"At present, my brother gnomes, we have a great work before us; our
wants must be satisfied, and we must adopt the means to satisfy them. We
thirst for blood, and we must have it. This fool loves to feast his eyes
upon gold, and gold he shall see by the stratum. He but barters his
blood for gold, after the fashion of his own vile race. What else can he
expect from us? "It is not often, my friends, that we have a feast of blood. Only now
and then when some stray traveller falls into a crevice or impudently
approaches too near to the craters of Vesuvius and Etna, till he gets
suffocated by the fumes and falls senseless into our maws. "Happily for us, we are not so constituted as to need sustenance to the
extent of those gross gormandisers of the upper world who, would you
believe it, my comrades, find it necessary to devour food three or four
times a day. "Ah! well you may open your august eyes at the mention of a vice so
brutally preposterous. Thus it is to be sons of clay. We, who are more
finely organised beings, of an essence more ethereal, are content to
allow ages to pass before we indulge our appetites with a full meal; yet
we, too, my brethren, need sustenance sometimes. "Again we are suffering from the pangs of hunger, and we must be
satisfied. Patience, my fellow sages and students of those sublime and
abstruse sciences ignored by the gross intellects of our reptile
neighbours, patience, for to-morrow I bring you a feast of blood. I have
brought you blood before, and I will do so again. It is for this that I
have taken upon me the base form of one of the vilest among their own
vile race. "My own comely shape by which I am known here below is ill-suited to
brook the atmosphere of the surface world; therefore, partly to excite
compassion, and consequently disarm suspicion, I have adopted a
loathsome disguise, through which even ye, my friends, would fail to
recognise me. At this moment, while I am speaking, the filthy clay that
for your sakes I shall don to-morrow lies in the chamber of the victim. "I am so far able to free myself from it as to speak with you in the
spirit, but I much fear that the sympathy which to some extent must
exist between my spirit and the fulsome mask that awaits me in the world
above, may so influence the organs of the foul body as to cause it to
correspond audibly to the voice of my spirit, and so alarm the victim in
whose chamber it sleeps, and scare him into flight. "Therefore my discourse must be brief. There is no time to be lost. At
once ye must commence to stir up the internal fires in this earth's
centre, and cause a powerful earthquake. The external crust which these
mortals inhabit must crack and gape into chasms. I will lead him into
the mountains to-morrow when he will be your prey; till then, farewell." No sooner had the orator concluded his harangue than I began to feel a
curious sensation. It was as if the floor on which I had been lying were
lifted up under me, and I felt myself rolling from side to side, much in
the same manner as if I were at sea. This motion continued and
increased, and was accompanied by a low rumbling sound. After a time
this grew louder, and I heard an explosion, and then a heavy crash, as
if the mountains were being riven asunder, and were now toppling
headlong into the valleys, sweeping away whole villages with a force
inconceivable. The whole châlet rocked like an open boat in a storm. I was panic
struck, and trembled in every limb. It was then really true all that I
had seen and heard; it was no disordered dream. The gnomes were really
at work. Louder and louder grew the rumbling. Crash followed upon crash. All the
inmates of the châlet were aroused, and screams of women and children
resounded from every quarter. I sprang to my feet, hurriedly donned my
coat and boots, and rushed out of the hut, but my fiendish companion was
at my heels. Upon gaining the outside of the cottage I found the face of the country
much changed. Huge crags had been loosened, and tumbled quite close to
us. Many châlets had been completely crushed under them, and as far as
the eye could see all was one scene of desolation. The terror and the consternation of my poor hostess was pitiable. She
gathered her children together as a hen gathers her chickens under her
wings, and remained stupefied with despair. As for myself, having escaped the danger of being crushed alive, my only
thought now was to escape my tormentor in the best way I could. The
earthquake was at an end, so I strode on in the direction I had followed
on the previous day, taking advantage of the momentary absence of the
dwarf, who had entered the hut for some purpose or other, and imagined
for a moment that I should not be overtaken. Alas! vain hope; hardly had
I proceeded for ten minutes, when I heard steps behind me, and lo! there
was the hideous elf running after me on all fours, his physical
conformation rendering this mode of progression the easiest. I started,
and my blood ran cold. "What do you want?" I asked, angrily, still striding on. But it was useless. Raising himself on his short legs, he beckoned to
me, and I immediately felt myself spellbound. "Follow me," he signed with a gesture. "I do not want a guide," I replied. "I am neither in search of crystals,
fossils, nor of shining stones; no, nor even of gold." "Never mind," he seemed to say; "come all the same; I will show you what
the earthquake has done." "I am much obliged to you; but I have seen enough of the earthquake, and
I repeat I do not want a guide." "I do not want your money; I will follow you for friendship," he
appeared to say. "Not even for friendship," I said; "I prefer to walk alone." "What!" he intimated, "when you can get a companion for nothing?" "Don't you see, my good man," said I, "that your presence is a bore to
me--that I'd rather be alone?" "Nevertheless, yesterday evening you were glad enough of a guide, and I
asked you for no reward for my trouble," he seemed to say with his eye. "It is false," I replied; "I did not want a guide. I could have found
the hut myself." "That is ungrateful," he said, in his dumb manner. "Did you not ask me?" "If I asked you," I replied, "I did so for the sake of not passing you
without a word; besides, I offered you money, and you refused it. I
won't be under any obligation to you," said I. "Here, take your nuggets;
I want them not," and I threw them at him. "I'll have nothing to do with
one who feigns to be dumb in the daytime, and yet can talk well enough
at night." The crêtin gazed scrutinisingly at me for some time, as much as to say,
"Ha! ha! my friend, you have overheard my discourse. I thought as much,
but no matter; escape me if you can." He then walked rapidly on in front of me with his short legs, every now
and then beckoning to me with his long arms, and I immediately felt
myself impelled by a power not my own, and found myself forced to follow
the wretch in spite of all my efforts.