Seite 3.)

A heavy stone slab was turned and then lifted. She did not understand why. She saw an opening
that led into the depths below. The strangers stepped down, leaving the starlit air and the cheerful
life of the upper world behind them.

"I am afraid," said one of the women who stood around, to her husband, "I cannot venture to go
down, nor do I care for the wonders down yonder. You had better stay here with me."

"Indeed, and travel home," said the man, "and quit Paris without having seen the most wonderful
thing of all- the real wonder of the present period, created by the power and resolution of one
man!"

"I will not go down for all that," was the reply.

"The wonder of the present time," it had been called. The Dryad had heard and had understood it.
The goal of her ardent longing had thus been reached, and here was the entrance to it. Down into
the depths below Paris? She had not thought of such a thing; but now she heard it said, and saw
the strangers descending, and went after them.

The staircase was of cast iron, spiral, broad and easy. Below there burned a lamp, and farther
down, another. They stood in a labyrinth of endless halls and arched passages, all communicating
with each other. All the streets and lanes of Paris were to be seen here again, as in a dim reflection.
The names were painted up; and every, house above had its number down here also, and struck
its roots under the macadamized quays of a broad canal, in which the muddy water flowed onward.
Over it the fresh streaming water was carried on arches; and quite at the top hung the tangled net
of gas-pipes and telegraph-wires.

In the distance lamps gleamed, like a reflection from the world-city above. Every now and then a
dull rumbling was heard. This came from the heavy wagons rolling over the entrance bridges.

Whither had the Dryad come?

You have, no doubt, heard of the CATACOMBS? Now they are vanishing points in that new
underground world- that wonder of the present day- the sewers of Paris. The Dryad was there, and
not in the world's Exhibition in the Champ de Mars.

She heard exclamations of wonder and admiration.

"From here go forth health and life for thousands upon thousands up yonder! Our time is the time
of progress, with its manifold blessings."

Such was the opinion and the speech of men; but not of those creatures who had been born here,
and who built and dwelt here- of the rats, namely, who were squeaking to one another in the clefts
of a crumbling wall, quite plainly, and in a way the Dryad understood well.

A big old Father-Rat, with his tail bitten off, was relieving his feelings in loud squeaks; and his
family gave their tribute of concurrence to every word he said:

"I am disgusted with this man-mewing," he cried- "with these outbursts of ignorance. A fine
magnificence, truly! all made up of gas and petroleum! I can't eat such stuff as that. Everything
here is so fine and bright now, that one's ashamed of one's self, without exactly knowing why. Ah,
if we only lived in the days of tallow candles! and it does not lie so very far behind us. That was a
romantic time, as one may say."

"What are you talking of there?" asked the Dryad. "I have never seen you before. What is it you
are talking about?"

"Of the glorious days that are gone," said the Rat- "of the happy time of our great-grandfathers
and great-grandmothers. Then it was a great thing to get down here. That was a rat's nest quite
different from Paris. Mother Plague used to live here then; she killed people, but never rats.
Robbers and smugglers could breathe freely here. Here was the meeting-place of the most
interesting personages, whom one now only gets to see in the theatres where they act melodrama,
up above. The time of romance is gone even in our rat's nest; and here also fresh air and petroleum
have broken in."

Thus squeaked the Rat; he squeaked in honor of the old time, when Mother Plague was still alive.

A carriage stopped, a kind of open omnibus, drawn by swift horses. The company mounted and
drove away along the Boulevard de Sebastopol, that is to say, the underground boulevard, over
which the well-known crowded street of that name extended.

The carriage disappeared in the twilight; the Dryad disappeared, lifted to the cheerful freshness
above. Here, and not below in the vaulted passages, filled with heavy air, the wonder work must
be found which she was to seek in her short lifetime. It must gleam brighter than all the gas-flames,
stronger than the moon that was just gliding past.

Yes, certainly, she saw it yonder in the distance, it gleamed before her, and twinkled and glittered
like the evening star in the sky.

