Cornelia regarded him with wondering eyes, her shrewd intellect had already deciphered the enigma, but her eyes still looked doubtful.
"Who are you?" she asked.
The stranger covered his blushing face with both hands and sobbed forth:
"A woman, an unhappy woman, who loves, who is beside herself, who is ready to die for him she loves."
CHAPTER IX.
THE PLAGUE.
There is a mighty Potentate among us here below, the secrets of whose existence are still unknown to our wise men, although they have a lot to tell us about her power; a Potentate whom they have not yet taught us to fear, or else everybody would not still be turning to her full of hope.
This Potentate is not Hell, but the Earth.
Yes, the good, the blessed, the peaceful Earth. She is not violent like the other elements, fire, water, and air. She calmly allows herself to be trampled underfoot; lets us make great wounds in her; lets us load her broad back with cities and towns; crush her bones by driving deep mining-shafts into her—and for all that she allows us who plague her so, to live and multiply in the midst of her dust.