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The next scene is the triumph of M. Gunsbourg, though for it he is indebted to Miss Loie Fuller and the inventor of the aerial ballet. In the conceit of Berlioz, Faust lies asleep on the bushy banks of the Elbe. Mephistopheles summons gnomes and sylphs to fill his mind with lovely fancies.
And what you say makes me think that there may have been some metallurgistic and gold-working Gnomes among the Sylphs who joined themselves in love with the daughters of men. The Gnomes, and that is a fact, occupied themselves willingly with the goldsmith's art, and it is probable that those ingenious demons forged the bracelets you believe to have been of Phoenician manufacture.
Water-nymphs, sea-sprites, and earth-goblins, undines, gnomes, and sylphs dwelt there as sentinels of a sacred trust, and Eline was content to go. “For,” she said, “the secret vault of the sacred name yet stands intact until these same faithless ones shall come again, purified by many wanderings and trials, and shall again guard that new-old temple with me. That time they shall not fail!”
In mediæval literature, these earth-spirits are often called gnomes, while the water-spirits are spoken of as ûndinés, the air-spirits as sylphs, and the ether-spirits as salamanders.
"A naiad queen might bathe her feet before you; but I " She ceased speaking, and a deep blush suffused her cheeks. "Ah! then you know something about the naiads, my child?" "Yes, and about the sylphs, too," replied Nanna, nodding her head, proud at having an opportunity of displaying her knowledge before one whom, besides her father, was the only person that she had ever cared to interest.
There is a gush of entrancing melody; there is an oppressive sense of strange sweet odor, there is a dream like intermingling to the eye of tall slender Eastern trees bosky shrubberies flocks of golden and crimson birds lily-fringed lakes meadows of violets, tulips, poppies, hyacinths, and tuberoses long intertangled lines of silver streamlets and, upspringing confusedly from amid all, a mass of semi-Gothic, semi-Saracenic architecture sustaining itself by miracle in mid-air, glittering in the red sunlight with a hundred oriels, minarets, and pinnacles; and seeming the phantom handiwork, conjointly, of the Sylphs, of the Fairies, of the Genii and of the Gnomes.
Besides the sylphs, gnomes, undines, and salamanders, he acknowledged various ranks and orders of demons. He pretended to invisibility and absolute chastity. He also said that, if it pleased him, he could abstain for years from meat and drink, and all the necessities of the body. It is needless, however, to pursue his follies any further.
I now comprehended how it was that the Count de Gabalis peopled his mystic world with sylphs, beautiful beings whose breath of life was lambent fire, and who sported forever in regions of purest ether and purest light. The Rosicrucian had anticipated the wonder that I had practically realized. How long this worship of my strange divinity went on thus I scarcely know. I lost all note of time.
Her name was Selina, which gives the tale a modern aspect, and makes us wonder if the old tradition can have been modified by some report of Undine's story. There was an idea set forth by the Rosicrucians of spirits abiding in the elements, and as Undine represented the water influences, Fouque's wife, the Baroness Caroline, wrote a fairly pretty story on the sylphs of fire.
A marriage should be royal and chimerical; it should promenade its ceremony from the cathedral of Rheims to the pagoda of Chanteloup. I have a horror of a paltry wedding. Ventregoulette! be in Olympus for that one day, at least. Be one of the gods. Ah! people might be sylphs. Games and Laughter, argiraspides; they are stupids.
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