but the
necessary clothing of a dry scientific subject, meant to make it
palatable to your silly, ignorant audience, and to raise in their
minds a wish to seek further, so that they might in so seeking acquire
a taste for knowledge. I do not want to seek, I believe implicitly all
you said; but of this world of wonder and miracles I would know more.
How far does it go? What more do you see, for the magician must know
everything?"

The young countess looked into Ivan's eyes as she spoke with a strange
magnetic power impossible to resist. Such a look as this had often
dazzled men's brains.

"You said, also," continued Angela, "how fiery and strong are those
who live in this magnetic kingdom, but that they have no credit for
the virtues they possess; it is due to the working of magnetism. I
believe this also. Magnetism has, however, two poles, the north and
the south pole. I have read that the opposite poles are drawn to one
another, and the homogeneous drift asunder. If, therefore, in the
magnetic kingdom hearts are drawn to one another, seek one another,
love one another, which is an immutable fact, so also is it an
immutable fact that there must be human beings who hate one another
with an undying, a deadly hatred, and that such hatred is no sin. Am I
not right?"

Ivan felt that he was driven into a corner; he understood the drift of
the countess's question. Here his knowledge of natural philosophy came
to his assistance.

"It is true," he said, "that so far as life upon the earth is in
question, there must also exist antipathies and sympathies. You have
studied magnetism, you have read of the poles, therefore you must know
that there exists an equator, or line, which is neither north nor
south. This is the magnetic equator, that neither draws the magnet nor
repulses it, and here there is perfect peace. Just such an equator is
found in every human heart, and however a man may be carried away by
the passions of love or hatred, his line remains unchangeable, and
those who dwell there dwell in peace."

"And who are the people who live under the magnetic equator?" asked
the countess, with curiosity.

"For example, parents and their children should dwell there."

The young girl's face was covered with a vivid blush; her beautiful
eyes shot a battery of lightning glances at Ivan, who remained quite
unmoved under this battery.

"We must talk more of this," she said, with sudden dignity.

Ivan bowed before the haug