The common opinion, that the immense difference between man and the Eternal must be filled up by a chain of spiritual giants, is false; as no chain can shorten the distance, much less fill it, for it will ever retain the same width; and the seraph, i. e. the highest finite being according to human thoughts, must imagine just as many, if not more, beings above him, as I do beneath me. Astronomy, this sawing machine of suns, this ship's wharf and laboratory of earths, would persuade us that the _enlargement_ of worlds and beings is a sign of their improvement. But over the whole sky there hang only earth and fire-balls, and all things on them, from milk-way to milk-way, are less than the wishes and longings of our hearts. Then why should our earth alone, why not every other also, be progressing? why should they, rather than we, have the start in this inaugural eternity? In short, it may be disputed if in the whole universe there are other angels and archangels than Victor and Jean Paul. It seems scarcely credible to me. But truly the _melodious_ progression to sublime beings has hitherto been merely taken for granted. I believe in a _harmonious_ one, in an eternal ascension, but in no created culmination. I presume Karlson intended to answer my argument, not on the seraphs, but on ephemera, when Nadine, who had borrowed the fly in order to examine it, held it too near her eyes, and thereby disturbed and extinguished our Mendelssohn-Platonic conversation. For Madame Berlier (such was the noble name of our temporary hostess) stepped up to Nadine, and said: "It is a pity for the pain. You must take the wart-locust, I have proofs," do you understand? It is this. The so-called wart-eater, a locust with light brown spots, takes away a wart in a very short time by a single bite. Dame Berlier, over whom, as over most Southrons, beauty had greater power than self-love and sex, had falsely imagined that Nadine wished to annihilate the only fault in her charming form with the fly. The Chaplain had scarcely heard the wart-eater mentioned, when he vanished among the green, and commenced a hunt for wart-locusts. I was vexed that I had known the remedy as well as Dame Berlier, and never thought of it. For a shabby simile I should have easily recollected it, but not for a useful cure. Fortune permitted him soon to return with the winged wart-operator; this excited my envy. When he gave it to Nadine, the officious Phylax had squeezed, with the letter and paper press of his hands, like in a good calendar-press, the brown spotted vegetable-eater to--death. The animal could bite no more; I immediately darted off in search of another, and soon returned, holding one by the tips of its wings, and said, I would myself hold it over the wart until he would operate on it. While performing the action I praised it. Every great deed, I said, is only accomplished in the soul, at the moment of determination; when it comes