“I perceive that these people speak a language different from our own. They are spirits of sound, and express their thoughts in music. What they mean to say is that they are peaceable, if we let them alone, but that they have the power to defend themselves if we trouble them.”
“Prove it,” I involuntarily exclaimed, for I had adopted instinctively the habit of the princess, who wanted proofs for everything.
“It is not a matter for proving, but of understanding,” answered Cravatu.
“But how are we going to reply?” I asked. “Where can we find a dictionary of music, and who is going to compose the music, or fiddle it to them?”
Upon this Cravatu said:
“The language of music used to be known to us as the music of nature. In olden times the gnomes could understand it and speak it, and required no dictionary for its interpretation, because their simple minds understood that simple language. But now we gnomes have become so learned and scientific, and our minds so complicated, that it is possible for hardly anyone to understand a simple thing, or to express himself in a simple manner. Fortunately, I still find some knowledge of music in my rapidly fading memory, but I cannot answer in music. However, I know the language of flowers, and this is also an universal and natural language, somewhat akin to music, and, if I am not mistaken, these spirits will understand it.”
This ingenuity of Cravatu pleased me very much. He was in fact still sound at heart, one of the brightest of the gnomes, and in spite of the progress of civilisation, in the midst of which he moved, he had still a certain amount of perception of truth, although on that very account he was much exposed to the ridicule of the scientists and made a target for their wit, because they did not believe in such a thing as intuition, and said that nobody could know anything except by way of information, inference, and by a trained imagination.
Cravatu now called some of the Acthnici, who, by the mysterious power which they possess, can create visible objects out of the invisible images existing everywhere in the astral light, and ordered them to produce a White Rose. This they did, and caused it to float slowly up through the hole.
“What does this signify?” I asked, and Cravatu answered—
“The White Rose asks: ‘May I approach you?’”