She saw a glittering portal open, that led to a little garden, where all was brightness and dance
music. Colored lamps surrounded little lakes, in which were water-plants of colored metal, from
whose flowers jets of water spurted up. Beautiful weeping willows, real products of spring, hung
their fresh branches over these lakes like a fresh, green, transparent, and yet screening veil. In the
bushes burnt an open fire, throwing a red twilight over the quiet huts of branches, into which the
sounds of music penetrated- an ear tickling, intoxicating music, that sent the blood coursing
through the veins.

Beautiful girls in festive attire, with pleasant smiles on their lips, and the light spirit of youth in
their hearts- "Marys," with roses in their hair, but without carriage and postilion- flitted to and fro
in the wild dance.

Where were the heads, where the feet? As if stung by tarantulas, they sprang, laughed, rejoiced,
as if in their ecstacies they were going to embrace all the world.

The Dryad felt herself torn with them into the whirl of the dance. Round her delicate foot clung the
silken boot, chestnut brown in color, like the ribbon that floated from her hair down upon her bare
shoulders. The green silk dress waved in large folds, but did not entirely hide the pretty foot and
ankle.

Had she come to the enchanted Garden of Armida? What was the name of the place?

The name glittered in gas-jets over the entrance. It was "Mabille."

The soaring upwards of rockets, the splashing of fountains, and the popping of champagne corks
accompanied the wild bacchantic dance. Over the whole glided the moon through the air, clear, but
with a somewhat crooked face.

A wild joviality seemed to rush through the Dryad, as though she were intoxicated with opium.
Her eyes spoke, her lips spoke, but the sound of violins and of flutes drowned the sound of her
voice. Her partner whispered words to her which she did not understand, nor do we understand
them. He stretched out his arms to draw her to him, but he embraced only the empty air.

The Dryad had been carried away, like a rose-leaf on the wind. Before her she saw a flame in the
air, a flashing light high up on a tower. The beacon light shone from the goal of her longing, shone
from the red lighthouse tower of the Fata Morgana of the Champ de Mars. Thither she was carried
by the wind. She circled round the tower; the workmen thought it was a butterfly that had come
too early, and that now sank down dying. The moon shone bright, gas-lamps spread light around, through the
halls, over the all-world's
buildings scattered about, over the rose-hills and the rocks produced by human ingenuity, from
which waterfalls, driven by the power of "Master Bloodless," fell down. The caverns of the sea,
the depths of the lakes, the kingdom of the fishes were opened here. Men walked as in the depths
of the deep pond, and held converse with the sea, in the diving-bell of glass. The water pressed
against the strong glass walls above and on every side. The polypi, eel-like living creatures, had
fastened themselves to the bottom, and stretched out arms, fathoms long, for prey. A big turbot
was making himself broad in front, quietly enough, but not without casting some suspicious
glances aside. A crab clambered over him, looking like a gigantic spider, while the shrimps
wandered about in restless haste, like the butterflies and moths of the sea.

In the fresh water grew water-lilies, nymphaea, and reeds; the gold-fishes stood up below in rank
and file, all turning their heads one way, that the streaming water might flow into their mouths. Fat
carps stared at the glass wall with stupid eyes. They knew that they were here to be exhibited, and
that they had made the somewhat toilsome journey hither in tubs filled with water; and they
thought with dismay of the land-sickness from which they had suffered so cruelly on the railway.

They had come to see the Exhibition, and now contemplated it from their fresh or salt-water
position. They looked attentively at the crowds of people who passed by them early and late. All
the nations in the world, they thought, had made an exhibition of their inhabitants, for the
edification of the soles and haddocks, pike and carp, that they might give their opinions upon the
different kinds.

"Those are scaly animals" said a little slimy Whiting. "They put on different scales two or three
times a day, and they emit sounds which they call speaking. We don't put on scales, and we make
ourselves understood in an easier way, simply by twitching the corners of our mouths and staring
with our eyes. We have a great many advantages over mankind."

"But they have learned swimming of us," remarked a well-educated Codling. "You must know I
come from the great sea outside. In the hot time of the year the people yonder go into the water;
first they take off their scales, and then they swim. They have learnt from the frogs to kick out with
their hind legs, and row with their fore paws. But they cannot hold out long. They want to be like
us, but they cannot come up to us. Poor people!"

