects, some sombre weather-beaten pile, the delight
+of a poet, the story would drive the commentator and the industrious
+winnower of words, facts, and dates to despair. The narrator believes in
+it, as all superstitious minds in Flanders likewise believe; and is not
+a whit wiser nor more credulous than his audience. But as it would be
+impossible to make a harmony of all the different renderings, here
+are the outlines of the story; stripped, it may be, of its picturesque
+quaintness, but with all its bold disregard of historical truth, and its
+moral teachings approved by religion--a myth, the blossom of imaginative
+fancy; an allegory that the wise may interpret to suit themselves. To
+each his own pasturage, and the task of separating the tares from the
+wheat.
+
+
+
+The boat that served to carry passengers from the Island of Cadzand to
+Ostend was upon the point of departure; but before the skipper loosed
+the chain that secured the shallop to the little jetty, where people
+embarked, he blew a horn several times, to warn late lingerers, this
+being his last journey that day. Night was falling. It was scarcely
+possible to see the coast of Flanders by the dying fires of the sunset,
+or to make out upon the hither shore any forms of belated passengers
+hurrying along the wall of the dykes that surrounded the open country,
+or among the tall reeds of the marshes. The boat was full.
+
+"What are you waiting for? Let us put off!" they cried.
+
+Just at that moment a man appeared a few paces from the jetty, to
+the surprise of the skipper, who had heard no sound of footsteps. The
+traveler seemed to have sprung up from the earth, like a peasant who had
+laid himself down on the ground to wait till the boat should start, and
+had slept till the sound of the horn awakened him. Was he a thief? or
+some one belonging to the custom-house or the police?
+
+As soon as the man appeared on the jetty to which the boat was moored,
+seven persons who were standing in the stern of the shallop hastened to
+sit down on the benches, so as to leave no room for the newcomer. It was
+the swift and instinctive working of the aristocratic spirit, an impulse
+of exclusiveness that comes from the rich man's heart. Four of the seven
+personages belonged to the most aristocratic families in Flanders. First
+among them was a young knight with two beautiful greyhounds; his long
+hair flowed from beneath a jeweled cap; he clanked his gilded spurs,
+curled the ends of his moustache from time to time with a swaggering
+grace, and looked round disdainfully on the rest of the crew. A
+high-born damsel, with a falcon on her wrist, only spoke with her mother
+or with a churchman of high rank, who was evidently a relation. All
+these persons made a great deal of noise, and talked among themselves as
+though there were no one else in the boat; yet close beside them sat
+a man of great importance in the district, a stout burgher of Bruges,
+wrapped about with a vast cloak. His servant, armed to the teeth, had
+set down a couple of bags filled with gold at his side. Next to the
+burgher came a man of learning, a doctor of the University of Louvain,
+who was traveling with his clerk. This little group of folk, who looked
+contemptuously at each other, was separated from the passengers in the
+forward part of the boat by the bench of rowers.
+
+The belated traveler glanced about him as he stepped on board, saw that
+there was no room for him in the stern, and went to the bows in quest
+of a seat. They were all poor people there. At first sight of the
+bareheaded man in the brown camlet coat and trunk-hose, and plain stiff
+linen collar, they noticed that he wore no ornaments, carried no cap nor
+bonnet in his hand, and had neither sword nor purse at his girdle, and
+one and all took him for a burgomaster sure of his authority, a worthy
+and kindly burgomaster like so many a Fleming of old times, whose homely
+features and characters have been immortalized by Flemish painters.
+The poorer passengers, therefore, received him with demonstrations of
+respect that provoked scornful tittering at the other end of the boat.
+An old soldier, inured to toil and hardship, gave up his place on the
+bench to the newcomer, and seated himself on the edge of the vessel,
+keeping his balance by planting his feet against one of those traverse
+beams, like the backbone of a fish, that hold the planks of a boat
+together. A young mother, who bore her baby in her arms, and seemed to
+belong to the working class in Ostend, moved aside to make room for the
+stranger. There was neither servility nor scorn in her manner of doing
+this; it was a simple sign of the goodwill by which the poor, who know
+by long experience the value of a service and the warmth that fellowship
+brings, give expression to the open-heartedness and the natural impulses
+of their souls; so artlessly do they reveal their good qualities and
+their defects. The stranger thanked her by a gesture full of gracious
+dignity, and took his place between the young mother and the old
+soldier. Immediately behind him sat a peasant and his son, a boy ten
+years of age. A beggar woman, old, wrinkled, and clad in rags, was
+crouching, with her almost empty wallet, on a great coil of rope that
+lay in the prow. One of the rowers, an old sailor, who had known her in
+the days of her beauty and prosperity, had let her come in "for the love
+of God," in the beautiful phrase that the common people use.
