The three floors of the enormous house represented the upper, the middle, and the lower world.
The first floor was submarine and subterranean; cool, dimly-illuminated grottoes, some in basaltic, columnar rock, some in emerald-glowing stalactite, invited all the fantastic creatures of the sea, both fabled and real, who were promenading about on the floor of the deep, to a sweet, life-long siesta in their softly-gleaming recesses. On the second floor luxuriant equatorial palm-groves grew in startling proximity to the snow-laden pines of the North, and a heterogeneous assembly of all nations and ages poured through the resplendent avenues, chatting and playing pranks on each other with Teutonic good humor.
“Let us go to Olympus,” said King Gunther, who was drifting with his snow-maiden through the motley throng. “I may never have another chance of getting there,” he added jocosely.
“I am afraid I should not feel at home there,” answered the daughter of the Rhine; “you know I belong properly to the lower regions.”
“Then let us go to the lower regions,” retorted the king, gayly. “You needn’t go in search of the Elysian Fields; you carry them with you wherever you go.”
“Beware, your Majesty,” murmured the water-nymph, threateningly. “You are defying Fate. Creatures of my kind are dangerous to trifle with.”
“It is you who are trifling, not I,” he burst forth; “with me the joke has long ago become serious.”
He felt her arm trembling where it touched his; under the black fringe of her mask he saw her lips quiver, and her eyes shone with a strange, moist radiance. The crowd of gay maskers surged about them and the music whirled away over their heads unheeded, and broke in showers of rippling sound.
“Listen to me,” he whispered boldly, stooping to her level—but in the same moment a heavy hand was laid upon his neck and a burly, gray-bearded Jupiter stood before him with a great train of Olympian attendants.
“I love the daughters of this green earth,” said the king of the gods; “or I should say the green daughters of this black earth,” he corrected himself, touching with a caressing hand the green sea-weeds of the swan maiden’s drapery.