"I must take up the cudgels for my friend in this respect too," said Cyprian, "and tell you that, in the very neighbourhood of this place where we are at this moment, there actually happened an event, not very long ago, by no means unlike the incidents of this story. Into a quiet happy group of friends, just when supernatural matters were forming the subject of conversation, there suddenly came a stranger, who struck every one as being uncanny and terrifying, notwithstanding his apparent everydayness, and seeming belonging to the common level. By his arrival this stranger not only spoiled the enjoyment of the evening in question, but subsequently destroyed the peace and happiness of the family for a long period. Even at this day deadly shudders seize a happy wife when she thinks of the crafty wickedness with which this person tried to entangle her in his nets. I told this at the time to Ottmar, and nothing made a greater impression on him than the moment when the stranger made his spectral entry, and the sense of the propinquity of the hostile Spiritual Principle seized upon every one present with a sudden terror. This moment came vividly to Ottmar's mind, and formed the groundwork of his tale." "But," said Ottmar, "as a single incident is far from being a complete story--which ought to spring perfect and complete from its author's brain, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter--my tale is of course not worth much as a whole, and it is little to my credit, I suppose, that I took advantage of two or three incidents which really happened, weaving them--not without some little success perhaps--into a network of the imaginary." "Yes," said Lothair, "you are right, my friend. A single striking incident is far from being a tale, just as one well-imagined theatrical situation is a long way from constituting a play. This reminds me of the way in which a certain playwright (who no longer walks this world, and whose terrible death certainly atoned for any shortcomings of his during his life, and reconciled his worst enemies to him) used to construct his pieces. In a company where I was present, he said, without any concealment, that he selected some one's good dramatic situation which occurred to him, and then, solely for the sake of that, hung a canvas round it and painted away upon it 'just whatever came in his head,' or 'as best he could,' to use his own expressions. This gave me a complete explanation of, and threw a dazzling flood of light upon, the whole character and inner being of that writer's pieces, particularly those of his later period. None of them is without some very happily devised central situation, but all round this the scenes, which he made up out of commonplace material, are woven like a loosely knitted web, although the hand of that weaver, skilled as it is in _technique_, is never to be mistaken."