endeavour
through the fire of wine to wake again the fire of the soul."

"Then," said Louise, "you comprehend something which is very bad and
irrational. They are precisely such excitements as these that we have to
thank for there being so many miserable men, and so many drunkards in
Sweden, that one can scarcely venture to go out in the streets for
them!"

"I do not defend it, dear Louise," said Henrik, gently smiling at the
zeal of his sister, "but I can understand it, and in certain cases I can
excuse it. Life is often felt to be so heavy, and the moments of
inspiration give a fulness to existence; they are like lightning flashes
out of the eternal life!"

"And so they certainly are," said Leonore, who had listened attentively
to her brother, and whose mild eyes had become moist by his words; "and
life will certainly," continued she, "feel thus clear, thus full, when
we shall have become ever entirely freed from the chrysalis; not from
the bonds of the body only, but of the soul also. Perhaps these moments
are given to us here on earth to allure us up to the Father's house, and
to let us feel its air."

"A beautiful thought, Leonore," said her brother. "Thus these gleams of
light are truly revelations of our inward, actual, here-yet-enslaved
life. Good God! how glorious that--But ah! the long, long moments of
darkness, what are they?"

"Trials of patience, times of preparation," replied Leonore, tenderly
smiling. "Besides, the bright moments come again and gladden us with
their light, and that so much the more frequently the further one
advances in perfection. But one must, at the same time, learn to have
patience with oneself, Henrik, and here, in this life, to wait for
oneself."

"You have spoken a true word, sister. I must kiss your hand for it,"
said Henrik. "Ah, yes, if----"

"Be now a little less sensible and aesthetic," exclaimed "our eldest,"
"and come here and drink a cup of tea! See here, Henrik, a cup of strong
warm tea, which will do your head good. But this evening and to-morrow
morning you must take a table-spoonful of my elixir!"

"From that defend us all, ye good--_Vi ringrazia carissima sorella!_"
said Henrik. "But--but charming Gabriele! a drop of port wine in the tea
would make it more powerful, without turning me into one of those
miserable beings of whom Louise is so afraid! Thanks, sister dear!
_Fermez les yeux_, O Mahomet!" and with an obeisance before Louise,
Henrik conveyed the cu