The Fiery Angel

by Valery Bruisov

  There can be no argument that all these continuous alternations of joy and torture wearied me more than the former pains of love refused, and my longing for a life peaceful and occupied in work ever increased, like a slowly-brooding storm. But we had still some time to wait before the first lightning flashes, for Renata still preserved her sway over my soul, which, after a short excommunication, once more cleaved towards her, to her glance and to her kiss, as the root under the earth cleaves towards moisture. However, in the being of Renata herself there was a something that did not permit of a slow march of events and, carried away by a new inner upheaval towards a new road of thoughts and emotions, she suddenly turned herself, and the whole of our life, on to another tack.

  Chapter the Tenth

  How Renata left me

  ONE evening, which I had spent, as usual, with dear Agnes, I returned home rather late, so that I had to obtain the right of way from the night-watchman with small presents. Approaching our house, I distinguished in the darkness someone sitting in the porch like a cat, and soon saw that it was Martha. She rushed to meet me, and related, not without simple horror, that something unexpected and terrifying had happened to-day to Mistress Renata, and that she, Martha, was afraid lest it might not be the interference of some unclean power. From the detailed description I soon gathered that Renata had been victim of another of those fits of possession, that I had already had opportunity to witness, when the spirit that was entered within her body cruelly tortured and insulted her. And now I remembered that Renata had been especially sad and restless during the last few days, to which I, however, had reacted with a disregard at once light-hearted and ignoble.

  At this moment my feeling was as if someone had pricked me in the heart, and the stream of my love for Renata had suddenly burst in my soul into a flood strong and full. I hurried upstairs, already imagining to myself in every detail how I should plead for pardon and forgiveness from Renata, and kiss her hands and listen to her tender answering words. I found Renata in bed, where, as always after a seizure, she lay exhausted almost to death, and her face, feebly lit by a candle, was like a white wax mask. Seeing me, she did not smile, rejoice or make a single movement that would manifest emotion.

  I kneeled at her bedside and began to speak thus:

  “Renata, forgive me! All this time I have been behaving unpardonably. I am cruelly guilty in that I left you. I do not know how or why I did so. But it shall never be again, I swear to you.”

  Renata stopped my speech and said in a voice soft, but clear and decisive:

  “Rupprecht, it is I who must speak now, and you who must listen. To-day there has happened to me something so important that I cannot encompass it within my reason. To-day my life was severed in two, and that which awaits me in the future will not resemble that which has been in the past.”

  After this solemn exordium, Renata, turning to me her pale and serious face, related to me the following:

  During the last week, when I had paid little attention to Renata, she had suffered much from solitude and wept for whole days, carefully concealing the fact from me. But, when a person is in weariness, he becomes defenceless against the assault of inimical demons, and so the long-standing enemy of Renata, who had persecuted her ever since the castle of Count Heinrich, had once more vanquished her, entered into her, and, torturing her, felled her to the floor. However, as she lay, prostrate and scarcely aware of anything, suddenly there rose before her a brilliant radiance, and in it appeared the image of the fiery angel, whom she had not seen since the very days of her childhood. Renata at once recognised her Madiël, for he was now as he had ever been: his face shone, his eyes were blue as the skies, his hair as if of threads of gold, his robe as if spun from flaming yarn. An inexpressible ecstasy seized Renata, like that which possessed the apostles on Mount Tabor in the hour of the Transfiguration of our Lord, but Madiël’s face was stern, and speaking, he said thus:

  “Renata! From that selfsame day on which you, succumbing to the temptations of the flesh, desired by deceit and cunning to bend me to passion, I left you, and whenever after you imagined that you saw me, it was not I you saw. And that Count Heinrich, in whom you supposed you recognised my incarnation, was sent to you by none other than the Tempter, to seduce and kill your soul utterly. In the gardens of bliss, before the face of the One in Whose Hands is All, where soar the angels, oft-times and many did I shed tears of sorrow at seeing you perish and beholding the evil triumph of the enemies of you and ourselves. Oft-times and many did I raise, like the smoke of an incense-burner, my voice in prayer to the All Highest, that He might grant me to put my hand on your shoulder and withhold you from the abyss, but ever the Voice restrained me, saying: ‘She must yet cross, even this step.’ Now it is given unto me, at last, to reveal to you all the truth, and know, that heavy are your sinnings on the scales of Justice, and your soul is already half submerged into the fires of Hell. Not of the crown of Saint Amalia of Löthringen does it behove you to dream now, but only of a crown of martyrdom, with blood washing away the uncleanness of your crimes! Sister of mine beloved! Prostrate yourself in horror, repent, pray unceasingly unto the Lord, and it will be permitted to me again to protect and fortify you!”

