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

Seraphitus bowed, without any contempt or coldness. In spite of the grace of this reply, which made it almost sweet, it nevertheless betrayed a reserve which in a woman would have been intoxicatingly provoking. Seraphitus clasped the girl to him, and Minna took the caress for an answer, and sat looking at him. As Seraphitus raised his head, tossing back the golden locks of his hair with an almost impatient jerk, he saw happiness in his companion’s eyes.

‘“Yes, Minna,’’ said he, in a paternal tone that was peculiarly charming in a youth scarcely full grown, ‘‘look at me. Do not look down.”

“Why ?”’

‘Do you want to know ?—Try then.’’

Minna gave one hasty glance at her feet, and cried out like a child that has met a tiger. The dreadful influence

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of the void had seized her, and one look had been enough to give it to her. The fiord, greedy of its prey, had a loud voice, stunning her by ringing in her ears, as though to swallow her up more surely by coming between her and life. From her hair to her feet, all down her back, ran a shudder, at first of cold; but then it seemed to fire her nerves with intolerable heat, throbbed in her veins, and made her limbs feel weak from electrical shocks, like those caused by touching the electrical eel. Too weak to resist, she felt herself drawn by some unknown force to the bottom of the cliff, where she fancied she could see a monster spouting venom, a monster whose magnetic eyes fascinated her, and whose yawning jaws crunched his prey by anticipation.

‘“‘T am dying, my Seraphitus, having loved no one but you,’’ said she, mechanically moving to throw herself down.

Seraphitus blew softly on her brow and eyes. Suddenly, as a traveller is refreshed by a bath, Minna had forgotten that acute anguish; it had. vanished under that soothing breath, which penetrated her frame and bathed it in balsamic effluence, as swiftly as the breath had passed through

_ the air. . ‘“Who and what are you?”’ said she, with an impulse of delicious alarm. ‘‘But I know.—You are my life.—How can you look down into the gulf without dying ?’’ she asked after a pause.

Seraphitus left Minna clinging to the granite, and went as a shadow might have done to stand on the edge of the crag, his eyes sounding the bottom of the fiord, defying its bewildering depths; his figure did not sway, his brow was as white and calm as that of a marble statue—deep meeting deep.

‘Seraphitus, if you love me, come back!”’ cried the girl.

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‘Your danger brings back all my torments. Who—who are you to have such superhuman strength at your age?’’ she asked, feeling his arms around her once more. 3

‘‘Why,’’ said Seraphitus, ‘‘you can look into far vaster space without a qualm’’; and raising his hand, the strange being pointed to the blue halo formed by the clouds round a clear opening just over their heads, in which they could see the stars, though it was daylight, in consequence of some atmospheric laws not yet fully explained.

‘‘But what a difference!’ she said, smiling.

‘‘You are right,’’ he replied; ‘‘we are born to aspire skyward. Our native home, like a mother’s face, never frightens its children.”’ ¥

His voice found an echo in his companion’s soul; she was silent.

‘‘Come, let us go on,’’ said he.

They rushed on together by the paths faintly visible along the mountain side, devouring the distance, flying from shelf to shelf, from ledge to ledge, with the swiftness of the Arab horse, that bird of the desert. In a few minutes they reached a green carpet of grass, moss and flowers, on which no one yet had ever rested.