+
+"Thank you kindly, Thomas," the old woman had said. "I will say two
+_Paters_ and two _Aves_ for you in my prayers to-night."
+
+The skipper blew his horn for the last time, looked along the silent
+shore, flung off the chain, ran along the side of the boat, and took up
+his position at the helm. He looked at the sky, and as soon as they were
+out in the open sea, he shouted to the men: "Pull away, pull with all
+your might! The sea is smiling at a squall, the witch! I can feel the
+swell by the way the rudder works, and the storm in my wounds."
+
+The nautical phrases, unintelligible to ears unused to the sound of the
+sea, seemed to put fresh energy into the oars; they kept time together,
+the rhythm of the movement was still even and steady, but quite unlike
+the previous manner of rowing; it was as if a cantering horse had broken
+into a gallop. The gay company seated in the stern amused themselves by
+watching the brawny arms, the tanned faces, and sparkling eyes of the
+rowers, the play of the tense muscles, the physical and mental forces
+that were being exerted to bring them for a trifling toll across the
+channel. So far from pitying the rowers' distress, they pointed out the
+men's faces to each other, and laughed at the grotesque expressions on
+the faces of the crew who were straining every muscle; but in the fore
+part of the boat the soldier, the peasant, and the old beggar woman
+watched the sailors with the sympathy naturally felt by toilers who live
+by the sweat of their brow and know the rough struggle, the strenuous
+excitement of effort. These folk, moreover, whose lives were spent in
+the open air, had all seen the warnings of danger in the sky, and their
+faces were grave. The young mother rocked her child, singing an old hymn
+of the Church for a lullaby.
+
+"If we ever get there at all," the soldier remarked to the peasant, "it
+will be because the Almighty is bent on keeping us alive."
+
+"Ah! He is the Master," said the old woman, "but I think it will be
+His good pleasure to take us to Himself. Just look at that light down
+there..." and she nodded her head as she spoke towards the sunset.
+
+Streaks of fiery red glared from behind the masses of crimson-flushed
+brown cloud that seemed about to unloose a furious gale. There was a
+smothered murmur of the sea, a moaning sound that seemed to come from
+the depths, a low warning growl, such as a dog gives when he only means
+mischief as yet. After all, Ostend was not far away. Perhaps painting,
+like poetry, could not prolong the existence of the picture presented by
+sea and sky at that moment beyond the time of its actual duration. Art
+demands vehement contrasts, wherefore artists usually seek out Nature's
+most striking effects, doubtless because they despair of rendering the
+great and glorious charm of her daily moods; yet the human soul is often
+stirred as deeply by her calm as by her emotion, and by silence as by
+storm.
+
+For a moment no one spoke on board the boat. Every one watched that sea
+and sky, either with some presentiment of danger, or because they felt
+the influence of the religious melancholy that takes possession of
+nearly all of us at the close of the day, the hour of prayer, when all
+nature is hushed save for the voices of the bells. The sea gleamed pale
+and wan, but its hues changed, and the surface took all the colors of
+steel. The sky was almost overspread with livid gray, but down in the
+west there were long narrow bars like streaks of blood; while lines of
+bright light in the eastern sky, sharp and clean as if drawn by the tip
+of a brush, were separated by folds of cloud, like the wrinkles on an
+old man's brow. The whole scene made a background of ashen grays and
+half-tints, in strong contrast to the bale-fires of the sunset. If
+written language might borrow of spoken language some of the bold
+figures of speech invented by the people, it might be said with the
+soldier that "the weather has been routed," or, as the peasant would
+say, "the sky glowered like an executioner." Suddenly a wind arose from
+the quarter of the sunset, and the skipper, who never took his eyes off
+the sea, saw the swell on the horizon line, and cried:
+
+"Stop rowing!"
