The possibilities of spiritual life, of high aspirations, which had been opened to Albrecht when upon the kobold had dawned the glorious light of a soul seemed at first to dazzle him. He walked as a man in a dream, or as a prophet who hears voices and sees visions. His joyous, sensuous, wild nature did not, it is true, at once lose its strength. He was the inciter of the countess to the sports of which under his guidance she began to be fond, her former dread of giving pain to the defenceless animals yielding to the delights of the excitement of the chase; he infused into her a new gayety, an animal zest in life, a sensuous eagerness to seize upon the joy of the moment and to forget past and future; he inoculated her, in a word, with the spirit of his being as he had existed hitherto, of the kobold not yet fully transformed into a man, although the process of this transformation had begun at the moment when he had been gifted with a human soul. As for the Lady Adelaide, she was thoroughly delighted with the change which had come to Rittenberg. This, she declared, was like the gay times when Erna's father was still alive, and the castle was the rendezvous of many bold and merry knights and dames. She began to bring from the recesses of her memory numberless tales of the old time, and now she was pleased to find that her grand-niece would listen to histories and scandals which hitherto she had refused to hear. Lady Adelaide assured Elsa, in those confidential moments during which that damsel was engaged in assisting her at her toilet, that the baron had quite made the countess over, and that the transformation was little short of a miracle. "Heaven knows what a prude she was," Lady Adelaide would say, long years of habitual freedom of intercourse with her damsel having brought her to a degree of intimacy in her speech with Elsa which was unusual with one of the latter's station; "she used to blush, God's blood! at the mere mention of a man; and as for having any witty talk with her, I might as well have gone to the chapel for a cosey chat with the Virgin on the altar, Heaven save the mark! Now it is all quite different, and I can have some real comfort in gossiping with her." "Yes, doubtless marriage is a wonderful thing," demurely responded Elsa, who was betrothed to the steward of the castle, and was only waiting to assure herself that she could not possibly do better before she took the irrevocable step of marrying him. "It has changed the countess much; and her husband, too, meseems."