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Updated: June 17, 2025
"Seraphita, am I worthy to belong to a woman?" "Ah, now," she said, smiling, "you are suddenly very modest; is it a snare? A woman is always so touched to see her weakness glorified. Well, come and take tea with me the day after to-morrow evening; good Monsieur Becker will be here, and Minna, the purest and most artless creature I have known on earth.
You came to these Northern lands for rest, you, worn-out by the impetuous struggle of genius unrecognized, you, weary with the patient toils of science, you, who well-nigh dyed your hands in crime and wore the fetters of human justice " Wilfrid dropped speechless on the carpet. Seraphita breathed softly on his forehead, and in a moment he fell asleep at her feet. "Sleep! rest!" she said, rising.
Almost at once difficulties began, difficulties which are inevitable when a genius of the stamp of Balzac is bound by an unfortunate agreement to provide a specified quantity of copy at stated intervals. Balzac could not write to order. "Seraphita," planned to please Madame Hanska, was intended to be a masterpiece such as the world had never seen.
Wilfrid sat down, crossed his arms, and looked gloomily at Seraphita. "I forgive you," he said; "for you know not what you do." "You mistake," she replied; "every woman from the days of Eve does good and evil knowingly." "I believe it," he said. "I am sure of it, Wilfrid. Our instinct is precisely that which makes us perfect. What you men learn, we feel."
Let me seat thee, beautiful and noble being, on a throne! I do not doubt success, but live within my heart and I am sure of it." "I have already reigned," said Seraphita, coldly. The words fell as the axe of a skilful woodman falls at the root of a young tree and brings it down at a single blow.
He was of a Bohemian temperament, and fond of low company. Thus he would occasionally compromise the dignity of his descent from the illustrious Don-Pierrot-de-Navarre, grandee of Spain of the first class, and the Marquesa Dona Seraphita, of aristocratic and disdainful bearing.
Minna, that is the-way I love." And when Minna, like Wilfrid, "seized by a devouring jealousy," demanded to know "whom?" Seraphita answered, "God." This she did because the one whom she loved became her God. We are told that "love makes gods of men." Perfect love, the love of those who are spiritual-mates soul-mates the "man-woman-god whom we await," becomes an immortal: and immortals are gods.
Nevertheless, we are again puzzled, when we attempt to realise the personality of a man whose imagination could soar to the mystical and philosophical conception of "Seraphita," which is full of religious poetry, and who yet had the power in "Cesar Birotteau" to invest prosaic and even sordid details with absolute verisimilitude, or in the "Contes Drolatiques" would write, in Old French, stories of Rabelaisian breadth and humour.
If we wish to understand the mystery of Balzac's life or, more truly, the mystery of the life of the woman whom he married take up and read once more the pages of Seraphita, one of his poorest novels and yet a singularly illuminating story, shedding light upon a secret of the soul.
In the end, this dual personage vanishes from our mundane atmosphere, translated bodily to heaven; and leaves his or her lovers to repair their loss just like a forlorn widow or widower by making a match based on rules of conduct laid down by the departed one. Seraphita was Balzac's pocket Catholicism. He had another Catholicism, entirely orthodox, for the use of the public at large.
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