+
+The sailors stopped immediately, and let their oars lie on the water.
+
+"The skipper is right," said Thomas coolly. A great wave caught up the
+boat, carried it high on its crest, only to plunge it, as it were,
+into the trough of the sea that seemed to yawn for them. At this mighty
+upheaval, this sudden outbreak of the wrath of the sea, the company in
+the stern turned pale, and sent up a terrible cry.
+
+"We are lost!"
+
+"Oh, not yet!" said the skipper calmly.
+
+As he spoke, the clouds immediately above their heads were torn asunder
+by the vehemence of the wind. The gray mass was rent and scattered east
+and west with ominous speed, a dim uncertain light from the rift in
+the sky fell full upon the boat, and the travelers beheld each other's
+faces. All of them, the noble and the wealthy, the sailors and the poor
+passengers alike, were amazed for a moment by the appearance of the last
+comer. His golden hair, parted upon his calm, serene forehead, fell in
+thick curls about his shoulders; and his face, sublime in its sweetness
+and radiant with divine love, stood out against the surrounding gloom.
+He had no contempt for death; he knew that he should not die. But if at
+the first the company in the stern forgot for a moment the implacable
+fury of the storm that threatened their lives, selfishness and their
+habits of life soon prevailed again.
+
+"How lucky that stupid burgomaster is, not to see the risks we are all
+running! He is just like a dog, he will die without a struggle," said
+the doctor.
+
+He had scarcely pronounced this highly judicious dictum when the storm
+unloosed all its legions. The wind blew from every quarter of the
+heavens, the boat span round like a top, and the sea broke in.
+
+"Oh! my poor child! my poor child!... Who will save my baby?" the mother
+cried in a heart-rending voice.
+
+"You yourself will save it," the stranger said.
+
+The thrilling tones of that voice went to the young mother's heart and
+brought hope with them; she heard the gracious words through all the
+whistling of the wind and the shrieks of the passengers.
+
+"Holy Virgin of Good Help, who art at Antwerp, I promise thee a thousand
+pounds of wax and a statue, if thou wilt rescue me from this!" cried the
+burgher, kneeling upon his bags of gold.
+
+"The Virgin is no more at Antwerp than she is here," was the doctor's
+comment on this appeal.
+
+"She is in heaven," said a voice that seemed to come from the sea.
+
+"Who said that?"
+
+"'Tis the devil!" exclaimed the servant. "He is scoffing at the Virgin
+of Antwerp."
+
+"Let us have no more of your Holy Virgin at present," the skipper cried
+to the passengers. "Put your hands to the scoops and bail the water out
+of the boat.--And the rest of you," he went on, addressing the sailors,
+"pull with all your might! Now is the time; in the name of the devil who
+is leaving you in this world, be your own Providence! Every one knows
+that the channel is fearfully dangerous; I have been to and fro across
+it these thirty years. Am I facing a storm for the first time to-night?"
+
+He stood at the helm, and looked, as before, at his boat and at the sea
+and sky in turn.
+
+"The skipper always laughs at everything," muttered Thomas.
+
+"Will God leave us to perish along with those wretched creatures?" asked
+the haughty damsel of the handsome cavalier.
+
+"No, no, noble maiden.... Listen!" and he caught her by the waist and
+said in her ear, "I can swim, say nothing about it! I will hold you by
+your fair hair and bring you safely to the shore; but I can only save
+you."
+
+The girl looked at her aged mother. The lady was on her knees entreating
+absolution of the Bishop, who did not heed her. In the beautiful
+eyes the knight read a vague feeling of filial piety, and spoke in a
+smothered voice.
+
+"Submit yourself to the will of God. If it is His pleasure to take your
+mother to Himself, it will doubtless be for her happiness--in another
+world," he added, and his voice dropped still lower. "And for ours in
+this," he thought within himself.
+
+The Dame of Rupelmonde was lady of seven fiefs beside the barony of
+Gavres.
