Death drew closer to him, stooped and pressed a kiss on his brow, and
led him away with easy grace.

Although he seemed to see the coffin of the murdered Mother ever winding
on before him, the young man accompanied the Monarch. His arm trembled
with the quick beating of his boiling blood as it lay on the hard one of
the Autocrat, who, thunder as he might to the bowing throng prostrating
themselves before him, continued to speak in soft tones and with a
noble, courteous air to his present companion. He spoke of the past, he
uttered without trembling even the name of the murdered Mother, as if
her assassination did not weigh upon his conscience. He did not seem to
have the least doubt that she was really dead, vanished forever from the
face of the earth. He artfully pointed out to the young man another
immense future,[10] graven, as he said, in the Book of Fate. He painted
it in the most alluring colors, awakening his young desires for its
attainment; he spared no promises, and as if he held himself to be one
of God's prophets, he parodied inspiration. The unhappy young man turned
his eyes toward the ground, away from the handsome face, as though it
had been that of Antichrist. Each word of the Tempter fell like a drop
of poison on his heart, engendering and hatching the worms within. They
walked together through the long ranges of apartments, the close ranks
of men prostrating themselves as they passed, until they struck with
their foreheads the malachites wrought into the tessellated floor.

When they arrived at the other end of the Palace, the gates of bronze
upon the order of the Master were suddenly thrown open, while the mass
behind, lifting their heads from the ground, looked enviously after
them.

'Behold, this is my Treasury,' said the Monarch. 'Look, and have faith
in the extent of my power!'

The young man looked before him. He was standing at the portals of deep
mines of wealth, endlessly extended. Alas! the glowing splendor from the
hills and valleys burned into the blue eyes of the young man; his pupils
rapidly absorbed the molten torrents of gold and silver; circles of
light from amethyst, opal, and emerald, bent like rainbows round the
azure orbs. The subterranean flames roared and crackled; the hills were
shaken to their centre; the caves were heaving in their depths, and
fresh, glittering, golden, diamantine lumps came ever gushing from the
fused and seething mass.

But strange sounds were ever and