As through the hard rock go the branching silver veins; as into the
solid land run the creeks and gulfs from the unresting sea; as the
lights and influences of the upper worlds sink silently through
the earth's atmosphere; so doth Faerie invade the world of men, and
sometimes startle the common eye with an association as of cause and
effect, when between the two no connecting links can be traced.

Cosmo von Wehrstahl was a student at the University of Prague. Though
of a noble family, he was poor, and prided himself upon the independence
that poverty gives; for what will not a man pride himself upon, when he
cannot get rid of it? A favourite with his fellow students, he yet had
no companions; and none of them had ever crossed the threshold of his
lodging in the top of one of the highest houses in the old town. Indeed,
the secret of much of that complaisance which recommended him to his
fellows, was the thought of his unknown retreat, whither in the evening
he could betake himself and indulge undisturbed in his own studies and
reveries. These studies, besides those subjects necessary to his course
at the University, embraced some less commonly known and approved;
for in a secret drawer lay the works of Albertus Magnus and Cornelius
Agrippa, along with others less read and more abstruse. As yet, however,
he had followed these researches only from curiosity, and had turned
them to no practical purpose.