swarming mysteries of these
thick woods lurked in his brain? As for his hounds, theirs was the
same stealth, the same symmetry, the same cold, secret unhumanity as
his. Creatures begotten of moonlight on silence they seemed to me,
with instincts past my workaday wits to conceive.

And Rosinante! I laughed softly to think of her staid bones beside the
phantom creature this prince had called up to me at mention of
"Twilight."

I ate because I was ravenously hungry, but also because, while eating,
I was better at my ease.

Suddenly out of the stillness, like an arrow, Safte was gone; and far
away beneath the motionless leaves a faint voice rang dwindling into
silence. I shuddered at my probable fate.

Prince Ennui glanced lightly. "When the magic horn at last resounds,"
he said, "how strange a flight it will be! These thorny briers
encroach ever nearer on my palace walls. I am a captive ever less at
ease. Summer by summer the sun rises shorn yet closer of his beams,
and now the lingering transit of the moon is but from one wood by a
narrow crystal arch to another. They will have me yet, sir. How weary
will the sleepy ones be of my uneasy footfall!"

And even as Safte slipped softly back to his watching mate, the patter
and shrill menace of voices behind him hinted not all was concord
between these hidden multitudes and their unseemly prince.

The master-stars shone earlier here; already sparkling above the tower
was a canopy of clearest darkness spread, while the leafy fringes of
the sky glowed yet with changing fires.

We returned to the lawns before the palace porch, and, with his
lantern in his hand, the Prince signed to me to go in. I was not a
little curious to view that enchanted household of which I had read so
often and with so much delight as a child.

In the banqueting-hall only the matted windows were visible in the
lofty walls. Prince Ennui held his lantern on high, and by its flame,
and the faint light that flowed in from above, I could presently see,
distinct in gloom, as many sleepers as even Night could desire.

Here they reclined just as sorcerous sleep had overtaken them. But how
dimmed, how fallen! For Time that could not change the sleeper had
changed with quiet skill all else. Tarnished, dusty, withered,
overtaken, yellowed, and confounded lay banquet and cloth-of-gold,
flagon, cup, fine linen, table, and stool. But in all the ruin, like
buds of springtime in a bare wood, or jewels in ashes,