for higher degrees of knowledge: the blending of spiritual and sensual passion, that thrills me with ardent yearning if I only touch your hand, meet your eyes, feel your breath on my face. No one, no matter how much he may have suffered, issues from this bath of the soul unrejuvenated and unrefreshed, and indeed, my friend, for your own sake I wish you had the courage to rush with closed eyes into the flames from which the poor mortal creature, purged from all the dross of earthly sorrow, emerges purified as a new, divinely consoled being. "This is the mystery," he continued as she was still silent: "no one comes to the Father save by the Son, no one can understand heavenly love who closes the heart to earthly affection. You have not found your God, my friend, because you would not yield to the power of your god-_man_, your Saviour, who would have delivered you from yourself. Do you know for what sin Lucifer was expelled from the presence of the eternal one? He wished to remain in presumptuous innocence, disdained to submit to the power of love. Now he is freezing amid his flames, as you, Christiane, shiver with cold while your whole nature is on fire. Oh! my friend, you are silent. Would that I had an angel's tongue to win from your soul some echo, thaw your frozen heart. You say you have a horror of me. Oh! it is not of me, the poor weak man, whom a single glance of yours can curb; you dread your own fall, which must precede your deliverance, the loss by which you are to gain, the death through which you must live. 'So a heart trembles at the approach of love, as if it were menaced by death.' But you have a strong soul, Christiane, you will shake off this cowardice and risk all to gain all, death for life, sin for mercy, hate for love--