Thus they went on talking and squabbling, till some one for the sake of starting another subject began telling about the robberies, which their master, the old man of the mountain, was so incomprehensibly allowing to go on, doing next to nothing to find out the offender, although his losses, rich as he might be, must have amounted to very large sums. The stranger miner again spoke of his contrivances for making sure of catching the thief; and Conrad, who recollected the former conversation, shook his fist at him in silence.

Eleazar seemed to enter into these strange schemes, and exulted with vulgar glee at the thought of thus at length getting hold of the rascal. As Edward eyed him in the dusky glare of the hut, and saw his face with its brown and yellow features unsteadily lit by the flickering flames, he thought that this disgusting and to him hateful monster had never lookt so hideous before: a secret shudder crept over him when he thought of Rose, and that this was the confident and bosom friend of a man whom he could not but honour, although his weaknesses and caprices formed so strong a contrast with his virtues.

The smiths listened to the conversation with great earnestness: they believed the stranger; yet every one of them brought forward some superstitious device of his own, in which the speaker himself always put still greater reliance. Edward, in spite of the disgust this gossiping excited in him, was almost unconsciously held fast within the circle. Ghost stories were told; the wild huntsman was talkt of, and several said they had seen him; others had met with mountain sprites and goblins; then they got to forebodings and omens; and the conversation kept on growing livelier, the storytellers more eager, and the hearers more attentive.

"Goblins," said Michael, "there are assuredly: for I myself ten years ago was well acquainted with one; and he was a very passable fellow to have to do with. The urchin foretold too in those days that I should lose my right eye about this very time."

"What sort of a chap was that?" cried one of his comrades; "and why have you never told us this story before?"

"When I had got through my apprenticeship," said Michael, "at the mountain-town twenty miles from here, and was now come to work at old master Berenger's forge, I used to be plagued at first and quizzed by the other journeymen, as every younker is when he is fresh. When I grew tired of laughing and grumbled, we came to blows; I gave and got my share, as in such cases always must happen. Among the rest there was a grizzly-bearded journeyman who worried and annoyed me most of all, a giant of a fellow, and all along with it so cunning, with such a sharp sting in his tongue, that one could not possibly help being vext, however stedfastly one might have made up ones mind and determined with oneself at morning prayers, not to allow the gall to mount into ones throat. In my distress I often cried with anger; for in the town I had fancied myself a clever fellow, and my unruly tongue had made many a one tremble. One night when I was thoroughly harast and woebegone, I was lying over there on the jutting crag all alone in a little bit of a room—the only other person in the house was a woman as old as the mountains—on the sudden I heard something stirring and scraping near me. I opened the window shutter at my head a little, and as the half moon peept into the room, I saw a tiny creature brushing away at my shoes. 'Who are you?' I askt the mite; for he lookt much like a boy of eleven years old.—'Hush!' said the little thing, and brusht away busily. 'I am Silly, the good comrade.'—'Silly?' askt I; 'he's one whom I know nothing of.'—'Dame knows him, Ursul knows him,' said the little one, and put my shoes on the floor.—'Leave my things alone,' cried I.—'Make 'em clean, dust 'em, brush 'em neat,' answered the creature, and set to work at my Sunday hat.—'Is this farce never to end?' I called out to him; 'brush your own nose.'—He laught, and seemed to have no notion that I had any right to give orders in my own room. 'Art afraid, he then giggled out, of big Ulric? Need not be afraid. Ask him to morrow, when he sets at you again, where he got the brown fire scar atop of his head over the right eyebrow; he'll soon be meek as a lamb.' The creature was gone. I listened; there was nothing. I closed the window shutter again and fell asleep. In the morning it seemed to me as if the whole had been merely a dream. My shoes however were clean, my hat brusht. At length I askt old Ursul about the unknown boy. She was very deaf; and it was long before I could make her understand what I meant. 'Ah! she at last cried, has the little boy been with thee? Well, well, good betide thee, my tall lad. The tiny thing harms nobody, and brings luck to everyone he takes notice of. I have known him now well-nigh these forty years. He goes round to the houses where he likes the folks, and helps them in their housekeeping, now in one thing, now in another. Cleaning everything is his darling employment. He can't bear dust; dirty sooty pots and other kitchenware are his aversion; and he will often scrub at 'em with all his might. Bright brass vessels, shining copper pans, are things he is quite bewitcht with; pewter plates too he likes very well. Many a time has he brought me a groschen, bright and new, as if it had come from the mint.'—'But where does the imp live?' I cried.—'Where does the child live?' she said: 'people choose to call it goblin, or manikin; he himself signs himself Silly; that is his christen-name. But he is a kind good-natured sprite; and so thou must do nothing to hurt him, that he may not fall out with thee.' I had heard of such fellows, but before this could never believe in them. In the smithy the baiting began as usual; old Ulric put me quite in a fury; for they had remarkt my soreness, and this made them think it the better sport to badger me. I was just going to dash a redhot iron at the grizzly-bearded lubber's snow-white head, when Silly came across my thoughts. 'And the brown fire scar up there!' I said; 'you know, Ulric!' Thus I cried, without thinking there was anything in it, when on the sudden the old giant became so quiet, timid, and meek, that it made me stare my eyes out. From that moment forward the fierce fellow became my friend. Nay he was so humble in his behaviour to me, that I rose mightily in everybody's opinion, and thenceforth stood near the top of the board. When we grew better acquainted, he told me in confidence that in his youth he had once let himself be misled into engaging in an attempt to steal with the help of a servant maid. He had already crept into the room, supposing that everybody was asleep; but the smith being still awake had rusht against him with a fire brand snatcht up from the hearth; and thus his head and hair had been singed. He fancied that no mortal creature knew the story, of which he was heartily ashamed; and therefore he entreated me by all my hopes of heaven never to tell any one of it; indeed he was unable to make out how I could have learnt the affair. On this point however he was mistaken; for without his own confession I had never known a word of it. After this my life flowed along very peaceably, and the little creature came every now and then, and helpt me in what I had to do. Before long however we quarrelled. He often came upon me so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and many a time when nothing was further from my thoughts, that I was frightened to the very core. Whenever I said a word to him about this, he grew very pettish, and told me, I was an ungrateful fellow, not to acknowledge his manifold services. Now I had heard a little before from an English traveller, that the name of my goblin in his language meant foolish, and that in England such a creature was called Puck, or Robin Goodfellow; and when in the openness of my heart I told all this to my little guest, and at the same time, because he had just frightened me again, wanted to hang a bell about his neck, that I might always hear him when he was coming, the urchin became angry and furious beyond all measure, prophesied that I should lose my eye about this time, and vanisht with a great rumbling. Nor have I ever seen the brat again since."

"Thou prince of all babbling braggarts!" cried Conrad, when the story was ended: "Can't you open your mouth, man, without lying? and yet you are already come to years. Folks that hold traffic for any time with spirits, grow shar-pwitted. The dealings of these creatures are with supernatural out-of-the-way things; and when they pay us a visit, the very terrour they arouse, till one grows used to them a bit, gives one something impressive and dignified."

"More especially," cried Michael somewhat angered, "when one has been sleeping a night in a potato field."

"That night," answered Conrad, "and that abominable mischance, that foul scandalous deed of a vagabond, will be the death of me; I know it as well as you. I shall not hold out much longer."

"May be so," said the pale stranger; "yet you can't tell all this while whether I too may not be one of these goblins, who has been trying to cure you of your follies. To be good friends with you, my rough-spoken, overbearing sir, it was verily requisite that you should have treated me with a little more civility. Wisdom, experience, strength of mind, may often be learnt from those in whom one is the slowest to look for them. If however, my good companions, you would like to know which of you all will die first, I have a way of telling you that in a moment."

They all seated themselves in a circle on benches and stools. The stranger pulled a plated box out of his pocket, while he continued: "When this little chip which I am going to light is burning, you must pass it quickly from hand to hand, and the person in whose hold it goes out will be the first of us to see the next world."

All lookt at the stranger in anxious expectation. He thrust a little bit of wood down into the box, while he muttered some sounds, and then he drew it out again burning and flickering. Eleazar, who sat next to him, received it, gave it to his neighbour, and thus the match went on spitting sparks from one hand to another. It had finisht the round, and come back to Eleazar, who was very loth to take it, and was hastily passing it on, when on the sudden it flared brightly and then went out between his fingers. "Stupid stuff!" he cried sulkily, as he threw the bit of wood on the ground and jumpt up in a passion; "Nothing but empty superstition! And we are so good-natured as to let ourselves be made the tools of such nonsense."

He lookt sharply at the stranger with his glaring eyes, then slapt him on the shoulder, and withdrew with him. Meanwhile the moon had arisen, and was pouring its bright light over the forests and rocks: the party went each his own way, and Edward too bent his steps homeward. As he was walking up the narrow footpath, he heard a warm discussion; it sounded like a quarrel; and when he drew nearer he fancied he distinguisht Eleazar and the stranger. He struck off therefore into another path, partly for the sake of avoiding them and not being forced to return in their company, partly too that he might not have the air of wishing to overhear what they were disputing about; for Eleazar was of a very suspicious temper, and mistrusted everybody, though he took it extremely ill if any one did not place an unlimited confidence in him.

In the house everything was quiet: except that Rose was singing a simple air with a supprest voice, scarce audibly in her remote chamber. Edward was moved by it, and so strongly, that he could not help being surprised at his extreme susceptibility. Before he fell asleep, his melancholy had so increast, that he could hardly refrain from shedding tears.

* * * * *

A few days after this Edward observed the stranger coming out of Herr Balthasar's apartment. He wondered what such a person could have had to do there; and, when he entered the old man's room, he found him violently disturbed and enraged.

