Seraphita | Page 3

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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] and
Dagny, [email protected]

SERAPHITA
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Madame Eveline de Hanska, nee Comtesse Rzewuska.
Madame,--Here is the work which you asked of me. I am happy, in thus
dedicating it, to offer you a proof of the respectful affection you allow
me to bear you. If I am reproached for impotence in this attempt to

draw from the depths of mysticism a book which seeks to give, in the
lucid transparency of our beautiful language, the luminous poesy of the
Orient, to you the blame! Did you not command this struggle
(resembling that of Jacob) by telling me that the most imperfect sketch
of this Figure, dreamed of by you, as it has been by me since childhood,
would still be something to you?
Here, then, it is,--that something. Would that this book could belong
exclusively to noble spirits, preserved like yours from worldly pettiness
by solitude! THEY would know how to give to it the melodious rhythm
that it lacks, which might have made it, in the hands of a poet, the
glorious epic that France still awaits. But from me they must accept it
as one of those sculptured balustrades, carved by a hand of faith, on
which the pilgrims lean, in the choir of some glorious church, to think
upon the end of man.
I am, madame, with respect, Your devoted servant, De Balzac.

SERAPHITA


CHAPTER I
SERAPHITUS
As the eye glances over a map of the coasts of Norway, can the
imagination fail to marvel at their fantastic indentations and serrated
edges, like a granite lace, against which the surges of the North Sea
roar incessantly? Who has not dreamed of the majestic sights to be seen
on those beachless shores, of that multitude of creeks and inlets and
little bays, no two of them alike, yet all trackless abysses? We may
almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable
hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts
the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the staple commerce of
the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men
who cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen
degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain
existence. Thanks to perils devoid of glory, to year-long snows which

clothe the Norway peaks and guard them from profaning foot of
traveller, these sublime beauties are virgin still; they will be seen to
harmonize with human phenomena, also virgin--at least to
poetry--which here took place, the history of which it is our purpose to
relate.
If one of these inlets, mere fissures to the eyes of the eider-ducks, is
wide enough for the sea not to freeze between the prison-walls of rock
against which it surges, the country-people call the little bay a
"fiord,"--a word which geographers of every nation have adopted into
their respective languages. Though a certain resemblance exists among
all these fiords, each has its own characteristics. The sea has
everywhere forced its way as through a breach, yet the rocks about each
fissure are diversely rent, and their tumultuous precipices defy the rules
of geometric law. Here the scarp is dentelled like a saw; there the
narrow ledges barely allow the snow to lodge or the noble crests of the
Northern pines to spread themselves; farther on, some convulsion of
Nature may have rounded a coquettish curve into a lovely valley
flanked in rising terraces with black-plumed pines. Truly we are
tempted to call this land the Switzerland of Ocean.
Midway between Trondhjem and Christiansand lies an inlet called the
Strom-fiord. If the Strom-fiord is not the loveliest of these rocky
landscapes, it has the merit of displaying the terrestrial grandeurs of
Norway, and of enshrining the scenes of a history that is indeed
celestial.
The general outline of the Strom-fiord seems at first sight to be that of a