+
+The girl felt the longing for life in her heart, and for love that spoke
+through the handsome adventurer, a young miscreant who haunted churches
+in search of a prize, an heiress to marry, or ready money. The Bishop
+bestowed his benison on the waves, and bade them be calm; it was all
+that he could do. He thought of his concubine, and of the delicate feast
+with which she would welcome him; perhaps at that very moment she was
+bathing, perfuming herself, robing herself in velvet, fastening her
+necklace and her jeweled clasps; and the perverse Bishop, so far from
+thinking of the power of Holy Church, of his duty to comfort Christians
+and exhort them to trust in God, mingled worldly regrets and lover's
+sighs with the holy words of the breviary. By the dim light that shone
+on the pale faces of the company, it was possible to see their differing
+expressions as the boat was lifted high in air by a wave, to be cast
+back into the dark depths; the shallop quivered like a fragile leaf, the
+plaything of the north wind in the autumn; the hull creaked, it seemed
+ready to go to pieces. Fearful shrieks went up, followed by an awful
+silence.
+
+There was a strange difference between the behavior of the folk in the
+bows and that of the rich or great people at the other end of the boat.
+The young mother clasped her infant tightly to her breast every time
+that a great wave threatened to engulf the fragile vessel; but she clung
+to the hope that the stranger's words had set in her heart. Each time
+that the eyes turned to his face she drew fresh faith at the sight, the
+strong faith of a helpless woman, a mother's faith. She lived by that
+divine promise, the loving words from his lips; the simple creature
+waited trustingly for them to be fulfilled, and scarcely feared the
+danger any longer.
+
+The soldier, holding fast to the vessel's side, never took his eyes off
+the strange visitor. He copied on his own rough and swarthy features the
+imperturbability of the other's face, applying to this task the whole
+strength of a will and intelligence but little corrupted in the course
+of a life of mechanical and passive obedience. So emulous was he of a
+calm and tranquil courage greater than his own, that at last, perhaps
+unconsciously, something of that mysterious nature passed into his
+own soul. His admiration became an instinctive zeal for this man, a
+boundless love for and belief in him, such a love as soldiers feel for
+their leader when he has the power of swaying other men, when the halo
+of victories surrounds him, and the magical fascination of genius is
+felt in all that he does. The poor outcast was murmuring to herself:
+
+"Ah! miserable wretch that I am! Have I not suffered enough to expiate
+the sins of my youth? Ah! wretched woman, why did you lead the gay life
+of a frivolous Frenchwoman? why did you devour the goods of God with
+churchmen, the substance of the poor with extortioners and fleecers of
+the poor? Oh! I have sinned indeed!--Oh my God! my God! let me finish my
+time in hell here in this world of misery."
+
+And again she cried, "Holy Virgin, Mother of God, have pity upon me!"
+
+"Be comforted, mother. God is not a Lombard usurer. I may have killed
+people good and bad at random in my time, but I am not afraid of the
+resurrection."
+
+"Ah! master Lancepesade, how happy those fair ladies are, to be so near
+to a bishop, a holy man! They will get absolution for their sins," said
+the old woman. "Oh! if I could only hear a priest say to me, 'Thy sins
+are forgiven!' I should believe it then."
+
+The stranger turned towards her, and the goodness in his face made her
+tremble.
+
+"Have faith," he said, "and you will be saved."
+
+"May God reward you, good sir," she answered. "If what you say is true,
+I will go on pilgrimage barefooted to Our Lady of Loretto to pray to her
+for you and for me."
+
+The two peasants, father and son, were silent, patient, and submissive
+to the will of God, like folk whose wont it is to fall in instinctively
+with the ways of Nature like cattle. At the one end of the boat stood
+riches, pride, learning, debauchery, and crime--human society, such as
+art and thought and education and worldly interests and laws have made
+it; and at this end there was terror and wailing, innumerable different
+impulses all repressed by hideous doubts--at this end, and at this only,
+the agony of fear.
+
+Above all these human lives stood a strong man, the skipper; no doubts
+assailed him, the chief, the king, the fatalist among them. He was
+trusting in himself rather than in Providence, crying, "Bail away!"
+instead of "Holy Virgin," defying the storm, in fact, and struggling
+with the sea like a wrestler.
