How happened it that for five whole months the countess had never
perceived the captain? Because he hid himself from her knowledge, and
carefully concealed the pains he took to avoid her. Nothing so
resembles the Divine love as hopeless human love. A man must have
great depth of heart to devote himself in silence and obscurity to a
woman. In such a heart is the worship of love for love's sake only
--sublime avarice, sublime because ever generous and founded on the
mysterious existence of the principles of creation. _Effect_ is nature,
and nature is enchanting; it belongs to man, to the poet, the painter,
the lover. But _Cause_, to a few privileged souls and to certain mighty
thinkers, is superior to nature. Cause is God. In the sphere of causes
live the Newtons and all such thinkers as Laplace, Kepler, Descartes,
Malebranche, Spinoza, Buffon; also the true poets and solitarys of the
second Christian century, and the Saint Teresas of Spain, and such
sublime ecstatics. All human sentiments bear analogy to these
conditions whenever the mind abandons Effect for Cause. Thaddeus had
reached this height, at which all things change their relative aspect.
Filled with the joys unutterable of a creator he had attained in his
love to all that genius has revealed to us of grandeur.

"No," he was thinking to himself as he watched the curling smoke of
his pipe, "she was not entirely deceived. She might break up my
friendship with Adam if she took a dislike to me; but if she coquetted
with me to amuse herself, what would become of me?"

The conceit of this last supposition was so foreign to the modest
nature and Teutonic timidity of the captain that he scolded himself
for admitting it, and went to bed, resolved to await events before
deciding on a course.