Here and there, in the damp low grounds, half choked with ore and slag of various kinds, dark reeds are growing in the shape of lizards; like lizards they bend backwards, moving their heads from side to side and showing thus the diamond eye which shines brilliantly at the extreme end.
These dark depths seem to teem with fantastic creatures; close by a heap of grains of gold, stands immovable a watchful, silent guardian, a griffin; a pack of black dogs, also guardians of the treasures hid in this world of precious metals and stones, are roaming incessantly along the ceiling. On the sloping sides, dwarfs not larger than grasshoppers, and jumping about like peas in the sieve of the winnower, are gathering right and left the tiny gold and silver spangles which are left at their disposal, while enormous toads are posted about as watchmen.
Finally, far back in the remotest part of these abysses the kings of this empire are moving about; these thick-set men, with stout limbs and monstrous heads, are the Gnomes.
But people hardly believe in Gnomes any longer; the hard-working miners who ought to come every day in contact with them, deny their existence, and they have gradually passed into the class of fabulous beings.
Still, I am told that as recently as last year, a pretty peasant girl from the neighborhood of Hamburg appeared on a certain evening at a ball, with a large ruby on her finger. She professed to have received this gem from an Earth Spirit, who had appeared to her at the entrance to the Faunus mines.
The gossips of the village were not satisfied, however, with the account, and suspected the Gnome to have been an English Gnome, who was travelling abroad for his health and courting pretty girls for his amusement. This conviction was so strong that the poor girl had to leave the country in disgrace.
This is the last Gnome that has been mentioned in that part of Germany.