+
+But the helpless poor at the other end of the wherry! The mother rocking
+on her bosom the little one who smiled at the storm; the woman once
+so frivolous and gay, and now tormented with bitter remorse; the old
+soldier covered with scars, a mutilated life the sole reward of his
+unflagging loyalty and faithfulness. This veteran could scarcely count
+on the morsel of bread soaked in tears to keep the life in him, yet he
+was always ready to laugh, and went his way merrily, happy when he could
+drown his glory in the depths of a pot of beer, or could tell tales
+of the wars to the children who admired him, leaving his future with a
+light heart in the hands of God. Lastly, there were the two peasants,
+used to hardships and toil, labor incarnate, the labor by which the
+world lives. These simple folk were indifferent to thought and its
+treasures, ready to sink them all in a belief; and their faith was but
+so much the more vigorous because they had never disputed about it nor
+analyzed it. Such a nature is a virgin soil, conscience has not been
+tampered with, feeling is deep and strong; repentance, trouble, love,
+and work have developed, purified, concentrated, and increased their
+force of will a hundred times, the will--the one thing in man that
+resembles what learned doctors call the Soul.
+
+The boat, guided by the well-nigh miraculous skill of the steersman,
+came almost within sight of Ostend, when, not fifty paces from the
+shore, she was suddenly struck by a heavy sea and capsized. The stranger
+with the light about his head spoke to this little world of drowning
+creatures:
+
+"Those who have faith shall be saved; let them follow me!"
+
+He stood upright, and walked with a firm step upon the waves. The young
+mother at once took her child in her arms, and followed at his side
+across the sea. The soldier too sprang up, saying in his homely fashion,
+"Ah! _nom d'un pipe_! I would follow _you_ to the devil;" and without
+seeming astonished by it, he walked on the water. The worn-out sinner,
+believing in the omnipotence of God, also followed the stranger.
+
+The two peasants said to each other, "If they are walking on the sea,
+why should we not do as they do?" and they also arose and hastened after
+the others. Thomas tried to follow, but his faith tottered; he sank
+in the sea more than once, and rose again, but the third time he also
+walked on the sea. The bold steersman clung like a remora to the wreck
+of his boat. The miser had had faith, and had risen to go, but he tried
+to take his gold with him, and it was his gold that dragged him down
+to the bottom. The learned man had scoffed at the charlatan and at the
+fools who listened to him; and when he heard the mysterious stranger
+propose to the passengers that they should walk on the waves, he began
+to laugh, and the ocean swallowed him. The girl was dragged down into
+the depths by her lover. The Bishop and the older lady went to the
+bottom, heavily laden with sins, it may be, but still more heavily laden
+with incredulity and confidence in idols, weighted down by devotion,
+into which alms-deeds and true religion entered but little.
+
+The faithful flock, who walked with a firm step high and dry above the
+surge, heard all about them the dreadful whistling of the blast; great
+billows broke across their path, but an irresistible force cleft a way
+for them through the sea. These believing ones saw through the spray a
+dim speck of light flickering in the window of a fisherman's hut on the
+shore, and each one, as he pushed on bravely towards the light, seemed
+to hear the voice of his fellow crying, "Courage!" through all the
+roaring of the surf; yet no one had spoken a word--so absorbed was each
+by his own peril. In this way they reached the shore.
+
+When they were all seated near the fisherman's fire, they looked round
+in vain for their guide with the light about him. The sea washed up the
+steersman at the base of the cliff on which the cottage stood; he was
+clinging with might and main to the plank as a sailor can cling when
+death stares him in the face; the MAN went down and rescued the almost
+exhausted seaman; then he said, as he held out a succoring hand above
+the man's head:
+
+"Good, for this once; but do not try it again; the example would be too
+bad."
+
+He took the skipper on his shoulders, and carried him to the fisherman's
+door; knocked for admittance for the exhausted man; then, when the door
+of the humble refuge opened, the Saviour disappeared.
+
+The Convent of Mercy was built for sailors on this spot, where for long
+afterwards (so it was said) the footprints of Jesus Christ could be seen
+in the sand; but in 1793, at the time of the French invasion, the monks
+carried away this precious relic, that bore witness to the Saviour's
+last visit to earth.
+
+
+
+There at the convent I found myself shortly after the Revolution of
+1830. I was weary of life. If you had asked me the reason of my despair,
+I should have found it almost impossible to give it, so languid had
+grown the soul that was melted within me. The west wind had slackened
+the springs of my intelligence. A cold gray light poured down from the
+heavens, and the murky clouds that passed overhead gave a boding look to
+the land; all these things, together with the immensity of the sea, said
+to me, "Die to-day or die to-morrow, still must we not die?" And then--I
+wandered on, musing on the doubtful future, on my blighted hopes. Gnawed
+by these gloomy thoughts, I turned mechanically into the convent church,
+with the gray towers that loomed like ghosts though the sea mists.
