THE CLOUDS OF THE SANCTUARY
There are pageants in which all the material splendors that man arrays co-operate.Nations of slaves and divers have searched the sands of ocean and the bowels of earth for the pearls and diamonds which adorn the spectators.Transmitted as heirlooms from generation to generation, these treasures have shone on consecrated brows and could be the most faithful of historians had they speech.They know the joys and sorrows of the great and those of the small.Everywhere do they go; they are worn with pride at festivals, carried in despair to usurers, borne off in triumph amid blood and pillage, enshrined in masterpieces conceived by art for their protection.None, except the pearl of Cleopatra, has been lost.The Great and the Fortunate assemble to witness the coronation of some king, whose trappings are the work of men's hands, but the purple of whose raiment is less glorious than that of the flowers of the field.These festivals, splendid in light, bathed in music which the hand of man creates, aye, all the triumphs of that hand are subdued by a thought, crushed by a sentiment.The Mind can illumine in a man and round a man a light more vivid, can open his ear to more melodious harmonies, can seat him on clouds of shining constellations and teach him to question them.The Heart can do still greater things.Man may come into the presence of one sole being and find in a single word, a single look, an influence so weighty to bear, of so luminous a light, so penetrating a sound, that he succumbs and kneels before it.The most real of all splendors are not in outward things, they are within us.A single secret of science is a realm of wonders to the man of learning.Do the trumpets of Power, the jewels of Wealth, the music of Joy, or a vast concourse of people attend his mental festival? No, he finds his glory in some dim retreat where, perchance, a pallid suffering man whispers a single word into his ear; that word, like a torch lighted in a mine, reveals to him a Science.All human ideas, arrayed in every attractive form which Mystery can invent surrounded a blind man seated in a wayside ditch.Three worlds, the Natural, the Spiritual, the Divine, with all their spheres, opened their portals to a Florentine exile; he walked attended by the Happy and the Unhappy; by those who prayed and those who moaned; by angels and by souls in hell.When the Sent of God, who knew and could accomplish all things, appeared to three of his disciples it was at eventide, at the common table of the humblest of inns; and then and there the Light broke forth, shattering Material Forms, illuminating the Spiritual Faculties, so that they saw him in his glory, and the earth lay at their feet like a cast-off sandal.
Monsieur Becker, Wilfrid, and Minna were all under the influence of fear as they took their way to meet the extraordinary being whom each desired to question.To them, in their several ways, the Swedish castle had grown to mean some gigantic representation, some spectacle like those whose colors and masses are skilfully and harmoniously marshalled by the poets, and whose personages, imaginary actors to men, are real to those who begin to penetrate the Spiritual World.On the tiers of this Coliseum Monsieur Becker seated the gray legions of Doubt, the stern ideas, the specious formulas of Dispute.He convoked the various antagonistic worlds of philosophy and religion, and they all appeared, in the guise of a fleshless shape, like that in which art embodies Time,--an old man bearing in one hand a scythe, in the other a broken globe, the human universe.
Wilfrid had bidden to the scene his earliest illusions and his latest hopes, human destiny and its conflicts, religion and its conquering powers.
Minna saw heaven confusedly by glimpses; love raised a curtain wrought with mysterious images, and the melodious sounds which met her ear redoubled her curiosity.
To all three, therefore, this evening was to be what that other evening had been for the pilgrims to Emmaus, what a vision was to Dante, an inspiration to Homer,--to them, three aspects of the world revealed, veils rent away, doubts dissipated, darkness illumined.
Humanity in all its moods expecting light could not be better represented than here by this young girl, this man in the vigor of his age, and these old men, of whom one was learned enough to doubt, the other ignorant enough to believe.Never was any scene more simple in appearance, nor more portentous in reality.
When they entered the room, ushered in by old David, they found Seraphita standing by a table on which were served the various dishes which compose a "tea"; a form of collation which in the North takes the place of wine and its pleasures,--reserved more exclusively for Southern climes.Certainly nothing proclaimed in her, or in him, a being with the strange power of appearing under two distinct forms;nothing about her betrayed the manifold powers which she wielded.Like a careful housewife attending to the comfort of her guests, she ordered David to put more wood into the stove.
"Good evening, my neighbors," she said."Dear Monsieur Becker, you do right to come; you see me living for the last time, perhaps.This winter has killed me.Will you sit there?" she said to Wilfrid."And you, Minna, here?" pointing to a chair beside her."I see you have brought your embroidery.Did you invent that stitch? the design is very pretty.For whom is it,--your father, or monsieur?" she added, turning to Wilfrid."Surely we ought to give him, before we part, a remembrance of the daughters of Norway.""Did you suffer much yesterday?" asked Wilfrid.
"It was nothing," she answered; "the suffering gladdened me; it was necessary, to enable me to leave this life.""Then death does not alarm you?" said Monsieur Becker, smiling, for he did not think her ill.
"No, dear pastor; there are two ways of dying: to some, death is victory, to others, defeat.""Do you think that you have conquered?" asked Minna.