Page:The Quest Volume 11 (1919-20).djvu/548

 It appeared from these memoirs that my grandfather was a member of a society called the 'Philadelphians,' an order claiming that its roots go back to ancient Egypt and hailing as its founder the legendary Hermes Trismegistus. Even the secret grips and signs of recognition were given. The name of Johann Hermann Obereit frequently occurred. He was a chemist and' apparently an intimate friend of my grandfather's; indeed he seemed to have lived in the same house with him at Runkel. I wished naturally to learn more about the life of my extraordinary ancestor and about that hidden world-renouncing philosophy the spirit of which spoke out of every line he had written. I accordingly decided to go to Runkel to find out whether by chance any descendants of Obereit were still there and if they had any family records.

One can scarcely imagine anything more dream-like than this tiny little town of Runkel, slumbering away in spite of the screams and cries of Time, like some forgotten relic of the Middle Ages, with its crooked streets and passages, silent as the dead, and grass-grown, rugged cobble-stones, beneath the shadow of the ancient rock-built castle of Runkelstein, the ancestral seat of the Princes of Wied.

The very first morning after my arrival I felt myself irresistibly drawn to the little churchyard. There the days of my youth woke again to memory, as I stepped from one flower-carpeted mound to another in the sweet sunshine and read mechanically from the stones the names of those who slumbered beneath. Already from afar I recognized my grandfather's with its glittering mystic inscription. But on drawing near I found I was no longer alone.

An old white-haired, clean-shaven man of