utiful and noble being, on a throne! I do not doubt success, but live
within my heart and I am sure of it."

"I have already reigned," said Seraphita, coldly.

The words fell as the axe of a skilful woodman falls at the root of a
young tree and brings it down at a single blow. Men alone can comprehend
the rage that a woman excites in the soul of a man when, after showing
her his strength, his power, his wisdom, his superiority, the capricious
creature bends her head and says, "All that is nothing"; when, unmoved,
she smiles and says, "Such things are known to me," as though his power
were nought.

"What!" cried Wilfrid, in despair, "can the riches of art, the riches of
worlds, the splendors of a court--"

She stopped him by a single inflexion of her lips, and said, "Beings
more powerful than you have offered me far more."

"Thou hast no soul," he cried,--"no soul, if thou art not persuaded by
the thought of comforting a great man, who is willing now to sacrifice
all things to live beside thee in a little house on the shores of a
lake."

"But," she said, "I am loved with a boundless love."

"By whom?" cried Wilfrid, approaching Seraphita with a frenzied
movement, as if to fling her into the foaming basin of the Sieg.

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