in modern mythology, or Hoffman's tales. I should choose to be a gnome.
J. That choice savors of the pride that apes humility.
M. By no means; the gnomes are the most important of all the elemental tribes. Is it not they who make the money?
J. And are accordingly a dark, mean, scoffing, ——
M. You talk as if you had always lived in that wild unprofitable element you are so fond of, where all things glitter, and nothing is gold; all show and no substance. My people work in the secret, and their works praise them in the open light; they remain in the dark because only there such marvels could be bred. You call them mean. They do not spend their energies on their own growth, or their own play, but to feed the veins of mother earth with permanent splendors, very different from what she shows on the surface.
Think of passing a life, not merely in heaping together, but making gold. Of all dreams, that of the alchymist is the most poetical, for he looked at the finest symbol. Gold, says one of our friends, is the hidden light of the earth, it crowns the mineral, as wine the vegetable order, being the last expression of vital energy.
J. Have you paid for your passage?
M. Yes! and in gold, not in shells or pebbles.
J. No really wise gnome would scoff at the water, the beautiful water. “The spirit of man is like the water.”
