“Poor child!” said Seraphitus, turning pale; “there is but one whom thou canst love in that way.”

“Who?” asked Minna.

“Thou shalt know hereafter,” he said, in the feeble voice of a man who lies down to die.

“Help, help! he is dying!” cried Minna.

Wilfrid ran towards them.  Seeing Seraphita as she lay on a fragment of gneiss, where time had cast its velvet mantle of lustrous lichen and tawny mosses now burnished in the sunlight, he whispered softly, “How beautiful she is!”

“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.

“Farewell,” she said, “farewell, home of Earth, warmed by the fires of Love; where all things press with ardent force from the centre to the extremities; where the extremities are gathered up, like a woman’s hair, to weave the mysterious braid which binds us in that invisible ether to the Thought Divine!

“Behold the man bending above that furrow moistened with his tears, who lifts his head for an instant to question Heaven; behold the woman gathering her children that she may feed them with her milk; see him who lashes the ropes in the height of the gale; see her who sits in the hollow of the rocks, awaiting the father!  Behold all they who stretch their hands in want after a lifetime spent in thankless toil.  To all peace and courage, and to all farewell!

“Hear you the cry of the soldier, dying nameless and unknown? the wail of the man deceived who weeps in the desert?  To them peace and courage; to all farewell!

“Farewell, you who die for the kings of the earth!  Farewell, ye people without a country and ye countries without a people, each, with a mutual want.  Above all, farewell to Thee who knew not where to lay Thy head, Exile divine!  Farewell, mothers beside your dying sons!  Farewell, ye Little Ones, ye Feeble, ye Suffering, you whose sorrows I have so often borne!  Farewell, all ye who have descended into the sphere of Instinct that you may suffer there for others!

“Farewell, ye mariners who seek the Orient through the thick darkness of your abstractions, vast as principles!  Farewell, martyrs of thought, led by thought into the presence of the True Light.  Farewell, regions of study where mine ears can hear the plaint of genius neglected and insulted, the sigh of the patient scholar to whom enlightenment comes too late!

“I see the angelic choir, the wafting of perfumes, the incense of the heart of those who go their way consoling, praying, imparting celestial balm and living light to suffering souls!  Courage, ye choir of Love! you to whom the peoples cry, ’Comfort us, comfort us, defend us!’ To you courage! and farewell!