"Always the same wild irrational feelings, the same superstitious foolery, ruling over mankind!" he cried, as Edward came in: "That miserable fellow there whom you met flatters himself he shall gain a large sum of money from me, if he can detect our thief by means of some senseless artifice. He won't come back again, the blockhead! for I have at length given vent for once to my feelings. There is nothing in the world so insufferable to me, as when people try, by means of certain phrases fabricated at random, or of certain traditional ceremonies, most of them a misgrowth out of historical blunders, or out of ancient usages which formerly had a very different meaning, to put themselves in connexion with what they call the invisible world, nay fancy, though they deem it an object of terrour, that they can master it thereby. In fact the greater part of mankind are crazed, without choosing to confess it: nay, the very wisdom of thousands is arrant madness."

It seemed as if the worthy old man himself felt ashamed of his passionate vehemence; for he immediately began talking on other subjects. He made Edward sit down by him, and had some breakfast brought, which was quite against his usual custom. "Thus we shall be able," he then continued, "to settle a number of matters this morning, which on other days we may perhaps hardly find leisure for."

The door was again lockt, and the servant was ordered not to interrupt their conversation on any account. "I feel," Herr Balthasar then began, "that I am growing old; I must take thought and provide for the future, as I know not whether I am doomed to die a slow lingering death, or a sudden unforeseen one. If I draw up no settlement of my property, if I die without a will, that spendthrift in my native town, who has made the beloved of my youth so unhappy, will be my next natural heir: and verily it appalls me to think that my large fortune may hereafter be misused to maintain that despicable glutton in his rioting. All my poor people, all the hands now actively employed in this spot, would again pine away and be condemned to beggary and sloth. It is a sacred duty to forestall this. What are your views, my young friend, for your future life?"

Edward was a good deal embarrast by this address. Some time back indeed he had formed certain plans, and had even meant to speak to the old man about them, in the hope of profiting by his experience: but since his lovely foster-daughter had appeared to him in so different a light, since he had felt so strongly attracted toward her, he was no longer equally forward and confident. He could not make up his mind whether to declare or conceal his affection; for notwithstanding the familiarity with which Balthasar treated him, by many of the old man's feelings and views he found himself estranged and perplext.

"You are hesitating," said the old man after a while; "you have not enough reliance in me, because you do not know me. I look upon it as one of my duties to provide as a father for you: you are honest, sensible, diligent, and kind-hearted; you are perfectly verst in the various branches of my business; and I feel a confidence in you such as I have seldom been able to put in anybody. Your exertions for me and my establishments, your prudence and integrity, everything obliges me, even though I entertained no affection for you, to leave you well and very richly provided, since I have so much to thank you for. But I should be glad to know, and I beg you to be perfectly candid to me, whether you could be prevailed upon by the possession of a large fortune to fix your abode in this country, in this house, or perhaps would prefer settling after my death as a rich man in the neighbouring town, engaging in some other occupation, and marrying, or, it may be, travelling about in search of the home which you may like the best. Tell me your thoughts on this subject now with entire sincerity: since you have a claim, which I will take care shall be a valid one, to a third of my property, I cannot well make my final arrangements till I have learnt your intentions: for my establishments here and up the mountains, my manufactories, machines, mines, and various institutions, I also look upon as my children, and they must not be left orphans at my death."

Edward sank still deeper in thought. Never could he have expected this generosity and fatherly love from the old man; never had it occurred to him that this friend might one day make him rich and independent. This speech had changed the footing on which he stood with Herr Balthasar; he thought he should now be better able to confess boldly what for some days had been busying and disquieting his mind. He led the way by an assurance of his gratitude, saying that what the old man meant to do for him was far too much, that his relations after all had still a title to his affection, and that a great deal less would make him happy and as rich as he could desire.

"I am aware of all that you can urge to me on this score," said the old man interrupting him: "these relations of mine, even the scapegrace son and the good-for-nothing father, will be taken care of, so that they shall not have any reasonable ground of complaint. But I know that you have sacrificed the best years of your youth and strength to me. To a gay spirit like yours, to a person of your lively friendly temper, your long residence amid these joyless mountains must have been anything but pleasant. You many years since bade adieu to every sort of merriment and amusement: everything that charms youth, music, dancing, even society, plays, travelling, the literature of the day, you have given up for my sake; because you resolved, as I well markt, and that too very early, to suit yourself entirely to my inclinations. Scarce one man in a thousand could have done this; and you were this one: you have done it too without losing anything of your good nature, and kindly obliging disposition. If therefore you would like to settle elsewhere hereafter and in a totally different line of life, I cannot have the slightest objection to it, nor will it occasion the least curtailment of your fortune. But you must tell me your determination frankly, if you have already made up your mind, or can make it up on the instant: for in case you choose to remain here and carry on my business, I must secure you the means of exerting yourself usefully, by a number of arrangements and explicit incontrovertible injunctions in my will; therefore speak."

Edward replied with emotion: "Heaven grant you may long remain as a father amongst us! Whether however I am to look on this country as my home or no, depends solely upon you: a word from you, and I can immediately resolve to spend the whole of my life here, even if you should be spared to us many years longer. But if you cannot or will not speak that word, I must sooner or later seek out another home; and I fear that in that case even your noble bequest will fail to procure me that happiness, which I must needs value higher than riches."

"I don't understand you, my young friend," answered Balthasar; "your words are a riddle to me."

"Your generosity," continued Edward, "and your affectionate benevolence have brought up a poor orphan girl; you have behaved like a father to her; and her fate must therefore be decided by you and none else. Give me that dear maiden, give me Rose for my wife, and I will live and die on this mountain, without a wish beyond it."

The old man's face suddenly darkened and put on an expression which might be called terrific. He started up hastily, walkt several times up and down the room, then sat down again sighing, and began in a bitter tone: "So! this is it! You are in love! Is it not so? I am doomed again to hear this ill-omened, this calamitous word! I am doomed to witness this frenzy, this dark, heart-rending, heart-sickening absurdity, even in you, in a man of your sense! And all, all that one might otherwise esteem, and look upon as reasonable, is swallowed up in this whirlpool, in which horrour, madness, wild passions, carnal lust, and capricious folly are frothing and boiling all at once. This marriage however, Edward, can never, never be."

"I have said too much," answered Edward calmly, "to be satisfied with a bare refusal. Tell me what are your plans for the dear girl, and I shall learn to bear them with resignation."

"And she, the little fool!" interposed the old man hastily, "has she too tumbled in love with you? Has the luckless word already past to and fro betwixt you?"

"No," replied Edward; "her pure youth is still hovering in that happy state of simplicity, which only desires that tomorrow may be just like today and yesterday. She has no wishes but the simple ones of a child."

"So much the better," said Balthasar; "she will be ready to act rationally then, and will not throw any hinderance in the way of my plan. Surely you, who are tolerably well acquainted with me, ought to have perceived long ago that I had designed the child for Eleazar. I mean her to marry, to live in sober wedlock, not to dream away and dote in what you call love."

"And will she," askt Edward, "be happy with him for her husband?"

"Happy!" cried the old man, bursting into a kind of loud laugh; "happy! What is a man to think of when he hears that word? There is no happiness; there is no unhappiness; only pain, which we are to welcome to our arms, only self-contempt, beneath which we must bow our necks, only hopelessness, which we must make the partner of our table and of our bed. Everything else is a lie and a trick. Life is a spectre, before which, whenever I pause to look upon it, I stand shuddering: and nothing but toil and activity, and straining all my faculties, can enable me to endure and to despise it. I could envy the loom and the spinning-jenny, if such a feeling, such a wish had any sense in it: for what is our consciousness but a consciousness of misery? what is our existence but an unveiling of the madness, the frenzy of all life? to which we either abandon ourselves in chill patience, or weep and struggle against it convulsively, or play through a caricature of happiness and joy, while in our dreary heart we are fully aware that it is all a wanton lie."

"Neither then must I ask you," continued Edward quietly and sorrowfully, "whether you love Eleazar as a friend, whether he is truly worthy of friendship and esteem; for all freedom of will, every movement of feeling is crusht by these dark thoughts."

"As if I had not felt," said Balthasar, "and wept and laught, like other men. The difference is only, that I soon stript truth naked, and that I acknowledged and felt my own baseness, and that of all mankind, of the world, and everything in it. Eleazar! he and you! If we are to make use of such words, my friend, I love you; all the fibres of my heart twine fast around you; awake and in my dreams you stand before me: your being miserable might reduce me to despair. And this raw-boned, loathsome Eleazar! If I am to give a name to this folly of my nature, I hate him; he is quite nauseous to me, whenever he stands before my eye or before my imagination: the bile which has tainted his eyes and face, his squinting glances, the twitches of his nose when he is speaking, while his long teeth stare out as if he were grinning, his shrugging up his shoulders at every word, whereby his odious snuff-coloured coat is every moment dragged upward and lays bare the skinny bones of his wrists, all this, his way of drawing in his breath, his hissing voice, is so revolting to my bodily senses, and always excites my wrath so strongly, so painfully, that no other created being ever gave me the same torment; and for this very reason, because there is so much I have to make amends to him for, because heaven and nature have so utterly neglected him, must he become my chief heir, my son. Besides he has long known of it, and is pleased with the prospect of this union."

"I only half understand you," answered Edward: "you are fighting against your own feelings, you are wilfully putting yourself on the rack. I am not arguing now against your promise, since you have already given it to that man: but why do you cling to this image of life, that harasses and tortures you? Why not open your mind to those joyous feelings, to those sunny thoughts, which lie just as near, nay nearer?"

