When they had gone Mr Norrell rose wearily from his seat and took up a book that he had brought with him. He opened it at a place he had marked with a folded letter and placed it upon a little table so that it would be to hand if he needed to consult it. Then he began to recite a spell.

It took effect almost immediately because suddenly there was something green where nothing green had been before and a fresh, sweet smell as of woods and fields wafted through the room. Mr Norrell stopped speaking.

Someone was standing in the middle of the room: a tall, handsome person with pale, perfect skin and an immense amount of hair, as pale and shining as thistle-down. His cold, blue eyes glittered and he had long dark eye-brows, which terminated in an upward flourish. He was dressed exactly like any other gentleman, except that his coat was of the brightest green imaginable – the colour of leaves in early summer.

“O Lar!” began Mr Norrell in a quavering voice. “O Lar! Magnum opus est mihi tuo auxilio. Haec virgo mortua est et familia eius eam ad vitam redire vult.”¹ Mr Norrell pointed to the figure on the bed.

At the sight of Miss Wintertowne the gentleman with the thistledown hair suddenly became very excited. He spread wide his hands in a gesture of surprized delight and began to speak Latin very rapidly. Mr Norrell, who was more accustomed to seeing Latin written down or printed in books, found that he could not follow the language when it was spoken so fast, though he did recognize a few words here and there, words such as “formosa” and “venusta” which are descriptive of feminine beauty.

Mr Norrell waited until the gentleman’s rapture had subsided and then he directed the gentleman’s attention to the mirror above the mantelpiece. A vision appeared of Miss Wintertowne walking along a narrow rocky path, through a mountainous and gloomy landscape. “Ecce mortua inter terram et caelum!” declared Mr Norrell. “Scito igitur, O Lar, me ad hanc magnam operam te elegisse quia …”²

“Yes, yes!” cried the gentleman suddenly breaking into English. “You elected to summon me because my genius for magic exceeds that of all the rest of my race. Because I have been the servant and confidential friend of Thomas Godbless, Ralph Stokesey, Martin Pale and of the Raven King. Because I am valorous, chivalrous, generous and as handsome as the day is long! That is all quite understood! It would have been madness to summon anyone else! We both know who I am. The question is: who in the world are you?”

“I?” said Mr Norrell, startled. “I am the greatest magician of the Age!”

The gentleman raised one perfect eye-brow as if to say he was surprized to hear it. He walked around Mr Norrell slowly, considering him from every angle. Then, most disconcerting of all, he plucked Mr Norrell’s wig from his head and looked underneath, as if Mr Norrell were a cooking pot on the fire and he wished to know what was for dinner.