+I looked round with no kindling of the imagination at the forest of
+columns, at the slender arches set aloft upon the leafy capitals, a
+delicate labyrinth of sculpture. I walked with careless eyes along the
+side aisles that opened out before me like vast portals, ever turning
+upon their hinges. It was scarcely possible to see, by the dim light of
+the autumn day, the sculptured groinings of the roof, the delicate and
+clean-cut lines of the mouldings of the graceful pointed arches. The
+organ pipes were mute. There was no sound save the noise of my own
+footsteps to awaken the mournful echoes lurking in the dark chapels.
+I sat down at the base of one of the four pillars that supported the
+tower, near the choir. Thence I could see the whole of the building. I
+gazed, and no ideas connected with it arose in my mind. I saw without
+seeing the mighty maze of pillars, the great rose windows that hung like
+a network suspended as by a miracle in air above the vast doorways. I
+saw the doors at the end of the side aisles, the aerial galleries, the
+stained glass windows framed in archways, divided by slender columns,
+fretted into flower forms and trefoil by fine filigree work of carved
+stone. A dome of glass at the end of the choir sparkled as if it had
+been built of precious stones set cunningly. In contrast to the roof
+with its alternating spaces of whiteness and color, the two aisles lay
+to right and left in shadow so deep that the faint gray outlines of
+their hundred shafts were scarcely visible in the gloom. I gazed at the
+marvelous arcades, the scroll-work, the garlands, the curving lines, and
+arabesques interwoven and interlaced, and strangely lighted, until by
+sheer dint of gazing my perceptions became confused, and I stood upon
+the borderland between illusion and reality, taken in the snare set for
+the eyes, and almost light-headed by reason of the multitudinous changes
+of the shapes about me.
+
+Imperceptibly a mist gathered about the carven stonework, and I only
+beheld it through a haze of fine golden dust, like the motes that hover
+in the bars of sunlight slanting through the air of a chamber. Suddenly
+the stone lacework of the rose windows gleamed through this vapor
+that had made all forms so shadowy. Every moulding, the edges of every
+carving, the least detail of the sculpture was dipped in silver. The
+sunlight kindled fires in the stained windows, their rich colors sent
+out glowing sparks of light. The shafts began to tremble, the capitals
+were gently shaken. A light shudder as of delight ran through the
+building, the stones were loosened in their setting, the wall-spaces
+swayed with graceful caution. Here and there a ponderous pier moved as
+solemnly as a dowager when she condescends to complete a quadrille at
+the close of a ball. A few slender and graceful columns, their heads
+adorned with wreaths of trefoil, began to laugh and dance here and
+there. Some of the pointed arches dashed at the tall lancet windows,
+who, like ladies of the Middle Ages, wore the armorial bearings of their
+houses emblazoned on their golden robes. The dance of the mitred arcades
+with the slender windows became like a fray at a tourney.
+
+In another moment every stone in the church vibrated, without leaving
+its place; for the organ-pipes spoke, and I heard divine music mingling
+with the songs of angels, and unearthly harmony, accompanied by the deep
+notes of the bells, that boomed as the giant towers rocked and swayed on
+their square bases. This strange Sabbath seemed to me the most natural
+thing in the world; and I, who had seen Charles X. hurled from his
+throne, was no longer amazed by anything. Nay, I myself was gently
+swaying with a see-saw movement that influenced my nerves pleasurably in
+a manner of which it is impossible to give any idea. Yet in the midst of
+this heated riot, the cathedral choir felt cold as if it were a winter
+day, and I became aware of a multitude of women, robed in white, silent,
+and impassive, sitting there. The sweet incense smoke that arose from
+the censers was grateful to my soul. The tall wax candles flickered. The
+lectern, gay as a chanter undone by the treachery of wine, was skipping
+about like a peal of Chinese bells.
