orms, and
attest my might, shall I beckon to the angels that hover round me,
visibly to appear to do my service?--Yes! let it be attempted,
ventured--Then trembling and fear came over me, I was stunned and in
despair; in contrite humility I cast myself down before my Creator, I
felt myself undone, now that I perceived my devilish arrogance which
had risen out of pure humility and love; I had experienced the most
fearful apostacy from God, just at the moment when with all my
faculties I felt myself nearer to him.

"This moment in which my spirit became dizzy on the verge of insanity
and frenzy, has since then ever seemed to me the most terrible one in
my life. I now understood myself and human nature, and also the danger
of enthusiastic raptures of love. I had then indeed myself trodden the
bridge over which all enthusiasts have passed, the narrow path (ever
shining brightly, though hell lies beneath it) between virtue and vice,
between wisdom and presumption, which leads from love and kindliness to
hatred and murder, and I had now learned what an unholy spirit had
moved the Anabaptists, and Adamites, and perhaps now glows and rages in
many a heart among the rebels. Oh! my son, man is a most frail and
pitiable being, the more is lent to him, the more has he to answer for,
the brighter the spirit of love glows within him, the darker burns his
reprobation; his gifts granted to him from heaven, may become his dire
enemies, there is no one either that stands so fast, but that he may
also fall. My legends had already taught me that, but I was doomed to
feel it first in this fatal downfall."

"Therefore still hell and devil?" cried Edmond after a long pause.
"However mildly you spoke and sentenced at first, the priestly
condemnation follows in the end. Oh thou unfortunate Cavalier and
Marion! and ye unhappy children, on whose lisping tongues Satan himself
laid the name of the Lord, and the awaking to repentance."

"What then shall we call that?" said the old man mildly, "which works
directly against God? We require not certainly that fearful figure,
which perversity has imagined, in order to represent him personally; we
need not indeed ascribe to him those tremendous attributes, which the
miracle-seeking has invented, fabulously enough, but so much the worse
for us, the weaker, the more powerless he in himself is: how feeble are
we then to permit ourselves to be so ignominously overcome by this
shadow, this delusion, this i