"As you please," said the old man,—"for you, but not for me. Day after day has taught me that very few men really live. Most of them are in a state of ceaseless dissipation: nay what they call thought and reflexion is itself the very same thing, a mere attempt to raise a mist around the nature and inborn feelings of their hearts, and to keep themselves from discerning them. And arrogance starts up, the consciousness of their dignity and strength goads and spurs them on, till they rave with ungovernable pride. This too I have known in my youth, and outlived it. Then I loved, as I deemed. How clear and rosy-hued, how bright and smiling the world lay before me! My heart too was as it were bathed in pure ether, blue, boundless, with sweet hope, like morning clouds, floating and scattering freshness through it. And the primary stock of this love, what is it? Silliness, animal passion, which intertwines itself with our seemingly tender feelings, which tricks itself out with blossoms, and then eats canker-like into them, to make them too shed their leaves, to trample that, which it called heavenly, in the mire, and—far worse than the comparatively innocent beasts of the field, that are driven by a blind instinct without anything of volition—to deface and spoil everything which but now it worshipt as holy. From this conflagration then shoot forth ever and anon those disasterous sparks, which again grow into children, and again awaken to the consciousness of woe, if not of sin. And so the wheel goes evermore round and round, through a measureless viewless eternity. And the charm, the beauty of the world! the fresh bloom of its appearances! Is not everything here again grounded upon that which nature teaches me to loathe and abhor? It is perhaps by this feeling alone, as an invisible inward prompter, that I understand what people mean by beauty. This, wheresoever it is found, in flower or tree, in human being, animal, or plant, takes its rise always out of filth and abominations. The lily and the rose falls to pieces in your hand, your touch withers it, and it leaves only rottenness behind: the youth's, the virgin's beauty and loveliness—look at it without any self-imposed illusion, without the brutish sting of the senses—is horrour and putridity and everything we revolt from! a few hours of death, a corpse dug out of its tomb, make this woe manifest to all.—And I myself! what is there within me but death? a ghost and a skeleton! the stench of my own corpse haunts me; and in all my feelings there is madness, in all my thoughts despair."

"Cannot religion then," replied Edward, "cannot philosophy, cannot the sight of the happiness you spread around you, lighten this gloomy mood, this melancholy, which is wasting your life away?"

"Alas, my dear good friend," continued the old man, "I assure you that all I have read of those christian anchorets and self-tormentors, who out of overheated zeal transformed their life into a never-ending martyrdom, for the sake of stifling every impulse and thought save the highest of all, is less, far less, than what I have practist on myself since I became conscious of the cheerlessness of my existence. I too had once found a home for my whole soul in those regions in which the faithful feel the presence and the love of the deity, full of confidence and a blessed serenity. My spirit was transfigured; all my feelings were purified; my whole nature seemed as it were unfolding itself in a single blossom; all within me was bliss and calm; and in this heavenly tranquillity there was a sweet impulse to new contemplations, a ravishing excitement to plunge yet deeper into the flood of joy. And what was the end of it?"

"Pray go on," said Edward.

"I discovered,"—thus the old man after a pause resumed his speech—"that here too sensuality, delusion, and folly, had again made me their captive. Those voluptuous tears which I often shed in my seemingly fervent devotion, which I took for the purest gush from my heart, even they sprang only out of sensuality and a state of bodily intoxication. My animal impulses had put on the mask of spirit; and the deliciousness of those tears soon seduced me into endeavouring to stir up such emotions artificially, into abusing this mysterious close relation to infinite love as a stimulus of the most refined sensual excitement, which I then extinguisht in a rapture of tears. I was appalled by this lie in my soul, when I detected and could no more deny it; and the fearfullest desolation of despair, the dismallest solitude of death closed round me again, when the deception had been broken, and the vision would no more descend among the apish toys of my imagination. When after this I wisht to pursue my inquiries beneath the light of truth, horrour itself met me in the very spot where but now, like a scene-painting, my rapture had been standing. I no longer felt doubt, for even in this there is still joy; I had no certainty, for even in the most terrible there is life; but the dead blank of the uttermost indifference, a barren enmity to everything holy, a scorn of all emotion, as being sheer foppishness and silliness, lay like a large field of snow in the wildernesses of my soul.—'Soul! spirit!'—thus I often cried to myself laughing, and even now I cannot refrain from laughter,—'can there be anything else? And if this be so, in what does spirit differ from matter? where is the party wall between life and death?' In the spectral phantom of life, in the sphinx-born riddle of being, in that terrific fiat out of which the worlds sprang forth, to roll convulsively onward and evermore onward, till they can drop back into rest and nothingness—in this all contradictions and contrarieties are mixt up and confounded, to petrify into an indissoluble curse."

Edward was silent at first for a while: then not without emotion he spake the following words: "I cannot understand what you say except in part; for the bent of your thoughts and feelings I am an utter stranger to. Whatever sorrows I have undergone, whatever unprofitable or cheerless meditations I have indulged in, still I have never strayed into these deserts, which lie, it would seem, at the horizon of all such as abandon themselves with too passionate intensity to captious inquiries. I have heard and read of strong minds, who in the recklessness of passion, or in the extravagancies of love, strove to burst the bolts of nature and of life, in order to become one with the universe and to possess it. Despair, self-loathing, hatred of God, have often been the doom and the unhappy lot of men thus under the mastery of their impulses. We feel no doubt that reason is not absolutely sufficient to reveal all that we wish to understand, to reconcile all that we wish to see in harmony with the workings of the deity. But it may be dangerous to seek for help in the regions of our feelings and imagination, to give ear to our visionary forebodings. They try to set up their own supremacy, and may easily fall out with reason, though at the outset they seem to uphold her. If they gain their aim, and this noble mediatorial power, which seated in the centre of all our spiritual powers, irradiating and swaying them, first converts them into true powers, is overthrown and cast into chains by them, then each of our higher impulses begets a giant as its son, that will war against God. For doubt, wit, unbelief, and scoffing are not the only faculties that fight against God: our imagination, our feelings, our enthusiasm do the same, though at first they seem to supply faith with so safe and mysterious an asylum. Consequently, my dear, my honoured friend, since our life is surrounded on all sides by these dizzying precipices, and every path, whatever course it takes, leads to them, what remains for us to do, except to trust with a certain kind of light-heartedness, which perhaps is also one among the noblest powers of our nature, with cheerfulness, gaiety, and humility, in the existence and the love of that infinite inexhaustible love, of that supreme wisdom, which puts on every shape, and can weave into its woof even what to us seems worthless and incongruous? so as to bear our life safely and easily, to take pleasure in our task-work, and to be happy, which we cannot else be, in the midst of affluence itself, making others happy as far as we are able. Is not this too piety and religion? I for my part have never met with them under any other form."

"All this might be so," answered the old man breaking off the discussion, "if the root of life sprang out of love."

"Does not every flower tell us so?" cried Edward, "every smile of a child, the meek thankful eye of the sufferer whom we relieve, the glance of the bride——"

He stopt short suddenly; for Rose's bright childly glance beamed at these words with all its might through his soul. When he lookt up again, he was greatly surprised to see his old friend's eyes wet with tears.

"Edward," said he greatly moved, "you shall know all. Rose is no adopted child; she is my own daughter, my own blood. Alas! this again is another deplorable story of human weakness and vanity. While I was living here alone, a young beautiful girl came as a maid-servant into my house. Her parents were exceedingly poor, but she had been well and religiously brought up. She was honest and virtuous. She was so fond of solitude that, when she had done her work, she used to withdraw from all society, especially from that of the young. In a very singular manner she attacht herself to me; her devotion or love had almost a superstitious character. She revered me, wretch as I am, like a supernatural being. Never yet had my passions been moved by any girl, and least of all were they so by her, beautiful as she was: I was an old man, and fancied I loved her like a father, and thought of looking out a husband for her. How it happened, I should not be able to tell you; everything might seem so untrue. She became pregnant. I had already long felt dismay at my own weakness and meanness. Shame, despair, dread of the world, waged war within my soul, and made me their recreant slave. I sent her away in my distress, provided for her, richly, prodigally; but my heart was turned to stone. Grief, sadness, doubts in herself and in God, bitter mortification that she had forfeited my love, or was unworthy of it, while she burst into fearful accusations against herself, as the most innocent are the readiest to do, snapt the thread of her life. Had I seduced her? Did I not really love her? No, a miserable seducer I was not; but I had not the courage to acknowledge my sin, and to reward the love of her innocent heart. And thus I was a base wretch. She died, and I regarded myself with still more hopeless scorn. The poor creature's parents, whom I placed in comfortable circumstances, blest me, old villain as I was, for not punishing their daughter's shame, and for bringing up her child in my house. This child, this fair girl, whom I love, beyond perhaps what is allowable—for her happiness is my thought day and night—will now perchance also be sacrificed to woe; for a destiny stronger than I constrains me to give her to Eleazar as his wife. Go now to him; he is to be my son-in-law; tell him the wedding will take place in a week; and if you cannot stay with me afterward, my dearest Edward, whom I also love as my own son, the fortune I designed for you shall be paid to you ... and we too shall never meet again. Go now."

* * * * *

He sobbed so violently that he could not say more; and Edward went away in a most strange state of feeling, to look for Eleazar, who lived in a house by himself lower down in a narrow valley, carrying on his favorite pursuits there.

