try and ye countries without a people, each, with a mutual
want. Above all, farewell to Thee who knew not where to lay Thy head,
Exile divine! Farewell, mothers beside your dying sons! Farewell, ye
Little Ones, ye Feeble, ye Suffering, you whose sorrows I have so often
borne! Farewell, all ye who have descended into the sphere of Instinct
that you may suffer there for others!

"Farewell, ye mariners who seek the Orient through the thick darkness of
your abstractions, vast as principles! Farewell, martyrs of thought,
led by thought into the presence of the True Light. Farewell, regions
of study where mine ears can hear the plaint of genius neglected and
insulted, the sigh of the patient scholar to whom enlightenment comes
too late!

"I see the angelic choir, the wafting of perfumes, the incense of the
heart of those who go their way consoling, praying, imparting celestial
balm and living light to suffering souls! Courage, ye choir of Love!
you to whom the peoples cry, 'Comfort us, comfort us, defend us!' To you
courage! and farewell!

"Farewell, ye granite rocks that shall bloom a flower; farewell, flower
that becomes a dove; farewell, dove that shalt be woman; farewell,
woman, who art Suffering, man, who art Belief! Farewell, you who shall
be all love, all prayer!"

Broken with fatigue, this inexplicable being leaned for the first time
on Wilfrid and on Minna to be taken home. Wilfrid and Minna felt
the shock of a mysterious contact in and through the being who thus
connected them. They had scarcely advanced a few steps when David
met them, weeping. "She will die," he said, "why have you brought her
hither?"

The old man raised her in his arms with the vigor of youth and bore her
to the gate of the Swedish castle like an eagle bearing a white lamb to
his mountain eyrie.

CHAPTER VI. THE PATH TO HEAVEN

The day succeeding that on which Seraphita foresaw her death and bade
farewell to Earth, as a prisoner looks round his dungeon before leaving
it forever, she suffered pains which obliged her to remain in the
helpless immobility of those whose pangs are great. Wilfrid and Minna
went to see her, and found her lying on her couch of furs. Still veiled
in flesh, her soul shone through that veil, which grew more and more
transparent day by day. The progress of the Spirit, piercing the last
obstacle between itself and the Infinite, was called an illness, the
hour of Life went by the name of death. David wept as