Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/162

156 "Hear now my third name upon the earth: !

"Men, know ye wherefore? Because despair tore my heart—and there came a day when I was loved,—and in that day I believed in Beauty, Goodness, Wisdom, even upon earth? Because, when dying, I raised my head and cried: How blessed it is to spring from the grave into the skies!—Because I dared to love!"

Again was she silent, again motionless and white as alabaster.

And when the Seer for the third time adjured her, she murmured, in a low voice: "Then follow me!" Taking the lamp from below the crucifix, she left the place where the People of women lay prostrate behind her, and followed a tortuous path far through the subterranean space. The walls of the narrow dungeons contracted and lengthened before the thin hand as it approached them, bearing the lamp with its doubtful and uncertain light.

Everywhere around her were walls reeking with humidity; everywhere a low and stifling vault! No sound of footsteps was there ever heard; no breath ever played with the doubtful flame of the lamp! The Young Man continued to advance, although he felt ever more languid, more weary and oppressed. It seemed to him that the very air necessary for breath failed on all sides; that an invisible weight crushed him to the earth; that the blood congealed in his veins, and it seemed to him that he cried to himself: "I will go no farther!"

The lady in the funereal robes then turned round, and, lifting the glimmering lamp above his forehead, said: "Although thou art a man, and a strong and courageous one, thou canst not endure to breathe for a single hour here, where all my weary years forever flow and reflow! Go! Go, in peace!"

But the Seer sadly asked: "Tell me, where then is he who loved thee?"

Suddenly casting down her eyes, she answered: "There! where his destiny as man precipitated him! He tore me from my solitude of heart: and left me in the utter solitude of spirit! I loved him,—he has left me!"

Then showing a distant stone which whitened in the