Seraphita | Page 8

canst thou look into that gulf and not die?"
she added presently.
Seraphitus left her clinging to the granite rock and placed himself at the

edge of the narrow platform on which they stood, whence his eyes
plunged to the depths of the fiord, defying its dazzling invitation. His
body did not tremble, his brow was white and calm as that of a marble
statue,--an abyss facing an abyss.
"Seraphitus! dost thou not love me? come back!" she cried. "Thy
danger renews my terror. Who art thou to have such superhuman power
at thy age?" she asked as she felt his arms inclosing her once more.
"But, Minna," answered Seraphitus, "you look fearlessly at greater
spaces far than that."
Then with raised finger, this strange being pointed upward to the blue
dome, which parting clouds left clear above their heads, where stars
could be seen in open day by virtue of atmospheric laws as yet
unstudied.
"But what a difference!" she answered smiling.
"You are right," he said; "we are born to stretch upward to the skies.
Our native land, like the face of a mother, cannot terrify her children."
His voice vibrated through the being of his companion, who made no
reply.
"Come! let us go on," he said.
The pair darted forward along the narrow paths traced back and forth
upon the mountain, skimming from terrace to terrace, from line to line,
with the rapidity of a barb, that bird of the desert. Presently they
reached an open space, carpeted with turf and moss and flowers, where
no foot had ever trod.
"Oh, the pretty saeter!" cried Minna, giving to the upland meadow its
Norwegian name. "But how comes it here, at such a height?"
"Vegetation ceases here, it is true," said Seraphitus. "These few plants
and flowers are due to that sheltering rock which protects the meadow

from the polar winds. Put that tuft in your bosom, Minna," he added,
gathering a flower,--"that balmy creation which no eye has ever seen;
keep the solitary matchless flower in memory of this one matchless
morning of your life. You will find no other guide to lead you again to
this saeter."
So saying, he gave her the hybrid plant his falcon eye had seen amid
the tufts of gentian acaulis and saxifrages,--a marvel, brought to bloom
by the breath of angels. With girlish eagerness Minna seized the tufted
plant of transparent green, vivid as emerald, which was formed of little
leaves rolled trumpet-wise, brown at the smaller end but changing tint
by tint to their delicately notched edges, which were green. These
leaves were so tightly pressed together that they seemed to blend and
form a mat or cluster of rosettes. Here and there from this green ground
rose pure white stars edged with a line of gold, and from their throats
came crimson anthers but no pistils. A fragrance, blended of roses and
of orange blossoms, yet ethereal and fugitive, gave something as it
were celestial to that mysterious flower, which Seraphitus sadly
contemplated, as though it uttered plaintive thoughts which he alone
could understand. But to Minna this mysterious phenomenon seemed a
mere caprice of nature giving to stone the freshness, softness, and
perfume of plants.
"Why do you call it matchless? can it not reproduce itself?" she asked,
looking at Seraphitus, who colored and turned away.
"Let us sit down," he said presently; "look below you, Minna. See! At
this height you will have no fear. The abyss is so far beneath us that we
no longer have a sense of its depths; it acquires the perspective
uniformity of ocean, the vagueness of clouds, the soft coloring of the
sky. See, the ice of the fiord is a turquoise, the dark pine forests are
mere threads of brown; for us all abysses should be thus adorned."
Seraphitus said the words with that fervor of tone and gesture seen and
known only by those who have ascended the highest mountains of the
globe,--a fervor so involuntarily acquired that the haughtiest of men is
forced to regard his guide as a brother, forgetting his own superior
station till he descends to the valleys and the abodes of his kind.

Seraphitus unfastened the skees from Minna's feet, kneeling before her.
The girl did not notice him, so absorbed was she in the marvellous view
now offered of her native land, whose rocky outlines could here be seen
at a glance. She felt, with deep emotion, the solemn permanence of
those frozen summits, to which words could give no adequate
utterance.
"We have not come here by human power alone," she said, clasping her
hands. "But perhaps I dream."
"You think that facts the causes of which you cannot perceive are
supernatural," replied her companion.
"Your replies," she said, "always bear the stamp