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Having looked for a moment through a very ordinary telescope indeed, he said to King Loc: "King Loc, he for whom you search is with the nixies in their palace of crystal, from which none ever return, and whose iridescent walls adjoin your kingdom." "Is he there?" cried the king, "Let him stay!" and he rubbed his hands. "I wish him joy."
It was thus the fountains were dancing to the moon in Arabia; it was thus the Nixies shook their white limbs on the haunted banks of the Rhine; it was thus the fairy women flashed their alabaster feet on the fairy hills of Connemara; it was thus the Houris were dancing for Mahomet on the palace floors of Paradise. "It was over such dancing," I said, "that John the Baptist lost his head."
Why performed in such a solitude, and by what class of choristers, were questions which the terrified imagination of the adept, stirred with all the German superstitions of nixies, oak-kings, wer-wolves, hobgoblins, black spirits and white, blue spirits and grey, durst not even attempt to solve. Another of his senses was soon engaged in the investigation.
Soon he saw that the blue flames flickered over the white faces of women, beautiful faces rising on the crests of the waves and crowned with sea-weeds and sea-shells, with sea-green tresses floating over their shoulders and veils flowing from under their breasts that shimmered with pearls. The child recognised the nixies and tried to flee.
All was silent: no living creature stirred; only the sunbeams fell athwart the lake, and little cascades of water fell over the surface of the rock. "I have seen the nixies of the pool," thought the young man, who was the son of a rich peasant farmer in the village. "Surely that means that I shall die ere long.
Wonderful fairy creatures, nixies and gnomes and goblins arrived every minute as guests for the castle. The hare came in quite breathless with a basket which he delivered up to an attendant, saying: "Eggs for His Majesty." The fox from Fuchstanz seemed to feel himself very important; he swaggered about, knocking people with his bushy tail.
While the former were drawn mostly from his own full and eventful life, the latter were fairy stories, pure and simple, sometimes already well known, sometimes made up, wherein fairies, ghosts, elves, gnomes, goblins and dragons, will-o'-the-wisps, nixies, kelpies and dwarfs disported themselves. Christmas was approaching, and the next day, Christmas-eve, the tree was to be lighted.
As Hermann opened the door for them, he saw a little dwarf with a lighted lantern waiting for them outside the door, and much as he wished to accompany them home, he did not dare to do so. When they had left the room, a storm of conjecture burst forth; at last everyone agreed that they must be the nixies of the lake.
The sober, enlightened age protested against the old folk-tales with goblins, gnomes, elves, and other kindred sprites, but, to make up for it, thousands of living caricatures played in their own rooms the part of goblins and gnomes, and lady shepherdesses appropriated the roles of the elves, nixies, and nymphs.
When I first knew him he was full of the poetry of his mother-land; his talk was of fjords and glaciers, of firs and birches, of hulders and nixies, of housemen and gaardsmen; but he was glad to be here, and I think he never regretted that he had cast his lot with us. Always, of course, he had the deepest interest in his country and countrymen.
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