"I took you for one. I love the Italians! They are a gifted people! What a pity that many years of oppression keeps their noble fire in subjection, so that it only finds vent for itself in petty, malicious outbreaks, like the flames of their Solfatara! An Italian--and how do you come to Russia?" "Business connections. A merchant remains there where he has most prospect of gain." "Then the amber trade between these coasts and Russia is probably flourishing?" "It depends," said the stranger, with a cunning smile, "whether a man succeeds in bringing his wares cheaply across the frontier. Besides, the peasants, who have farmed their royalty from Government, are not exactly reasonable with their amber, let them dig it out of the earth with spades, or rescue it from the sea-weed, or obtain it with dragnets from the sea." "What reflections might it not awake," said Blanden to himself, and hardly noticing the others. "The forests of other days have sunk beneath the earth, and still offer their treasures to the living race--but what becomes of our sunken hopes? They have nothing, nothing more to give us! Ah! if any one could dream so deeply, so utterly deeply, he might hear the rustling of the trees in the submarine forests, and see sitting there the amber nymph in magnificent jewels of the deep, in those pale-yellow halls, and singing a song of the old splendours of the never-penetrated forests, into which the complaints of men have never yet taken refuge." And, as he looked more closely at the vision of the amber-nymph, it bore Eva's features, and he resolved to deck her worthily of his vision. "But what shall I do with this rough, raw material?" said he, petulantly, to the dealer, "I cannot buy any of this from you; at the most, only the little piece which contains the imprisoned fly. Oh, happy he, who might sit so firmly in a woman's heart!" They agreed about the not insignificant price of this rarity; the dealer then began-- "I see clearly that only the artistically formed produce of the ocean has any value for you. Yet I know first-rate masters in Wilna to whom I sell my wares, and who know how to lend every delicate form to them. Give me commissions! When I return I will certainly bring you everything that you can wish to your complete satisfaction." "And when do you return?" "In a few weeks." Blanden considered for a moment, then he said-- "Well, then, you shall procure me an outfit for an amber princess; everything of pale-yellow, most precious material. Take out your pocket-book, and make notes. First, a tasteful toilet casket, fragrant as the Oriental beauties love it; then a splendid string of beads--the beads of our Northern Ocean shall shame the corals of the Southern Sea; a bracelet; a brooch with two winged doves, or a little Cupid with a dart. Can the master's art produce any other such perfections that are fitted for beauty's adornment, even if it does not hover before my own imagination, here am I, a ready purchaser."