“What is the matter with me?” he asked himself.  “No, she is not a mere creature, but a whole creation.  Of her world, even through veils and clouds, I have caught echoes like the memory of sufferings healed, like the dazzling vertigo of dreams in which we hear the plaints of generations mingling with the harmonies of some higher sphere where all is Light and all is Love.  Am I awake?  Do I still sleep?  Are these the eyes before which the luminous space retreated further and further indefinitely while the eyes followed it?  The night is cold, yet my head is on fire.  I will go to the parsonage.  With the pastor and his daughter I shall recover the balance of my mind.”

But still he did not leave the spot whence his eyes could plunge into Seraphita’s salon.  The mysterious creature seemed to him the radiating centre of a luminous circle which formed an atmosphere about her wider than that of other beings; whoever entered it felt the compelling influence of, as it were, a vortex of dazzling light and all consuming thoughts.  Forced to struggle against this inexplicable power, Wilfrid only prevailed after strong efforts; but when he reached and passed the inclosing wall of the courtyard, he regained his freedom of will, walked rapidly towards the parsonage, and was soon beneath the high wooden arch which formed a sort of peristyle to Monsieur Becker’s dwelling.  He opened the first door, against which the wind had driven the snow, and knocked on the inner one, saying:—­

“Will you let me spend the evening with you, Monsieur Becker?”

“Yes,” cried two voices, mingling their intonations.

Entering the parlor, Wilfrid returned by degrees to real life.  He bowed affectionately to Minna, shook hands with Monsieur Becker, and looked about at the picture of a home which calmed the convulsions of his physical nature, in which a phenomenon was taking place analogous to that which sometimes seizes upon men who have given themselves up to protracted contemplations.  If some strong thought bears upward on phantasmal wing a man of learning or a poet, isolates him from the external circumstances which environ him here below, and leads him forward through illimitable regions where vast arrays of facts become abstractions, where the greatest works of Nature are but images, then woe betide him if a sudden noise strikes sharply on his senses and calls his errant soul back to its prison-house of flesh and bones.  The shock of the reunion of these two powers, body and mind,—­one of which partakes of the unseen qualities of a thunderbolt, while the other shares with sentient nature that soft resistant force which deifies destruction,—­this shock, this struggle, or, rather let us say, this painful meeting and co-mingling, gives rise to frightful sufferings.  The body receives back the flame that consumes it; the flame has once more grasped its prey.  This fusion, however, does not take place without convulsions, explosions, tortures; analogous and visible signs of which may be seen in chemistry, when two antagonistic substances which science has united separate.