he limbs."

Cyprian pocketed his manuscript, and said, with a smile:

"My dear friends, you know my little peculiarity. When I get a little
annoyed, because some fault is found with any of my feeble efforts,
this is merely because I am so well aware how thoroughly the censure is
deserved, and how much my productions merit it. Do not let us say
another word on the subject of this story of mine."

After this the friends went back to the subject of Vincent, and his
bent towards the marvellous. Cyprian's view was, that such a bent must
of necessity be inherent in all poetic temperaments, and that this was
why Jean Paul has said so many magnificent things on the subject of
mesmerism, that a whole universe of hostile doubt would sink into
insignificance in comparison with them; that poetical persons are the
pet children of Nature, and that it is silly to suppose she can be
displeased when those darlings of hers try to discover secrets which
she has shrouded with her veil--as a fond mother hides from her
children some valuable gift, only that she may afford them the greater
pleasure by disclosing it to them.

"But, to speak practically," said Cyprian, "and this principally to
please you, Ottmar: who that has looked carefully into the history of
the human race--can have failed to be struck by the circumstance that,
as soon as some disease makes its appearance like a ravening monster,
Nature herself comes to the front with the weapons necessary to
vanquish it; and, as soon as it has been overcome, another monster
makes its appearance, with fresh powers of destruction; and new
weapons are discovered again? And so goes on the everlasting contest
which is a condition of the process of life--of the organic structure
of the entire world. How if, in these times, when everything is
spiritualized--when the interior relationship, the mysterious
interdependence and interplay of the physical and psychical principles,
are coming more and more clearly and importantly into evidence; when
every bodily malady is found to have its corresponding expression in
the psychic organism--how, I say, if mesmerism were the weapon--forged
in the spirit--which Nature herself presents to us, as the means of
combatting the evil which is located in the spirit?"

"Stay, stay!" cried Lothair, "where are we getting to? We have talked
far too much already on a subject which must always remain a foreign
province for us; in which we can, at most, pluck for poet