Eleazar was sitting in a loose flame-coloured bed-gown before a small furnace with a still. The room was but dimly lighted; the curtains had been let halfway down, and the lower panes were blockt up with large books. Everything was in the utmost disorder, so that Edward could scarcely find a place to sit down in. Vials and retorts, crucibles, pans, hooks, cylinders, and all sorts of chemical instruments were standing and lying about. A strange vapour from the fire filled the room. With a surly air Eleazar put down the bellows, and came out of his corner. He only half heard what Edward had to tell him, and said at length with his croaking voice: "In a week? so soon? I shall never have finisht my great work by that time. Could not the old fellow wait patiently for another month or two? Why the silly child has not even a notion yet what marriage means."

Edward was utterly disgusted with these peevish words, and with the heartless ingratitude displayed in them. He called to mind how much Balthasar had been saying to him about madness as the real groundwork and substance of life; and it seemed to him as if this were actually the foundation on which both father and son-in-law were about to erect their melancholy dwelling. The fate of the innocent girl cut him to the heart.

"Only lay your request before our master," he said indignantly, "and no doubt he will allow you to enjoy your freedom some time longer. If you were to be very pressing, perchance he might even give up the plan of the marriage altogether; for it seems to me, you have no very mighty anxiety about Rose's hand."

"Softly!" said Eleazar, throwing off his bed-gown and putting on his coat very much at his ease; "softly!" He seated himself again before the furnace, and tasted the liquour while he clarified it: "Be it so; for then his fortune will all keep together, and thus I shall be able at length to carry on my operations on a grand scale. But the old man will never listen to what anybody says; what he has once determined and pronounced must be fulfilled, though reason itself were to go to the bottom. Still this should not annoy me a jot, unless that outlandish raggamuffin had put me out of all patience, and made my choler boil over. One ought to have the right of knocking such mischievous scoundrels on the head."

"What is the matter with you?" askt Edward somewhat surprised.

"Have you already forgotten that miserable vagabond," continued Eleazar with a ferocious look, "who played off his stupid trick upon us the other day at the forge? I am to die soon. This was the only thing wanting to set all our affairs in the most dismal confusion. But here, here at this furnace, I have it already preparing, the only sure safeguard against all such idle fears; and as I have succeeded with the help of wisdom in turning unsightly things into gold, so I shall not fail in producing that elixir for which so many mighty minds have heretofore sought and laboured, and often in vain."

Edward went nearer to him. "In truth," he exclaimed, "you amaze me. You talk about these mysterious matters with such a careless security, as I have never yet met with; and it perplexes me the more since my reason tells me that your pursuit is a mere chimera, and the discovery of such an art a fable."

"Reason!" cried the little man, drawing up his withered face into numberless wrinkles. "This reason methinks is the true chimera, and never spawned anything but fables. Take these gold bars, which I cast in this form yesterday, after extracting the metal last week from some lead: there lies a touchstone; scratch it; and then tell me whether it is not true genuine gold."

Edward took up the bars, put them to the test, and found them genuine. "You must either fancy," continued the alchemist, "that I begin by getting a heap of ducats, and then melt them down like a fool, or else you cannot have another word to say. Will you keep these two bars as a remembrance? I make you a present of them."

Edward lookt at the stunted figure with astonishment, then laid down the bars on the table again, and said: "No, I won't rob you; the present would be much too valuable. But you should not let these vast treasures lie about here at random thus mixt up with all the rest of your things: it is holding out a lure to thieves and robbers."

"Nobody will look for gold in my house," answered the other, busying himself again at his furnace: "nobody will recognize gold under this ungainly form. Besides there are means after all for keeping off thieves and house-breakers, which none of you have ever yet dreamt of. If however you still doubt me, bring me a dollar next time, make a secret mark on it, and I will give it you back turned into gold. But the matter must not go further. And then you will no longer question my chance of discovering the elixir of life. Only I should like to punish that beggarly vagrant, that rascally herb-culler, and pitiful conjuror, as he deserves. Let him only come for once into my quarters! With all his contemptible jugglery, I would astound him! I am so enraged with the fellow, the blood runs into my head at the very thought of him."

"How," interposed Edward, "came that paltry jest to make so deep an impression upon you?"

"Jest!" screamed Eleazar; "Heavens! is it a jest that I have ever since been a prey all over to these hellish tortures, this ghastly fear of death? My own skeleton, my own rotting carcase is standing perpetually before my eyes. Old Conrad too over yonder has fallen sick, and is bewailing the loss of his reputation. Such a knave as this stranger is just as bad as a murderer: nay worse: for he pours the poison down ones throat in the midst of a large party without himself risking life or limb." He jumpt up.—"Hark you!" he cried and threw his arms round Edward: "Yes! the old man is right; the wedding must be very soon, as soon as possible, tomorrow, aftertomorrow, to make all safe. I can go on discovering my life-preserving elixir after the marriage: can't I? One shall not die all at once in a moment, friend Ned; flesh and bone still keep pretty tightly together."

He laught so loud that he shook with it, and the writhings of his face squeezed the tears out of his goggle eyes. Edward who had never yet seen the sullen creature laugh, shuddered at the sight. When the old man grew calmer, he told him that he could not possibly now communicate this wish of his to Herr Balthasar; and that the affair would probably proceed in the way already settled. He felt glad, when he had left the room and house behind him, and could again breathe in the open air. His determination to quit the place was stronger than ever; he even resolved, if it would hasten his journey, to forgo the great reward which Herr Balthasar intended for him.

* * * * *

After a restless and almost sleepless night, Edward next morning found the lovely charming girl on the grass plot before the house. She was very talkative, but he was in no mood to carry on a conversation.

"O dear mister Edward," said Rose at length; "you don't seem to like me a morsel any more, you are making such sour faces at me."

"I shall soon be forced to leave you and this country," answered the young man; "and that makes me so sorrowful."

"You be forced! you leave us!" exclaimed Rose in dismay: "Can there be anything that should force you? Good heavens! it never yet struck me that such a thing could be possible. I always thought you belonged to us, just like the great house in which we live, or the steep green hill facing us."

"I have now heard from your father also, what I could not have believed, that you are to marry Herr Eleazar, and that very soon."

"Did not I tell you so?" answered Rose: "Ay, ay, that is to be my fate, and I only wish I could make the crabbed man a little merrier. Time will pass away terribly slowly with him. But perhaps I shall then be able to go to the town some time or other, see a bit of the world, hear some music and have a dance; for I think at all events an old husband must do something now and then to please his young wife. And for all these matters I had counted very much upon you."

"No, my child," said Edward gravely and gloomily; "I am the very last person you must count upon; for to say the truth, this marriage of yours is the chief reason that forces me to quit the neighbourhood. It would break my heart to stay here."

Edward repented of having been hurried so far by his passion, as thoughtlessly to allow these words to escape his lips; the more so, when he saw the lovely girl go away from him, starting back as if in affright, and then relieve her opprest heart by a flood of tears. He tried to take hold of her hand and comfort her; but she pusht his angrily back, and then said after a while, when she had got the better of her violent sobbing and was able to speak again: "No, leave me alone, for we are now separated from each other for ever. I could never have thought that you would have behaved to me so ill; for you had always been so kind to me. Oh God! how forlorn I am now! Yes I meant to love my husband Eleazar with all my heart, and to do everything to please him; for heaven must grant him thus much, since he is hated and shunned by all mankind just like a leper or an evil spirit. I too can't bear him, if I were merely to follow my own feelings; for he is a thoroughly utterly odious creature. But for his sake, and out of love to my father, and for your sake too, Edward, I had made up my mind so peaceably to all this; and therefore I thought that you too would perhaps be very willing to stay here now, or might even do so a little for my sake, in case everything was not just as you wisht it."

"How so, Rose? is it partly for my sake that you have come to this determination?" askt Edward in amazement.

"O yes!" answered the child, and her eyes had recovered their kind look; "but now I clearly see that I had reckoned without my host. You don't deserve it, indeed you don't like that I should be so fond of you. And now if you are really going away, it will then be indeed a shocking thing that I am to marry Eleazar: for in this lonely place, without you to help me and stand by me, he would seem just like a ghost."

"But how is it possible?"—said Edward interrupting her—

"Let me finish my speech!" exclaimed Rose hastily; "and then I will go away and cry again; for that will very often be the case now. I thought thus: if Eleazar is so cross, Edward is so goodnatured; and now I shall never be a day without seeing him, and he will talk to me, and perhaps give me books; for my father, people tell me, won't have so much authority over me when once I am married. In this way I might be better able to forget my woful husband, and might always think of you when you were away, and be glad and happy as soon as you came back to me. For thus do people live, and the parsons all order us to do so, with our hearts half in heaven, and the other half on this bad earth. Thus I should have kept my strength and spirits, so as even to make my unhappy Eleazar more cheerful at times; but if you go away ... then ... oh where shall I find any comfort! Then I shall soon die ... or only wish that my father ... or my plague of a husband would make haste and die. Alas! now that you don't love me any more, I am very very unhappy."

She began crying anew, and still more violently than before. Edward eyed her for a long time with a searching glance, and lost himself in a maze of thought. Whenever men, thus he mused to himself, give themselves up to dark phantoms, and make caprices and extravagancies the main stock of their life, mishap and horrour will spring up of their own accord under their feet. Life is so tender and mysterious, so pliant and volatile, and so easily takes every shape, that there is no seed it will not readily receive. Evil sprouts up and runs wild in it; and brings up the intoxicating grape from the nether world, and the wine of horrour. Here in this childish innocence and simplicity are already slumbering the germs of the most fearful events and feelings, if time and opportunity should but forward and ripen them; and close at my side stands the fiend tempting me to become the gardener in this beauteous garden of the deadliest fruits.

