"Forget it?" he replied. "If home is the fairest spot on earth, then I have only found mine now. Henceforth all other places lie eternally forgotten. But what is that yonder?" he asked, pointing to tall green pillars whose tops reached nearly to the crystal roof. "See for thyself," said the sea-fairy, and he moved by her side towards the last hall in which the graceful columns stood. And now he glides between their slender shafts, and utters a joyous cry as he looks up at the transparent dome, beneath which leafy tree-crowns waved, while little star-fishes gleamed brightly as they glided among the leaves. "Palm trees!" cried Antonio, breathless with astonishment--"palm trees, such as I have heard rustling by the banks of the Ganges! This must be some delusion, some golden dream, out of which I must sooner or later wake. No, no, there are the tender lianas winding round the kingly stems, and there in the shadow lurks my lotos flower, the most beautiful of all the gorgeous blossoms of India!" [Illustration: ANTONIO IN THE CRYSTAL CASTLE. F. C., p. 178.] He dropped the fairy's hand, hastened forward, and looked into the shining cup, whose purple streamers trembled in the waves. "Yes, indeed, it is the lotos, gleaming in snowy purity like its sisters in the holy stream, in whose cup the goddess slumbers. But oh! how camest thou hither, beloved flower? But what do I ask? The holy river of thy favoured home has caught thy falling seed and borne it onwards to the sea, and there on its protecting wave thou hast been rolled on and on, further and further, towards the south-west, till the warm Gulf Stream received thee. Carried northwards by this current of blessing which careful Nature sends to these icy realms, thou camest with broken palm branches and liana sprays into this northern fairyland, where the hand of the beauteous sea-fairy gave thee a second home--one beautiful enough to make thee forget even the sunny plains of India."