Uranie. English

by Camille Flammarion

  IV.

  AMOR.

  In their life together, pleasant and intimate as it was, there wassomething lacking. These conversations on the serious topics of being ornon-being, their exchange of ideas on the analysis of humanity, theirinquiries into the final end of the existence of things, satisfied theirminds sometimes, but not their hearts. When they had been together for along time, talking under the garden trellis which towered above thepicture of the great city, or in the silent library, the student, thethinker could not leave his companion; they sat hand in hand, mute,attracted and repelled by an irresistible power. After leaving eachother, both felt a singular, painful void in their breasts, anindefinable uneasiness, as though some link necessary for both theirlives had been broken; and each hoped for nothing but the hour ofmeeting. He loved her, not for himself, but for herself, with an almostimpersonal affection, with a feeling of high esteem as well as ardentlove; and by a constantly fought combat with his desire he had been ableto resist it. But one day, when they were both sitting on the wide divanin the library, strewn, as usual, with books and loose leaves, a silencefell upon them, and it happened that, overcome perhaps by the weight ofhis long-continued efforts to resist so powerful an attraction, theyoung author's head insensibly drooped to his companion's shoulder, andalmost at once ... their lips met....

  Oh, unutterable joys of requited love; insatiable intoxication of theheart transported with happiness; never-ending delights of the uncurbedimagination; sweet music of the heart,--to what ethereal heights haveyou not raised the chosen ones, given up to your supreme felicities!Suddenly forgetful of this lower world, they fly on outstretched wingsto some enchanted paradise, lose themselves in celestial depths, andsoar away to the sublime regions of eternal rapture. The world, with itsjoys and its sorrows, no longer exists for them; they live in light, infire,--they are salamanders, phoenixes, freed from all weight, light asflame, burning themselves out, rising again from their ashes, alwaysluminous, always ardent, invulnerable, invincible.

  The expansion of their first long-repressed delights threw the loversinto an ecstatic existence in which metaphysics and its problems werefor a time forgotten. This lasted six months. The sweetest but mostimperious of feelings had suddenly absorbed and taken possession ofthem, thus completing the insufficient intellectual satisfactions of themind. From the day of the kiss, George Spero not only entirelydisappeared from society, but even ceased to write; and I lost sight ofhim myself, notwithstanding the long and true affection he had professedfor me. Logicians might have been able to conclude from this that forthe first time in his life he was satisfied that he had found thesolution of the great problem,--the supreme object of the existence ofbeings.

  They were living in this "selfishness for two" which, while movingmankind from our optic centre, diminishes its defects and makes itappear more beautiful. Satisfied by their mutual affection, everythingin nature and humanity sang a perpetual hymn of happiness and love.Often in the evening they walked along the banks of the Seine, dreamilycontemplating the effects of light and shade which make the sky of Parisso exquisite at twilight, when the silhouettes of towers and buildingsare thrown out against the luminous background in the west. Piles ofrose-colored and purple clouds, illuminated by the distant reflection ofthe sea over which the vanished sun is still shining, give our skies acharacter of their own, not like that of Naples, bathed in the west bythe Mediterranean mirror, but surpassing Venice perhaps, whoseillumination is pale and eastern. It might chance that, their stepshaving led them to the old island of the Cite, they would stroll alongthe river bank, passing in sight of Notre Dame and the old Chatelet,whose dark outlines might still be seen against the dimly lighted sky.Sometimes, often indeed, enticed by the brilliance of the setting sunand by the fresh green of the country, they went along the _quais_, outbeyond the ramparts of the great city, and strayed as far as thesolitudes of Boulogne or Billancourt, shut in between the dusky hills ofMeudon and Saint-Cloud. They were contemplating Nature; they forgot thenoisy city lost behind them; and walking with the same step, forming butone being, they received the same impressions, thought the samethoughts, and by their silence spoke the same language. The streamflowed on at their feet, the noises of the day were dying away, thefirst stars were peeping out. Iclea liked to tell George their names asthey appeared.

  March and April often offer Paris mild evenings, on which the first warmbreezes, forerunners of spring, greet us. Orion's brilliant stars, thedazzling Sirius, the Twins, Castor and Pollux glitter in the immensesky; the Pleiades sink towards the western horizon; but Arcturus andBootes, shepherd of the celestial flocks, return, and a few hours laterwhite and resplendent Vega rises on the eastern horizon, soon followedby the Milky Way. Arcturus with its golden rays is always the first starto be recognized, from its piercing brilliancy and from its position inthe prolongation of the tail of the Great Bear. Sometimes the lunarcrescent was hanging in the western sky, and the young girl gazedadmiringly, like Ruth by Boaz' side, at "that golden sickle in the fieldof stars."

  The stars surround the earth, the earth is in the sky. Spero and hiscompanion realized this, and perhaps no other couple on any othercelestial earth lived on more intimate terms than they with the sky andinfinity.