He awoke from his study and said mournfully; "Dear child, thou dost not yet understand thyself, thy destiny, or the world. I am not frivolous enough to enter into thy plans, or to encourage thee in them in the innocency of thy youth. What thou wishest cannot, must not be; and in another year, or less perhaps, thou wilt see thyself how impossible it is. We should both become wretched, and to deepen our misery should despise each other. May heaven guide thy steps: but I love and prize thee so much, that I cannot ruin thee. Pray to God: he will support thee."

"He talks for all the world just like my father!" cried Rose, and walkt away, half in sorrow, half in anger; while Edward went musing to his room.

"Is Balthasar right then after all?" he said to himself; "is human nature so utterly depraved? or is it not rather the business of energy, resolution, and reason, to transform those very qualities in us as in all other things into virtues and excellencies, which else if they are neglected would become malignant and base?"

He then wrote a long letter to Herr Balthasar, and once more told him positively that he must quit his house and the country, if the marriage of Eleazar and Rose was irrevocably fixt; and that he would readily forgo his promist fortune, if Balthasar would only afford him some degree of support in his plans for his future life. He again however called upon him as a father to consider the unsuitable, nay the shocking nature of the projected match. He conjured him to look at the happiness of his child with a steadier, more impartial eye. At the same time he begged for another, a last interview, and said he had a request which the old man must needs grant him, if he would have him leave the mountains with honour, with peace of mind, and without repenting of the years he had past there.

* * * * *

It was with a very heavy heart that Edward went to his old master. The whole destiny of mankind lay darkly and with a crushing weight upon his breast. Anguishing was the conviction he felt, that in the very sweetest and purest innocence all the roots of evil and sin were already lurking, and that there needed only chance and caprice to foster their growth, for them to put forth their calamitous fruits. His situation was so completely changed, his chief wish was that the house which had so long been his home, the country he was become so fond of, were but far behind him, that gradually and with a steady hand he might eraze all the recollections of the time he had spent there. He was resolved that at all events he would not be a witness of the disasters to which, he was persuaded, the dark spirits brooding there must infallibly give birth; that he would not stay to behold them; for he did not feel sure of being so firm, that his own passion and frailty might not lend a hand in bringing down the impending ruin. Heartily as at this moment he abhorred such a thought, he yet knew full well from observation and experience that no man is always the same, and that even the best are not braced with the same strength at all hours: he knew how the sophistry of our passions will come athwart all our good feelings and resolves, and that the more secure they feel the more easily it trips them up and overthrows them.

He found the old man in a serious mood, but without the agitation he had feared. "Come and shake hands with me," cried Balthasar as he entered, "although you choose to leave me. How I shall support your absence I cannot yet conceive, anymore than I should know how I could live without light and warmth: but nevertheless I shall be forced to learn this lesson, if nothing can alter or upset your determination."

"My fatherly friend," Edward began, "can you then persist in your determination, which to me is so utterly incomprehensible? Is it quite impossible for you to consent to what alone will make me happy, and assuredly will make your daughter so too?"

"I had hoped, my dear friend," answered the old man very mildly, "you would not have toucht on this string again, which thrills far too painfully through my whole frame. Pray convince yourself that this long-formed resolution, which you if you please may term a whim, I cannot possibly revoke; it is much too firmly intertwined with my whole being. What we do from conviction as we call it, from pondering about a matter and balancing it first in one scale and then in the other, over and over again, is seldom worth much. Whatever is permanent, characteristic, genuine in our nature, is instinct, prejudice, call it superstition;—a conclusion without question or inquiry, an act because one cannot help it. Such is this of mine! You may look upon it as a vow, a solemn oath which I have sworn to myself, and which I cannot violate without the most atrocious perjury against my own heart. I owe my poor good Eleazar much amends for having let my soul entertain and cherish disgust, bitterness, and aversion toward him for so many years.—And as to the happiness of the pair!—on this point my opinion is just the reverse of yours. He is wise, sensible, virtuous; he is happy already, and will keep so, whether he marry or not. It is an act of condescension in a person of his grave character to take up with my daughter. A man who has got the philosopher's stone can never be harmed by any of earth's paltry troubles. And my Rose! O my dear friend, the truly dreadful thing would be, if I were to give her to you to wife: this being, this child, that I cannot help loving so dearly, that I fold up with remorse and sorrow in my heart, would go to wreck like others amid the pleasures of the world, in self-will and frivolity, in dissipation and recklessness. You would indulge her out of love in all sorts of follies, and so make her and yourself miserable. No, it cannot be on any terms; and you yourself will thank me hereafter for my reasonable refusal. And now not a word more, dearest Edward, on this subject: let us come to your other request, which I can safely promise to grant you."

Edward began, with a cheerless spirit, to reckon up the damage his master had sustained from the robberies that were carried on in such an inexplicable manner, and urged the absolute necessity that, before he left the country, effective measures should at length be taken to get some trace of the thief. The old man wanted to break off the discussion; but Edward reminded him of his promise. Above all was Balthasar averse to a proposal made by his young friend, to set a spring-gun secretly in the warehouse, whereby the audacious robber might at length be caught and punisht. The old man regarded such a measure as impious, unlawful, and nearly akin to wilful murder.

Edward tried to refute these notions, and at last said: "You owe it to yourself and to me to adopt this plan, which I too am far from approving unconditionally, but which in the present instance is the only remedy. I need not again state the amount of the sums which have been stolen from you time after time during the last three years and more; they would make a large fortune, so large a one that many a wealthy man would have been ruined by such losses. It is your unaccountable indifference that has thus emboldened the thief, who, it is clear, must be accurately acquainted with all our goings on. Whenever a watch has been set, nothing has happened. But as soon as we were off our guard again, no bolts, no bars however strong, no precautions however well-judged, availed us. William, and many other persons equally innocent, we have eyed with misdoubt. You cannot deny it; your suspicion must needs have lighted on everybody about you in turn. How can a heart so noble as yours hold fellowship with such a hateful feeling as to imagine now and then, for moments, that those on whom you bestow your friendship and esteem, may be capable of the most scandalous baseness? You are guilty of the most glaring injustice to hundreds of honest and honorable men, for the sake of screening a single villain with an indulgence which I cannot but call weakness, and a weakness under these circumstances quite unpardonable. In a few days I shall leave you. It is possible that the thief may not find any favorable opportunities hereafter, that another overseer may be more successful, that he may induce you to take stronger measures, and so to intimidate the offender: the robberies may cease: may not malicious persons, may not the offender himself perhaps, to secure himself against all chance of detection, and to frustrate every inquiry, spread a rumour that I am the heinous thief? Nay, might not such a report carry with it a very great show of probability, since assuredly no one could have got at your goods with so little risk as I? What will it profit me when far away, though you endeavour to vindicate me and to silence such a calumny? Will not your unwonted lenity, your present preposterous supineness, make the detestable rumour wear a look of the utmost speciousness, nay, of irrefragable truth? How, by what means, shall I then be able to clear myself? And, my loved, my honoured friend, who do nothing but good to mankind, and think nothing but evil of them, may not the same suspicion start up even in you, and strike deep root in the dark places of your soul, and by little and little grow into a conviction that I am the person?"

Balthasar gazed at him, and walkt several times silently up and down the room. He was evidently struggling with himself, and seemed totally lost in thought.

"You are not mistaken," he said after a long pause; "or rather you are perfectly right. You know my notions about wealth and property. I look on them with terrour. It seemed to me to be quite right, and to be a kind of slight amends to destiny for my incomprehensible luck, that what was flowing in so abundantly upon me from every side should at least have one outlet by which a part of it might run off. At times I have fancied that such a person or such another was thus making his fortune, who wanted it, and in a manner deserved it by his cleverness and sagacity in getting it. I took up a superstitious resolution to remain purposely in the dark, that I might not dissipate this strange dream and be deprived of this vague feeling. It gave me pain that I had to misdoubt so many of my people, nay all of them; but at the same time it was a pleasure that I could not feel certain about any. Yes, my friend, you too, you too have I wronged. You now know me pretty well, and I entreat your forgiveness. I have oftentimes thought in secret, without however feeling the least anger against you: 'Well, he is taking beforehand what he has richly earned, by labour, by sleepless nights, by diligence of every kind ... he cannot know for certain whether death may not snatch me away suddenly ... peradventure he has some poor relations ... he may wish to marry and set up with a handsome establishment ... he may perhaps have the same notions about property as I myself.' This has been the main ground of my lenity and weakness, as you call it; more especially when after the removal of William and several other doubtful characters all still went on just as before. Even your great anxiety, Edward, your indignation, even this turned my surmises against you. I have said to myself: 'Why does he talk so much about it, and make such a piece of work? I have given him the fullest powers in the matter: did he really take it so much to heart, he would have got hold of some clew long ago in one way or other by craft or by force. I could not possibly do otherwise than approve of whatever steps he took for my good.'"

An overpowering pain seized on Edward during this speech; he felt on the point of fainting. With a look of utter despondency he threw himself into a chair, hid his face with his hands, and bent it down upon the table, till at length a flood of tears that streamed from his burning eyes, and a loud fit of convulsive sobbing a little relieved his heart, which seemed about to break.

The old man was astonisht to see so great and unlookt for an effect produced by a speech which he had uttered with perfect calmness, and even with kindliness. He endeavoured to comfort and pacify his young friend, lifted up his head, and wiped the tears from his face, which still stared at him with an expression of the deepest grief and despair. He embraced him, he sought after words to heal the wound he had inflicted, to lull the storm he had called up.

"O my heavens!" he at length cried, when he saw that all his efforts were in vain, "what shall I do? Edward! I did not really mean any ill. I only think of others what I believe of myself. I love thee in truth, young man, above anybody I have ever known; thou art to me as a son: hence my perverse supineness under my unjust suspicions: thou must forgive me all, all, dearest Edward. I will do everything, everything you ask of me."

