ge tear-drops occasionally rolling down his pallid
cheeks, a stranger suddenly entered the room. He was enveloped in a
gray traveling cloak, and his hat was drawn down over his eyes.
Stepping directly in front of Arwed, he threw off his cloak and cap.

'Swedenborg!' exclaimed Arwed, in a languid tone.

'The old _Fatum_,' spoke the seer, 'has again most unhappily kept troth
with my presentiments. I see you again in the heaviest hour of your
life, as I expected. But what I could not have expected is, to see you
sinking under your sorrow. It becomes a man to struggle manfully
against this evil fiend, and gloriously to vanquish; not to lay down
his arms before him, like a wounded and disabled combatant.'

'You have never loved!' ejaculated Arwed; 'you cannot know the anguish
which rends my heart.'

'I have loved!' exclaimed Swedenborg, with radiant eyes; 'I yet love,
and with a passion which shall be eternal! Not, indeed, a perishable
woman, but the celestial _Sophiam_! Would to God that you also would
choose her for your bride. How vain and trifling would all the earthly
sorrows which now afflict you, then appear.'

'Do you know the stroke I have received?' asked Arwed, passionately.

'I know it,' answered Swedenborg mysteriously, 'as well as most things
which concern you. Your image has often floated before my inward
vision, and the spirits have often conversed with me of you.'

'All my misery,' rejoined Arwed, 'comes from the cold, malicious
Ulrika. Her barbarity has torn from my brows the garland with which
true love would have crowned me.'

'Sweden's vassal,' cried Swedenborg with solemn earnestness; 'blaspheme
not Sweden's queen!'

'How!' cried Arwed, with astonishment, '_You_ take her part? You, who
prophecied wo to Sweden under her reign?'

'That is still my opinion,' rejoined Swedenborg. 'But since Ulrika, by
the unanimous voice of the people, sits upon her father's throne, she
must be to us an object of veneration only. If she has done evil, she
will not escape its punishment; and as the Lord oftentimes takes care
to punish the sinner directly in that wherein he sinned, so perhaps
will the man for whom she has done every thing, at some time become an
instrument of divine wrath and take the crown from her head to place it
on his own, repaying her with the basest treachery.'

'Alas, her crimes had wings,' complained Arwed; 'and this requital
creeps snail-like after them.'

'Know then, you, who are so e