Would that I knew who loves him best, the stars or I! which of us would sacrifice our being most eagerly for his happiness! Why should I not be free to avow my love?
In the presence of death we may declare our feelings,--and Seraphitus is about to die." "Minna, you are mistaken; the siren I so love and long for, she, whom I have seen, feeble and languid, on her couch of furs, is not a young man." "Monsieur," answered Minna, distressfully, "the being whose powerful hand guided me on the Falberg, who led me to the saeter sheltered beneath the Ice-Cap, there--" she said, pointing to the peak, "is not a feeble girl.

Ah, had you but heard him prophesying! His poem was the music of thought.

A young girl never uttered those solemn tones of a voice which stirred my soul." "What certainty have you ?" said Wilfrid.
"None but that of the heart," answered Minna.
"And I," cried Wilfrid, casting on his companion the terrible glance of the earthly desire that kills, "I, too, know how powerful is her empire over me, and I will undeceive you." At this moment, while the words were rushing from Wilfrid's lips as rapidly as the thoughts surged in his brain, they saw Seraphita coming towards them from the house, followed by David.

The apparition calmed the man's excitement.
"Look," he said, "could any but a woman move with that grace and langor ?" "He suffers; he comes forth for the last time," said Minna.
David went back at a sign from his mistress, who advanced towards Wilfrid and Minna.
"Let us go to the falls of the Sieg," she said, expressing one of those desires which suddenly possess the sick and which the well hasten to obey.
A thin white mist covered the valleys around the fiord and the sides of the mountains, whose icy summits, sparkling like stars, pierced the vapor and gave it the appearance of a moving milky way.

The sun was visible through the haze like a globe of red fire.