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 of having thoughtlessly betrayed his brother to ruin should be a thing of the past!  But when she perceived that he purposed involving his father in the Magian’s snares by calling up his mother’s Manes, she could no longer be silent, and she broke out with indignant warning:  “Leave my father alone, Philip!  For all you saw at the Magian’s was mere trickery.”

“Gently, child,” said the philosopher, in a superior tone.  “I was of exactly the same opinion till after sundown yesterday.  You know that the tendency of the school of philosophy to which I belong insists, above all, on a suspension of judgment; but if there is one thing which may be asserted with any dogmatic certainty—­”

But Melissa would hear no more.  She briefly but clearly explained to him who the maiden was whose hand he had held by the lake, and whom he had seen again at Serapion’s house; and as she went on his interruptions became fewer.  She did her utmost, with growing zeal, to destroy his luckless dream; but when the blood faded altogether from his colorless cheeks, and he clasped his hand over his brow as if to control some physical suffering, she recovered her self-command; the beautiful fear of a woman’s heart of ever giving useless pain, made her withhold from Philip what remained to be told of Agatha’s meeting with Alexander.