Love-making and wooing were carried on among the gnomes as it is with us, only with the exception that the females had the same right as the males to bestow their affection and to make proposals; neither was it considered a disgrace for any lady to do so; on the contrary, it would have been a disgrace for her to pretend to have other sentiments than she had, and it would have injured her beauty and destroyed her light. There was, however, no such thing as what is understood among us as “women’s rights,” for their natural instincts taught them that not everything that becomes a male also becomes a female; these gnomes made no attempt to overstep the limits drawn by nature, for this would have caused them to become degraded and unnatural. On account of their simple-mindedness immorality was entirely unknown, because true morality has its basis in the instinctive perception of truth, and requires no artificially concocted systems and shams. One may be very moral without even knowing that moral doctrines exist, and another may know all the moral prescriptions by heart, and be a rascal for all that. There was one class of females distinguished from the rest. They were such as, having attained a certain age, were still without children. They corresponded to what is in our world called “old maids”; but they were neither old nor ugly. In fact, they were on the whole very charming, and could sing beautiful songs, as everyone knows who has lived for a certain time in the vicinity of the Untersberg, and heard them sing. Their songs are usually of a sad character, and alluring; they express their loneliness and longing for children. The love for production exists in all departments of nature, and also among the gnomes. A gnome having no knowledge of his own, is always happy to stuff his head with theories belonging to others, and loves them as if they were his own children. The same is the case with the so-called “wild women” of the Untersberg. Their love for offspring sometimes causes them to come out of the Untersberg and appropriate to themselves children of men, such as they find lost or astray within their realm. For this reason they are called “wild,” although I wish to gracious that I would never meet with anything less wild than they. I always found them very lovely, and I now understand the meaning of those popular tales which speak of children of peasants that have been abducted by these spirits, and taken into the Untersberg, where they lived among the “wild women,” who treated them kindly, and played with them; and after a certain time sent them back to their parents loaded with gifts. [Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF LUCIFER] VI. LUCIFER.