+
+Then I knew that the whole cathedral was whirling round so fast that
+everything appeared to be undisturbed. The colossal Figure on the
+crucifix above the altar smiled upon me with a mingled malice and
+benevolence that frightened me; I turned my eyes away, and marveled
+at the bluish vapor that slid across the pillars, lending to them an
+indescribable charm. Then some graceful women's forms began to stir on
+the friezes. The cherubs who upheld the heavy columns shook out their
+wings. I felt myself uplifted by some divine power that steeped me in
+infinite joy, in a sweet and languid rapture. I would have given my
+life, I think, to have prolonged these phantasmagoria for a little, but
+suddenly a shrill voice clamored in my ears:
+
+"Awake and follow me!"
+
+A withered woman took my hand in hers; its icy coldness crept through
+every nerve. The bones of her face showed plainly through the sallow,
+almost olive-tinted wrinkles of the skin. The shrunken, ice-cold old
+woman wore a black robe, which she trailed in the dust, and at her
+throat there was something white, which I dared not examine. I could
+scarcely see her wan and colorless eyes, for they were fixed in a stare
+upon the heavens. She drew me after her along the aisles, leaving a
+trace of her presence in the ashes that she shook from her dress. Her
+bones rattled as she walked, like the bones of a skeleton; and as we
+went I heard behind me the tinkling of a little bell, a thin, sharp
+sound that rang through my head like the notes of a harmonica.
+
+"Suffer!" she cried, "suffer! So it must be!"
+
+We came out of the church; we went through the dirtiest streets of the
+town, till we came at last to a dingy dwelling, and she bade me enter
+in. She dragged me with her, calling to me in a harsh, tuneless voice
+like a cracked bell:
+
+"Defend me! defend me!"
+
+Together we went up a winding staircase. She knocked at a door in the
+darkness, and a mute, like some familiar of the Inquisition, opened
+to her. In another moment we stood in a room hung with ancient, ragged
+tapestry, amid piles of old linen, crumpled muslin, and gilded brass.
+
+"Behold the wealth that shall endure for ever!" said she.
+
+I shuddered with horror; for just then, by the light of a tall torch and
+two altar candles, I saw distinctly that this woman was fresh from the
+graveyard. She had no hair. I turned to fly. She raised her fleshless
+arm and encircled me with a band of iron set with spikes, and as she
+raised it a cry went up all about us, the cry of millions of voices--the
+shouting of the dead!
+
+"It is my purpose to make thee happy for ever," she said. "Thou art my
+son."
+
+We were sitting before the hearth, the ashes lay cold upon it; the
+old shrunken woman grasped my hand so tightly in hers that I could not
+choose but stay. I looked fixedly at her, striving to read the story of
+her life from the things among which she was crouching. Had she indeed
+any life in her? It was a mystery. Yet I saw plainly that once she must
+have been young and beautiful; fair, with all the charm of simplicity,
+perfect as some Greek statue, with the brow of a vestal.
+
+"Ah! ah!" I cried, "now I know thee! Miserable woman, why hast thou
+prostituted thyself? In the age of thy passions, in the time of thy
+prosperity, the grace and purity of thy youth were forgotten. Forgetful
+of thy heroic devotion, thy pure life, thy abundant faith, thou didst
+resign thy primitive power and thy spiritual supremacy for fleshly
+power. Thy linen vestments, thy couch of moss, the cell in the rock,
+bright with rays of the Light Divine, was forsaken; thou hast sparkled
+with diamonds, and shone with the glitter of luxury and pride. Then,
+grown bold and insolent, seizing and overturning all things in thy
+course like a courtesan eager for pleasure in her days of splendor, thou
+hast steeped thyself in blood like some queen stupefied by empery. Dost
+thou not remember to have been dull and heavy at times, and the sudden
+marvelous lucidity of other moments; as when Art emerges from an
+orgy? Oh! poet, painter, and singer, lover of splendid ceremonies and
+protector of the arts, was thy friendship for art perchance a caprice,
+that so thou shouldst sleep beneath magnificent canopies? Was there not
+a day when, in thy fantastic pride, though chastity and humility were
+prescribed to thee, thou hadst brought all things beneath thy feet, and
+set thy foot on the necks of princes; when earthly dominion, and
+wealth, and the mind of man bore thy yoke? Exulting in the abasement of
+humanity, joying to witness the uttermost lengths to which man's folly
+would go, thou hast bidden thy lovers walk on all fours, and required
+of them their lands and wealth, nay, even their wives if they were worth
+aught to thee. Thou hast devoured millions of men without a cause; thou
+hast flung away lives like sand blown by the wind from West to East.
