"Yes, one perceives it now," said Nikolaus, "but we are not spirits. It
is plain he did not see you, but were we invisible, too? He looked at
us, but he didn't seem to see us."

"No, none of us was visible to him, for I wished it so."

It seemed almost too good to be true, that we were actually seeing these
romantic and wonderful things, and that it was not a dream. And there he
sat, looking just like anybody--so natural and simple and charming, and
chatting along again the same as ever, and--well, words cannot make you
understand what we felt. It was an ecstasy; and an ecstasy is a thing
that will not go into words; it feels like music, and one cannot tell
about music so that another person can get the feeling of it. He was
back in the old ages once more now, and making them live before us. He
had seen so much, so much! It was just a wonder to look at him and try
to think how it must seem to have such experience behind one.

But it made you seem sorrowfully trivial, and the creature of a day, and
such a short and paltry day, too. And he didn't say anything to raise up
your drooping pride--no, not a word. He always spoke of men in the same
old indifferent way--just as one speaks of bricks and manure-piles and
such things; you could see that they were of no consequence to him, one
way or the other. He didn't mean to hurt us, you could see that; just as
we don't mean to insult a brick when we disparage it; a brick's emotions
are nothing to us; it never occurs to us to think whether it has any or
not.

Once when he was bunching the most illustrious kings and conquerors and
poets and prophets and pirates and beggars together--just a brick-pile--I