And the fishes stared. They thought that the whole swarm of people whom they had seen in the
bright daylight were still moving around them; they were certain they still saw the same forms that
had first caught their attention.

A pretty Barbel, with spotted skin, and an enviably round back, declared that the "human fry"
were still there.

"I can see a well set-up human figure quite well," said the Barbel. "She was called 'contumacious
lady,' or something of that kind. She had a mouth and staring eyes, like ours, and a great balloon at
the back of her head, and something like a shut-up umbrella in front; there were a lot of dangling
bits of seaweed hanging about her. She ought to take all the rubbish off, and go as we do; then
she would look something like a respectable barbel, so far as it is possible for a person to look like
one!"

"What's become of that one whom they drew away with the hook? He sat on a wheel-chair, and
had paper, and pen, and ink, and wrote down everything. They called him a 'writer.'"

"They're going about with him still," said a hoary old maid of a Carp, who carried her misfortune
about with her, so that she was quite hoarse. In her youth she had once swallowed a hook, and
still swam patiently about with it in her gullet. "A writer? That means, as we fishes describe it, a
kind of cuttle or ink-fish among men."

Thus the fishes gossipped in their own way; but in the artificial water-grotto the laborers were
busy; who were obliged to take advantage of the hours of night to get their work done by
daybreak. They accompanied with blows of their hammers and with songs the parting words of the
vanishing Dryad.

"So, at any rate, I have seen you, you pretty gold-fishes," she said. "Yes, I know you;" and she
waved her hand to them. "I have known about you a long time in my home; the swallow told me
about you. How beautiful you are! how delicate and shining! I should like to kiss every one of
you. You others, also. I know you all; but you do not know me."

The fishes stared out into the twilight. They did not understand a word of it.

The Dryad was there no longer. She had been a long time in the open air, where the different
countries- the country of black bread, the codfish coast, the kingdom of Russia leather, and the
banks of eau-de-Cologne, and the gardens of rose oil- exhaled their perfumes from the
world-wonder flower.

When, after a night at a ball, we drive home half asleep and half awake, the melodies still sound
plainly in our ears; we hear them, and could sing them all from memory. When the eye of the
murdered man closes, the picture of what it saw last clings to it for a time like a photographic
picture.

So it was likewise here. The bustling life of day had not yet disappeared in the quiet night. The
Dryad had seen it; she knew, thus it will be repeated tomorrow.

The Dryad stood among the fragrant roses, and thought she knew them, and had seen them in her
own home. She also saw red pomegranate flowers, like those that little Mary had worn in her dark
hair.

Remembrances from the home of her childhood flashed through her thoughts; her eyes eagerly
drank in the prospect around, and feverish restlessness chased her through the wonder-filled
halls.

A weariness that increased continually, took possession of her. She felt a longing to rest on the
soft Oriental carpets within, or to lean against the weeping willow without by the clear water. But
for the ephemeral fly there was no rest. In a few moments the day had completed its circle.

Her thoughts trembled, her limbs trembled, she sank down on the grass by the bubbling water.

"Thou wilt ever spring living from the earth," she said mournfully. "Moisten my tongue- bring me
a refreshing draught."

"I am no living water," was the answer. "I only spring upward when the machine wills it."

"Give me something of thy freshness, thou green grass," implored the Dryad; "give me one of thy
fragrant flowers."

"We must die if we are torn from our stalks," replied the Flowers and the Grass.

"Give me a kiss, thou fresh stream of air- only a single life-kiss."

"Soon the sun will kiss the clouds red," answered the Wind; "then thou wilt be among the dead-
blown away, as all the splendor here will be blown away before the year shall have ended. Then I
can play again with the light loose sand on the place here, and whirl the dust over the land and
through the air. All is dust!"

The Dryad felt a terror like a woman who has cut asunder her pulse-artery in the bath, but is filled
again with the love of life, even while she is bleeding to death. She raised herself, tottere

Zu Seite 2

Zur Seite 4