“Thou blessed babe!”

CHAPTER III.  HOMUNCULUS.

After all, a journey up the Rhine, in the mists and solitude of December, is not so unpleasant as the reader may perhaps imagine.  You have the whole road and river to yourself.  Nobody is on the wing; hardly a single traveller.  The ruins are the same; and the river, and the outlines of the hills; and there are few living figures in the landscape to wake you from your musings, distract your thoughts, and cover you with dust.

Thus, likewise, thought our traveller, as he continued his journey on the morrow.  The day is overcast, and the clouds threaten rain or snow.  Why does he stop at the little village of Capellen?  Because, right above him on the high cliff, the glorious ruin of Stolzenfels is looking at him with itshollow eyes, and beckoning to him with its gigantic finger, as if to say; “Come up hither, and I will tell thee an old tale.”  Therefore he alights, and goes up the narrow village lane, and up the stone steps, and up the steep pathway, and throws himself into the arms of that ancient ruin, and holds his breath, to hear the quick footsteps of the falling snow, like the footsteps of angels descending upon earth.  And that ancient ruin speaks to him with its hollow voice, and says;

“Beware of dreams!  Beware of the illusions of fancy!  Beware of the solemn deceivings of thy vast desires!  Beneath me flows the Rhine, and, like the stream of Time, it flows amid the ruins of the Past.  I see myself therein, and I know that I am old.  Thou, too, shalt be old.  Be wise in season.  Like the stream of thy life, runs the stream beneath us.  Down from the distant Alps,—­out into the wide world, it bursts away, like a youth from the house of his fathers.  Broad-breasted and strong, and with earnest endeavours, like manhood, it makes itself a way through these difficultmountain passes.  And at length, in its old age, its stops, and its steps are weary and slow, and it sinks into the sand, and, through its grave, passes into the great ocean, which is its eternity.  Thus shall it be with thee.

“In ancient times there dwelt within these halls a follower of Jesus of Jerusalem,—­an Archbishop in the church of Christ.  He gave himself up to dreams; to the illusions of fancy; to the vast desires of the human soul.  He sought after the impossible.  He sought after the Elixir of Life,—­the Philosopher’s Stone.  The wealth, that should have fed the poor, was melted in his crucibles.  Within these walls the Eagle of the clouds sucked the blood of the Red Lion, and received the spiritual Love of the Green Dragon, but alas! was childless.  In solitude and utter silence did the disciple of the Hermetic Philosophy toil from day to day, from night to night.  From the place where thou standest, he gazed at evening upon hills, and vales, and waters spread beneath him; and saw how the setting sun had changed them allto gold, by an alchymy more cunning