“Alas!” said Godefroid, no longer restraining the tears that rolled down his cheeks, “I heard the Voice from on high; it called me by name! It had never named me before, but this time it bade me to Heaven! Oh, how sweet is that voice!—As I could not fly to Heaven,” he added artlessly, “I took the only way we know of going to God.”
“My child! oh, sublime boy!” cried the old man, throwing his arms round Godefroid, and clasping him to his heart. “You are a poet; you can boldly ride the whirlwind! Your poetry does not proceed from your heart; your living, burning thoughts, your creations, move and grow in your soul.—Go, never reveal your ideas to the vulgar! Be at once the altar, the priest, and the victim!
“You know Heaven, do you not? You have seen those myriads of angels, white-winged, and holding golden sistrums, all soaring with equal flight towards the Throne, and you have often seen their pinions moving at the breath of God as the trees of the forest bow with one consent before the storm. Ah, how glorious is unlimited space! Tell me.”
The stranger clasped Godefroid’s hand convulsively, and they both gazed at the firmament, whence the stars seemed to shed gentle poetry which they could bear.
“Oh, to see God!” murmured Godefroid.
“Child!” said the old man suddenly, in a sterner voice, “have you so soon forgotten the holy teaching of our good master, Doctor Sigier? In order to return, you to your heavenly home, and I to my native land on earth, must we not obey the voice of God? We must walk on resignedly in the stony paths where His almighty finger points the way. Do not you quail at the thought of the danger to which you exposed yourself? Arriving there without being bidden, and saying, ‘Here I am!’ before your time, would you not have been cast back into a world beneath that where your soul now hovers? Poor outcast cherub! Should you not rather bless God for having suffered you to live in a sphere where you may hear none but heavenly harmonies? Are you not as pure as a diamond, as lovely as a flower?
“Think what it is to know, like me, only the City of Sorrows!—Dwelling there I have worn out my heart.—To search the tombs for their horrible secrets; to wipe hands steeped in blood, counting them over night after night, seeing them rise up before me imploring forgiveness which I may not grant; to mark the writhing of the assassin and the last shriek of his victim; to listen to appalling noises and fearful silence, the silence of a father devouring his dead sons; to wonder at the laughter of the damned; to look for some human form among the livid heaps wrung and trampled by crime; to learn words such as living men may not hear without dying; to call perpetually on the dead, and always to accuse and condemn!—Is that living?”
“Cease!” cried Godefroid; “I cannot see you or hear you any further! My reason wanders, my eyes are dim. You light a fire within me which consumes me.”
“And yet I must go on!” said the senior, waving his hand with a strange gesture that worked on the youth like a spell.
For a moment the old man fixed Godefroid with his large, weary, lightless eyes; then he pointed with one finger to the ground. A gulf seemed to open at his bidding. He remained standing in the doubtful light of the moon; it lent a glory to his brow which reflected an almost solar gleam. Though at first a somewhat disdainful expression lurked in the wrinkles of his face, his look presently assumed the fixity which seems to gaze on an object invisible to the ordinary organs of sight. His eyes, no doubt, were seeing then the remoter images which the grave has in store for us.