tea-table. If we may believe certain persons, you know amazing things;
if this be true, would it not be charitable in you to solve a few of
our doubts?"

"Ah!" she said smiling, "I walk on the clouds. I visit the depths of
the fiord; the sea is my steed and I bridle it; I know where the
singing flower grows, and the talking light descends, and fragrant
colors shine! I wear the seal of Solomon; I am a fairy; I cast my
orders to the wind which, like an abject slave, fulfils them; my eyes
can pierce the earth and behold its treasures; for lo! am I not the
virgin to whom the pearls dart from their ocean depths and--"

"--who led me safely to the summit of the Falberg?" said Minna,
interrupting her.

"Thou! thou too!" exclaimed the strange being, with a luminous glance
at the young girl which filled her soul with trouble. "Had I not the
faculty of reading through your foreheads the desires which have
brought you here, should I be what you think I am?" she said,
encircling all three with her controlling glance, to David's great
satisfaction. The old man rubbed his hands with pleasure as he left
the room.

"Ah!" she resumed after a pause, "you have come, all of you, with the
curiosity of children. You, my poor Monsieur Becker, have asked
yourself how it was possible that a girl of seventeen should know even
a single one of those secrets which men of science seek with their
noses to the earth,--instead of raising their eyes to heaven. Were I
to tell you how and at what point the plant merges into the animal you
would begin to doubt your doubts. You have plotted to question me; you