When Edward at length was somewhat recovered, he said with a broken voice, which was often checkt by violent sobs: "No, no, noblest, most upright of mankind, never, never could you have sunk down into a miserable thief! No want, not even hunger and nakedness, no opportunity however tempting, could have degraded your lofty mind so low. You only say it to quiet me. O heavens! this man, who treated me with the warmest affection and with unbounded confidence, who placed large sums in my hands, without ever inquiring about them, that I might become the dispenser of his bounty in feeding the hungry and taking care of the sick, this same friend could at the very same time deem me capable of such infamous wickedness. Observe now, observe what a dangerous thing it is, to admit such dark spirits and phantoms into ones soul, from which in time they utterly drive out all truth and love, and strength and faith. O thou bright pure form of Truth! O thou spotless beauty of Virtue! How changed does this man seem to me since that calamitous word, how changed am I myself! how fearfully, how dismally has the relation between us changed! It seems to me as though the very belief in the possibility of anything like what this man has believed possible of me, had cast a shade of vice and depravity over my whole life: for this noble being has hitherto been the mirror of my own worth, by looking at which I became conscious of my own well-meaning and integrity. Can everything, everything in our heart be thus transformed in a single moment? Yes, my dear, my fatherly friend, I shall evermore honour and love you; I admire you while I mourn over you; but even without any further cause this conversation would have parted us; this alone, without regard to my happiness or unhappiness, must drive me from you into the wide world."

"So then we are now finally severed," said the old man very sorrowfully, "by destiny, not by my fault. One may master everything, except ones own innermost self. Suspicion in me is not that bad thing into which your overstrained sense of honour, such as I never saw in any man before, converts it by the meaning you assign to it. But, my dearest friend, without whom my life will long be a mere blank, you will stay at least a few days, until you can take away the papers that will secure your fortune to you. For this compensation you must accept from me as from a father, unless you would quite overwhelm me with shame."

They embraced, and the old man gave Edward an unlimited permission to take whatever steps he thought proper for the sake of detecting and punishing the thief. Edward had regained his self-possession; and the old man was all kindness and gentleness. They talkt about other affairs; and Edward took some accountbooks under his arm to look over and correct.

"Embrace me once more with all your heart," said the old man, "and forgive me too with all your heart."

Edward turned back, and after embracing him said: "My dearest friend, what have I to forgive you for, thinking as you do? It is not the right word. What I have just endured I can never forget; and this shock will thrill through me to the latest day of my life. The human heart and soul, man and God, seem to have become totally different in my eyes since that terrific flash of lightning. Thinking as you do too, you cannot be angry with me, if I now say half in jest, that, had you not allowed me to take my measures, I might have fancied after I was gone that you had been thus ingeniously and cunningly robbing yourself, who knows with what subtle views, perchance for the very sake of throwing suspicion on some one or other."

"You are not altogether in the wrong," said Balthasar. Edward was again standing at the door. "Wait another moment, young man!" cried his master. Edward once more turned back. But when he drew nearer to the old man, he was astonisht to find how totally his countenance and the expression of his eyes were changed. A quick firy glance was sparkling restlessly upon him.

"You are fully convinced, I well know," the old man began, "of the truths of the Christian religion; you read your bible diligently and devoutly. You also believe in the historical parts of it, and regard the whole as an actual revelation: the rational, and allegorical, and learned philological interpretations do not satisfy your mind. Is it not so? you are a true Christian with all your heart and soul."

"Certainly," answered Edward.

"The story," continued the old man, "how the Saviour was tempted in the wilderness by the Evil One, is not in your opinion a parable, or an allegory, or mythical legend, without any substance? but you believe that this event actually befell Jesus Christ, the Son of God, along with the various circumstances and questions and answers recorded?"

"What are you aiming at?" askt Edward hesitatingly after a pause. "Yes, I believe this story like a sincere and orthodox Christian."

"Well!" the old man went on, while his pale closed lips wrinkled into a strange smile: "I have a double aim, though I should hardly need to say more, if you had ever thought deeply about this incident. In the first place, if our Saviour himself had to bear such things, if it was possible for him to be suspected though but by the Evil One, surely you might forgive me with all your heart, if with half or a quarter of mine I have now and then half misdoubted you. Meseems, this mysterious, marvellous story with its fathomless, untold meanings does not downrightly condemn my views of human nature. They are not mere spectres that have taken possession of my soul, unless indeed they belong to one and the same family with spirits. In the second place, do your eyes see much meaning in this wondrous story, if the success of the temptation was totally and absolutely impossible?—Now then what say you? appalling are the feelings that seize on one of us, and you too cannot escape them, when all this is brought home to the heart and mind.—There is still a third remark that I would close with:—what would have become of the world and of mankind, of heaven and earth, if the tempter had won the day? if love had faltered and been beguiled?—O young man, the doors are not closed in every place where we see them put to. You fancy you have made out everything, when you have hardly counted up to five.—I too believed, I too inquired, was absorbed in love and devotion, beheld love in my own soul and in the souls of my brethren, and this is the very delusion the breaking up of which snap my heart and life asunder, never, never to revive and reunite. Cast away your pride in your feelings, think not to soar on the wings of your imagination; but crawl along the ground like worms, and eat dust; for that is what befits you."

The old man squeezed Edward's hand, and then with a bitter smile, and a sudden laugh that scared him, tore himself away. For a while Edward continued fixt in a stupour, and when at length he lifted up his eyes, Balthasar was again immerst in deep thought, and standing at his writing table with the gloomy suffering look which he usually wore. Edward felt as if he was leaving a dying man when he went away, and shut the heavy oaken door slowly and carefully after him.

* * * * *

Edward had taken his measures with no less secrecy than judgement. None of the servants, foremen, or even of the overseers knew that he was doing anything out in the warehouse. Every interruption had been guarded against. He was quite alone, nor did anybody even know of his having left the house, when he made his arrangements; and it was dark before he came back. He could not tell whether a fresh robbery might not be committed on that very night, or not till a future one. All the watchmen had been removed from the warehouse in such a manner as not to excite suspicion.

And now amid the solitude of the night he sat down to the account books, for the sake of bringing all his thoughts to bear on a single point, and thereby recovering from the agitation he had lately undergone. It was of importance to have these matters perfectly arranged before he went away. At length he succeeded in banishing what had happened from his thoughts for the time; and he became so much engaged in his employment, he forgot that these very hours might be unravelling that unpleasant affair, which had given them so much annoyance for years.

When he had finisht and was turning over the leaves of an old book that he had taken up along with the rest, some written papers fell out of it: they were in Balthasar's hand, and had evidently been written many years. He read the following fragments.

Yes in truth weeping is a wonder, and, as they say, a gift sent from heaven. A bliss spreads through our soul, as soon as our flowing tears come, like the waters of a river, sweeping away black sorrow, and disquietude, and trembling doubts. Ye are all given back to me, ye spirits that once were mine, and that a cruel destiny afterward severed from me.

For the sake of this, people will woo tears, and try to lure them with coaxing when they will not come. Our day's work is over, and now, as the rich man and the glutton will wind up his multifarious meal with sweetmeats, so after our toil, after closing our accounts, we court devotional thoughts and pathetical emotions, we meditate on the dead, in order to entice this lifes-wine of tears into our voluptuous eyes and our luxurious brain. Now a sentimental melancholy inhaloes every ordinary object around us; and amid the meek abasht feelings of a pining anguish and remorse, suddenly starts up nauseous arrogance, vaunting the grandeur of a spoilt capricious heart. O what poor wretches our fellow creatures now seem to us in their commonplaceness, who yet all, as the patient children and drudges of mother earth, are better than we.

But laughter! This earthquake which invisible powers heave up out of the knotty entanglement of our dark enigmatical being! which in boisterous senseless noises announces that within, in the unseen world, the soul neither recks of nor knows truth or falsehood, and has just been murdering the innocent herald who was bringing these phantasms before it! These rude unmeaning sounds which will for a long time distort even the best face, the most mechanically regular mask!

How men long after this loathsome convulsion! While tears lie and cheat by aping heavenly feelings, laughter is awkwardly trying to let the craziness of evil demons skulk behind it, hides itself from vulgarity for the sake of being seen, feigns terrour when our unsubdued struggling feelings are detected, and saunters about in the midst of whatever is disgusting and impure, perpetually clapperclawing with some outcast among the rabble or other: one moment our intelligent, and higher faculties, as they call them, get the upper hand; the next they are beaten down and trod upon by something base and profligate: and thus veering to and fro, now toying now scolding, laughter clatters down the steps of idiocy, which crumble with the decay of our bodily strength ... and man grins, and is happy.

Blessed time, when there was a real existence, a life in life! when the vast whole of eternity, being sufficient to itself, had not splintered itself out into time! when the spirit did not need a succession, measured out by the atoms of time and space, to become conscious of its power and of its being! What a portentous event was it, when eternity and life parted fellowship!—when the band by which spirits were bound in one, burst, and that strange creature, Death, rusht in through the chasm to domineer over all. Now that which is firm, stedfast, enduring, has concentrated itself in the depths of its own being, and has put on the unvarying aspect of solid meditation. Stones, rocks, metals, bid defiance to decay with their cold looks, and would make believe that they know not of change. Drops of water dancing like tiny elves along them, the sightless legions of the air, wherever they spread, are eating into the limbs of the rigid haughty giant; the dwarf, man, digs into his bones, and, if his strength were equal to his fury, would reduce him to fleeting sand. May it not peradventure be the same with the eternal stars? A little acid, and the monster sneezes sillily, and roars, and yawns, and for the moment remembers its spiritual nature.

