She looked at him and slowly extended her arm, pointing to Minna, who now sprang towards her, fair and glowing and lovely as the flowers she held in her hand.
"Child!" said Seraphitus, advancing to meet her.
Wilfrid remained where she left him, motionless as the rock on which he stood, lost in thought, longing to let himself go into the torrent of the Sieg, like the fallen trees which hurried past his eyes and disappeared in the bosom of the gulf.
"I gathered them for you," said Minna, offering the bunch of saxifrages to the being she adored."One of them, see, this one," she added, selecting a flower, "is like that you found on the Falberg."Seraphitus looked alternately at the flower and at Minna.
"Why question me? Dost thou doubt me?"
"No," said the young girl, "my trust in you is infinite.You are more beautiful to look upon than this glorious nature, but your mind surpasses in intellect that of all humanity.When I have been with you I seem to have prayed to God.I long--""For what?" said Seraphitus, with a glance that revealed to the young girl the vast distance which separated them.
"To suffer in your stead."
"Ah, dangerous being!" cried Seraphitus in his heart."Is it wrong, oh my God! to desire to offer her to Thee? Dost thou remember, Minna, what I said to thee up there?" he added, pointing to the summit of the Ice-Cap.
"He is terrible again," thought Minna, trembling with fear.
The voice of the Sieg accompanied the thoughts of the three beings united on this platform of projecting rock, but separated in soul by the abysses of the Spiritual World.
"Seraphitus! teach me," said Minna in a silvery voice, soft as the motion of a sensitive plant, "teach me how to cease to love you.Who could fail to admire you; love is an admiration that never wearies.""Poor child!" said Seraphitus, turning pale; "there is but one whom thou canst love in that way.""Who?" asked Minna.
"Thou shalt know hereafter," he said, in the feeble voice of a man who lies down to die.
"Help, help! he is dying!" cried Minna.
Wilfrid ran towards them.Seeing Seraphita as she lay on a fragment of gneiss, where time had cast its velvet mantle of lustrous lichen and tawny mosses now burnished in the sunlight, he whispered softly, "How beautiful she is!""One other look! the last that I shall ever cast upon this nature in travail," said Seraphitus, rallying her strength and rising to her feet.
She advanced to the edge of the rocky platform, whence her eyes took in the scenery of that grand and glorious landscape, so verdant, flowery, and animated, yet so lately buried in its winding-sheet of snow.
"Farewell," she said, "farewell, home of Earth, warmed by the fires of Love; where all things press with ardent force from the centre to the extremities; where the extremities are gathered up, like a woman's hair, to weave the mysterious braid which binds us in that invisible ether to the Thought Divine!
"Behold the man bending above that furrow moistened with his tears, who lifts his head for an instant to question Heaven; behold the woman gathering her children that she may feed them with her milk; see him who lashes the ropes in the height of the gale; see her who sits in the hollow of the rocks, awaiting the father! Behold all they who stretch their hands in want after a lifetime spent in thankless toil.
To all peace and courage, and to all farewell!
"Hear you the cry of the soldier, dying nameless and unknown? the wail of the man deceived who weeps in the desert? To them peace and courage; to all farewell!
"Farewell, you who die for the kings of the earth! Farewell, ye people without a country and ye countries without a people, each, with a mutual want.Above all, farewell to Thee who knew not where to lay Thy head, Exile divine! Farewell, mothers beside your dying sons!
Farewell, ye Little Ones, ye Feeble, ye Suffering, you whose sorrows Ihave so often borne! Farewell, all ye who have descended into the sphere of Instinct that you may suffer there for others!
"Farewell, ye mariners who seek the Orient through the thick darkness of your abstractions, vast as principles! Farewell, martyrs of thought, led by thought into the presence of the True Light.Farewell, regions of study where mine ears can hear the plaint of genius neglected and insulted, the sigh of the patient scholar to whom enlightenment comes too late!
"I see the angelic choir, the wafting of perfumes, the incense of the heart of those who go their way consoling, praying, imparting celestial balm and living light to suffering souls! Courage, ye choir of Love! you to whom the peoples cry, 'Comfort us, comfort us, defend us!' To you courage! and farewell!
"Farewell, ye granite rocks that shall bloom a flower; farewell, flower that becomes a dove; farewell, dove that shalt be woman;farewell, woman, who art Suffering, man, who art Belief! Farewell, you who shall be all love, all prayer!"Broken with fatigue, this inexplicable being leaned for the first time on Wilfrid and on Minna to be taken home.Wilfrid and Minna felt the shock of a mysterious contact in and through the being who thus connected them.They had scarcely advanced a few steps when David met them, weeping."She will die," he said, "why have you brought her hither?"The old man raised her in his arms with the vigor of youth and bore her to the gate of the Swedish castle like an eagle bearing a white lamb to his mountain eyrie.