Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/329

XXIII ] beauty and loveliness of manner, and we love them exceedingly but chastely."

The visitors smiled at this, and said, "You have guessed rightly. Who is able to behold such beauty near and feel no desire?"

The three days were up, and the visitors were escorted back to their society in the spirit world, where they presumably told their wives about the members of this "Society of the Eagle," whose very clothes they could have described. For, Swedenborg says, "The prince was clad in a long purple robe, embroidered with stars the color of silver; under the robe he wore a tunic of shining silk of a violet color. This was open at the breast, where the front part of a kind of belt was seen, bearing the badge of his society. The badge was an eagle on the top of a tree, brooding over her young. This was of shining gold in a circle of diamonds. The chief counselors were not very differently attired, but without the badge in place of which were graven sapphires pendent from the neck by a chain of gold. The courtiers were in togas of chestnut brown into which were woven flowers encircling young eagles. The tunics under them were of opaline silk, as were also their breeches and stockings. Such was their apparel."

But if the account of the visit to heaven finished with a marriage it was because the new book was at least ostensibly about marriage.