Honoré de Balzac

“ We will reign, sweetheart—never fear! But all will not be roses for us till we are free to please ourselves. There is nothing so hard for a King as to govern!
"Am I the Queen now, I ask you? Do you think that your mother ever fails to repay me in evil for what good my uncles may do for the glory of your throne? And mark the difference! My uncles are great princes, descendants of Charlemagne, full of goodwill, and ready to die for you; while this daughter of a leech, or a merchant, Queen of France by a mere chance, is as shrewish as a citizen's wife who is not mistress in her house. ”

“ You acquire alacrity of spirit; in one instant you can be present in every region; you are borne, like the Word itself, from one end of the world to the other. There is a harmony—you join in it; there is a light—you see it; there is a melody—its counterpart is in you. In that frame you will feel your intellect expanding, growing, and its insight reaching to prodigious distances; in fact, to the spirit, time and space are not. Distance and duration are proportions proper to matter; and spirit and matter have nothing in common. ”

“ Death and impurity were repossessing themselves of their prey.
As they resumed the bondage of the flesh from which their spirit had for a moment been released by a sublime trance, the two mortals felt as on awakening in the morning from a night of splendid dreams, of which reminiscences float in the brain, though the senses have no knowledge of them, and human language would fail to express them. The blackness of the limbo into which they fell was the sphere where the sun of visible worlds shines.
"We must go down again," said Wilfrid to Minna. ”

“ There is this strange feature in the mind of man: the most devoted, even in the act of devoting himself, always builds up a romance of hope even in the most perilous crisis. Thus, when on the river under the Pont au Change, the prince, the soldier, and the preacher had required Christophe to carry to Queen Catherine the document which, if discovered, would have cost him his life, the boy had trusted to his wit, to chance, to his perspicacity, and had boldly marched on between the two formidable parties—the Guises and the Queen—who had so nearly crushed him. ”

“ I see myself and you side by side, walking with equal pace, living in the same thought; each dwelling in the other's heart, understanding each other, responding to each other as an echo catches and repeats a sound across wide distances.
"Can life be long when it is thus consumed hour by hour? Shall we not die in a first embrace? What if our souls have already met in that sweet evening kiss which almost overpowered us—a feeling kiss, but the crown of my hopes, the ineffectual expression of all the prayers I breathe while we are apart, hidden in my soul like remorse? ”

“ We are one of the greatest works of God. Has He not bestowed on us the faculty of reflecting nature, concentrating it in ourselves by thought, and making it a stepping-stone from which to fly to Him? We love each other in proportion to what is heavenly in our souls.—But do not be unjust, Minna; look at the scene displayed at our feet; is it not grand? The ocean lies spread like a floor, the mountains are like the walls of an amphitheatre, the ether above is like the suspended velarium of the theatre, and we can inhale the mind of God as a perfume. ”

“ The most splendid celebrity is a possession that genius alone can create. Well, I can, at my will, make for you a bed of laurels. And if the silent ovation paid to science is not all you desire, I have within me the sword of the Word; I could run in the path of honor and ambition where others only crawl.
"Command me, Pauline; I will be whatever you will. My iron will can do anything—I am loved! Armed with that thought, ought not a man to sweep everything before him? The man who wants all can do all. ”

“ Is not love for a lifetime only sheer suffering? Have you not felt a longing for eternal love? Do you not now understand to what ecstasy a being can rise when he is double through loving Him who never betrays his love, Him before whom all bow and worship!
"I would I had wings, Wilfrid, to cover you withal; I would I had strength to give you that you might know the foretaste of the world where the purest joys of the purest union known on earth would cast a shadow in the light that there perennially enlightens and rejoices all hearts! ”

“ He suppressed some reflections, raised his arms in the direction of Christiania, which was visible as a speck on the horizon, and said:
"Look!"
"We are indeed small," said she.
"Yes; but we become great by feeling and intellect," said Seraphitus. "The knowledge of things, Minna, begins with us; the little we know of the laws of the visible world enables us to conceive of the immensity of higher spheres. I know not whether the time is ripe for talking thus to you; but I so long to communicate to you the flame of my hopes! Some day, perhaps, we may meet in the world where love never dies." ”

