the dead takes the living with him, and draws them after him far into his cold realm. Time gradually unfolded his grief, instead of weakening it. His life had become a night, in which the moon is under the earth, and he could not believe that Luna would gradually return with an increasing bow of light. Not joys, but only actions,--those remote stars of night,--were now his aim. He held it unjust to keep back in the presence of his father the tears which often forced themselves from him in the midst of conversation, merely because his father took no interest in them; still he showed him, nevertheless, by the energy of his discourses and resolves, the vigorous youth. Only the reproach which he had cast upon himself for his guilt in Liana's death had suffered itself to be swallowed up in the peace which Idoine had given him, although he now held her apparition to have been only a feverish waking dream about Liana. His father kept a profound silence about Idoine's appearance on the stage of action, as well as all disagreeable recollections. He spoke much, however, of Italy and of the spoils of art which Albano would acquire there, especially through the company of the Princess, the Counsellor of Arts, and the German gentleman, who had gone on before them, and whom one might soon overtake. The son turned to him at last with the bold inquiry whether he really had a sister still, and related the adventure with the Baldhead. "It might well be," said Gaspard, with a disagreeable jocosity, "that thou hadst still more sisters and brothers than I knew of. But what I know is, that thy twin-sister Severina died this year in her cloister. For what, then, dost thou take the night-adventure?" "I should almost think it a dream," he replied. Here, accidentally, his hand found its way to his pocket, and to his astonishment struck upon the half-ring which his sister had presented him. The strangeness of the whole thing sank deep among his sensations, and that night of horror passed swiftly and coldly through his noon. He and his father examined the ends of the divided ring, on each of which a broken-off signature ended abruptly. "There is _nothing_ miraculous, however," said the Knight. "How do we know, then, that there is anything natural?" said Albano. "Mystery," replied Gaspard, "or the spirit-world, dwells only in the spirit." "We must," the son continued, "even in the case of the commonest optical tricks, derive our pleasure from something else than the resolving of the deception of fancy into a deception of the senses, because otherwise the magic would necessarily please us more _after_ the solution than before. These are the points and poles of human nature, upon which the eternal polar clouds hang. Our maps of the kingdom of truth and spirits are the map-stones, which stand for ruins and villages; these are _lies_, but still they are _likenesses_. The spirit, forever an exile among bodies, desires