if your wings, like those of Icarus, melt before the sun, we
are here to ease your fall." He then said something in Arabic to Ali,
who made a sign of obedience and withdrew, but not to any distance. As
to Franz a strange transformation had taken place in him. All the bodily
fatigue of the day, all the preoccupation of mind which the events of
the evening had brought on, disappeared as they do at the first approach
of sleep, when we are still sufficiently conscious to be aware of the
coming of slumber. His body seemed to acquire an airy lightness, his
perception brightened in a remarkable manner, his senses seemed to
redouble their power, the horizon continued to expand; but it was not
the gloomy horizon of vague alarms, and which he had seen before he
slept, but a blue, transparent, unbounded horizon, with all the blue of
the ocean, all the spangles of the sun, all the perfumes of the summer
breeze; then, in the midst of the songs of his sailors,--songs so clear
and sonorous, that they would have made a divine harmony had their notes
been taken down,--he saw the Island of Monte Cristo, no longer as a
threatening rock in the midst of the waves, but as an oasis in the
desert; then, as his boat drew nearer, the songs became louder, for an
enchanting and mysterious harmony rose to heaven, as if some Loreley had
decreed to attract a soul thither, or Amphion, the enchanter, intended
there to build a city.

At length the boat touched the shore, but without effort, without shock,
as lips touch lips; and he entered the grotto amidst continued strains
of most delicious melody. He descended, or rather seemed to descend,
several steps, inhaling the fresh and balmy air, like that which may be
supposed to reign around the grotto of Circe, formed from such perfumes
as set the mind a dreaming, and such fires as burn the very senses; and
he saw again all he had seen before his sleep, from Sinbad, his singular
host, to Ali, the mute attendant; then all seemed to fade away and
become confused before his eyes, like the last shadows of the magic
lantern before it is extinguished, and he was again in the chamber of
statues, lighted only by one of those pale and antique lamps which watch
in the dead of the night over the sleep of pleasure. They were the
same statues, rich in form, in attraction, and poesy, with eyes of
fascination, smiles of love, and bright and flowing hair. They were
Phryne, Cleopatra, Messalina, those three celebrated cour