  While Madiël was speaking all his words were revealed to Renata in vivid pictures. Thus she saw—first the gardens of Paradise in which the angels sing hymns to the Creator, and fly up like birds, forming in their flight the mystic letters, D, J, L; then the steps of a staircase, portraying to her her earthly life, as she descended it amidst serpents, basilisks, dragons and other monsters; then herself submerged waist-deep in the fire of Hell, and the devils dancing round in jollification. And when Madiël ended his speech of wrath, Renata was in the last despair, and it seemed as if the breath of life were leaving her. Then, seeing his companion in this terrible state, Madiël suddenly changed, his face assumed an expression mild and tender, and he became like an affectionate elder brother, as he had been in the days when he played with her as a child; approaching, he bent over the swooning Renata, and tenderly kissed her on the lips, fanning her with a sweet and not burning fieriness. With a cry of joy, Renata desired to embrace him, but her outstretched arms encountered only old Martha, who had run in attracted by the noise of her fall and her pitiful moans.

  This was what Renata related to me, leaving me, as ever after her confessions, in doubt: what part in her words was reality, and what part the vision of her delirium or the invention of her mind, fatally inclined to lying. That day I took care only to comfort and quieten the ailing one, persuading her not to think as yet about what had happened, and trying to console her with the promise of better days in which I should consecrate to her all my hours and all my minutes. But Renata only shook her head to all my words, or smiled indulgently, as a mother smiles to her child when it tries to cheer her weariness away with its toys. Lulled by my tender words, however, she soon fell asleep, into the sleep of one tired and tormented, and I fell asleep near her, as in the old days, before we were yet intimate.

  That same night, however, I was able to convince myself that Renata had not spoken light-heartedly when she spoke of a severance of her life in two: at the first streaks of dawn, Renata woke me, and her face was strangely solemn as she asked me to help her rise and escort her to early Mass. I obeyed, involuntarily awed by the sternness of her voice and the silence of the morning hour, and Renata, dressing hastily, made me take her, though she was so weak that she could hardly step, to the Church of Saint Cecilia. There, falling at a prie-dieu, in the bluish twilight of the temple, Renata prayed insatiably and shed copious tears until the very end of the service, like the last of sinners, seeking liberation from her sins. And, as I watched her zeal, I began to understand that there had taken place in Renata not a temporary change, but some great upheaval, that had transformed all her thoughts, feelings, and desires with lasting effect, as if it had rebuilt on a new plan all her being.

  In truth, from now onwards began an entirely new life for Renata,
and for me together with her, and at times I felt that, even if it had been possible to have found a unity in all the various aspects of Renata which she had previously shown me, yet her new image was that of quite another woman. Not only did Renata express quite other ideas than before, not only did she begin to lead an entirely new mode of life, but I could scarcely recognise her very manner of speech, acts, mode of behaviour toward people; the sound of her voice itself, her walk, even perhaps her face hardly seemed familiar to me. But when I reminded myself of what Renata had told me of her childhood, how she had spent whole nights in prayer, how she had gone out naked into the frost, how she had flagellated herself and torn her breasts with sharp points; or, also, of those words she had said to me on the barge when we were voyaging together towards Köln: “We should all of us feel horrified and, like a stag from the huntsman, flee into a monastic cell”—I then realised that all this had actually been in Renata before, but only hidden, like a body beneath chance garments.

  In order to depict, even if only in a very general way, this last period of our life together, I must say first of all that Renata instilled into her repentance that same fierceness that she had first into her sorrow and, later, into her passion. On one of the first days following her vision she desired to go to confession and, however strongly I warned her of the dangers to which it might lead, she actually fulfilled her intention in our parish church. I do not know whether Renata did frankly confess all her sins before our parish pater, sins the least of which, had it been made publicly known, would have led her to the stake as a witch, but, in any case, on returning home, overcome and all in tears, she told me of the epithimia that had been imposed on her. And from that day forth, she fulfilled it, never missing a morning without being present at a Mass, greeting each church with a prayer, praying till exhaustion each evening at the prie-dieu, keeping all the fasts prescribed for the faithful, on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and at times she would even fly out of bed at night in order, wringing her hands and weeping bitterly, to implore absolution from her sins. Unsatisfied with the penances suggested to her, Renata thirsted to reinforce her exploits, to express still more fully her repentance, and perhaps thereby to supplicate a more rapid pardon for herself. More than once I had to restrain her as she furiously beat her head against the floor, more than once I had to raise her, unconscious from the fatigue of her prayers, and once I tore away from her a dagger with which she had already traced upon her breasts a bloody cross. At such moments, Renata’s face was always happy and child-like, and she begged me humbly:

  “Rupprecht, leave me, I am happy, I am happy!”

  In these first days of her penitence, Renata was calm and kind to me, as a sister to a brother in a Brigittian monastery, not replying sharply to me, obeying me in small matters, but in the substantial firmly holding to her road. But of course Renata had renounced all the temptations of passion, and she did not allow me even to touch her, speaking of earthly love with that same coldness as would a scholastic like Vincent of Beauvais.

  Insistently, Renata pleaded with me to join her in her repentance, begging me on her knees and with tears like some good sister, or exhorting me with threats like a preacher—but in my soul, where Iacob Wimpfeling had flung his seed, these appeals could find no echo. All my life I have preserved in the depths of my heart a live faith in my Creator, the Defender of the World, in His Sanctifying Grace and in the expiatory sacrifice of Christ our Saviour, but never have I agreed that true religion demands outward manifestations. If the Lord God has given into the possession of mankind the earth, where only by struggle and toil can we fulfil our duty, and where only passionate feelings can bring true joy—then, in His Justice, He cannot demand that we renounce toil, struggle and passion. And, besides, the example of the monks, those true wolves in sheep’s clothing, who have long since become a broad target pierced by all the arrows of satire, shows sufficiently how little a life of idleness and dependence may approach to saintliness, though it be conducted in the proximity of altars and the presence of daily Masses.