  And yet by degrees, perhaps without noticing it himself, the youngphilosopher was gradually taking up again by shattered fragments hisinterrupted studies; analyzing subjects now with a deep feeling ofoptimism which he had never known before, in spite of his naturalkindliness; excluding cruel conclusions because they seemed to him to bedue to an insufficient knowledge of causes, looking at the panoramas ofNature and of humanity in a new light. She too had taken up, at leastpartially, the studies which she had begun in common with him; but anew feeling filled her soul, and her mind had not the same freedom forintellectual work. Absorbed in this constant affection for a being whomshe had wholly won, she saw only through him, acted only by him. Inquiet evening hours, when she went to the piano and played a sonata byChopin, which she was astonished to find she had not understood untilshe was in love, or to accompany her pure rich voice while singing theNorwegian _lieder_ by Grieg or Bull, or our own Gounod's melodies, itseemed to her, unconsciously perhaps, that her lover was the onlylistener capable of appreciating these inspirations of the heart. Whatdelicious hours he spent, stretched on a divan in that spacious libraryin the house at Passy, sometimes idly following the capricious rings ofsmoke from a Turkish cigarette, while she gave herself up to fancifulmemories, singing the sweet _Saetergientens Sondag_ of her native land,the serenade from "Don Juan," Lamartine's "Lake," or else when runningher skilful fingers over the keys she sent the melodious dream ofBoccherini's minuet floating into the air.

  Spring had come. May had brought the opening fetes at the UniversalExhibition of which we spoke at the beginning of this story, and thegreat trees in the garden at Passy shaded the Eden of the loving couple.Iclea's father, who had suddenly been called to Tunis, returned with acollection of Arabian arms for his museum at Christiania. He intended togo back to Norway very soon, and it had been agreed between the youngNorwegian girl and her lover that the marriage should take place in hernative land on the anniversary of the mysterious apparition.

  Their love was, from its very nature, very far removed from all thosecommon-place unions founded, some on gross sensual pleasure, others onmotives of interest more or less disguised, which represent the greaterpart of human love. Their cultivated minds kept them isolated in theloftier regions of thought; their delicacy of feeling kept them in anideal atmosphere where all material burdens were forgotten; the extremeimpressibility of their nerves, the exquisite refinement of all theirsensations, brought them delights whose enjoyment seemed to have no end.If there is love in other worlds, it can be no deeper or more exquisitefeeling. To a physiologist they would have been the living witnesses ofthe fact that, contrary to ordinary opinion, all enjoyment comes fromthe brain, the intensity of sensation corresponding to the psychicsensibility of the being.

  Pari
s was for them, not a city, not a world, but the theatre of humanhistory. They lived the past centuries over again. The old quarterswhich had not yet been ruined by modern changes,--the Cite, with NotreDame, Saint-Julien le Pauvre, whose walls still recall Chilperic andFredegonde; the old houses where Albert le Grand, Petrarch, Dante,Abelard, had lived; the old University, anterior to the Sorbonne, andbelonging to the same vanished centuries; the cloister of Saint-Merrywith its sombre little paths, the abbey of Saint-Martin, Clovis' toweron the mountain, Saint-Genevieve, Saint-Germain-des-Pres, a relic ofthe Merovingians, Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, whose bell sounded thetocsin, the Sainte-Chapelle at Louis IX.'s palace, all memorials ofFrench history, were the object of their pilgrimages. They were alonein crowds, looking into the past and seeing what very few people knowhow to see.

  And so the immense city spoke its language of other days,--either when,lost amid the monsters, griffins, pillars, and capitals, the arabesquesof the tower and galleries of Notre Dame, they saw the human hive go tosleep at their feet in the evening dusk, or, when rising higher still,they tried from the top of the Pantheon to restore the old outlines ofParis and its gradual development from the Roman emperors who lived inthe Baths, to Philip Augustus and his successors.

  The spring sunshine, the blooming lilacs, the joyous May mornings, fullof bird-songs and nervous exhilaration, often drew them at random awayfrom Paris into the meadows and woods. The hours flew by like a breathof wind, the day had passed like a thought, and the night prolonged thedivine dream of love. In the swiftly revolving world of Jupiter, wherethe days and nights are twice as rapid as they are here, and do not evenlast ten hours, lovers do not find the time fade away any more quickly.The measure of time is in ourselves.

  They were sitting one evening on the roof of the old tower at theChateau de Chevreuse; there was no railing, and they were close togetherin the centre, from whence one can look down over the unobstructedsurrounding landscape. The warm air from the valley, impregnated withwild perfumes from the neighboring woods, rose to where they sat; thewarbler was still singing, and the nightingale in the growing shadowswas trying over his melodious hymn to the stars. The sun had just set ina blaze of crimson and gold, and the west alone was still illuminated bya glowing radiance. Everything seemed to be asleep on Nature's broadbosom.

