At this Melissa took courage; she turned to Serapion and modestly addressed him: 

“You, sir, look like a grave, kind man, and seem to have a regard for my brother.  You, then, will help us, no doubt, to cure him of an illusion which troubles us.  A dead girl, he says, met him, and he touched her hand.”

“And do you, sweet child, think that impossible?” the Magian asked with gentle gravity.  “Have the thousands who bring not merely fruit and wine and money for their dead, but who even burn a black sheep for them—­you, perhaps, have done the same—­have they, I ask, done this so long in vain?  I can not believe it.  Nay, I know from the ghosts themselves that this gives them pleasure; so they must have the organs of sense.”

“That we may rejoice departed souls by food and drink,” said Melissa, eagerly, “and that daimons at times mingle with the living, every one of course, believes; but who ever heard that warm blood stirred in them?  And how can it be possible that they should remunerate a service with money, which certainly was not coined in their airy realm, but in the mint here?”

“Not too fast, fair maid,” replied the Magian, raising a warning hand.  “There is no form which these intermediate beings can not assume.  They have the control of all and everything which mortals may use, so the soul of Korinna revisiting these scenes may quite well have paid the ferryman with an obolus.”

“Then you know of it?” asked Melissa in surprise; but the Magian broke in, saying: 

“Few such things remain hidden from him who knows, not even the smallest, if he strives after such knowledge.”

As he spoke he gave the girl such a look as made her eyelids fall, and he went on with greater warmth:  “There would be fewer tears shed by death-beds, my child, if we could but show the world the means by which the initiated hold converse with the souls of the dead.”

Melissa shook her pretty head sadly, and the Magian kindly stroked her waving hair; then, looking her straight in the eyes, he said:  “The dead live.  What once has been can never cease to be, any more than out of nothing can anything come.  It is so simple; and so, too, are the workings of magic, which amaze you so much.  What you call magic, when I practice it, Eros, the great god of love, has wrought a thousand times in your breast.  When your heart leaps at your brother’s caress, when the god’s arrow pierces you, and the glance of a lover fills you with gladness, when the sweet harmonies of fine music wrap your soul above this earth, or the wail of a child moves you to compassion, you have felt the magic power stirring in your own soul.  You feel it when some mysterious power, without any will of your own, prompts you to some act, be it what it may.  And, besides all this, if a leaf flutters off the table without being touched by any visible hand, you do not doubt that a draught of air, which you can neither hear nor see, has swept through the