The evening before the impatiently expected first of June the king sat in the upper hall of Helsingborg castle, at the chess-table, where he was usually the victor. On this occasion, however, he had found an almost invincible opponent in the learned Iceland philosopher, who appeared able beforehand to calculate the plans of his adversary, and only to need a single move in order to frustrate them. Notwithstanding Master Thrand's decided superiority, the king had, however, won every game; but he seemed to regard this with indifference; he was absent, and often forgot to make his moves. At the opposite end of the hall he heard his brother talking of hunting and horses, with Count Gerhard; his mother was listening to the poems of the German minstrels and Master Laurentius; while the young knights discoursed with animation of the next day's festivities and tournament. "Tell me, Master Thrand," said the king to his learned antagonist, with a thoughtful glance out of the window at the star-lit heavens, "what is your opinion of omens, and of the wondrous art of astrology, to which so many learned men are devoted in our time. Believe you the life and actions of men and the changeable fortunes of this world can be so considerable and important in the eyes of the Almighty that higher powers should care for them, or intermeddle with them?--and think ye the position and movements of the heavenly bodies stand in any real relation to our life and destiny?" "That is almost more than science can be said as yet to have fathomed with certainty, most gracious king!" answered the artist, with a subtle, satirical smile on his lips, while his head almost disappeared between his shoulders; "but if any science is to bring clearness and demonstration into the speculations of the learned and the mysteries of astrology, it must be that exalted science of sciences whose poor worshipper I am. Assuredly, your grace, nothing happens in the world but what is natural, that is to say, a necessary consequence of foregoing causes; but it is precisely the great problem of the mysterious and hidden causes of these things and events which it is the province of human wisdom to solve. '_Beatas qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas_' hath been said already by the wise heathen. Theologians and poets indeed picture to themselves a nearer and safer road by which to reach the same goal as ourselves, or even a far higher one," he continued, with a scornful self-satisfied smile; "but they deceive themselves in their simplicity and enthusiasm by looking for a kind of supernatural influence of the Divine wisdom which in fact is the life and soul of nature, yet which but partially discloses itself to us in its workings, according as these by degrees unfold themselves to us in their essences through the sacred optic tubes of science and research."