impatience; they were constantly beneficent and gentle, full of
courtesy and loving-kindness; their marriage was the harmony of two
souls indissolubly united. Two eiders winging the same flight, the
sound in the echo, the thought in the word,--these, perhaps, are true
images of their union. Every one here in Jarvis loved them with an
affection which I can compare only to the love of a plant for the sun.
The wife was simple in her manners, beautiful in form, lovely in face,
with a dignity of bearing like that of august personages. In 1783,
being then twenty-six years old, she conceived a child; her pregnancy
was to the pair a solemn joy. They prepared to bid the earth farewell;
for they told me they should be transformed when their child had
passed the state of infancy which needed their fostering care until
the strength to exist alone should be given to her.

"Their child was born,--the Seraphita we are now concerned with. From
the moment of her conception father and mother lived a still more
solitary life than in the past, lifting themselves up to heaven by
Prayer. They hoped to see Swedenborg, and faith realized their hope.
The day on which Seraphita came into the world Swedenborg appeared in
Jarvis, and filled the room of the new-born child with light. I was
told that he said, 'The work is accomplished; the Heavens rejoice!'
Sounds of unknown melodies were heard throughout the house, seeming to
come from the four points of heaven on the wings of the wind. The
spirit of Swedenborg led the father forth to the shores of the fiord
and there quitted him. Certain inhabitants of Jarvis, having
approached Monsieur Seraphitus as he stood on the shore, heard him
repeat those blissful words of Scripture: 'How beautiful on the
mountains are the feet of Him who is sent of God!'

"I had left the parsonage on my way to baptize the infant and name it,