第27章
"The conviction that shone on the baron's face forbade all discussion;I listened in silence.His voice had a contagious heat which made my bosom burn within me; his fanaticism stirred my heart as the anger of another makes our nerves vibrate.I followed him in silence to his house, where I saw the nameless child lying mysteriously folded to its mother's breast.The babe heard my step and turned its head toward me;its eyes were not those of an ordinary child.To give you an idea of the impression I received, I must say that already they saw and thought.The childhood of this predestined being was attended by circumstances quite extraordinary in our climate.For nine years our winters were milder and our summers longer than usual.This phenomenon gave rise to several discussions among scientific men; but none of their explanations seemed sufficient to academicians, and the baron smiled when I told him of them.The child was never seen in its nudity as other children are; it was never touched by man or woman, but lived a sacred thing upon the mother's breast, and it never cried.If you question old David he will confirm these facts about his mistress, for whom he feels an adoration like that of Louis IX.for the saint whose name he bore.
"At nine years of age the child began to pray; prayer is her life.You saw her in the church at Christmas, the only day on which she comes there; she is separated from the other worshippers by a visible space.
If that space does not exist between herself and men she suffers.That is why she passes nearly all her time alone in the chateau.The events of her life are unknown; she is seldom seen; her days are spent in the state of mystical contemplation which was, so Catholic writers tell us, habitual with the early Christian solitaries, in whom the oral tradition of Christ's own words still remained.Her mind, her soul, her body, all within her is virgin as the snow on those mountains.At ten years of age she was just what you see her now.When she was nine her father and mother expired together, without pain or visible malady, after naming the day and hour at which they would cease to be.
Standing at their feet she looked at them with a calm eye, not showing either sadness, or grief, or joy, or curiosity.When we approached to remove the two bodies she said, 'Carry them away!' 'Seraphita,' Isaid, for so we called her, 'are you not affected by the death of your father and your mother who loved you so much?' 'Dead?' she answered, 'no, they live in me forever-- That is nothing,' she pointed without emotion to the bodies they were bearing away.I then saw her for the third time only since her birth.In church it is difficult to distinguish her; she stands near a column which, seen from the pulpit, is in shadow, so that I cannot observe her features.
"Of all the servants of the household there remained after the death of the master and mistress only old David, who, in spite of his eighty-two years, suffices to wait on his mistress.Some of our Jarvis people tell wonderful tales about her.These have a certain weight in a land so essentially conducive to mystery as ours; and I am now studying the treatise on Incantations by Jean Wier and other works relating to demonology, where pretended supernatural events are recorded, hoping to find facts analogous to those which are attributed to her.""Then you do not believe in her?" said Wilfrid.
"Oh yes, I do," said the pastor, genially, "I think her a very capricious girl; a little spoilt by her parents, who turned her head with the religious ideas I have just revealed to you."Minna shook her head in a way that gently expressed contradiction.