第98章 MADAME SAND AND THE NEW APOCALYPSE(12)

"Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived that I stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of a mountain.Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron;before me, nothing but a void--an abyss, and ether; the blue gloom of midnight beneath my feet, as above my head.I became delirious, and quitting that staircase, which methought it was impossible for me to reascend, I sprung forth into the void with an execration.

But, immediately, when I had uttered the curse, the void began to be filled with forms and colors, and I presently perceived that Iwas in a vast gallery, along which I advanced, trembling.There was still darkness round me; but the hollows of the vaults gleamed with a red light, and showed me the strange and hideous forms of their building.....I did not distinguish the nearest objects;but those towards which I advanced assumed an appearance more and more ominous, and my terror increased with every step I took.The enormous pillars which supported the vault, and the tracery thereof itself, were figures of men, of supernatural stature, delivered to tortures without a name.Some hung by their feet, and, locked in the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the marble of the pavement; others, fastened by their waists, were dragged upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads, towards capitals, where other figures stooped towards them, eager to torment them.Other pillars, again, represented a struggling mass of figures devouring one another; each of which only offered a trunk severed to the knees or to the shoulders, the fierce heads whereof retained life enough to seize and devour that which was near them.There were some who, half hanging down, agonized themselves by attempting, with their upper limbs, to flay the lower moiety of their bodies, which drooped from the columns, or were attached to the pedestals; and others, who, in their fight with each other, were dragged along by morsels of flesh,--grasping which, they clung to each other with a countenance of unspeakable hate and agony.Along, or rather in place of, the frieze, there were on either side a range of unclean beings, wearing the human form, but of a loathsome ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses to pieces--in feasting upon their limbs and entrails.From the vault, instead of bosses and pendants, hung the crushed and wounded forms of children; as if to escape these eaters of man's flesh, they would throw themselves downwards, and be dashed to pieces on the pavement.....The silence and motionlessness of the whole added to its awfulness.I became so faint with terror, that Istopped, and would fain have returned.But at that moment I heard, from the depths of the gloom through which I had passed, confused noises, like those of a multitude on its march.And the sounds soon became more distinct, and the clamor fiercer, and the steps came hurrying on tumultuously--at every new burst nearer, more violent, more threatening.I thought that I was pursued by this disorderly crowd; and I strove to advance, hurrying into the midst of those dismal sculptures.Then it seemed as if those figures began to heave,--and to sweat blood,--and their beady eyes to move in their sockets.At once I beheld that they were all looking upon me, that they were all leaning towards me,--some with frightful derision, others with furious aversion.Every arm was raised against me, and they made as though they would crush me with the quivering limbs they had torn one from the other."....

It is, indeed, a pity that the poor fellow gave himself the trouble to go down into damp, unwholesome graves, for the purpose of fetching up a few trumpery sheets of manuscript; and if the public has been rather tired with their contents, and is disposed to ask why Mrs.Sand's religious or irreligious notions are to be brought forward to people who are quite satisfied with their own, we can only say that this lady is the representative of a vast class of her countrymen, whom the wits and philosophers of the eighteenth century have brought to this condition.The leaves of the Diderot and Rousseau tree have produced this goodly fruit: here it is, ripe, bursting, and ready to fall;--and how to fall? Heaven send that it may drop easily, for all can see that the time is come.