  Iclea was a little pale; but in the glow of the western sky her skin wasso clear, so delicate, so ideal that the light seemed to penetrate itand illuminate it from within. Her eyes were misty with soft languor,and her little, childlike mouth was lightly parted; she seemed lost incontemplation of the sunset light. Leaning on Spero's breast, her armstwined about his neck, she was sinking into a revery when ashooting-star crossed the sky just over the tower. She started with alittle feeling of superstition.

  The most brilliant stars were already sparkling in the heavenly depths.Arcturus, a brilliant golden yellow, was very high, almost at thezenith; Vega, a pure white light, had already risen towards the west; inthe north, Capella; in the west, Castor, Pollux, and Procyon. The sevenstars of the Great Bear, Regulus, Spica Virginis, were also discernible.Noiselessly, one by one, the stars came out to punctuate the heavens.The north star showed the only motionless spot in the celestial sphere.

  The moon was rising, its reddish disk somewhat diminished from being onthe wane. Mars was shining between Pollux and Regulus in the southwest,Saturn in the southeast. Twilight was slowly yielding its place to themysterious reign of night.

  "Does it not seem to you," she asked, "that all these stars are likeeyes looking down at us?"

  "Celestial eyes, like yours. What can they see on earth more beautifulthan you--and our love?"

  "And yet--" she added.

  "Yes, 'and yet,'--the world, family, society, custom, moral laws, andall that. I understand your thought. We have forgotten all these thingsto obey attraction alone,--like the sun, like all those stars, like thewarbling nightingale, like all Nature. Very soon we shall give thosesocial customs the part which belongs to them, and can openly proclaimour love. Shall we be any happier for that? Is it possible to be anyhappier than we are at this very moment?"

  "I am yours," she replied, "I do not exist for myself. I am swallowed upin your light, your love, in your happiness, and I care for nothing,nothing more. No. I was thinking of those stars, of those eyes lookingdown at us, and wondering where all the human eyes are which havewatched them for millions of years as we do to-night. Where are all thehearts that have beaten as our heart beats now? Where are all the soulswho have lost themselves in endless kisses in the mysterious vanishednights?"

  "They all exist, nothing can be destroyed. We associate heaven andearth, and we are right. In all the ages, with all peoples, among allbeliefs, mankind has always asked the secret of its destiny of thestarry heavens. That was one kind of divination. The Earth is a star ofheaven, like Mars and Saturn, which we see yonder, earths of the sky,lighted by the same sun as we are, and like all these stars, which aredistant suns. Thought translates what man has believed ever since itexisted. All eyes have sought the answer to the great enigma in theskies, and Urania has replied to them since the early days ofmythology."

  The night was coming on. The moon, slowly rising in the eastern sky, wasshedding her radiance through the atmosphere, insensibly displacing thetwilight; and in the city at their feet, below the thickets and ruins, afew lights were already beginning to appear here and there. The two hadrisen, and were standing in the centre of the tower roof, closelyclasped together. She was beautiful, framed in the aureole of her hair,whose curls floated over her shoulders; little puffs of spring-likeair, fragrant with perfume of violets, gillyflowers, lilacs, and Mayroses were rising from the neighboring gardens. Solitude and silencewere about them. Their lips united in a long kiss,--the hundredth atleast of that beautiful day of spring. She was still dreaming. Afugitive smile suddenly lighted up her face, then faded away like apassing cloud.

  "Of what are you thinking?" he asked.

  "Oh, nothing! A worldly, foolish thought; a little silly--nothing."

  "But what was it?" he asked, taking her again in his arms.

  "Oh! I was only wondering if people had mouths in those other worlds;because, you know--a kiss--lips--"

  And so the hours passed away,--days, weeks, months, in a perfect unionof all their thoughts, all their feelings and impressions. The June sunwas already shining at its solstice, and the time to leave for Iclea'shome had come. At the appointed time she left with her father forChristiania, and Spero followed them a few days later. It was theyoung savant's intention to stay in Norway until autumn, andcontinue the studies on the aurora borealis he had begun the yearbefore,--observations which were especially interesting to him, andwhich he had had scarcely time to begin.

  This visit to Norway was the prolongation of a happy dream. The fairNorthern girl cast an aureole of perpetual winsomeness about him whichwould perhaps have made him still forget the attractions of science ifshe herself had not had, as we have seen, an insatiable taste for study.The experiments which the indefatigable seeker had undertaken onatmospheric electricity interested her as much as they did him. She toowanted to know about those mysterious flames in the aurora borealiswhich palpitate at night in high atmospheres; and as his series ofinvestigations led him to desire a balloon ascension, in order to reachand surprise the phenomenon at its source, she also experienced the samewish. He tried to dissuade her from it, those aeronautic expeditions notbeing free from danger. But the very idea of sharing a peril with himwould have been enough to make her deaf to her loved one's entreaties.After long hesitation Spero decided to take her with him, and preparedfor an ascension from the University of Christiania on the first nightof the aurora borealis.