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

things; and if so, would it not be an act of charity to clear up some of our doubts ?”’

“Oh, yes!’ said Seraphita, with a smile. ‘“‘They say that I walk on the clouds; Iam on familiar terms with the eddies in the fiord; the sea is a horse I have saddled and bridled; I know where the singing flower grows, where the talking light shines, where living colors blaze that scent the air; I have Solomon’s ring; I am a fairy; I give my orders to the wind, and it obeys me like a submissive slave; I can see the treasures in the mine; [ am the virgin whom pearls rush to meet, and—’”’

**And we walk unharmed on the Falberg,’’ Minna put in.

‘“What, you, too?’’ replied the Being with a luminous glance at the girl, which quite upset her. ‘‘If I had not the power of reading through your brows the wish that has brought you here, should I be what you think Iam?”’ she went on, including them all in her captivating gaze, to David’s great satisfaction, and he went off rubbing his hands.—'‘‘Yes,’’ she went on after a pause, ‘‘you all came overflowing with childish curiosity. You, my dear Pastor, wondered whether it were possible that a girl of seventeen should know even one of the thousand secrets which learned men seek diligently with their noses to the ground instead of with their eyes raised to heaven! Now, if I were to show you how and where plant life and animal life mingle, you would begin to doubt your doubts.—You piotted to crossquestion me, confess ?”’

‘*Yes, beloved Seraphita,’’ said Wilfrid. ‘‘But is not such a desire natural to man?”’

‘‘And do you want to worry this child?’’ she said, laying her hand on Minna’s hair with a caressing gesture.

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The girl looked up, and seemed to long to be merged in the Being before her.

‘The word is given for all,’’ the mysterious Being went | en very gravely. ‘‘Woe to him who should keep silence even in the midst of the desert, thinking that none would hear. Everything speaks, everything hears here below. The word moves worlds.—I hope, Pastor Becker, not to speak in vain. I know what difficulties trouble you most: would it not be a miracle if I could at once apprehend all the past experiences of your conscience? Well, that miracle will be accomplished.—Listen to me: you have never confessed your doubts in their full extent; I alone, immovable in my faith, can set them before you, and frighten you at your own image. You are on the darkest declivity of doubt. You do not believe in God, and everything on earth is of secondary importance to the man who attacks the first cause of everything.

‘‘Let us set aside the discussions thrashed out without result by false philosophers. Generations of Spiritualists have made no less vain efforts to disprove the existence of matter than generations of Materialists have made to disprove the existence of the spirit. Why these contests? Does not man, as he is, afford undeniable proofs of both? Is he not a union of matter and spirit? Only a madman can refuse to find an atom of matter in the human frame; when it is decomposed, natural science finds no difference between its elements and those of other animals. The idea which is produced in man by the power of comparing several different objects, on the other hand, does not seem to come within the domain of matter. On this J give no opinion; we have to deal with your doubts, not with my convictions.

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