ture out among the rocks to reach the open sea and attempt,
the fishing which the Norwegians carry on to a great extent
on less dangerous parts of the coast. The various fish in
the fiord partly supplies the food of the inhabitants; the
pasture land in the valleys affords milk and butter; a few
plots of good land allow them to reap a harvest of rye, of
hemp, and vegetables, which they manage to protect against
the bitter cold and the transient but terrible heat of the sun,
showing true Norwegian ingenuity in this twofold conflict.
The absence of communications, either by land, where roads
are impracticable, or by sea, where only small boats can
thread the watery labyrinths of the fiord, hinders them from
acquiring wealth by the sale of their timber. It would cost
an equally enormous sum to clear the channel at the en-
trance or to open up a road to the interior.
The roads from Christiania to Dronthjem all make a
bend round the Stromfiord, crossing the Sieg by a bridge
several leagues above the falls; the coast between the Jarvis
valley and Dronthjem is covered with impenetrable forests,
and the Falberg is divided from Christiania by inaccessible
precipices. The village of Jarvis might perhaps have opened
communications with Sweden by way of the Sieg, but to
bring it into touch with civilization the Stromfiord needed
a man of genius. The genius indeed came : a poet, a pious
Swede, who died admiring and respecting the beauties of
the land as being one of the grandest of the Creator's works.
Those of my readers who have been gifted by study with
that "mind's eye," w^hose rapid perception can throw on the
soul, as on a canvas, the most diverse landscapes of the v/orld,
may now readily conceive of the general aspect of the Strom-
fiord. They alone, perhaps, will be able to thread their
tortuon„s way through the reef of the inlet where the sea
6 SERAPHITA
fights and foams; to glide on its swell below the shelves of the
Falberg, whose white peaks mingle with the misty clouds
of a sky that is almost constantly pearl-gray; to admire the
dented margin of the pretty sheet of water; to hear the falls
of the Sieg, which drops in long streamers on to a picturesque
medley of large trees tossed in confusion, some upright, some
hidden among boulders of gneiss; and at last to rest on the
smiling pictures offered to the eye by the lower hills of Jar-
vis, whence rise the noblest products of the north in clumps,
in myriads : here, birch-trees, as graceful as girls and, like
them, gently stooping; there, pillared aisles of beech with
centennial, mossy trunks; all the contrast of these various
shades of green, of white clouds among black pine-trees, of
heath-grown commons in every shade of purple — all the
colors, all the fragrance, the unknown marvels, in short, of
this vegetation.
Expand the proportions of this amphitheatre, soar up to
the clouds, lose yourself in the caves of the rocks where the
walruses hide, still your fancy will never be equal to the
riches, the poetry of this Norwegian scene. For can your
thought ever be as vast as the ocean that bounds the land,
as fantastic as the strange forms assumed by the forests, as
the clouds, the shadows, the changes of light?
Do you see now, above the meadows on the shore, on the
furthest fold of the plain that undulates at the foot of the
high hills of Jarvis, two or three hundred houses, roofed
with nccve?\ a kind of thatch of birch bark; frail-looking
dwellings, quite low, and suggesting silkworms flung there on
a mulberry leaf brought by the wind? Above these humble
and peaceful dwellings is a church, built with a simplicity
that harmonizes with the poverty of the village. A grave-
yard lies round the chancel of this church; the parsonage is
seen beyond. A little higher, on a. knoll of the hillside,
stands a dwelling, the only one built of stone, and for that
reason called by the natives the Castle — the Swedish Castle.
In fact, a rich man had come from Sweden thirty years
before this story ojjens and settled at Jarvis, trying to improve
SERAPHITA 7
its fortunes. This little mansion, erected with a view to
tempting the inhabitants to build the like, was remarkable
for its substantial character, for a garden wall — a rare thing
in Norway, where,, in spite of the abundance of stone, wood
is used for all the fences, even for those that divide the fields.
The house, thus protected from snow, stood on a mound in
the midst of a vast courtyard. The windows were screened
by those verandas of immense depth supported on large
squared fir-trunks, which give Northern buildings a 'sort of
patriarchal expression.
From under their shelter the savage bareness of the Fal-
berg could easily be seen, and the infinitude of the open ocean
be compared with the drop of water in the foam-flecked gulf ;
the portentous rush of the Sieg could be heard, though from
afar the sheet of water looked motionless, where it threw it-
self into its granite bowl hedged in for three leagues round
v/ith vast glaciers — in short, the whole landscape where the
scene is laid of the supernatural but simple events of this
narrative.
