Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/356

338 educated "beyond the common sphere of woman." "Mr. Swedenborg's deportment was exquisitely refined and gallant. When dinner was announced, I offered my hand to the hostess, and quickly our young man of eighty-one had put on his gloves and presented his hand to Mademoiselle Hoog, in doing which he looked uncommonly well. Whenever he was invited out, he dressed properly and becomingly in black velvet, but ordinarily he wore a brown coat and black trousers. I never saw him dressed otherwise than in one of these two suits of clothes.

"Our old gentleman was seated between Madame Konauw and the elder Demoiselle Hoog, both of whom understood thoroughly well how to talk; but they had promised me beforehand that, at least during dinner, they would allow the old gentleman to eat in peace. This promise they kept faithfully, and he seemed to enjoy very much to be so attentively served by the ladies. This time he displayed such a good appetite that I was quite surprised. They could not prevail on him to take more than three glasses of wine, which were besides half filled with sugar, of which he was more than ordinarily fond. During the dessert the talk went on very freely, and it continued afterwards while we took tea and coffee, and thus uninterruptedly until seven o'clock, when I had taken care that the carriage should be ready to take us home.

"It is astonishing what a number of questions the ladies addressed to him; all of which he answered." Cuno, to our regret, did not feel inclined to record these, except one, which certainly had the ladies in a flutter.

"The conversation turned upon a certain distinguished personage, I think an ambassador, who had died some time ago at the Hague. 'I know him,' exclaimed Mr. Swedenborg, 'although I never saw him in his lifetime. As you mention here his name, d'Abricourt, I know him and that he left a widow. But he has already married again in the spiritual world, and he has now a wife for all eternity who is more perfectly in harmony with his disposition than the one he left behind in this world.' "

Cuno dined several times with him again at the same house, and also at another where Swedenborg told him that a new set of teeth was growing in his mouth. Cuno was inclined to believe it. Swedenborg was, he said, "for his years a perfect wonder of health."