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

‘*Y our snow-shoes are off, that is all.’’

“Oh!” cried she, ‘‘and I would fain have untied yours, and have kissed your feet!”’

‘‘Keep those speeches for Wilfrid,’’ said Seraphitus, mildly.

‘*Wilfrid!’’ echoed Minna in a tone of fury, which died away as she looked at her companion. ‘‘You are never angry!’ said she, trying, but in vain, to take his hand. ‘“You are in all things so desperately perfect!’’

‘‘Whence you infer that I have no feelings ?”’

Minna was startled at a glance so penetratingly thrown into her mind.

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“You prove to me that we understand each other,”
replied she, with the grace of a loving woman.
Seraphitus gently shook his head, with a flashing look

that was at once sweet and sad.

‘“You who know everything,’’ Minna went on, ‘‘tell me why the alarm I felt below, by your side, is dissipated now that Iam up here; why I dare for the first time to look you in the face; whereas, down there, [ scarce dare steal a glance at you?”’

‘*Perhaps up here we have cast off the mean things of the earth,’’ said he, pulling off his pelisse.

‘‘T never saw you so beautiful,’’ said Minna, sitting down on a mossy stone, and gazing in contemplation of the being who had thus brought her to a part of the mountain ee from afar seemed inaccessible.

Never, in fact, had Seraphitus shone with such brilliant splendor—the only expression that can do justice to the eagerness of his face and the aspect of his person. Was this radiance due to the effulgence given to the complexion by the pure mountain air and the reflection from the snow? Was it the result of an internal impetus which still excites the frame at the moment it is resting after long exertion? Was it produced by the sudden contrast between the golden glow of sunshine and the gloom of the clouds through which this pretty pair had passed?

To all these causes we must perhaps add the effects of one of tle most beautiful phenomena that human nature can offer. If some skilled physiologist had studied this being, who, to judge by the boldness of his brow and the light in his eyes at this moment, was a youth of seventeen; if he had sought the springs of this blooming life under the whitest skin that the North ever bestowed on one of its

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sons, he would, no doubt, have believed in the existence of a phosphoric fluid in the sinews that seemed to shine through the skin, or in the constant presence of an internal _ glow, which tinted Seraphitus as a light shines through an alabaster vase. Delicately slender as his hands were—he had taken off his gloves to loosen Minna’s sandals—they seemed to have such strength as the Creator has given to the diaphanous joints of a crab. The fire that blazed in his eyes rivalled the rays of the sun; he seemed not to receive but to give out light. His frame, as slight and fragile as a woman’s, was that of a nature feeble in appearance, but whose strength is always adequate to its desires, which are sometimes strong. Seraphitus, though of middle height, seemed taller as seen in front; he looked as if he fain would spring upward. His hair, with its light curls, as if touched by a fairy hand and tossed by a breeze, added to the illusion produced by his airy attitude; but this absolutely effortless mien was the outcome rather of a mental state than of physical habit.