The winter of 1799-1800 was one of the hardest in the
memory of Europe; the Norway sea froze in every fiord, where
the violence of the undertow commonly prevents the ice from
forming. A wind, in its effects resembling the Spanish
desert wind, had swept the ice of the Stromfiord by drifting
the snow to the head of the gulf. It was long since the good
folks of Jarvis had seen the vast mirror of the pool in winter
reflecting the sky — a curious effect here in the heart of the
hills whose curves were effaced under successive layers of
snow, the sharpest peaks, like the deepest hollows, forming
mere faint undulations under the immense sheet thrown by
nature over the landscape now so dolefully dazzling and
monotonous. The long hangings of the Sieg, suddenly
frozen, described a vast arch, behind which the traveler might
have walked sheltered from the storm if any one had been
bold enough to venture across country. But the dangers of
any expedition kept the boldest hunters within doors, fearing
that they might fail to discern under the snow the narrow
8 SERAPHITA
paths traced along the edge of the precijiices, the ravines,
and the cliffs. ISTot a creature gave life to this white desert
reigned over by the Polar blast, whose voice alone was some-
times though rarely heard.
The sky, always gray, gave the pool a hue of tarnished
steel. ISFow and again an eider-duck might fiy across with
impunity, thanks to the thick down that shelters the dreams
of the wealthy, who little know the dangers that purchase it ;
but the' bird — like the solitary Bedouin who traverses the
sands of Africa — was neither seen nor heard; in the torpid
air, bereft of electric resonance, the rush of its wings was
noiseless, its joyous cry unheard. What living eye could en-
dure the sparkle of that precipice hung with glittering icicles,
and the hard reflections from the snows, scarcely tinted on
the peaks by the beams of the pallid sun which peeped out
now and then like a dying thing anxious to prove that it
still lives? Many a time, when the rack of gray clouds,
driven in squadrons over the mountains and pine forests, hid
the sky with their dense shroud, the earth, for lack of heavenly
lights, had an illumination of its own.
Here, then, were met all the majestic attributes of the
eternal cold that reigns at the Pole, of which the most strik'
ing is such royal silence as absolute monarchs dwell in.
Every condition carried to excess has the appearance of nega-
tion, or the stamp of apparent death ; is not life the conflict
of two forces? Here nothing showed a sign of life. One
force alone, the barren force of frost, reigned supreme. The
beating of the open sea even did not penetrate to this silent
hollow, so full of sound during the three brief months when
nature hurriedly produces the uncertain harvest needful to
support this patient race. A few tall fir-trees protruded their
dark pyramids loaded with festoons of snow; and the droop
of their boughs, bending under these heavy beards, gave a
finishing touch to the mourning aspect of the heights, where
they were seen as black points.
Every family clung to the fireside in a house carefully
closed, with a store of biscuit, run butter, dried fish, and pro-
SERAPHITA 9
visions laid in to stand seven months of winter. Even the
smoke of these dwellings was scarcely visible; they were
all nearly buried in snow, of which the weight was broken
by long planks starting from the roof, and supported at some
distance from the walls on strong posts, thus forming a cov-
ered way round the house. During these dreadful winters
the women weave and dye the stuffs of wool or linen of which
the clothes are made; while the men for the most part read,
or else lose themselves in those prodigious meditations which
have given birth to the grand theories, the mystical dreams
of the North, its beliefs and its studies— so thorough on cer-
tain points of science that they have probed to the core; a
semi-monastic mode of life, which forces the soul back on it-
self, to feed on itself, and which makes the Norwegian peas-
ant a being apart in the nations of Europe.
This, then, was the state of things on the Stromfiord in
the first year of the nineteenth century, about the middle of
the month of May.
One morning, when the sun was blazing down into the
heart of this landscape, lighting up the flashes of the
ephemeral diamonds produced by the crystallized surface of
the snow and ice, two persons crossed the gulf and flew along
the shelves of the Falberg, mounting towards the summit
from ledge to ledge. Were they two human beings, or were
they arrows? Any one who should have seen them would
have taken them for two eiders soaring with one consent be-
low the clouds. Not the most superstitious fisherman, not
the most daring hunter, would have supposed that human
creatures could have the power of pursuing a path along the
faint lines traced on the granite sides, where this pair were,
nevertheless, gliding along with the appalling skill of som-
nambulists, when, utterly unconscious of the laws of gravity
and the perils of the least false step, they run along a roof,
preserving their balance under the influence of an unknown
power.
