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Updated: June 29, 2025
Minna quivered as she heard the voice, now so changed, of her guide, a pure voice, like that of a young girl, which dissolved the fantastic dream through which she had been passing. Seraphitus seemed to be laying aside his male force and the too keen intellect that flames from his eyes.
The person whom Minna had addressed as Seraphitus threw his weight upon his right heel, arresting the plank six and a half feet long and narrow as the foot of a child which was fastened to his boot by a double thong of leather. This plank, two inches thick, was covered with reindeer skin, which bristled against the snow when the foot was raised, and served to stop the wearer.
"One other look! the last that I shall ever cast upon this nature in travail," said Seraphitus, rallying her strength and rising to her feet. She advanced to the edge of the rocky platform, whence her eyes took in the scenery of that grand and glorious landscape, so verdant, flowery, and animated, yet so lately buried in its winding-sheet of snow.
He seemed to repress some thoughts, then stretched his arms towards Christiana, just visible like a speck on the horizon and said: "Look!" "We are very small," she said. "Yes, but we become great through feeling and through intellect," answered Seraphitus.
"Oh, no," said Minna, and as she spoke she felt the soft breath of her companion on her brow. "Dear heart, will you come day after to-morrow evening and take tea with me?" "Gladly, dear." "Monsieur Becker, you will bring her, will you not?" "Yes, mademoiselle." Seraphitus inclined his head with a pretty gesture, and bowed to the old pastor as he left the house.
And, strange to say, it was Gautier that introduced me to Balzac; for mention is made in the wonderful preface to "Les Fleurs du Mal" of Seraphita: Seraphita, Seraphitus; which is it? woman or man? Should Wilfred or Mona be the possessor?
As soon as we seek to penetrate the secrets of Nature, where nothing is secret, and where it is only necessary to have the eyes to see, we perceive that the simple produces the marvellous. "Seraphitus," said Minna one evening a few days after Wilfrid's arrival in Jarvis, "you read the soul of this stranger while I have only vague impressions of it.
We can just fancy one of her dignified later heroines, all self- renunciation and rural sentiment, preaching in vain to that real woman, Emma Bovary. HER we know, her we remember, as we remember few, comparatively, of Balzac's thronging faces, from La Cousine Bette to Seraphitus Seraphita.
Too feeble to resist, she felt herself drawn by a mysterious power to the depths below, wherein she fancied that she saw some monster belching its venom, a monster whose magnetic eyes were charming her, whose open jaws appeared to craunch their prey before they seized it. "I die, my Seraphitus, loving none but thee," she said, making a mechanical movement to fling herself into the abyss.
Wilfrid, as he devoured the pages of the prophet, lived by his inner senses only; the pastor, looking up at times from his book, called Minna's attention to the absorption of their guest with an air that was half-serious, half-jesting. To Minna's thoughts the face of Seraphitus smiled upon her as it hovered above the clouds of smoke which enveloped them. The clock struck twelve.
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