Thus young Doctor Schöner was deemed a genius--that is a strong letter of recommendation to a young girl, who has just left school--and, therefore, even the keen female eye does not perceive those tiny specks upon the velvet coat and that unfashionable hair, which detests the scissors. The young poet now went towards Eva, and commenced a conversation with her about the beauty of the evening, and the beauties in the party of actresses, extolling Signora Bollini with glowing eulogy. Eva, who leaned against the trunk of the giant oak, would have liked best to hide herself in it like a dryad, so as not to be obliged to listen to this praise, not to look at this goddess of art. "Doctorchen, whither have you vanished?" suddenly rang the Signora's mellifluous voice, audible far around, and stepping nearer, she said, with a graceful inclination towards mother and daughter: "Ah, with the blue-bell, in the shadow of the sacred oak! You must spare my amanuensis tome to-day, ladies. He knows the road, the path, the names of all the hills on the coast, and the little bays--he is my map." At the Signora's first words, Schöner had retreated from Eva, as though he had been caught upon forbidden paths. He introduced the ladies to one another, and immediately disappeared amongst the group of actors. After a few polite words, which she had exchanged with the Regierungsrath's family, the Signora was back again in the midst of her own people. Again a bright song resounded, accompanied by the waves breaking still louder on the shore. Annoyed at the long stay, the Regierungsrath gave the signal to return home, and as they departed Eva could still hear the singer's merry words. "Now ladies, away into the surging tide! Who would not wish to be a moonlight-water-fairy for once? I feel like a spirit of the elements, and my adorers have long since declared me to be an Undine, because in their opinion I have no soul. All the same--souls are the cheapest things in the world, and the smallest State has many hundreds of thousands of them! Besides, one must be able to exist without a soul, if one can only offer some substitute for it." "Bravo!" cried Schöner; "long live our Undine!" "Therefore, gentlemen, _abonnement suspendu_ for the Baltic Sea? To-night it belongs to the ladies, and you return quietly to the hotel. You need have no fear that I shall transform myself down below in the breaking surf into a Melusina, and perhaps, coquette with a fish's tail. I am no silvery-scaled monster, but both on land and in water a woman _comme il faut_. _En avant_, ladies! Here are no hearses as in Cranz; here one springs from the shore into the waves, and the only Actæon who plays the spy upon us is the moon! It shall have its horns; it will soon enter upon its last quarter!" Ladies and gentlemen descended the Fuchs-spitze on separate paths.