Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/74

 heart lies a sacrifice on the altar, fire from heaven consumes it as a proof that the offering is accepted."

I know not why her calm voice so painfully disturbed my whole soul (not only my argument). Even Nadine's eyes, which triumphed over her own sorrows, were suffused with tears by her sister's, and, although she is generally more timid and fastidious than Gione, in passing a little garden, she raised from a projecting hairy potato-stalk, a large moth, and showed it to us with a firm mouth, which should have been softened by a smile.

It was the so-called Death's-head. I stroked the flat, drooping wings, and said, "It come from Egypt, the land of mummies and graves; it bears a memento mori on its back, and a miserere in its plaintive voice." "In the mean time it is a butterfly, and visits the nectaries, which we day-birds will do also," appropriately observed Wilhelmi; but he took the words out of my mouth.

Gione's countenance again expressed thoughtful calmness, and to me she became immeasurably beautiful and grand by the stillness of her grief. You once said that the female soul, though it be pierced with burning shafts, must never beat its wings convulsively together, else, like other butterflies, it would destroy their beauty. How true is this!

Nadine's eyes seldom shone without at last overflowing, and every sorrowful emotion remained long in her heart, because she tried to guard against it. She resembled those springs which take a temperature opposed to the time of day, and which are warmest in the cool evening. She turned to me and said, putting her hand in her left pocket, "I will show you some poetry which will prove your prose." While she was seeking it, she stood still with her companion Wilhelmi. He guessed before I did,