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.
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