"Stop here, Seraphitus," said a pale girl, "and let me take
breath. I would look only at you as we climbed the walls of
10 SERAPHITA
this abyss ; if I had not, what would have become of me? But,
at the same time, I am but a feeble creature. Do I tire
you ?"
"No," said the being on whose arm she leaned. "Let us
go on, Minna; the spot where we are standing is not firm
enough to remain on."
Once more the snow hissed off from the long boards at-
tached to their feet, and they presently reached the first an-
gular crag which chance had thrown out boldly from the face
of the precipice. The person whom Minna had addressed as.
Seraphitus poised himself on his right heel to raise the lath
of about six feet long, and as narrow as a child's shoe, which
was fastened to his boot by two straps of walrus skin; this
lath, about an inch thick, had a sole of reindeer skin, and
the hair, pressed back against the snow, brought him to a
full stop. By turning his left foot, on which this snow-shoe
(or sH) was not less than twelve feet in length, he was able
to turn nimbly round, he returned to his timid companion,
lifted her up in spite of his awkward footgear, and set her
down on a rocky seat, after dusting away the snow with his
pelisse.
"You are safe here, Minna, and may tremble at your ease.'"
"We have already reached a third of the height of the Ice-
cap," said she, looking at the peak, which she called by its
popular Norwegian name. "I do not yet believe "
But she was too much out of breath to talk; she smiled at
Seraphitus, who, without replying, held her up, his hand on
her heart, listening to its palpitations, as rapid as those of a
startled fledgling.
"It often beats as fast as that when I have been running,"
said she.
Seraphitus bowed, without any contempt or coldness. In
spite of the grace of this reph^, which made it almost sweet,
it nevertheless betrayed a reserve which in a woman would
have been intoxicatingly provoking. Seraphitus clasped the
girl to him, and Minna took the caress for an ansv/er, and sat
looking at him. As Seraphitus raised his head, tossing back
SERAPHITA 11
the golden locks of his hair with an almost impatient jerk,
he saw happiness in his companion's eyes.
"Yes, Minna," said he, in a paternal tone that was pe-
culiarly charming in a youth scarcely full grown, "look at
me. Do not look down."
"Why ?"
"Do you want to know ? — Try then."
Minna gave one hasty glance at her feet, and cried out
like a child that has met a tiger. The dreadful influence of
the void had seized her, and one look had been enough to give
it to her. The fiord, greedy of its prey, had a loud voice,
stunning her by ringing in her ears, as though to swallow her
up more surely by coming between her and life. From her
hair to her feet, all down her back, ran a shudder, at first of
cold; but then it seemed to fire her nerves with intolerable
heat, throbbed in her veins, and made her limbs feel weak
from electrical shocks, like those caused by touching the elec-
trical eel. Too weak to resist, she felt herself drawn by some
unknown force to the bottom of the cliff, where she fancied
she could see a monster spouting venom, a monster whose
magnetic eyes fascinated her, and whose yawning jaws
crunched his prey by anticipation.
"I am dying, my Seraphitus, having loved no one but
you," said she, mechanically moving to throw herself down.
Seraphitus blew softly on her brow and eyes. Suddenly,
as a traveler is refreshed by a bath, Minna, had forgotten
that acute anguish; it had vanished under that soothing
breath, which penetrated her frame and bathed it in balsamic
effluence, as swiftly as the breath had passed through the air.
"Who and what are you ?" said she, with an impulse of de-
licious alarm. "But I know. — You are my life. — How can
you look down into the gulf without dying?" she asked after
a pause.
Seraphitus left Minna clinging to the granite, and went as
a shadow might have done to stand on the edge of the crag,
his eyes sounding the bottom of the fiord, defying its bewilder-
ing depths; his figure did not sway, his brow was as white
and calm as that of a marble statue — deep meeting deep.
12 , SERAPHITA
"Seraphitiis^ if you love nie, come back !" cried the girl.
"Your danger brings back all my torments. Who — who are
you to have such superhuman strength at your age?" she
asked, feeling his arms around her once more.