  However, the sincerity and abandon with which Renata gave herself up to her repentance revived in me my feeling for her to such an extent that, during a week, or perhaps even for a whole ten days, I made belief that I also experienced what she did, for I desired so much not to be parted from her, to share with her her every minute. Together with Renata I visited the churches; again, leaning against a pillar, did I watch her bent over her prayer book; listened to the rhythmic swelling of the organ and dreamed hopelessly that it was the Mexican forests that rustled around us. I also did not refuse Renata when she called on me to pray with her, affectionately made me kneel by her side, and tenderly begged me to repeat after her the words of psalms and canticles. I yielded myself wholly to Renata’s will, and when she desired to repent all that she had committed in her life, then, kneeling before me and pouring out her tears, for whole hours she would curse herself and her acts, relating to me of her shameful past, and appearing to me to find especial sweetness therein in accusing herself of the darkest crimes, of which she had never been guilty, in piling upon herself the most shameful untruths.

  In these stories, she depicted her life with Count Heinrich as having been a complete horror, for she now declared that the secret society of which Heinrich had dreamed of being Grand Master was a society of the very lowest magi, which celebrated the Black Mass and prepared witches’ brews. According to Renata’s words it was in those very days that the ways to the Sabbath and the secrets of magic had been shown to her, so that she had only been pretending when she had made belief to be learning them with me. But even of our own life together, with no less emotion, did Renata relate such things as I could on no account believe, and which showed the events I had experienced personally as though reflected in a crooked mirror. Thus Renata assured me that, before meeting me, she had had no other desire than to shut herself up in a nunnery. But then some voice, belonging most certainly to the Enemy of Mankind, had spoken in her ear, saying, that the demons would give her back Heinrich, if, in his stead, she would help them to catch some other soul in their nets. After that, our whole life, it seemed, had consisted only in Renata using lies and hypocrisy that she might drag me into deadly sin, despising no form of deceit. If Renata were to be believed, one would have to suppose that she had played the part of the knocking demons herself, to tempt me into the sphere of demonomancy, that my visions of the Sabbath were those she had inspired in me, that Iohann Weier had been right in asserting that it had been Renata who had smashed the lamps at our experiment in magic, and so forth.

  Meanwhile, Renata demanded firmly that all the magic books still lying about on the lectern in her room should either be destroyed or thrown away, and however much I protested against such an undeserved execution of the books of Agrippa of Nettesheim, Peter of Apponia, Rogerius Bacon, Anselm of Parma and others, she remained unbending. Taking away the pile of tomes, I hid them in the far corner of my room, for I should have considered it sacrilege to behave like that Pope who burned Titus Livius, and raise my hand against a book, the highest treasure of mankind. But, in place of the tomes which had vanished from Renata’s desk, there soon appeared others, just as excellently bound in parchment and with no less glittering clasps, and perchance with a content that differed from theirs no more than an apple from a pear, for they too treated of demons and spirits. And, as the majority of these new compositions towards which the thirsty soul of Renata now strove were written in Latin, I had once again to be interpreter, and there repeated themselves for me and Renata those hours of joint study, during which, seated side by side at the desk and together bending over the pages, we had explored together the words of the writers.

  It was once more my task to procure the books, so that I resumed my visits to Jacob Glock and once more became a digger in his rich mines; but Renata sharply forbade me to bring the works of Martin Luther and all his henchmen and imitators, and I would on no account allow upon our desk even one book by “the
Obscure Men” by some Pfefferkorn or Hochstraten, so that, excluding all the contemporary literature of both warring camps, I had to limit my choice to the theologians of an older cut, to the treatises of the old and new scholastics. However, the first we chanced upon was that noble and interesting book by Thomas à Kempis “On the Imitation of Christ”; but then followed immediately various “Handbooks of the Exposition of Faith”; an “Enchiridion” on which was marked: “eyn Handbuchlein eynem yetzlichen Christenfast nutzlich bey sich zuhaben”; further, books such as “Die Hijmelstrasse” of Lanzkranna or “Of Prayer” by Leander of Seville; tempting by their titles and far-famed, but their fame not deserving of treatises; and still further—the lives of the saints, such as: Bernard of Clairvaux, Norbert of Magdeburg, Franciscus of Assisi, Elisabeth of Thuringen, Catherine of Sienna and others; and, lastly, the works of the two suns of this particular sphere—two folios, one slightly smaller and the other disproportionately large, for which I did not grudge my thalers, but through which we only made slow progress: the works of the seraphic doctor Iohann Bonaventura, the “Itinerium mentis,” in places not devoid of entrancement, and that of the universal doctor Thomas Aquinas, the “Summa Theologiæ,” a book of quite dead learnedness, incapable of being brought to life.