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

By the time these two philosophers had swallowed their fifth cup of tea, that mystical evening seemed quite natural. The heavenly truths were more or less substantial arguments, and open to discussion. Seraphita was a more or less eloquent girl; allowance must be made for her exquisite voice, her enchanting beauty, her fascinating manner, all the oratorical skill by which an actor can put a world of feelings and ideas into a sentence which in itself is often quite commonplace.

‘*Pooh!’’ said the good minister, with a little philosophical grimace, as he spread a slice of bread with salt butter, ‘‘the answer to all these riddles is six feet beneath the mould!’

‘‘At the same time,’’ said Wilfrid, sugaring his tea, ‘‘T cannot understand how a girl of seventeen can know so many things; for she squeezed everything into her speech as if it were in a vise.’’

‘“‘But only read the story of the Italian girl who, at twelve years old, could speak forty-two languages, ancient and modern,’’ said the pastor. ‘‘And again, that of thep. 144 monk who read thought by smell. These are in Jean Wier, and in a dozen other treatises which I will give you to read, a thousand proofs rather than one.”’

“IT dare say, my dear Pastor; but Seraphita remains to me a wife it would be divine joy to possess.”

“She is all intellect,’’ replied the minister dubiously.

Some days passed by, during which the snow in the valleys insensibly melted away; the greenery of the forests peeped through like a fresh growth; Norwegian nature made itself beautiful in anticipation of its brief bridal day. All this time, though the milder temperature allowed of open-air exercise, Seraphita remained in solitary seclusion. ‘Thus Wilfrid’s passion was enhanced by the aggravating vicinity of the girl he loved, and who refused to be seen. When the inscrutable being admitted Minna, Minna could detect the symptoms of an imward fever; Seraphita’s voice was hollow, and her complexion was wan; whereas hitherto its transparency might have been compared by a poet to that of the diamond, it now had the sheen of the topaz.

‘‘Have you see her?’’ asked Wilfrid, who had prowled round the house, awaiting Minna’s return.

**We shall lose him!’’ said the girl, her eyes filling with tears.

“Do not try to fool me!” cried the stranger, controlling the vehemence of tone that expressed his fury. ‘‘You can only love Seraphita as one girl loves another, not with such love as I feel for her. You cannot conceive what peril you would be in if there were anything to alarm my jealousy. —Why can I not go to see her? Is it you who raise difficulties ?”’

‘“‘P cannot think,’’ said Minna, calm on the surface, but ibs i aa oe

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quaking with mortal terror, ‘‘what right you have to sound © the depths of my heart.—Yes, I love him,’’ she went on, summoning the courage of conviction to confess the faith of her soul. ‘‘But my jealousy, though natural to love, fears nobody here. Alas! What I am jealous of is some unconfessed feeling in which he is absorbed. Between him and me lies a space I can never abridge. I want to know whether the stars love him more than I, whether they or I would be the more eagerly devoted to his happiness? Why, why, should i not be free to declare my affection? In the presence of death we may all confess our attachment —and Seraphitus is dying.”

‘‘Minna, indeed you are under a mistake; the siren round whom my desires have so often hovered, who allows me to admire her as she reclines on her couch, so graceful, fragile, and suffering, is not a man.”’

‘‘Nay,’’ replied Minna, in some agitation, ‘the whose powerful hand guided me over the Falberg to the seter under the shelter of the Ice-cap up there’’—and she pointed to the peak—‘‘is certainly not a mere, weak girl. If you had but heard her prophesy! Her poetry is the music of thought. No young girl could have had the solemn depth of voice which stirred my soul.”

‘‘What certainty have you—?’’ Wilfrid began.

‘‘None but that of my heart!’’ replied Minna in confusion, and hastily interrupting the speaker.