“ Christopher Columbus gave a world to the King of Spain; I am seeking to give the King of France a people that shall never die.—I, an outpost on the remotest frontier which cuts us off from the knowledge of things, a patient student of atoms, I destroy forms, I dissolve the bonds of every combination, I imitate Death to enable me to imitate Life. In short, I knock incessantly at the door of Creation, and shall still knock till my latest day. When I die, my knocker will pass into other hands not less indefatigable, as unknown giants bequeathed it to me. ”

“ That, Minna, is how I love Him."
"Whom?" said Minna, gripped by consuming jealousy.
"God!" replied Seraphitus, whose voice flashed upon their souls like a beacon light of freedom blazing from hill to hill—"God, who never betrays us! God, who does not desert us, but constantly fulfils our desires, and who alone can perennially satisfy His creatures with infinite and unmixed joys! God, who is never weary, and who only has smiles! God, ever new, who pours His treasures into the soul, who purifies it without bitterness, who is all harmony, all flame! ”

“ In him ends a finite, visible universe; in him begins an infinite and invisible universe—two worlds that do not know each other. Have the pebbles of the fiord any cognizance of their relative shapes, are they conscious of the colors seen in them by the eye of man, do they hear the music of the ripples that dance over them? Let us then leap the gulf we cannot fathom, the unthinkable union of a material with a spiritual universe, the concept of a visible, ponderable, tangible creation, conterminous with an invisible, imponderable, intangible creation ”

“ There alone could lovers meet and exchange their vows. Then Church Festivals were the only spectacles; a woman's soul was more deeply stirred within the walls of a cathedral than it now is at a ball or an opera. And does not every strong emotion bring a woman round to love? Thus, by dint of forming part of life, and identifying itself with every act, religion had become the moving principle of virtue and vice alike. Religion was mixed up with science, with politics, with eloquence, with crime; on the throne or in the skin of the poor and suffering ”

“ Lambert's woes had taught me many a chant of sorrow far more appealing than the finest passages in "Werther." And, indeed, there is no possible comparison between the pangs of a passion condemned, whether rightly or wrongly, by every law, and the grief of a poor child pining for the glorious sunshine, the dews of the valley, and liberty. Werther is the slave of desire; Louis Lambert was an enslaved soul. Given equal talent, the more pathetic sorrow, founded on desires which, being purer, are the more genuine, must transcend the wail even of genius. ”

“ But the unfinished condition of the machine set limits to the composer's execution, and his idea seemed all the greater; for, often, the very perfection of a work of art limits its suggestiveness to the recipient soul. Is not this proved by the preference accorded to a sketch rather than a finished picture when on their trial before those who interpret a work in their own mind rather than accept it rounded off and complete?
The purest and serenest music that Andrea had ever listened to rose up from under Gambara's fingers like the vapor of incense from an altar. ”

“ The angel is crucified everywhere, and in every sphere. Sighs go up to God from every world. The earth on which we live is one ear of the harvest; humanity is but a species in the vast field where flowers are grown for heaven.
"In short, God is everywhere the same, and it is easy everywhere to go to Him by prayer."
After these words, falling as from the lips of a second Hagar in the desert, and stirring the souls they pierced like the spears shot by the fiery word of Isaiah, the Being was silent to collect some little remaining strength. Neither Wilfrid nor Minna dared to speak. ”

“ A few moments after Christophe had gone out, old Lallier and his daughter came in, preceded by a woman-servant carrying three bottles of old wine.
"Well, and where is Christophe?" asked the furrier and his wife.
"Christophe?" said Babette; "we have not seen him."
"A pretty rogue is my son!" cried Lecamus. "He tricks me as if I had no beard. Why, old gossip, what will come to us? We live in times when the children are all too clever for their fathers!"
"But he has long been regarded by all the neighbors as a mad follower of Colas," said Lallier. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every day, every word, every kiss, every glance, must increase it by its tribute of past happiness. Hearts that are large enough never to forget must live every moment in their past joys as much as in those promised by the future. This was my dream of old, and now it is no longer a dream! Have I not met on this earth with an angel who has made me know all its happiness, as a reward, perhaps, for having endured all its torments? ”

