Volume 2 — SECTION EIGHT.

SECTION EIGHT.

The Serapion Brethren had assembled for another meeting.

"I must be greatly mistaken," said Lothair, "and be anything but the possessor of a native genius (supplemented by assiduous practice) for physiognomy--such as I believe that I do possess, if I do not read very distinctly in the face of every one of us (not excepting my own, which I see magically gleaming at me in yonder mirror), that our minds are all fully charged with matter of importance, and only waiting for the word of command to fire it off. I am rather afraid that more than one of us may have got shut up in one or other of his productions one of those eccentric little firework devils which may come fizzling out, dart backwards and forwards about the room, banging and jumping, and not manage to pop out of the window until it has managed to give us all a good singeing. I even dread a continuation of our last conversation, and may Saint Serapion avert that from us! But lest we should fall immediately into those wild, seething waters, and that we may commence our meeting in a duly calm and rational frame of mind, I move that Sylvester begins by reading to us that story which we could not hear on the last occasion because there was no time left."

This proposal was unanimously agreed to.

"The woof which I have spun," said Sylvester, producing a manuscript, "is composed of many threads, of the most various shades, and the question in my mind is whether--on the whole--you will think it has proper colour and keeping. It was my idea that I should, perhaps, put some flesh and blood into what I must admit, is a rather feeble body, by contributing to it something out of a great, mysterious period--to which it really does but serve as a sort of framework."

Sylvester read:--