And thou with thy butterfly wings in thy light summer garment, thou that hoverest aloft, and flittest over the mountains, and sweepest along the earth! from the airy changeling of the caterpillar, up or down to the lion and to man, ye all of you, fostering a brief momentary spark in you, like the glance from the flint and steel ... gone is the red bubbling up of the spark ... and again a mere slough is lying before us, after its short dream of life and love, dust upon dust, rottenness upon decay ... the great-grandfather beside his mouldering great-grandchild ... and neither knows the other, neither has ever heard of the other.

The plants around you prick up their ears at you in a thousand forms; the flowers smile roguishly and sadly, in the midst of the masquerade; and dream mingles with dream, when the lover plucks the rose, and blushing himself holds out the blushing blossom to his blushing maiden.

* * * * *

The beating of the pulse is not only a sign of life, it is life itself. No feeling, no thought, no sight or hearing, no taste or sensation flows along with a rushing stream, but all comes skipping, wave upon wave, drop upon drop, and this is its being. One thought is cast out by another; our feelings are only felt as they shift between life and death: the kiss only thrills on our lips when a chill void has already spread over them; our delight in a picture, in music, merely gushes through us; one moment it entrances us, the next it has vanisht. Thus the sea breathes in its ebb and flow, time in its days and nights, its winters and summers. If I do not forget myself this moment, I cannot recollect myself the next.—And death....

Is this revulsion of the pulse, this alteration of strain, this change of tune a prelude, a transition to a new piece of music? Every living creature exists to be devoured by another; man alone has apparently eluded these barrack-regulations, this military duty, and fattens himself up for the earth, that shattered chaos of stones and mould.

In love, in misfortune, in joy, in despondency, in labour and rest, death has always been my uppermost, I might rather say my only thought. Suicide in me would have been of all human actions the most natural. I have never felt that any indescribable fear, any overpowering shudder draws us back, and flings the knife from our hands. If poor naked Joy, that is so meanly clad, she is ashamed to walk about the earth, were once to enter our doors, then the stab of the bright dagger would only be the last glittering pinnacle of our joyous transport. For after that brief pulsation is over, how bald is the earth, how black is life! It is because I know not whither I am going, or whether I am going, or whether there be a whither, that the act is so alluring. Only men will not confess this, but give the name of cowardice and of courage to what is neither the one nor the other. In dissipation, in thoughtlessness, in indifference, the poor wretches lose both life and death.

* * * * *

A strange dream, that is to say, a dream, has visited me. The commonest thing is quite as strange as the uncommonest, only habit blunts our sense.

I was dead. I knew it distinctly; and yet I lived on in my consciousness. All my forlorn doubts, my stiff-neckedness that would not bow to the yoke, my hard heart that closed itself so early against love, had shut me out, so my conscience told me, from the place to which the good hope to go. The state in which I found myself, and numberless others along with me, was one the common ordinariness, the dull triviality of which was quite appalling. I was utterly unable to recollect my friends and those whom I had loved, however intensely I strained my memory and put it to the rack. A longing, like that of one pining with thirst after a stream of fresh clear water, tormented me, to call up the forms and the ideas of those beloved beings in my imagination; I felt a yearning after them like a heavy weight that was crushing me in the hidden places of my heart. Just as little could I bring back those actions which during my life I might have called good. Every thing in this region of my thoughts was like a bare parcht waste. But everything evil rolled in whirling circles wearyingly and dizzyingly before my inward eye. My vices and errours, all the faults and misdeeds of my life, every wretched moment of my temporal existence gathered round me as it were with the cries and croaking of fierce hungry birds of prey. O these sins how hugely and gigantically they swelled out! How horrible it was to see their consequences unfolding themselves far, far away in the realms of the future! how they took root and grew up riotously in after-generations! nothing but looks of anguish, of reproach, of pain, of bitter despair was turned upon me from thence. In like manner I easily called to mind all the persons who had ever been objects of my hatred or dislike; every tedious hour, the recollection of which tortured me afresh; all the folly and absurdity that I had ever uttered myself, or heard from others.

In the numerous vast halls countless swarms of men were sitting, standing, or walking about, all in the same state of deplorable woe. And no variety, no division of time, no hour, no sun or night disturbed or changed this melancholy monotonousness. One solitary amusement was there. Now and then some one reminded us of our former faith, how during our lives we had feared and worshipt a God. Then a loud burst of laughter, as at a most portentous absurdity, pealed through the hall. Afterward they all grew grave, and I strove with all my faculties to call back the reverence, the sanctity of my human feelings, but in vain.

* * * * *

Edward had not observed that the morning was already dawning, so completely had he been wrapt up in these singular papers. Without doubt too he would have gone on reading much longer, unless he had now been interrupted by loud cries and a violent knocking at his door. He went to see what it was, and Conrad rusht into the room, heated, panting, and with a ferocious look.

"Now we have him!" cried the miner furiously: "did not I say long ago that this vagabond is wickedness itself? Only let him instantly be bound, master overseer, hand and foot in the heaviest chains you can get, and then have the dog flogged till he is cut to pieces, that his life and his infernal soul may crawl out of him by inches."

"What is the matter with you?" askt Edward. "I am afraid you must be in a fever, and are stark raving."

"Hurrah!" screamed Conrad; "now my cruel illness will soon be gone, now that the miscreant has been caught at his wicked tricks. He will never carry me down again now into their rubbishy straw."

"Whom are you talking of?" Edward again began: "surely not of the Hungarian miner?"

"The very person," answered Conrad: "the monster has been stealing, and is in league with a whole gang of thieves. Hark you, to cut the matter short, I could not sleep last night, and so roamed about the woods, in part to get myself some herbs to cure my ailing. It was just beginning to dawn, when I heard something like wheels down below, along the lonely lane in the thick of the wood, and at the same time there was a moaning and groaning; for at night one hears and makes out every thing much plainlier. Off I ran. Two fellows were drawing a cart in great tribulation and fear, and the pale rascal was walking alongside, and driving them on. 'Scoundrels!' I shouted in their faces! and the word was hardly out of my throat, when the two thieves had already scampered off; but the pale skinny mountebank I held fast; the cart with the stolen goods is standing in the wood. They will soon bring it after me however; for I met a couple of workmen whom I sent for it; and the Hungarian waivode I have dragged hither with my own hand."

Meanwhile the whole house was in an uprore. The stranger was sitting handcufft at the door; and miners, spinners, and weavers came crowding; others flockt from the mills; and all were shouting, all were staring with wonder at each other; everybody wanted to tell his story, and nobody seemed to know what it was that had happened; so that Edward and Conrad began with much perplexity and annoyance to question one after another, until the miner cried out with his thundering voice: "Hold your jaws all of you. Not a soul shall speak another word, except he whom your young master shall ask."

One-eyed Michael was standing near them, and, as Edward turned to him, he said: "It may have been about three in the morning when I set off from the forge to deliver a message betimes at the smelting house up in the mountains. I was walking along the path through the wood, thinking no harm, save that when I got pretty near to the warehouse all the nightly robberies came across me which have been going on this many a long day there. 'I'd give the world to catch the rogue,' I said to myself, when all at once a gun went off. A gun! what ho! that put me to my wits. 'There are never any sportsmen hereabout,' I said, and began marching and bustling on with a little more haste and speed. In a few moments I hear cries and yells and shouts, and a pothering and squabbling. All this methinks can never be right. I get to the top, and now I see the whole business. The warehouse is open, several barrows and men are before it, they are piling up the goods: a short figure that I could not make out in the dark, panting and whining, screaming and grumbling, is shuffling and tumbling about. I make up to the fellows with the stolen goods. Then some of them seized me fast and prest down my eyes. The noise lessens, I can't cry out, nor would it do me much good. When they let me loose again, there was nothing to be seen. Even the limper, in spite of all my search, had got off and was not to be found. When I came nearer the houses I awoke every body with my shouts, telling them to go and watch the warehouse, and scour after the rogues."

"And I," cried Conrad, "have lugged the commander in chief of the cutpurses by the throat, that sapient soothsayer that was playing off his pranks with his match the other day at your forge."

Then they all set off again telling their stories, shouting and screaming, just as noisily as before. Edward however gave orders what all were to do; the stranger was to be watcht, the stolen goods to be taken into the house, and everybody was to be quiet, not to disturb their old master's rest, should he be still asleep. He himself hastened with a few others to the warehouse, to arrange matters there, and, if possible, to find out more about the thieves.

* * * * *

Edward found marks of blood in the warehouse and on the ground without, and he and his companions followed them. Anon they lost sight of them, then discovered them again in a thicket on one side, and a little after in one of the bypaths. Edward walkt on with anxious feelings; a boding prest upon his heart; he was unwilling to confess his misgivings even to himself. Ere long however they turned to certainty; for the traces led to the house of Eleazar, which lay on a green slope. When they got up to it they found all the neighbours already in motion; people were coming from the town; the priest of the parish was just passing through the door. Within everything was in confusion, and a physician and surgeon were busy upstairs.

Edward left his companions without, and with a beating heart opened the chamber door. Eleazar was lying pale and with ghastly features in his bed. His wound had just been examined, and a bandage placed on it. Everybody in the room, the physician, surgeon, priest, and servants lookt frightened and distrest; for there was something in this accident so mysterious and terrible that no one could help being struck with awe by it.

