his. Wilfrid was, however, strong enough to raise the cry of revolt to
which he had given utterance in Monsieur Becker's study. The narrative
of the old pastor had calmed him. Sceptical and derisive as he was, he
saw belief like a sidereal brilliance dawning on his life. He asked
himself if Seraphita were not an exile from the higher spheres seeking
the homeward way. The fanciful deifications of all ordinary lovers he
could not give to this lily of Norway in whose divinity he believed.
Why lived she here beside this fiord? What did she? Questions that
received no answer filled his mind. Above all, what was about to
happen between them? What fate had brought him there? To him,
Seraphita was the motionless marble, light nevertheless as a vapor,
which Minna had seen that day poised above the precipices of the
Falberg. Could she thus stand on the edge of all gulfs without danger,
without a tremor of the arching eyebrows, or a quiver of the light of
the eye? If his love was to be without hope, it was not without
curiosity.

From the moment when Wilfrid suspected the ethereal nature of the
enchantress who had told him the secrets of his life in melodious
utterance, he had longed to try to subject her, to keep her to
himself, to tear her from the heaven where, perhaps, she was awaited.
Earth and Humanity seized their prey; he would imitate them. His
pride, the only sentiment through which man can long be exalted, would
make him happy in this triumph for the rest of his life. The idea sent
the blood boiling through his veins, and his heart swelled. If he did
not succeed, he would destroy her,--it is so natural to destroy that
which we cannot possess, to deny what we cannot comprehend, to insult
that which we envy.

On the morrow, Wilfrid, laden with ideas which the extraordinary