“ I must tell you everything, my dear Pauline. There are moments when the spirit of vitality seems to abandon me. I feel bereft of all strength. Everything is a burden to me; every fibre of my body is inert, every sense is flaccid, my sight grows dim, my tongue is paralyzed, my imagination is extinct, desire is dead—nothing survives but my mere human vitality. At such times, though you were in all the splendor of your beauty, though you should lavish on me your subtlest smiles and tenderest words, an evil influence would blind me, and distort the most ravishing melody into discordant sounds. ”

“ The sight of this lady, who was young, pretty, well dressed, in a low bodice no doubt, and escorted by a man for whom her face beamed with all the charms of love, produced such a terrible effect on Lambert's soul and senses, that he was obliged to leave the theatre. If he had not been controlled by some remaining glimmer of reason, which was not wholly extinguished by this first fever of burning passion, he might perhaps have yielded to the almost irresistible desire that came over him to kill the young man on whom the lady's looks beamed. ”

“ The outer steps of the house and the courtyard were thronged with anxious groups. The scaffold erected for the Prince, opposite the Convent of the Récollets, astonished all the nobles. People spoke in whispers, and here, as at Blois, the conversation was a medley of serious and frivolous subjects, of grave and trivial talk. They were beginning to feel used to turmoils, to sudden rebellion, to a rush to arms, to revolts, to the great and sudden events which marked the long period during which the House of Valois was dying out, in spite of Queen Catherine's efforts. ”

“ This serious and pious way of speaking of art interested the Milanese extremely. Seated between these two distracted brains, one so noble and the other so common, and making game of each other to the great entertainment of the crowd, there was a moment when the Count found himself wavering between the sublime and its parody, the farcical extremes of human life. Ignoring the chain of incredible events which had brought them to this smoky den, he believed himself to be the plaything of some strange hallucination, and thought of Gambara and Giardini as two abstractions. ”

“ Man may stand face to face with a single being and find in a single word, a single look, a burden so heavy to be borne, a light so intense, a sound so piercing, that he can but yield and kneel. The truest splendors are not in outward things, but in ourselves.
To a learned man, is not some secret of science a whole new world of wonders? But do the clarions of force, the gems of wealth, the music of triumph, the concourse of the crowd, do honor to his joy? ”

“ Does the Voice, to be more surely heeded, pass through an animal's jaws? Does the Hand write in strange characters on the cornice of the hall where the Court is reveling? Does the Eye light up the King's slumbers? Does the Prophet read the dream? Does Death, when summoned, stand in the luminous space where a man's faculties revive? Does the Spirit crush matter at the foot of the mystical ladder of the seven spiritual worlds hung one above another in space, and seen by the floods of light that fall in cascades down the steps of the heavenly floor? ”

“ The tone and vehemence with which he spoke these words were a revelation to Catherine of her son's true character; it was like a blow from a bludgeon on her heart.
"And he speaks thus to me," thought she, "to me, who made him King."—"Monsieur," she said, "the business of being King in such times as these is a difficult one, and you do not yet know the master minds you have to deal with. You will never have any true and trustworthy friend but your mother, or other adherents than those whom she long since attached to her, and but for whom you would perhaps not be alive at this day. ”

“ He goes off to some remote nook, where a man, often pale and feeble, whispers a single word in his ear. That word, like a torch in an underground passage, lights up the whole of science.
Every human conception, arrayed in the most attractive forms that mystery can invent, once gathered round a blind man sitting in the mud by a roadside. The three worlds—the Natural, Spiritual, and Divine—were revealed to an unhappy Florentine exile; as he went he was escorted by the happy and by the suffering, by those who prayed and those who cursed, by angels and by the damned. ”