+Thou hast come down from the heights of thought to sit among the kings
+of men. Woman! instead of comforting men, thou hast tormented and
+afflicted them! Knowing that thou couldst ask and have, thou hast
+demanded--blood! A little flour surely should have contented thee,
+accustomed as thou hast been to live on bread and to mingle water with
+thy wine. Unlike all others in all things, formerly thou wouldst bid thy
+lovers fast, and they obeyed. Why should thy fancies have led thee to
+require things impossible? Why, like a courtesan spoiled by her lovers,
+hast thou doted on follies, and left those undeceived who sought to
+explain and justify all thy errors? Then came the days of thy later
+passions, terrible like the love of a woman of forty years, with a
+fierce cry thou hast sought to clasp the whole universe in one last
+embrace--and thy universe recoiled from thee!
+
+"Then old men succeeded to thy young lovers; decrepitude came to thy
+feet and made thee hideous. Yet, even then, men with the eagle power
+of vision said to thee in a glance, 'Thou shalt perish ingloriously,
+because thou hast fallen away, because thou hast broken the vows of thy
+maidenhood. The angel with peace written on her forehead, who should
+have shed light and joy along her path, has been a Messalina, delighting
+in the circus, in debauchery, and abuse of power. The days of thy
+virginity cannot return; henceforward thou shalt be subject to a master.
+Thy hour has come; the hand of death is upon thee. Thy heirs believe
+that thou art rich; they will kill thee and find nothing. Yet try at
+least to fling away this raiment no longer in fashion; be once more as
+in the days of old!--Nay, thou art dead, and by thy own deed!'
+
+"Is not this thy story?" so I ended. "Decrepit, toothless, shivering
+crone, now forgotten, going thy ways without so much as a glance from
+passers-by! Why art thou still alive? What doest thou in that beggar's
+garb, uncomely and desired of none? Where are thy riches?--for what were
+they spent? Where are thy treasures?--what great deeds hast thou done?"
+
+At this demand, the shriveled woman raised her bony form, flung off her
+rags, and grew tall and radiant, smiling as she broke forth from the
+dark chrysalid sheath. Then like a butterfly, this diaphanous creature
+emerged, fair and youthful, clothed in white linen, an Indian from
+creation issuing her palms. Her golden hair rippled over her shoulders,
+her eyes glowed, a bright mist clung about her, a ring of gold hovered
+above her head, she shook the flaming blade of a sword towards the
+spaces of heaven.
+
+"See and believe!" she cried.
+
+And suddenly I saw, afar off, many thousands of cathedrals like the one
+that I had just quitted; but these were covered with pictures and with
+frescoes, and I heard them echo with entrancing music. Myriads of human
+creatures flocked to these great buildings, swarming about them like
+ants on an ant-heap. Some were eager to rescue books from oblivion or
+to copy manuscripts, others were helping the poor, but nearly all were
+studying. Up above this countless multitude rose giant statues that they
+had erected in their midst, and by the gleams of a strange light from
+some luminary as powerful as the sun, I read the inscriptions on the
+bases of the statues--Science, History, Literature.
+
+The light died out. Again I faced the young girl. Gradually she slipped
+into the dreary sheath, into the ragged cere-cloths, and became an aged
+woman again. Her familiar brought her a little dust, and she stirred it
+into the ashes of her chafing-dish, for the weather was cold and stormy;
+and then he lighted for her, whose palaces had been lit with thousands
+of wax-tapers, a little cresset, that she might see to read her prayers
+through the hours of night.
+
+"There is no faith left in the earth!..." she said.
+
+In such a perilous plight did I behold the fairest and the greatest, the
+truest and most life-giving of all Powers.
+
+
+
+"Wake up, sir, the doors are just about to be shut," said a hoarse
+voice. I turned and beheld the beadle's ugly countenance; the man was
+shaking me by the arm, and the cathedral lay wrapped in shadows as a man
+is wrapped in his cloak.
+
+"Belief," I said to myself, "is Life! I have just witnessed the funeral
+of a monarchy, now we must defend the church."
+
+
+PARIS, February 1831.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christ in Flanders, by Honore de Balzac
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