Never look toward the past. There are still other lands, lands which you have never known and will never know. What would it have availed you to know them? For each the route is unique and each route leads to God. But it is not from this life that your eyes can see His glory. You spoke cruel words to the poor child whom you mistook for me—and how could you have made that mistake? Then you abandoned her. She was not alive; you created her; now you must wait for her; for she could not ascend alone to the city of God. Oh! I wanted us, both of us, to take the starry route, together, alone, to the pure lights. You must guide the other one. Both of you will complete your voyage; but this end is not the true one; nothing achieves completion, my brother, except in God; be not dismayed, therefore, if you think that you are on the verge of death. Behind one heaven is another; behind all of them is God. Beloved brother, hold fast to your Hope.”

Then, bending over, she wrote on the snow in glowing letters words which I, kneeling, was able to read:

THEY HAVE NOT YET OBTAINED WHAT GOD HAD PROMISED THEM—THAT ONLY IN COMPANY WITH US SHOULD THEY REACH PERFECTION.1

I wanted to speak to her, to ask her to speak to me at greater length, and I reached out toward her; but in the dead of night she pointed to the aurora and, rising slowly like an angel laden with prayers again set out on the seraphic route. As she rose her dress changed into a nuptial gown; I saw that it was fastened with jeweled pins; it glittered with stones; and although their brilliancy was such that it might have consumed my eyelashes, I did not feel the searing heat because of the celestial sweetness that flowed from her outstretched hands. She no longer looked toward me; I saw her ascending higher and higher; she reached the glowing gates; she was about to disappear behind a cloud.… Then a much-whiter light dazzled me and when the cloud parted, I saw angels. Ellis was in their midst, but I could not recognize her; each angel, with upraised arms, was shaking what I had mistaken for the aurora—a curtain that had again been lowered in front of immortal flashes of light; each flame was a veil through which shone the Light. Great flashes escaped through the fringes—but when the angels pulled aside the curtain, such a cry rent the skies that I covered my eyes with my hand and fell prostrate with terror.

When I arose again, night had closed in once more; in the distance I heard the voice of the sea. When I returned to the huts, I found my companions still asleep; I lay down near them, overcome by sleep.

Journey toward the pole. The excessive whiteness of things produces a strange glow; they are bathed in radiance. The wind blows furiously, and the snow, lifted up and driven by the wind, scatters, piles up, whirls, undulates, furls as cloth or human hair. One obstacle after another along the route made our journey very slow; we had to cut our way through the ice, chiseling stairs as we advanced. I do not wish to speak of our labors; they were so painful, so hard that I would seem to be complaining if I merely recounted them. Nor do I wish to speak of either the cold or our suffering; it would be ridiculous to say, “We suffered terribly,” for our suffering was immeasurably greater than anything these words might suggest. I would never succeed in conveying through words the supreme bitterness of our suffering; I would never be able to explain how the very acridity of our suffering gave birth to something resembling joy, pride; nor the rabid bite of the cold.

Far to the north towered a strange rampart of ice; an enormous and prismatic block stood there like a wall. Leading up to it was a deep ravine into which spilled a whirling mass of snow, driven perhaps by an unwavering wind. Without the ropes that linked us to each other, we would have been buried in the snow. Soon we were so tired of walking through the storm that, in spite of the danger of lying down on the snow, we stretched out to sleep. We took shelter behind a big block of ice; the wind blew the snow overhead; the wall formed a grotto. We were lying on the bed of the sled and on the skin of the slaughtered reindeer.

While the other six were sleeping, I went out alone from the grotto to see if it had stopped snowing. Through the shroud of snow I thought I saw Ellis, pensive near a white rock. She seemed not to see me; she was looking toward the pole; her hair was loose, and the wind was blowing it across her face. I dared not speak to her because she seemed so sad, and I doubted that it was she.