The princes and knights, followed by their vassals, departed in large numbers, on the Crusades, but they brought back from the Crusades, together with holy relics, traditions of Gnomes, Peris, and Undines. [Illustration: 278] The Rhine, disgusted at the loss of his royal dignity, and determined to take his vengeance on the warrior-bishops, received these last arrivals as he had those who came before. In his healing waters the Undines mingled with the Tritons and the Naiads; the Gnomes found shelter under the rocks, where they were hospitably received by the Dwarfs, and in the evening twilight the Nymphs, the Elves, and the Dryads danced once more merrily in company with Sylphs, Fairies, and Peris. No doubt Christian Germany looked afterwards at all this more in the light of food for the imagination than of trouble for the conscience, but in that happy land, where people believe and dream {259}at the same time, and where the words of the poet are as true as the Gospel, the imagination easily gets the better of conscience. Thus the search after the little blue flower led many a learned man astray, far off into half satanic paths. Besides, it lies in the nature of the German mind, which has always a tendency towards idealism, its magnetic pole, to oppose to the orthodox religion another more secret and more mysterious creed. [Illustration: 279] This was the case already in the fourteenth and {260}fifteenth century; it is the case still in this, the nineteenth century, especially among the country people, who have passed through the age of witchcraft in which the Black God ruled supreme, and, completely modifying their pagan notions, have transferred their Olympus to the Brocken, the mountain of the Witches’ Sabbath. Let us now see what the dwellers on the banks of the Rhine have done with all their old gods and demi-gods of every denomination. [Illustration: 283] XI. {263}Elementary Spirits of Air, Fire, and Water.--_Sylphs, their Amusements and Domestic Arrangements.--Little Queen Mab. --Will-o’-the-Wisps.--White Elves and Black Elves.--True Causes of Natural Somnambulism.--The Wind’s Betrothed.--Fire-damp.--Master Haemmerling.--The Last of the Gnomes._