His Lordship stood alone on the shore of the sea which flowed round the island, and awaited and received him with a seriousness which veiled his friendliness, and with an emotion which still wrestled with his wonted coldness. He was going now to cross over to the island, and yet Victor saw no means of transportation. There was no boat there; nor would it have been practicable to get one off, because iron spikes stood under the water in such numbers and direction that no boat could move. The guard that had hitherto been stationed on the shore to protect the island against the destructive curiosity of the populace was to-day removed. The father went with his son slowly around the shore, and dislodged out of their beds, one after another, twenty-seven stones which lay at equal distances from each other. The island had been constructed _before_ his Lordship's blindness, and _then_ was not yet prohibited to strangers; but during that affliction he had caused its interior to be completed and concealed by unknown nocturnal workmen. During the tour round the island Victor saw its fruit-espaliers of high tree-stems, which seemed to direct their shadows and voices toward the interior of the island, and whose foliage-work the tossing waves sprinkled with their broken suns and stars; bean-trefoils clasped the pine-trees, and round the cones ringlets of purple blossoms played their antics; the silver-poplar bowed down under the enthroned oak; fiery bushes of Arabian beans blazed from farther in out of leafy curtains; trees, grafted by approach, on double stems latticed up the avenues from the eye; and by the side of a fir, which overtopped all the summits, was a taller one, which had been bent down by storms half over the water, and which rocked itself above its grave. White columns lifted up in the middle of the island a Grecian temple, immovable above all the wavering treetops.--Sometimes a stray tone seemed to run through the green Holy of Holies. A tall, black gate reached to the tops of the pines, and, painted with a white sun-disk, looked toward the east, and seemed to say to man, Pass through me; not only thy Creator, but thy brother, has worked, here!-- Opposite to this gate lay the twenty-seventh stone. Victor's father displaced it, took out a magnet, bent down, and held its _south_ pole to the gap. Suddenly machines began to gnar, and the waves to whirl, and an iron bridge rose out of the water. Victor's soul was overfilled with dreams and expectations. Shuddering, he followed his father, and set foot upon the magic island. Here his father touched a thin stone with the _north_ end of the magnet, and the iron bridge sank down again. Before they stepped up to the elevated gate a key turned itself from within, and unlocked, and the gate flew open. His Lordship was silent. On his face a higher soul had risen like a sun: one no longer knew him; he seemed to be transformed into the genius of this magic island.