Seraphita | Page 7

Seraphitus, gently.

"Wilfrid!" cried Minna angrily; then, softening as she glanced at her
companion's face and trying, but in vain, to take his hand, she added,
"You are never angry, never; you are so hopelessly perfect in all
things."
"From which you conclude that I am unfeeling."
Minna was startled at this lucid interpretation of her thought.
"You prove to me, at any rate, that we understand each other," she said,
with the grace of a loving woman.
Seraphitus softly shook his head and looked sadly and gently at her.
"You, who know all things," said Minna, "tell me why it is that the
timidity I felt below is over now that I have mounted higher. Why do I
dare to look at you for the first time face to face, while lower down I
scarcely dared to give a furtive glance?"
"Perhaps because we are withdrawn from the pettiness of earth," he
answered, unfastening his pelisse.
"Never, never have I seen you so beautiful!" cried Minna, sitting down
on a mossy rock and losing herself in contemplation of the being who
had now guided her to a part of the peak hitherto supposed to be
inaccessible.
Never, in truth, had Seraphitus shone with so bright a radiance,--the
only word which can render the illumination of his face and the aspect
of his whole person. Was this splendor due to the lustre which the pure
air of mountains and the reflections of the snow give to the complexion?
Was it produced by the inward impulse which excites the body at the
instant when exertion is arrested? Did it come from the sudden contrast
between the glory of the sun and the darkness of the clouds, from
whose shadow the charming couple had just emerged? Perhaps to all
these causes we may add the effect of a phenomenon, one of the
noblest which human nature has to offer. If some able physiologist had
studied this being (who, judging by the pride on his brow and the

lightning in his eyes seemed a youth of about seventeen years of age),
and if the student had sought for the springs of that beaming life
beneath the whitest skin that ever the North bestowed upon her
offspring, he would undoubtedly have believed either in some
phosphoric fluid of the nerves shining beneath the cuticle, or in the
constant presence of an inward luminary, whose rays issued through the
being of Seraphitus like a light through an alabaster vase. Soft and
slender as were his hands, ungloved to remove his companion's
snow-boots, they seemed possessed of a strength equal to that which
the Creator gave to the diaphanous tentacles of the crab. The fire
darting from his vivid glance seemed to struggle with the beams of the
sun, not to take but to give them light. His body, slim and delicate as
that of a woman, gave evidence of one of those natures which are
feeble apparently, but whose strength equals their will, rendering them
at times powerful. Of medium height, Seraphitus appeared to grow in
stature as he turned fully round and seemed about to spring upward.
His hair, curled by a fairy's hand and waving to the breeze, increased
the illusion produced by this aerial attitude; yet his bearing, wholly
without conscious effort, was the result far more of a moral
phenomenon than of a corporal habit.
Minna's imagination seconded this illusion, under the dominion of
which all persons would assuredly have fallen,--an illusion which gave
to Seraphitus the appearance of a vision dreamed of in happy sleep. No
known type conveys an image of that form so majestically made to
Minna, but which to the eyes of a man would have eclipsed in womanly
grace the fairest of Raphael's creations. That painter of heaven has ever
put a tranquil joy, a loving sweetness, into the lines of his angelic
conceptions; but what soul, unless it contemplated Seraphitus himself,
could have conceived the ineffable emotions imprinted on his face?
Who would have divined, even in the dreams of artists, where all things
become possible, the shadow cast by some mysterious awe upon that
brow, shining with intellect, which seemed to question Heaven and to
pity Earth? The head hovered awhile disdainfully, as some majestic
bird whose cries reverberate on the atmosphere, then bowed itself
resignedly, like the turtledove uttering soft notes of tenderness in the
depths of the silent woods. His complexion was of marvellous

whiteness, which brought out vividly the coral lips, the brown
eyebrows, and the silken lashes, the only colors that trenched upon the
paleness of that face, whose perfect regularity did not detract from the
grandeur of the sentiments expressed in it; nay, thought and emotion
were reflected there, without hindrance or violence, with the majestic
and natural gravity which we delight