beings and admire the immediate result. The Angels alone see more. They
know the means; they comprehend the final end.

But what the two Elect were granted power to contemplate, what they were
able to bring back as a testimony which enlightened their minds forever
after, was the proof of the action of the Worlds and of Beings; the
consciousness of the effort with which they all converge to the Result.

They heard the divers parts of the Infinite forming one living
melody; and each time that the accord made itself felt like a mighty
respiration, the Worlds drawn by the concordant movement inclined
themselves toward the Supreme Being who, from His impenetrable centre,
issued all things and recalled all things to Himself.

This ceaseless alternation of voices and silence seemed the rhythm of
the sacred hymn which resounds and prolongs its sound from age to age.

Wilfrid and Minna were enabled to understand some of the mysterious
sayings of Him who had appeared on earth in the form which to each of
them had rendered him comprehensible,--to one Seraphitus, to the other
Seraphita,--for they saw that all was homogeneous in the sphere where he
now was.

Light gave birth to melody, melody gave birth to light; colors were
light and melody; motion was a Number endowed with Utterance; all
things were at once sonorous, diaphanous, and mobile; so that each
interpenetrated the other, the whole vast area was unobstructed and the
Angels could survey it from the depths of the Infinite.

They perceived the puerility of human sciences, of which he had spoken
to them.

The scene was to them a prospect without horizon, a boundless space into
which an all-consuming desire prompted them to plunge. But, fastened to
their miserable bodies, they had the desire without the power to fulfil
it.

The _Seraph_, preparing for his flight, no longer looked towards them;
he had nothing now in common with Earth.

Upward he rose; the shadow of his luminous presence covered the two
Seers like a merciful veil, enabling them to raise their eyes and see
him, rising in his glory to Heaven in company with the glad Archangel.

He rose as the sun from the bosom of the Eastern waves; but, more
majestic than the orb and vowed to higher destinies, he could not be
enchained like inferior creations in the spiral movement of the worlds;
he followed the line of the Infinite, pointing without deviation to the
One Centre, there to enter his eternal life,--to rece