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

‘‘However, my daughter, to whom Seraphita has taken a great fancy these two years past, has heard no music, and has not perceived the heavenly perfumes which embalm the air, they say, wherever she goes. Minna has often come home full of a simple girl’s admiration for the beauties of the spring; she is enraptured by the fragrance of the first tender larch shoots, the fir trees, and the flowers they have enjoyed together; but after our long winter nothing can be more natural than such intense delight. There is nothing very remarkable in the conversation of that being, is there, my child ?”’

‘*His secrets are not mine,’’

replied Minna. ‘‘When Ip. 87 am with him, I know all things; away from him, I know nothing; with him, I cease to be myself; away from him, I forget that more perfect life. Seeing him is as a dream, of which my remembrance depends on his will. I may have heard, when with him, the music of which Bancker’s wife and Erikson’s speak, and forget it when we are apart; I may have perceived those celestial perfumes and have beheld marvels, and yet know nothing of them here.”’

‘“What has most surprised me since I first knew her,’”’ said the pastor to Wilfrid, ‘‘is that she should allow you to approach her.’’

‘To approach her!’’ said the stranger. ‘She has never allowed me to kiss nor even to touch her hand. The first time I saw her she abashed me by her look, and said, ‘You are welcome here; you were due to come.’ It was as though she knew me. I trembled.—My fear makes me believe in her.”’

‘*And my love,’ said Minna, without a blush.

‘*Are you making fun of me?” said the pastor, laughing with good humor; ‘‘you, my child, in calling yourself a ° Spirit of Love; and you, sir, in making yourself out to be a Spirit of Wisdom ?”’

He drank off a glass of beer, and did not observe a singular look which Wilfrid gave to Minna.

‘‘Jesting apart,’’ Becker went on, ‘‘I was greatly amazed to hear that those two crazy girls had gone to-day for the first time to the top of the Walberg; but is not that some exaggeration? The girls must have simply climbed some hill; the summit of the Falberg is inaccessible.’’

‘‘Father,’’ said Minna, in some agitation, ‘‘I must then have been in the power of the demon; for I climbed the Falberg with him.”’

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“This is a serious matter,’’ said the pastor. ‘‘Minna has never told a lie.’’

‘“‘My dear sir,’’ said Wilfrid, ‘‘I can assure you, Seraphita exerts the most extraordinary power over me; I know not what words can give any idea of it. She has told me things which no one but I could know.”’

‘‘Somnambulism!’’ cried the old man. ‘‘Various cases of that kind are reported by Jean Wier as phenomena easy to account for, and known of old in Egypt.”’

‘*Gend me the theosophical works of Swedenborg,’’ said Wilfrid. ‘‘L long to plunge into those lakes of light; you have made me thirst for them.”’

Pastor Becker handed a volume to Wilfrid, who immediately began to read. It was about nine o’clock in the evening. The maid had just brought in the supper, and Minna made the tea. The meal ended, all three sat silently occupied; the pastor read Jean Wier’s ‘‘Treatise on Demonology’’; Wilfrid lost himself in the study of Swedenborg; Minna sewed and dreamed over her recollections. It was a thoroughly Norwegian scene, a peaceful, studious evening, full of thought—a flower under the snow. Wilfrid, as he read the writings of the prophet, was alive only to his inward senses. Now and again the pastor, with a halfserious, half-ironical gesture, pointed him out to Minna, who smiled rather sadly. To Minna, Seraphitus smiled down upon them, floating above the cloud of tobacco smoke in which they were wrapped.

Midnight struck. Suddenly the outer door was violently pushed open; heavy but hasty steps, the steps of a terrified old man, were heard in the sort of small hall between the two doors. Then David burst into the room.

‘“*Wiolence! Violence!’’ he cried. ‘‘Come! all of you,

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