Page:The Quest Volume 13 (1921-22).djvu/105

 fragments—probably crumbs of white bread—into the little lake. As Dr. Haselmayer observed I had seen them do it, he said quickly: "We are only feeding the moon—pardon, I meant the swan." But there was no swan either near or far in the neighbourhood; nor were there any fish.

What I was forced to overhear that night seemed to be mysteriously connected with the incident. Therefore I took great pains to impress every word on my memory and wrote it all down immediately afterwards.

On another occasion I was lying awake in my bedroom when I heard in the adjoining library, which was never entered at other times, his lordship's voice making the following elaborate speech:

"After what we have just observed in the water, my dear and highly esteemed Doctor, I should be very much mistaken indeed if all should not be perfectly in order for our cause. Evidently the old Rosicrucian sentence post centum viginti annos patebo (that is 'in a hundred and twenty years I shall be revealed') is to be explained entirely according to our expectations. Indeed this is what I should call a joyful secular recurrence of the great solstitium. We can confidently state that already in the last quarter of the past 19th century mechanics have been quickly and surely gaining an ever increasing ascendancy over mankind. But if things continue at this pace, as we have every right to expect, in the 20th century men will scarcely have time left to catch a glimpse of daylight because of all the trouble of cleaning, polishing, keeping in repair and eventually renewing the many and manifold and always multiplying machines.

"Even to-day we might rightly say that machinery