inertia or gravity is produced by a rupture between a thing and the
movement which appertains to it. Then it was that he foresaw the

crumbling of the worlds and their destruction if God should withdraw
the Breath of His Word. He searched the Apocalypse for the traces of

that Word. You thought him mad. Understand him better! He was seeking
pardon for the work of his genius.

"Wilfrid, you have come here hoping to make me solve equations, or
rise upon a rain-cloud, or plunge into the fiord and reappear a swan.

If science or miracles were the end and object of humanity, Moses
would have bequeathed to you the law of fluxions; Jesus Christ would

have lightened the darkness of your sciences; his apostles would have
told you whence come those vast trains of gas and melted metals,

attached to cores which revolve and solidify as they dart through
ether, or violently enter some system and combine with a star,

jostling and displacing it by the shock, or destroying it by the
infiltration of their deadly gases; Saint Paul, instead of telling you

to live in God, would have explained why food is the secret bond among
all creations and the evident tie between all living Species. In these

days the greatest miracle of all would be the discovery of the
squaring of the circle,--a problem which you hold to be insoluble, but

which is doubtless solved in the march of worlds by the intersection
of some mathematical lines whose course is visible to the eye of

spirits who have reached the higher spheres. Believe me, miracles are
in us, not without us. Here natural facts occur which men call

supernatural. God would have been strangelyunjust had he confined the
testimony of his power to certain generations and peoples and denied

them to others. The brazen rod belongs to all. Neither Moses, nor
Jacob, nor Zoroaster, nor Paul, nor Pythagoras, nor Swedenborg, not

the humblest Messenger nor the loftiest Prophet of the Most High are
greater than you are capable of being. Only, there come to nations as

to men certain periods when Faith is theirs.
"If material sciences be the end and object of human effort, tell me,

both of you, would societies,--those great centres where men
congregate,--would they perpetually be dispersed? If civilization were

the object of our Species, would intelligenceperish? would it
continue purely individual? The grandeur of all nations that were

truly great was based on exceptions; when the exception ceased their
power died. If such were the End-all, Prophets, Seers, and Messengers

of God would have lent their hand to Science rather than have given it
to Belief. Surely they would have quickened your brains sooner than

have touched your hearts! But no; one and all they came to lead the
nations back to God; they proclaimed the sacred Path in simple words

that showed the way to heaven; all were wrapped in love and faith, all
were inspired by that WORD which hovers above the inhabitants of

earth, enfolding them, inspiriting them, uplifting them; none were
prompted by any human interest. Your great geniuses, your poets, your

kings, your learned men are engulfed with their cities; while the
names of these good pastors of humanity, ever blessed, have survived

all cataclysms.
"Alas! we cannot understand each other on any point. We are separated

by an abyss. You are on the side of darkness, while I--I live in the
light, the true Light! Is this the word that you ask of me? I say it

with joy; it may change you. Know this: there are sciences of matter
and sciences of spirit. There, where you see substances, I see forces

that stretch one toward another with generating power. To me, the
character of bodies is the indication of their principles and the sign

of their properties. Those principles beget affinities which escape
your knowledge, and which are linked to centres. The different species

among which life is distributed are unfailing streams which correspond
unfailingly among themselves. Each has his own vocation. Man is effect

and cause. He is fed, but he feeds in turn. When you call God a
Creator, you dwarf Him. He did not create, as you think He did, plants

or animals or stars. Could He proceed by a variety of means? Must He
not act by unity of composition? Moreover, He gave forth principles to

be developed, according to His universal law, at the will of the
surroundings in which they were placed. Hence a single substance and

motion, a single plant, a single animal, but correlations everywhere.
In fact, all affinities are linked together by contiguous similitudes;

the life of the worlds is drawn toward the centres by famished
aspiration, as you are drawn by hunger to seek food.

"To give you an example of affinities linked to similitudes (a
secondary law on which the creations of your thought are based),

music, that celestial art, is the working out of this principle; for
is it not a complement of sounds harmonized by number? Is not sound a

modification of air, compressed, dilated, echoed? You know the
composition of air,--oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. As you cannot

obtain sound from the void, it is plain that music and the human voice
are the result of organized chemical substances, which put themselves

in unison with the same substances prepared within you by your
thought, co-ordinated by means of light, the great nourisher of your

globe. Have you ever meditated on the masses of nitre deposited by the
snow, have you ever observed a thunderstorm and seen the plants

breathing in from the air about them the metal it contains, without
concluding that the sun has fused and distributed the subtle essence

which nourishes all things here below? Swedenborg has said, 'The earth
is a man.'

"Your Science, which makes you great in your own eyes, is paltry
indeed beside the light which bathes a Seer. Cease, cease to question

me; our languages are different. For a moment I have used yours to
cast, if it be possible, a ray of faith into your soul; to give you,

as it were, the hem of my garment and draw you up into the regions of
Prayer. Can God abase Himself to you? Is it not for you to rise to

Him? If human reason finds the ladder of its own strength too weak to
bring God down to it, is it not evident that you must find some other

path to reach Him? That Path is in ourselves. The Seer and the
Believer find eyes within their souls more piercing far than eyes that

probe the things of earth,--they see the Dawn. Hear this truth: Your
science, let it be never so exact, your meditations, however bold,

your noblest lights are Clouds. Above, above is the Sanctuary whence
the true Light flows."

She sat down and remained silent; her calm face bore no sign of the
agitation which orators betray after their least fervid

improvisations.
Wilfrid bent toward Monsieur Becker and said in a low voice, "Who

taught her that?"
"I do not know," he answered.

"He was gentler on the Falberg," Minna whispered to herself.
Seraphita passed her hand across her eyes and then she said,

smiling:--
"You are very thoughtful to-night, gentlemen. You treat Minna and me

as though we were men to whom you must talk politics or commerce;
whereas we are young girls, and you ought to tell us tales while you

drink your tea. That is what we do, Monsieur Wilfrid, in our long
Norwegian evenings. Come, dear pastor, tell me some Saga that I have

not heard,--that of Frithiof, the chronicle that you believe and have
so often promised me. Tell us the story of the peasant lad who owned

the ship that talked and had a soul. Come! I dream of the frigate
Ellida, the fairy with the sails young girls should navigate!"

"Since we have returned to the regions of Jarvis," said Wilfrid, whose
eyes were fastened on Seraphita as those of a robber, lurking in the

darkness, fasten on the spot where he knows the jewels lie, "tell me
why you do not marry?"

"You are all born widows and widowers," she replied; "but my marriage
was arranged at my birth. I am betrothed."

"To whom?" they cried.
"Ask not my secret," she said; "I will promise, if our father permits

it, to invite you to these mysterious nuptials."
"Will they be soon?"

"I think so."
A long silence followed these words.

"The spring has come!" said Seraphita, suddenly. "The noise of the
waters and the breaking of the ice begins. Come, let us welcome the

first spring of the new century."
She rose, followed by Wilfrid, and together they went to a window