Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/159

Rh recital of their sorrows. But she who had first arisen, twisting her hair still more violently, cried to them: "Yonder, on the surface of the earth, the men would no longer listen to you; but they said to you: 'Go, and be our spies on the women we have left to perish! When their souls are tearing themselves loose from their bodies, stifle their complaints! When they break into curses against us, close their lips, for their groans are not pleasant to our ears! Often when they struggle to fling themselves forth from this gulf into which we have cast them, they spoil our festivals, and interrupt our philosophical speculations!' You obeyed, you descended, you are here! Your task is to teach us to die silently! But I will not die in silence! I will perish crying aloud: 'I had a soul; I have a soul; and on earth they would never acknowledge in me anything but a body! Be Thou the judge of it, O God! Thou who hast given me a living soul!

And as the eyes of the Young Man were fixed upon her, he saw her soul in a final convulsion tear itself loose from the tangled meshes of her hair, and float above the lamps athwart the gloom, like a veil of blood pierced by a thousand needles!

The Seer passed on lost in thought, as if with repugnance, and answering nothing. At last they reached a white couch in a lonely spot and at a great distance from all others. A lamp burned under a crucifix placed against a pillar of white marble, and a woman in black was upon her knees before it. Her face was turned away from the shadow of the Seer, who stopped and remained standing in silence, as if wrapped in deep melancholy.

"Master, who is she?" demanded the Young Man.

The Shade replied: "I have seen one form like that,—it was years ago,—once here, upon the earth,—a second time above, in Heaven! When she turns her head, we will know who she is."

And he remained standing there, without interrupting the prayer of the woman.

And it appeared to the Young Man that he saw kneeling by the side of the woman in black a woman in white, exactly like the first, except that in place of being quite