"Silence!" he imperiously exclaimed. "Do not forswear your own salvation, do not conjure up the fiends who are lying in wait for souls. And moreover no such vows are needed. Believe me, Christiane, I too have pride, and strength to suffer for its sake, and if I speak in vain to-day, it will be my turn to avoid you. But you must listen now. You're too just to condemn me unheard." He drew a long breath, as if he were obliged to gather fresh courage for what he wanted to say. Then suddenly in his softest voice, into which when he chose he could throw an almost magical influence, he continued: "Sit down quietly; I will try to be brief. But you are greatly exhausted. You have just suffered bitterly again; do not deny it, Christiane, my longing jealous heart, makes my eyes keen; I could not tell you what or whom it was that caused you pain, but your soul is still trembling from the effects of this blow. Is not it so?" He relapsed into silence and watched her intently. She was gazing into vacancy but her lips quivered. "You're a fiend," she murmured. "But go on--go on--! let us get to the end." "To the end?" said he. "Oh! Christiane, if you were only more gentle, if your grief had not made you insensible to the pain of others, you would spare me further words. Have I not already told you, that from the first moment I saw you I recognized the inevitable destiny that bound me to you, and have vainly striven with all the powers of the soul and mind to escape the thraldom? I have concealed from myself nothing that could help to stifle such a flame--your obstinacy, your atheism, your indifference to all that usually charms and misleads your sex. I have told myself that I had no happiness to expect from this love, no future, no help for my own needs; the thirst for rule which you falsely impute to me--or no, let me confess it, which perhaps usually sways me--was never so ignominiously baffled as by you. Everything that can offend the vanity, the pride, even the honor of a man, or repel his affection, I have experienced at your hands. And now, Christiane, I ask you on your conscience: do you doubt the power of nature, or as I call it, the mystical force, which alone is capable, in spite of everything, of bringing me back to your feet? I was fully prepared to be misunderstood, reproached, abused. But that is the very miracle of love: it prefers to be trampled under foot by the beloved object, rather than caressed by an indifferent hand. Now have you still the heart to call me a fiend, only anxious to get your soul into his power? Your soul? oh God! I have given up the hope of winning it, spite of the pain it has cost me, I despair of initiating you into the depths of my life with God, making you a sharer in the bliss of my fears and longings. But believe me, Christiane, there is an earthly compensation for the highest divine ecstacies, of which all minds are not capable, a compensation which matures the soul and at the same time prepares it