"Why," said Seraphitus, "you can look into far vaster
space without a qualm;" and raising his hand, the strange
being pointed to the blue halo formed by the clouds round
a clear opening just over their heads, in which they could see
the stars, though it was daylight, in consequence of some at-
mospheric laws not yet fully explained.
"But what a difference !" she said, smiling.
"You are right," he replied; "we are born to aspire sky-
wards. Our native home, like a mother's face, never fright-
ens its children."
His voice found an echo in his companion's soul; she was
silent.
"Come ! let us go on," said he.
They rushed on together by the paths faintly visible along
the mountain side, devouring the distance, flying from shelf
to shelf, from ledge to ledge, with the swiftness of the Arab
horse, that bird of the desert. In a few minutes they reached
a green carpet of grass, moss, and flowers, on which no one
yet had ever rested.
"What a pretty sceterl" cried Minna, giving the native
name to this little meadow; "but how comes it here, so high
up?"
"Here, indeed, the Norwegian vegetation ceases," said Sera-
phitus ; "and if a few plants and flowers thrive on this spot, it
is thanks to the shelter of the rock which protects them from
the Polar cold.- — Put this spray in your bosom, Minna," he
went on, plucking a flower ; "take this sweet creature on which
no human eye has yet rested, and keep the unique blossom in
memory of this day, unique in your life ! You will never
again find a guide to lead you to this soeter."
He hastily gave her a hybrid plant which his eagle eye had
discerned am.ong the growth of silene acaulis and saxifrage,
a real miracle developed under the breath of angels. Minna.
feiSHAPni'fA t3
seized it with childlike eagerness; a tuft of green, as trans-
parent and vivid as an emerald, composed of tiny leaves curled
into cones, light brown at the heart, shaded softly to green
at the point, and cut into infinitely delicate teeth. These leaves
were so closely set that they seemed to mingle in a dense
mass of dainty rosettes. Here and there this cushion was
studded with white stars edged with a line of gold, and from
the heart of each grew a bunch of purple stamens without a
pistil. A scent that seemed to combine that of the rose and
of the orange-blossom, but wilder and more ethereal, gave a
heavenly charm to this mysterious flower, at which Seraphitus
gazed with melancholy, as though its perfume had expressed
to him a plaintive thought, which he alone understood. T©
Minna this amazing blossom seemed a caprice of Nature,
who had amused herself by endowing a handful of gems with
the freshness, tenderness, and fragrance of a plant.
"Why should it be unique? Will it never reproduce its
kind?" said she to Seraphitus, who colored and changed the
subject.
"Let us sit down — tarn round — look! At such a height
you will perhaps not be frightened. The gulfs are so far below
that you cannot measure their depth ; they have the level per-
spective of the sea, the indefiniteness of the clouds, the hue of
the sky. The ice in the fiord is an exquisite turquoise, the pine
forests are visible only as dim brown streaks. To us the
depths may well be thus disgiiised."
Seraphitus spoke these words with that unction of tone and
gesture which is known only to those who have attained to
the highest places on the mountains of the earth, and which
is so involuntarily assumed that the most arrogant master
finds himself prompted to treat his guide as a brother, and
never feels himself the superior till they have descended into
the valleys where men dwell.
He untied Minna's snow-shoes, kneeling at her feet. The
girl did not notice it, so much was she amazed at the impos-
ing spectacle of the Norwegian panorama — the long stretch
of rocks lying before her at a glance, so much was she struck'
14 SERAPHItA
by the perennial solemnity of those frozen summits, for which
words have no expression.
"We have not come here by unaided human strength !" said
she, clasping her hands. "I must be dreaming !"
"You call a fact supernatural, because you do not know its
cause," he replied.
"Your answers are always stamped with some deep mean-
ing," said she. "With you I understand everything without
an effort. — Ah ! I am free !"
"Your snow-shoes are off, that is all."
"Oh !" cried she, "and I would fain have untied yours, and
have kissed your feet !"
"Keep those speeches for Wilfrid," said Seraphitus mildly.
"Wilfrid !" echoed Minna in a tone of fury, which died
away as she looked at her companion. "You are never angry !"
said she, trying, but in vain, to take his hand. "You are in
all things so desperately perfect !"
"Whence you infer that I have no feelings ?"
Minna was startled at a glance so penetratingly thrown
into her mind.
