You may be harsh to me, angry with me if you will, but
let me check you a little for your good. I will never abuse the power
if you will grant it. Be famous, but be happy too. Do not love
Chemistry better than you love us. Hear me, we will be generous; we
will let Science share your heart; but oh! my Claes, be just; let us
have our half. Tell me, is not my disinterestedness sublime?"
She made him smile. With the marvellous art such women possess, she
carried the momentous question into the regions of pleasantry where
women reign. But though she seemed to laugh, her heart was violently
contracted and could not easily recover the quiet even action that was
habitual to it. And yet, as she saw in the eyes of Balthazar the
rebirth of a love which was once her glory, the full return of a power
she thought she had lost, she said to him with a smile:--
"Believe me, Balthazar, nature made us to feel; and though you may
wish us to be mere electrical machines, yet your gases and your
ethereal disengaged matters will never explain the gift we possess of
looking into futurity."
"Yes," he exclaimed, "by affinity. The power of vision which makes the
poet, the power of deduction which makes the man of science, are based
on invisible affinities, intangible, imponderable, which vulgar minds
class as moral phenomena, whereas they are physical effects. The
prophet sees and deduces. Unfortunately, such affinities are too rare
and too obscure to be subjected to analysis or observation.
Pages:
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113