“You must know, my own love, that there are beings in the elements which bear the strongest resemblance to the human race, and which, at the same time, but seldom become visible to you.  The wonderful salamanders sparkle and sport amid the flames; deep in the earth the meagre and malicious gnomes pursue their revels; the forest-spirits belong to the air, and wander in the woods; while in the seas, rivers, and streams live the widespread race of water-spirits.  These last, beneath resounding domes of crystal, through which the sky can shine with its sun and stars, inhabit a region of light and beauty; lofty coral-trees glow with blue and crimson fruits in their gardens; they walk over the pure sand of the sea, among exquisitely variegated shells, and amid whatever of beauty the old world possessed, such as the present is no more worthy to enjoy—­creations which the floods covered with their secret veils of silver; and now these noble monuments sparkle below, stately and solemn, and bedewed by the water, which loves them, and calls forth from their crevices delicate moss-flowers and enwreathing tufts of sedge.

“Now the nation that dwell there are very fair and lovely to behold, for the most part more beautiful than human beings.  Many a fisherman has been so fortunate as to catch a view of a delicate maiden of the waters, while she was floating and singing upon the deep.  He would then spread far the fame of her beauty; and to such wonderful females men are wont to give the name of Undines.  But what need of saying more?—­You, my dear husband, now actually behold an Undine before you.”

The knight would have persuaded himself that his lovely wife was under the influence of one of her odd whims, and that she was only amusing herself and him with her extravagant inventions.  He wished it might be so.  But with whatever emphasis he said this to himself, he still could not credit the hope for a moment:  a strange shivering shot through his soul; unable to utter a word, he gazed upon the sweet speaker with a fixed eye.  She shook her head in distress, sighed from her full heart, and then proceeded in the following manner:-

“We should be far superior to you, who are another race of the human family,—­for we also call ourselves human beings, as we resemble them in form and features—­had we not one evil peculiar to ourselves.  Both we and the beings I have mentioned as inhabiting the other elements vanish into air at death and go out of existence, spirit and body, so that no vestige of us remains; and when you hereafter awake to a purer state of being, we shall remain where sand, and sparks, and wind, and waves remain.  Thus we have no souls; the element moves us, and, again, is obedient to our will, while we live, though it scatters us like dust when we die; and as we have nothing to trouble us, we are as merry as nightingales, little gold-fishes, and other pretty children of nature.

“But all beings aspire to rise in the scale of existence higher than they are.  It was therefore the wish of my father, who is a powerful water-prince in the Mediterranean Sea, that his only daughter should become possessed of a soul, although she should have to endure many of the sufferings of those who share that gift.