Seraphita

of intelligence. However portentous a fact may be, or even supernatural,-if such facts exist,-however solemnly a miracle may be done in sight of all, the lightning of that fact,

ord. The Spirit, descending, bears man above this earth, opens the seas and lets him see their depths, shows him lost species, wakens dry bones whose dust is the soil of valleys; the Apostle writes the Apocalypse, and twenty centuries later human science ratifies his words and turns his visions into maxims. And what comes of it all? Why this,-that the peoples live as they have ever lived, as they lived in the first Olympiad, as they lived on the morrow of Creation, and on the eve of the great cataclysm. The waves of Doubt have covered all things. The same floods surge with the same measured motion on the human granite which serves as a boundary to the ocean of intelligence. When man ha

yed nor changed; his passions, his ideas awoke in full force, fresh and vigorous. He went to breakfast with Monsieur Becker and found the old man absorbed in the "Treatise on Incantations," which he had searched since early morning to convince his guest that there was nothing unprecedented in all that they had seen and heard at the Swedish castle. With the childlike trustfulness of a true scholar he had folded down the pages in which Jean Wier related authentic facts which proved the possibility of the events that had happened the night before,-for to learned men an idea is a event, j

s he spread a layer of salt butter on his slice of bread, "the

mage how a young girl of seventeen can know so muc

spoke forty-two languages, ancient and modern; also the history of that monk who could gue

r; but to my thinking, Seraph

" said Monsieur B

for her brief bridal of a day. During this period, when the softened air invited every one to leave the house, Seraphita remained at home in solitude. When at last she admitted Minna the l

who had wandered around the Swedish

young girl, weeping;

can love Seraphita only as one young girl can love another, and not with the love which she inspires in me. You d

her heart. "But my jealousy, natural as it is in love, fears no one here below. Alas! I am jealous of a secret feeling that absorbs him. Between him and me there is a great gulf fixed which I cannot cross. Would that I knew who

d long for, she, whom I have seen, feeble and la

sheltered beneath the Ice-Cap, there-" she said, pointing to the peak, "is not a feeble girl. Ah, had you but heard him pro

ty have you?"

of the heart,"

le glance of the earthly desire that kills, "I, too, know h

as the thoughts surged in his brain, they saw Seraphita coming towards them

any but a woman move wit

es forth for the la

om his mistress, who advance

expressing one of those desires which suddenly p

the larches, whose silken tassels were beginning to appear,-breezes tempered by the incense and the sighs of earth,-gave token of the glorious Northern spring, the rapid, fleeting joy of that most melancholy of Natures. The wind was beginning to lift the veil of mist which half-obscured the gulf. The birds sang. The bark of the trees where the sun had not yet dried the clinging hoar-frost shone ga

ing line through the forest,-a fluvial pathway flanked by aged firs and roofed with strong-ribbed arches like those of a cathedral. Looking back from th

e on which they stood was carpeted by several kinds of lichen, forming a noble mat variegated by moisture and lustrous like the sheen of a silken fabric. Shrubs, already in bloom, crowned the rocks with garlands. Their waving foliage, eager for the freshness of the water, drooped its tresses above the stream; the larches shook their light fringes and played with the pines, stiff and motionless as

resent a fleeting image of perfection; for, by a law fatal to no eyes but our own, creations which appear complete-the love of our heart and the desire of

uty!" cri

and an open heart, lost in the bosom of immensity, I could hear the sighings of the flower, scarce budded, which longs for wings, or the cry of the eider grieving that it can only fly, and remember the desires of man who, issuing from all, is none the less ever longing. But that, Wilfrid, is only a woman's thought. You find

, perceiving for the first time a trace of earthly sentiment in her words, an

inna had left them for a moment to gather

the good of that world whose happiness you bear upon your heart. Be mine that my conscience may be pure; that a voice divine may sound in my ears and infuse Good into the great enterprise I have undertaken prompted by my h

said, "to an innocent girl who loves you, a

ouring scourge upon the nations. Europe is at an epoch when she awaits the new Messiah who shall destroy society and remake it. She can no longer believe except in him who crushes her under foot. The day is at hand when poets and historians will justify me, exalt me, and borrow my ideas, mine! And all the while my triumph will be a jest, written in blood, the jest of my vengeance! But not here, Seraphita; what I see in the North disgusts me. Hers is a mere blind force; I thirst for the Indies! I would rather fight a selfish, cowardly, mercantile government. Besides, it is easier to stir the imagination of the peoples at the feet of the Caucasus than to argue with the intellect of the icy lands which here surround me. Therefore am I

reigned," said S

rage that a woman excites in the soul of a man when, after showing her his strength, his power, his wisdom, his superiority, the capricious creatur

"can the riches of art, the riches

f her lips, and said, "Beings more powe

he thought of comforting a great man, who is willing now to sacrifice a

"I am loved with

phita with a frenzied movement, as if to f

ing to Minna, who now sprang towards her, fair and g

raphitus, advanc

st in thought, longing to let himself go into the torrent of the Sieg, like the f

rages to the being she adored. "One of them, see, this one," she a

lternately at the f

n me? Dost t

o look upon than this glorious nature, but your mind surpasses in intellect that

ance that revealed to the young girl t

er in yo

y God! to desire to offer her to Thee? Dost thou remember, Minna, what I

in," thought Minna,

ee beings united on this platform of projecting rock, but

otion of a sensitive plant, "teach me how to cease to love you. Who

urning pale; "there is but one w

asked

he said, in the feeble voice

he is dying!"

s, where time had cast its velvet mantle of lustrous lichen and tawny mosses

t upon this nature in travail," said Seraphitus

in the scenery of that grand and glorious landscape, so verdant, flow

ith ardent force from the centre to the extremities; where the extremities are gathered up, like a wo

children that she may feed them with her milk; see him who lashes the ropes in the height of the gale; see her who sits in the hollow of the rocks, awa

unknown? the wail of the man deceived who weeps in th

e all, farewell to Thee who knew not where to lay Thy head, Exile divine! Farewell, mothers beside your dying sons! Farewell, ye Little Ones, ye Feeble, y

, martyrs of thought, led by thought into the presence of the True Light. Farewell, regions of study where mine ears can

consoling, praying, imparting celestial balm and living light to suffering souls! Courage, ye choir of

ecomes a dove; farewell, dove that shalt be woman; farewell, woman, who art Su

frid and Minna felt the shock of a mysterious contact in and through the being who thus connected them. They had sca

outh and bore her to the gate of the Swedish castle li