Louis Lambert — Honoré de Balzac, trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley

‘‘Make haste, pretty one, the night is falling,’’ said he.

Minna was startled at hearing the new voice, so to speak, in which her guide spoke. A voice as clear as a girl’s, dissipating the fantastic flashes of the dream in which she had been walking. Seraphitus was abdicating his manly strength, and his looks were losing their too keen insight. Presently the fair couple were gliding across the fiord; they reached the snowy level that lay between the margin of the bay and the first houses of Jarvis; then, urged by the waning light, they hurried up to the parsonage as if climbing the steps of an enormous stairway.

‘My father will be uneasy,’

‘*No,’’ said Seraphitus.

At this moment they stopped at the porch of the humble dwelling where Pastor Becker, the minister of Jarvis, sat reading while awaiting his daughter’s return to supper.

‘Dear Pastor Becker,’’ said Seraphitus, ‘‘I have brought your daughter back safe and sound.”’

‘““Thank you, Mademoiselle,’’ said the old man, laying his spectacles on the book. ‘‘You must be tired.’’

_ “Not in the least,’’ said Minna, on whose brow her companion had just breathed.

‘Dear child, will you come to tea with me the evening

’ said Minna.

after to-morrow ?”’
‘‘With pleasure, dear.’’
‘Pastor Becker, will you bring her?”’
‘‘Yes, Mademoiselle.”’
Seraphitus nodded prettily, bowed to the old man, and

p. 32

left, and in a few minutes was in the courtyard of the Swedish Castle. An old servant of eighty came out under the wide veranda carrying a lantern. Seraphitus slipped off the snow-shoes with a grace of a woman, ran into the sitting-room, dropped on to a large divan covered with skins, and lay down.

‘‘What will you take?’’ said the old man, lighting the enormously long tapers that are used in Norway.

‘‘Nothing, David; I am too tired.”

Seraphitus threw off the sable-lined pelisse, wrapped it about him, and was asleep. The old servant lingered a few minutes in loving contemplation of the strange being resting under his gaze, and whcse sex the most learned man would have been puzzled to pronounce on. Seeing him as he lay, wrapped in his usual garment, which was as much like a woman’s dressing-gown as a man’s overccat, it was impossible to believe that the slender feet that hung down, as if to display the delicacy with which nature had molded them, were not those of a young girl; but the brow, the profile, seemed the embodiment of human strength carried to its highest pitch.

‘She is suffering, and will not tell me,”’ though the old man. ‘She is dying like a flower scorched by too fierce a sunbeam.”’

And the old man wept.

p. 83

IT
SERAPHITA

N THE COURSE of the evening David came into the drawing-room.

‘‘T know who is coming,”’

said Seraphita in a sleepy voice. ‘‘Wilfrid may come in.”’

On hearing these words, a man at once appeared, and came to sit down by her.

‘‘My dear Seraphita, are you ill? You look paler than usual.” ;

She turned languidly toward him, after tossing back her hair like a pretty woman overpowered by sick headache and

- too feeble to complain.

‘tT was foolish enough,’’ said she, ‘‘to cross the fiord with
Minna; we have been up the Falberg.”’

‘Did you want to kill yourself ?’’ cried he, with a lover’s alarm.

“Do not be uneasy, my good Wilfrid, I took great care of your Minna.”

Wilfrid struck the table violently with his hand, took a few steps toward the door with an exclamation of pain; then he came back and began to reproach her.

‘“Why so much noise if you suppose me to be suffering?’’ said Seraphita.

“T beg your pardon, forgive me,’’ said he, kneeling down. ‘‘Speak harshly to me, require anything of me that your cruel woman’s caprice may suggest to you asp. 34 hardest to be endured, but, my beloved, do not doubt my love! You use Minna like a hatchet to hit me with again and again. Have some mercy!”

‘‘Why speak thus, my friend, when you know that such words are useless ?’’ she replied, looking at him with a gaze that became at last so soft that what Wilfrid saw was not Seraphita’s eyes, but a fluid light shimmering like the last vibrations of a song full of Italian languor.

‘‘Ah! anguish cannot killl’’ cried he.