I then understood who he was. Well, in what humour must a poor
mountain sprite be, who only comes up every hundred years to see how
things go forward here on the earth!

It was the mountain sprite and no other, for in our time every
intelligent person is considerably wiser; and I looked with a sort of
proud feeling on the present generation, on the gushing, rushing,
whirling wheel, the heavy blows of the hammer, the shears that cut so
softly through the metal plates, the thick iron bars that were broken
like sticks of sealing-wax, and the music to which the heart's
pulsations vibrate: "Banco, Banco, a hundred thousand Banco!" and all
by steam--by mind and spirit.

It was evening. I stood on the heights of Trollhätta's old sluices,
and saw the ships with outspread sails glide away through the meadows
like spectres, large and white. The sluice gates were opened with a
ponderous and crashing sound, like that related of the copper gates of
the secret council in Germany. The evening was so still that
Trollhätta's Fall was as audible in the deep stillness, as if it were
a chorus from a hundred water-mills--ever one and the same tone. In
one, however, there sounded a mightier crash that seemed to pass sheer
through the earth; and yet with all this the endless silence of nature
was felt. Suddenly a large bird flew out from the trees, far in the
forest, down towards the Falls. Was it the mountain sprite?--We will
imagine so, for it is the most interesting fancy.