yet he was happy, for the spirit was not lost to him. Only last night
magic forces had brought her before him--his father, too, had been
present, and no deception was possible. He had gone to bed in rapturous
excitement, full of delicious hopes, and Korinna had at once appeared to
him in a dream, so lovely, so kind, and at the same time so subtle a
vision, ready to follow him in his thoughts and strivings. But just as
he had heard a full assurance of her love from her own lips, and was
asking her by what name he should call her when the craving to see her
again should wax strong in him, old Dido had waked him, to cast him out
of elysium into the deepest earthly woes.

But, he added--and he drew himself up proudly--he should soon possess the
Magian's art, for there was no kind of learning he could not master; even
as a boy he had proved that to his teachers. He, whose knowledge had but
yesterday culminated in the assurance that it was impossible to know
anything, could now assert with positive conviction, that the human soul
could exist apart from the matter it had animated. He had thus gained
that fixed footing outside the earth which Archimedes had demanded to
enable him to move it; and he should soon be able to exert his power over
departed souls, whose nature he now understood as well as--ay, and better
than--Serapion. Korinna's obedient spirit would help him, and when once
he should succeed in commanding the souls of the dead, as their master,
and in keeping them at hand among the living, a new era of happiness
would begin, not only for him and his father, but for every one who had
lost one dear to him by death.

But here Melissa interrupted his eager and confident speech. She had
listened with increasing uneasiness to the youth who, as she knew, had
been cheated. At first she thought it would be cruel to destroy his
bright illusions. He should at least in this be happy, till the anguish