they had for
you. While you listened to the stories of yonder slaves, that were only
fictions invented by another, did you also use your imagination? You
did not remain in spirit with the objects around you, nor were you
engrossed by your every-day thoughts: no, you experienced in your own
person all that was told; it was you yourself to whom this and that
adventure occurred, so strongly were you interested in the hero of the
tale. Thus your spirit raised itself, on the thread of such a story,
over and away from the present, which does not appear so fair or have
such charms for you. Thus this spirit moved about, free and unconfined
in a strange and higher atmosphere; fiction became reality to you--or,
if you prefer, reality became fiction--because your imagination and
being were absorbed into fiction."

"I do not quite comprehend you," returned the young merchant; "but you
are right in saying that we live in fiction, or fiction lives in us. I
remember clearly that beautiful time when we had nothing to do. Waking,
we dreamed; we pretended that we were wrecked on desert islands, and
took counsel with one another as to what we should do to prolong our
lives; and often we built ourselves huts in a willow copse, made scanty
meals of miserable fruits, although we could have procured the very
best at the house not a hundred paces distant; yes, there were even
times when we waited for the appearance of a kind fairy, or a wonderful
dwarf, who should step up to us and say: 'The earth is about to
open--will it please you to descend with me down to my palace of
rock-crystal, and take your choice of what my servants, the baboons,
can serve up?'"

The young men laughed, but confessed to their friend that he had spoken
truth. "To this day," continued another, "this enchantment creeps over
me now and then. I became, for instance, somewhat vexed at the stupid
fable with which my brother would come rushing up to the door: 'Have
you heard of the misfortune of our neighbor, the stout baker? He had
dealings with a magician, who, out of revenge, transformed him into a
bear, and now he lies within his chamber growling fearfully.' I would
get angry, and call him a liar. But what a different aspect the case
took on when I was told that the stout neighbor had made a journey into
a far-distant and unknown land, and there fell into the hands of a
magician who transformed him into a bear! I would after a while find
myself absorbed in the story;