"And is not love in it all, like a bee in a flower?" replied Wilfrid, who, seeing in her for the first time some trace of earthly feeling, thought it a favorable moment for the expression of his fervent affection.
"Always the same?" said Seraphita, laughing, Minna having left them; the girl was climbing a crag where she had seen some blue saxifrages.
"Always!" exclaimed Wilfrid. "Listen," he said, with an imperious glance that met a panoply of adamant, "you know not who I am, nor what my power is, nor what I demand. Do not reject my last entreaty. Be mine, for the sake of the world within your heart! Be mine, that my conscience may be pure, that a heavenly voice may sound in my ears and inspire me aright in the undertaking I have vowed to carry out, impelled by my hatred of the nations, but to be achieved for their welfare if only you are with me. What nobler mission may a woman dream of?—I came to these lands meditating a great scheme."
"And you are prepared to sacrifice it and its glories," said she, "to a very simple girl, whom you will love, and who will guide you into a peaceful path?"
"What do I care? I only want you! This is my secret," he replied, going on with his speech. "I have traveled all over the North, the great workshop where the new races are produced who overspread the earth like floods of humanity sent forth to renew worn-out civilization. I wanted to have begun my work on one of these points, conquering there the ascendency that force and intellect can assert over a small race; to have trained it to battle, to have declared war, and have sent it raging like a conflagration to consume Europe, while shouting to these 'Liberty!' to those 'Plunder!' to some 'Glory!' to others 'Pleasure!' I, standing meanwhile like the image of Fate, pitiless and cruel, moving like the storm which assimilates from the atmosphere the atoms of which the lightning is compounded, and feeding on men like a rapacious monster. I should then have conquered Europe; she is now at a period when she looks for the coming of the new Messiah, who is to devastate the world and to reform the nations. Europe can believe in no one but Him who will trample her under foot.
"Some day historians and poets would have justified my existence, have magnified me, have ascribed great ideas to me—to me, to whom this huge pleasantry, written in blood, is but revenge.
"But, dear Seraphita, what I have seen has disgusted me with the North; force here is too blind, and I crave for the Indies. A duel with a selfish, cowardly, and mercenary government fascinates me more. Besides, it is easier to arouse the imagination of the races that dwell at the foot of Caucasus than to convince the minds of men in these frozen lands. I am tempted to cross the Russian steppes, to reach the frontiers of Asia, to cover it as far as the Ganges with my victorious flood of human beings, and then I shall overthrow the English rule. Seven men, at different periods, have already carried out such a scheme. I shall renew Art, as the Saracens did when Mahomet cast them over Europe. I will not be so sordid a king as those who now govern the ancient provinces of the Roman Empire, quarreling with their subjects over custom-house dues. No, nothing shall arrest the flash of my gaze or the storm of my speech! My feet, like those of Genghis Khan, shall cover a third of the globe; my hand shall grasp Asia as did that of Aurung Zeeb.
"Be my partner; take your seat, fair and lovely being, on a throne. I have never doubted my success, but with you to dwell in my heart, I should be certain of it."
"I have reigned already," said Seraphita.
The words were like the blow dealt by the axe of a skilful woodsman at the root of a sapling, felling it at once. Men alone can know what a storm a woman can rouse in a man's soul when he has been trying to impress her with his strength or his power, his intellect or his superiority, and the capricious fair nods her head and says, "Oh, that is nothing!" or, with a bored smile, observes, "I know all that," when power is as nought to her.