Mary.  But are not these groups of crystals, rather than one crystal?

L. What do you mean by a group, and what by one crystal?

Dora (audibly aside, to Mary, who is brought to pause).  You know you are never expected to answer, Mary.

L. I’m sure this is easy enough.  What do you mean by a group of people?

Mary.  Three or four together, or a good many together, like the caps in these crystals.

L. But when a great many persons get together they don’t take the shape of one person?

(Mary still at pause.)

Isabel.  No, because they can’t; but you know the crystals can; so why shouldn’t they?

L. Well, they don’t; that is to say, they don’t always, nor even often.  Look here, Isabel.

Isabel.  What a nasty ugly thing!

L. I’m glad you think it so ugly.  Yet it is made of beautiful crystals; they are a little gray and cold in color, but most of them are clear.

Isabel.  But they’re in such horrid, horrid disorder!

L. Yes; all disorder is horrid, when it is among things that are naturally orderly.  Some little girls’ rooms are naturally orderly, I suppose; or I don’t know how they could live in them, if they cry out so when they only see quartz crystals in confusion.

Isabel.  Oh! but how come they to be like that?

L. You may well ask.  And yet you will always hear people talking, as if they thought order more wonderful than disorder!  It is wonderful—­as we have seen; but to me, as to you, child, the supremely wonderful thing is that nature should ever be ruinous or wasteful, or deathful!  I look at this wild piece of crystallization with endless astonishment.

Mary.  Where does it come from?

L. The Tete Noire of Chamonix.  What makes it more strange is that it should be in a vein of fine quartz.  If it were in a mouldering rock, it would be natural enough; but in the midst of so fine substance, here are the crystals tossed in a heap; some large, myriads small (almost as small as dust), tumbling over each other like a terrified crowd, and glued together by the sides, and edges, and backs, and heads; some warped, and some pushed out and in, and all spoiled, and each spoiling the rest.

Mary.  And how flat they all are!

L. Yes; that’s the fashion at the Tete Noire.

Mary.  But surely this is ruin, not caprice?

L. I believe it is in great part misfortune; and we will examine these crystal troubles in next lecture.  But if you want to see the gracefullest and happiest caprices of which dust is capable, you must go to the Hartz; not that I ever mean to go there myself, for I want to retain the romantic feeling about the name; and I have done myself some harm already by seeing the monotonous and heavy form of the Brocken from the suburbs of Brunswick.  But whether the