Just then the hated uncle arrived, with the carriages full of magic wands, and said, weepingly, he was going to the Carthusian cloister, to atone for many sins, and he would first willingly explain to his nephew, as well with words as by the carriages, all that he desired. "I believe nothing you say," said Albano. "I can now tell the whole truth, for the gloomy one has nothing more to do with me, I think, _cousin_," replied the Spaniard. "Is not that," he added, in a low tone, with a shy look at Siebenkäs, "the gloomy one, _cousin?_" Albano would not know nor hear anything. Siebenkäs asked him who the gloomy one was. It was the infinite man, he began, very black and gloomy, and had for the first time stalked over toward him across the sea, when he stood on the coast before a fog. At night he had often heard him call, and sometimes had repeated his ventriloquial speeches. He had immediately appeared to him, with a handful of threatenings, whenever he had told many truths after sundown. Therefore had he feared exceedingly before the present gentleman in the Chapel of the Cross; but now, since he had been converted without suffering any harm in the chapel, he would tell truths all day long, and in the Carthusian convent he intended to do so still more. "Cloisters are the very places where they do not generally dwell; for this reason, I suppose, the vow of silence is required, the observance of which is always more favorable to truth than its breach is," replied Siebenkäs. "O heretic, heretic!" cried the Spaniard, with such an unexpected anger that Albano at once received, through this sign of human feeling, pledges of his present sincerity, as well as of his narrower spiritual circumference. Now, for the first time, he asked him outright about the soil and the seed which he had hitherto used, in order to force the swift flowers of his miracles. At this question he caused a casket to be brought up. "Ask," said he. "How did Romeiro's form rise out of _Lago Maggiore?_" said Albano. The uncle unlocked the casket, showed a wax figure, and said, "It was only her mother." Albano shuddered before this near mock-sun of his sunken one, and at the presumption of relationship with which Schoppe had inspired him. "Am I related to her?" he quickly asked. The uncle replied, with confusion, "It may haply be otherwise." Albano asked about the monk who made the heavenly ascension in Mola. "He stood overhead filled with gas;[147] I down below on the wall," said the uncle. Albano would hear no further. The casket contained, besides, ear-trumpets and speaking-trumpets, a face-skin, blue glass, through which landscapes appeared snowed over, silk flowers, with powder of an _endormeur_, &c. Albano would not see anything more.