Superhuman Tales by Victor-Emile Michelet

Author:Victor-Emile Michelet [Michelet, Victor-Emile]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2019-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

THE REDEMPTRIX

To Madame H. Agopian-Pacha13

And there appeared a great wonder

in Heaven, a woman clothed with

the sun, and the moon under her

feet, and upon her head a crown

of twelve stars.

(Revelation XII: 1)

Oh, gilded flower of my ideal, you bloom too high for my hand ever to pluck you.

Certainly, my gaze has never quit you, but it is with an irremediable despair that that from below—from below forever!—I see your silhouette flamboyant on the horizon of my dream.

And I go forth, I go through life, groping for obstacles, rubbing shoulders with men whose natal baseness I disdain. I march in darkness, the density of which oppresses me and stifles me. And I sense that the darkness will not be illuminated again, whatever happens, that I shall turn around in the obscurity of a funerary crypt.

Certain kabbalists claim that many men are dead, who believe that they are alive because they have conserved the appearances of life. Perhaps I am one of those men. My soul has departed with her, when she disappeared. Oh, I felt the wing of distress pass over my forehead on that day, the day on which I saw her for the last time. Since then, I have been a dead man walking.

How can I talk about her? How can I express in words the impression that her presence gave me? It was the fête of my life. Her aspect multiplied my energies. Existing in her atmosphere, I was conscious of inhabiting a world in which the soul blossomed in bliss. Her person suggested joy, certainty and strength. On seeing her, I understood what theologians call the real presence.

I have lived. Now I am almost old. For having known that creature, what thanks do I not owe to destiny? Often, before the happiness of seeing her had illuminated my sad heart, I envied men whose powers permitted them to march in the orbit of a sublime being. To live in the radiation of a hero; to be a disciple blindly trusting a tranquil and strong master; to be a frail John whose head leaned on the serene shoulder of a Jesus—how many times did I sigh after that possibility?

I have envied you, poor fishermen to whom the mere gesture of the Nazarene Master opened the golden door of total Knowledge.

For I am not a demigod. Although my ideal is higher than that of other men, I remain at their level. I was a seagull whose wings devoid of feathers extended toward the immensity, without the power to soar there.

Now, she appeared. I approached her. And all the embryonic forces within me stirred. My most obscure virtualities were manifest in deeds. I cannot imagine an intensity equal to the one I felt in her radiation. Yes, I tell you, my sensibility had joy, my intelligence certainty, my will power. Who was she? An incarnation, a human appearance radiating Wellbeing.

In truth, to remember the man that I was before her coming it requires a painful effort. For I date from the friction of her dress on my life.

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