The surgeon, whom Edward took aside, shook his head, and assured him that all assistance was in vain; the patient would hardly live through the day. Eleazar now raised himself out of his stupour, lookt round, and perceived Edward. "Aha!" he cried with a strained and faint voice, "You too are already there! Well! You have at last got the better of me. This is what you have been driving at this long time. I am now lying here, and all is over, all is found out; there are no more questions and answers, no more todays and tomorrows. How it will fare with you remains to be seen hereafter. Not well most undoubtedly. So don't triumph in your imaginary virtue."

He beckoned and made the priest bring him a paper that was lying in the window. "Give this to the old man of the mountain," he then went on; "he will see from it how I loved him; for it is my will."

The priest now said a few words, begging to be left alone with the sick man. Edward was glad to leave the room and refresh himself in the open air. Here Conrad again ran up to him out of breath, and cried ... "Confusion worse confounded! Only think what he has been doing, our virtuous Eleazar! his last loaf has already been baked for him. Look you, this fellow, this lord and master of the country, this son-in-law of the old man of the mountain, is a scurvy thief ... Now I will forgive that white-faced Hungarian wretch for serving me as he did the other day; for what is all the reputation in the earth, all the honour in the world come to?"

The whole neighbourhood, town and country, was in consternation at this event. The most incredible thing in the world had taken place, a crime that could neither be denied nor concealed, committed by a man whom all had been forced to regard with respect, whom all had lookt upon as their future master and protector; and they could not recover from their astonishment, or fall back into their ordinary occupations; for their minds in this turmoil had for a while lost every standard by which a man measures himself.

The old man amid the general tumult had already learnt the whole story, in spite of the pains Edward had taken to prevent it. He had lockt himself up in his room and let nobody in.

Edward now interrogated the stranger. This man had for a long time had dealings with Eleazar; he lived in a town a good many miles off, and had often sent agents up the mountains and helpt in selling the stolen goods. A tradesman in another small town was also a party in the affair. The Hungarian had quarelled with Eleazar, and had come up into these parts with a view of going to old Balthasar, sounding him, and, if he found him inclined to pay well for it, disclosing the whole history of the abominable transaction. But as the old man had not shewn any mind to have recourse to superstitious devices, still less to give ear to his covert hints, so that the stranger might have brought his own neck into the noose if he had betrayed too much, he drew off and remained faithful to his confederate Eleazar, who had quieted him with a sum of money, along with large promises for the future.

The old man's great bell now rang, and Edward took up his papers and went to him. "You have lookt over and corrected all my accounts, my dear friend?" he began with outward calmness. Edward said yes, as he set down the books; but he hesitated and knew not whether to give in Eleazar's will along with them. The old man however took it himself out of his hand and cast his eyes over it.

"It is now three months," he began, "since he made me heir to all he has, in case he should die before me. He has drawn up a list of all his effects, and points out where each thing may be found. The chief article is a number of gold bars, which he says are of his own making. Read it."

Edward took the papers with some embarrassment. "Is it not true?" said the old man after some time, "does any thing but madness animate and rule the whole world? Can you understand this man and his character in any other way? To be sure this word itself does not help us to understand it. O young man, young man, do you not feel now how thoroughly right I was? I trusted this man unlimitedly, because he was not girt round with any delusive deceitful show; because nothing in my heart sallied forth to meet him, and I did not lie to myself in his behalf for the sake of pampering my own vanity. Ay, my friend, now everything is detected and noised abroad; he is going ... and in this will he gives me back what the lawyers would call my property. His will! Now forsooth it must also be time to make mine, and a different one from what I intended. Now your nice feelings of honour will no doubt condescend to stay with me a little longer ... and my child, my Rose! alas, how fearful it is that this darling of my heart is also a human being!"

"At such an hour as this," answered Edward, "which must needs strike you with horrour, I will not again declare the wishes of my heart to you; you yourself have toucht upon them, or I should have refrained even from these words. But undoubtedly I must now stay with you: destiny compells me to do so, and imposes it as a sacred duty upon me."

"Destiny with a vengeance!" said the old man with his bitter smile: "you take a fancy to Rose; you hear she is already engaged; this drives you away from me; but before you take leave, your honour must be cleared and furbisht up; and as a remembrance you shoot my most intimate friend, the man after my own soul, and tear him from my side. Now Rose is at liberty, you are your own master, your rival is got rid of; and destiny has managed the whole matter admirably. But whether this shot has not pierced through my heart, whether it has not rent and burst asunder the innermost sanctuary of my soul ... these questions are never thought of. There is as it were a huge chasm yawning in my spirit ... confidence, faith ... everything ... did not I say so? good is the only real evil ... Edward! don't look so sad ... methinks I am talking quite wildly."

He took the young man's hand. "Bring me the mayor this evening, and the priest and bailiff as witnesses. You are now my son, and this is the spirit I shall now make my will in. I feel it is high time; for it would be horrible if Helbach were to fling all my fortune to the dogs. O if I could but totally forget this shot and Eleazar! if such wild thoughts did not keep rushing about in my brain! Now you and Rose will stay with me."

Edward withdrew. He went to look for Rose in her room. She burst out a-crying, jumpt up from her chair, and threw herself into the young man's arms with an expression of the fondest affection. "Alas Edward!" she cried sobbing, and hid her face on his breast: "only look now at what I have to go through in my youth. This was never sung over me in my cradle, that I should lose my husband in so shocking a manner, and even before our wedding. And the last thing I should have thought of was that you were to shoot him dead, you, the dearest and kindest of all men.—Alas! poor, poor Eleazar! when he came from nature's hands, such an odious misshapen abortion of a man! And now into the bargain to steal, to lie, and to cheat! to rob my good father, who meant to give him everything! What will become of his poor soul now? Oh yes, he has perisht still more cruelly, he is much more unhappy than my cat with her kittens, that he shot so barbarously on the orange tree. Alas Edward! are you then in real truth such a good creature, as I have always believed you? or are you perchance very wicked too? You did not mean it, did you? that Eleazar should die so?"

Edward took pains to explain the nature of the whole affair to her. "Be composed," he continued; "the course of our lives here has suddenly undergone a violent change; we must all overcome this shock, to get back again into the path of our ordinary duty. A few days since you were sorry that I was going away; if it can give you any comfort, let me assure you that for the present at least I shall and must stay here. Do you still wish that I should?"

She gazed at him affectionately and seemed comforted. "So then that is settled now!" she exclaimed: "ah yes, I always thought you would stay; for I can't live without you; and my father can't live without you; and all our poor workmen and spinners, our good miners, for whom you are always saying and doing something, and who, when they come for their wages or for relief, look with their whole souls into your kind eyes, these above all can never live without you."

"This calamity," said Edward, "may hereafter make you, your father, me, and all of us happy. The discovery was inevitable; and perhaps, if it had not taken place now, it would have come at a time when it would have plunged us all in misery."

"If my father now," said Rose, "were to have no objection, I might perhaps in time accustom myself to look upon you as my future husband. If I could but feel a little more respect and awe for you! If you would behave very roughly to me now and then, not always so kindly, but angrily and savagely at times, I might by and by grow reconciled to it."

Edward went to his business. The uprore had ceast, and the whole house was now quiet and silent: it seemed as if people were afraid of even breathing: all walkt about softly and on tiptoe. News came that Eleazar was dead.

Toward evening Edward went with the mayor and witnesses into old Balthasar's room. He was surprised to find him in bed. On being spoken to by his visitors he lifted himself up, stared fixedly at them, and seemed to know no one. "Aha! reverend Sir," he cried out after a while, "you are come to fetch away a second poor sinner today. It is a busy time in your vocation. Is master Eleazar come with you?"

He beckoned to Edward. "Thou yellow blockhead!" he whispered to him; "what am I to do with thy gold bars that thou hast left me? don't thrust thy stupid cheat into men's eyes so ... it is far too glaring. But beware of Edward, he is wise and good. If he should ever suspect thee, thou art lost."

He talkt to the others, but still quite at random, and was taken up with the phantoms of his own brain. The mayor and witnesses retired, and Edward went after the physician. The business of drawing up the will was put off, until the sick man should have recovered and be restored to his perfect consciousness.

The physician found the patient's state very alarming. Edward was called up in the night; but when he entered the room Herr Balthasar had already breathed his last.

The dismay, the sorrow was universal. The mayor sent to have everything sealed up. In the midst of this confusion, it seemed a matter of very little moment that the Hungarian had found means to escape from his prison.

* * * * *

In the town where the extravagant counsellor Helbach lived, there was a great feast at which all the epicures famous for their love of good eating and their knowledge of good dishes were assembled. The counsellor himself was the soul of such parties: his word was law in them; and he it was that had managed the present banquet.

The dinner was nearly over; some of the guests, who had business to call them away, were gone: the company had grown quieter; and it was only at the upper end of the table, where the counsellor and some of the scientific eaters were sitting, that the conversation was carried on with any spirit.

"Believe me, my friends," said the counsellor with great earnestness, "the art of eating, the skill men may attain in it, has its epochs, its classical ages, and its decline, corruption, and dark ages, just as much as every other art; and it seems to me that we are now again verging to a kind of barbarism in it. Luxury, profusion, rarities, new dishes, overpeppering, overspicing, all these, my good sirs, are the artifices now commonly made use of to obtain admiration for a dinner; and yet these are the very things from which a thinking eater will turn away with contemptuous slight. In the whole of this department indeed much still remains to be done; and the stories we read of the old gormandizer, Heliogabalus, and others who lived during the decrepitude of the Roman empire, stories at which many men stare with stupid astonishment, ought only to excite our pity."

"It must always be difficult no doubt," said one of the guests, "to frame any distinct conception of the dishes and the delicacies of a former age. If we dress them by such receits as remain, the result will always have something absurd in it, like the dinner which Smollett describes so humourously in his Peregrine Pickle."