efore it in heavy folds. Nothing in the room was picturesque,
nothing brilliant; everything denoted rigorous simplicity, true
heartiness, the ease of unconventional nature, and the habits of a
domestic life which knew neither cares nor troubles. Many a dwelling is
like a dream, the sparkle of passing pleasure seems to hide some ruin
beneath the cold smile of luxury; but this parlor, sublime in reality,
harmonious in tone, diffused the patriarchal ideas of a full and
self-contained existence. The silence was unbroken save by the movements
of the servant in the kitchen engaged in preparing the supper, and
by the sizzling of the dried fish which she was frying in salt butter
according to the custom of the country.

"Will you smoke a pipe?" said the pastor, seizing a moment when he
thought that Wilfrid might listen to him.

"Thank you, no, dear Monsieur Becker," replied the visitor.

"You seem to suffer more to-day than usual," said Minna, struck by the
feeble tones of the stranger's voice.

"I am always so when I leave the chateau."

Minna quivered.

"A strange being lives there, Monsieur Becker," he continued after a
pause. "For the six months that I have been in this village I have never
yet dared to question you about her, and even now I do violence to
my feelings in speaking of her. I began by keenly regretting that my
journey in this country was arrested by the winter weather and that I
was forced to remain here. But during the last two months chains have
been forged and riveted which bind me irrevocably to Jarvis, till now
I fear to end my days here. You know how I first met Seraphita, what
impression her look and voice made upon me, and how at last I was
admitted to her home where she receives no one. From the very first day
I have longed to ask you the history of this mysterious being. On that
day began, for me, a series of enchantments."

"Enchantments!" cried the pastor shaking the ashes of his pipe into an
earthen-ware dish full of sand, "are there enchantments in these days?"

"You, who are carefully studying at this moment that volume of the
'Incantations' of Jean Wier, will surely understand the explanation of
my sensations if I try to give it to you," replied Wilfrid. "If we study
Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we
cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment--giving to that
word its exact significance. Man does not create forces; he employs the
only f