"I know it, my son; I penetrate thy soul, and I know that thou thirstest. Therefore I am here to quench thy thirst, and feed thy hungry heart." He remained standing upon the grass-plot, which he had reached by lonely paths, and which was encircled by trees and bushes. Not a sound interrupted the peaceful morning stillness of the place, except the distant music of the departing regiments dying away on the air. "I will teach thee to live in eternity!" resumed the Italian, solemnly. "My predecessor the apostle, George Schrepfer, has initiated thee in temporal life, and the knowledge of the present. By the pistol-shot, which disclosed to him the invisible world, and removed him from our earthly eyes, has he to thee, his most faithful and believing disciple, given the great doctrine of the decay of all things earthly, and prepared thee for the doctrine of the imperishableness of the celestial. The original of humanity sends me, to make known to thee this holy doctrine. When I met thee in Dresden, at the side of the Countess Dorothea von Medem, thee, whom I had never seen, I recognized by the blue flame which trembled above thy head, and which was nothing else than the soul of thy teacher, Schrepfer, wrestling in anguish, which has remained with thee, and hopes for delivery from thee. I greeted thee, therefore, not as a stranger but as a friend. No one called thy name, and yet it was known to me. I took thee by the hand, greeting thee. Hans Rudolph von Bischofswerder, be welcome. The blue flame which glows upon thy brow, guides me to thee, and the pistol-shot under the oaks centuries old, at Rosenthal, near Leipsic, was the summons which my spirit received among the pyramids of Egypt, and which recalled me to Europe, to my own, and thou art one of them."[Footnote: George Schrepfer, the founder of the Secret Free Mason Lodge (at the same time proprietor of a restaurant and a conjuror), invited his intimate disciples and believers in the year 1774, to whom Bischofswerder belonged, to meet him at Rosenthal, near Leipsic. He assembled them around him, beneath some old oaks, to take leave of them, as now he would render himself in the invisible realm, whence, as a spirit, he would distribute to some of his disciples gold, to others wisdom. He then commanded them to conceal their faces and pray. The praying ones suddenly heard a loud report, and, as they looked up Schrepfer fell dead. He had shot himself with a pistol.]
"And as thou spakest, oh master, I recognized thee, and I called--'