"You prove to me that we understand each other," replied
she, with the grace of a loving woman.
Seraphitus gently shook his head, with a flashing look that
was at once sweet and sad.
"You who know everything," Minna went on, "tell me why
the alarm I felt below, by your side, is dissipated now that
I am up here; why I dare for the first time to look you in
,the face; whereas, down there, I scarce dare steal a glance at
you ?"
"Perhaps up here we have cast off the mean things of the
earth," said he, pulling off his pelisse.
"I never saw you so beautiful," said Minna, sitting down
on a mossy stone, and gazing in contemplation of the being
who had thus brought her to a part of the mountain which
from afar seemed inaccessible.
Never, in fact, had Seraphitus shone with such brilliant
splendor — the only expression that can do justice to the eager-
SERAPHITA 15
ness of his face and the aspect of his person. Was this ra-
diance due to the effulgence given to the complexion by the
pure mountain air and the reflection from the snow? Was
it the result of an internal impetus which still excites the
frarfle at the moment it is resting after long exertion? Was
it produced by the sudden contrast between the golden glow
of sunshine and the gloom of the clouds through which
this pretty pair had passed ?
To all these causes we must perhaps add the effects of one
of the most beautiful phenomena that human nature can offer.
If some skilled physiologist had studied this being, who, to
judge by the boldness of his brow and the light in his eyes
at this moment, was a youth of seventeen; if he had sought
the springs of this blooming life under the whitest skin that
the North ever bestowed on one of its sons, he would, no
doubt, have believed in the existence of a phosphoric fluid
in the sinews that seemed to shine through the skin, or in the
constant presence of an internal glow, which tinted Seraphitus
as a light shines through an alabaster vase. Delicately slen-
der as his hands were — he had taken off his gloves to loosen
Minna's sandals — they seemed to have such strength as the
Creator has given to the diaphanous joints of a crab. The
fire that blazed in his eyes rivaled the rays of the sun; he
seemed not to receive but to give out light. His frame, as
slight and fragile as a woman's, was that of a nature feeble
in appearance, but whose strength is always adequate to its
desires, which are sometimes strong. Seraphitus, though of
middle height, seemed taller as seen in front; he looked as
if he fain would spring upwards. His hair, with its light
curls, as if touched by a fairy hand and tossed by a breeze,
added to the illusion produced by his airy attitude ; but this
absolutely effortless mien was the outcome rather of a mental
state than of physical habit.
Minna's imagination seconded this constant hallucination ;
it would have affected any beholder, for it gave to Seraphitus
the appearance of one of the beings we see in our happiest
dreams. N"o familiar type can give any idea of this face, to
16 SERAPHITA
Minna so majestically manly, though in the sight of a man
its feminine grace would have eclipsed the loveliest heads
by Raphael. That Painter of Heaven has frequently given a
sort of tranquil joy and tender suavity to the lines of his
angelic beauties ; but without seeing Seraphitus himself, what
mind can conceive of the sadness mingled with hope which
half clouded the ineffable feelings expressed in his features?
Who could picture to himself, even in the artist's dream, where
all things are possible, the shadows east by mysterious awe
on that too intellectual brow, which seemed to interrogate
the skies, and always to pity the earth ? That head could tower
disdainful, like a noble bird of prey whose cries rend the air,
or bow resigned, like the turtle-dove whose voice sheds tender-
ness in the depths of the silent forest.
Seraphitus had a complexion of surprising whiteness, made
all the more remarkable by red lips, brown eyebrows, and
silky lashes, the only details that broke the pallor of a face
whose perfect regularity did not hinder the strong expression
of his feelings; they were mirrored there without shock or
violence, but with the natural, majestic gravity we like to at-
tribute to superior beings. Everything in those monumental
features spoke of strength and repose.
Minna stood up to take the young man's hand, hoping to
draw him down to her so as to press on that fascinating brow
a kiss of admiration rather than of love ; but one look from his
eyes, a look that went through her as a sunbeam goes through
a glass prism, froze the poor child. She felt the gulf be-
tween them without understanding it ; she turned away her
head and wept. Suddenly a strong hand was round her waist,
and a voice full of kindness said :
"Come."
She obeyed, resting her head in sudden relief on the young
man's heart ; while he, measuring his steps by hers in gentle
and attentive conforrjity, led her to a spot whence they could