Maeterlinck warns us in his preface to _The Ornamentation of the Nuptials of the Spirit_, the subject of which is the _unio mystica_, the mystic union of the soul with God, that we must not expect a literary work; "you will perceive nothing," he says, "save the convulsive flight of a drunken eagle, blind and bleeding, over snowy summits." He only made the translation for the benefit of a few Platonists. But, apart from the translation itself, the preface is of value as showing how deeply read in the mystics Maeterlinck already was at this time, and the importance he attached to their teaching. "All certainty is in them alone," he says, paradoxically. Their ecstasies are only the beginning of the complete discovery of ourselves; their writings are the purest diamonds in the prodigious treasure of humanity; and their thoughts have the immunity of Swedenborg's angels who advance continually towards the springtide of their youth, so that the oldest angels seem the youngest. Embedded in the preface are gems from Ruysbroeck's other writings. Here is one of them:
"And they (the doves) will tarry near the rivers and over the clear waters, so that if any bird should come from on high, which might seize or injure them, they may know it by its image in the water, and avoid it. This clear water is Holy Writ, the life of the Saints, and the mercy of God. We will look upon our image therein whenever we are tempted; and in this way none shall have power to harm us. These doves have an ardent disposition, and young doves are often born of them, for every time that to the honour of God and our own beatitude we consider sin with hatred and scorn, we bring young doves into the world, that is to say new virtues."
The translation of the mystic was followed, in 1891, by a playlet in one act, _Les Sept Princesses_ (The Seven Princesses). It is "the angel" among Maeterlinck's productions, a weakling which no fostering can save. Few critics have a good word for it. "A girl's unpleasant dream," interprets Mieszner. "An indecipherable enigma," says Adolphe Brisson. "The piece is something _seen_, purely pictorial," says Anselma Heine, "a transposition of paintings by Burne-Jones." "Can only claim the rank of an intermezzo," says Monty Jacobs, "an unfinished sketch." "We must not seek a literal signification," says Beaunier, "its signification is in its very strangeness." "Perhaps the weakest thing in Maeterlinck," says Oppeln von Bronikowski, "a sketch, or a testing of mystico-symbolic apparatus." "_Passons_," says Adolphe van Bever. The Princesses have, however, found a friend in a Dutch critic, Dr Is. van Dijk, whose book on Maeterlinck is suggestive. His analysis and interpretation of the play runs somewhat as follows: