Blanden left the ignoble woman who, like hundreds of others, had transformed herself into a Megæra, when, in the heat of excitement, the lacquer of the gloss of cultivation melts away from them; yet he left her with a dagger in his heart! Was she right, could Eva have taken her own life? But no word of farewell, not a line indicated such a thing. Must he be accountable for the victim whom the sea had swallowed up? Who should solve that mystery? Blanden stared at the storm that now discharged itself with terrific blows, and ignited an old Perkunos oak upon the height, like a beacon for ships in danger. In his heart surged a tempestuous, agitated uproar, as great as the conflict of the elements without. Two hours later the full moon shone from out a cloudless sky; the ocean still gasped in short breaths after the spasm that had shaken it. But it became calmer, and at last displayed a smooth mirror-like surface. A boat glided over it. "Farewell my amber nymph," cried Blanden, "I send your jewels after you, that you may remember me in those subterranean halls, and one portion of my life I bury with you in the deep." With a loud noise the chest and its jewels sank into the sea; but still for a long time the boat of the solitary nocturnal sailor was driven about upon the waves. Peace dwells in its unfathomable lap, but just as unfathomable is the grief of that human life, the grief which rends the heart of that nocturnal sailor, and which he pours out in plaints to the mysterious planets. CHAPTER VI. THE CASTLE LAKE. Two years had passed away since lovely Eva Kalzow had met her death in the waves of the amber sea. The obscurity that veiled her end had never been lifted. Blanden brooded in solitude, retired from the world in his Castle Kulmitten; he absorbed himself completely in the study of Sanscrit and of the Indian philosophical systems; in these he found the original spring from which eastern wisdom has always drawn its supplies, even supposing that the same train of thought has not led the minds in the eastern and western worlds into the same path. He had little intercourse with his neighbours; only his friend Baron von Wegen and the worthy Landrath of the district remained true to him. Of all others he was suspicious; he did not know who, at the late election, had voted for or against him, and, under his peculiar circumstances at the time of the election, and the similarity of his political views to those of the electors, he felt obliged to look upon the, to him, unfavourable record of votes, as an expression of want of esteem, or at last of decided aversion.