And now the Emperor was well-nigh ten years nearer to the gates of death than when the Sleeping Beauty had been brought to his court.  The love of beauty was nearly quenched in him, but the longing for life grew more intense.  He became angry with the sleeper, that she awakened not, and with his little remaining strength smote her fiercely on the cheeks, but she gave no sign of reviving.  Remembering that if he gained the potion of immortality he would himself be plunged into a trance, he made all preparations for the interregnum.  He decreed that he was to be seated erect on his throne, with all his imperial insignia, and it was to be death to any one who should presume to remove any of them.  His slumbering figure was to preside at all councils, and to be consulted in every act of state, and all ministers and officers were to do homage daily.  The revived Sleeping Beauty was to partake of the draught anew, at the same time and in the same manner as himself, that she might awake with him, and that he might find her charms unimpaired.  All the ministers swore solemnly to observe these regulations; firmly purposing to burn the sleeper, if sleep he ever did, at the very first opportunity, and scatter his ashes to the winds.  Then they would fight for the Empire among themselves; each, meanwhile, was mainly occupied in striving to gain the rebels over to his interest, insomuch that the people grew more miserable day by day.

And as the aged Emperor waxed more and more feeble, he began to see visions.  Legions of little black imps surrounded him crying, “We are thy sins, and would be punished—­would’st thou by living for ever deprive us of our due?” And fair female forms came veiled with drooping heads, and murmured, “We are thy virtues, and would be rewarded—­would’st thou cheat us?” And other figures came, dark but lovely, and whispered, “We are thy dead friends who have long waited for thee—­would’st thou take to thyself new friends, and forget us?” And others said, “We are thy memories—­wilt thou live on till we are all withered in thy heart?” And others said, “We are thy strength and thy beauty, thy memory and thy wit—­canst thou live, knowing thou wilt never see us more?” And at last came two warders, officers of the King of Death, and one of them was laughing.  And the other asked why he laughed, and he replied: 

“I laugh at the Emperor, who thinks to escape our master, not knowing that the moment of his decease was engraved with a pen of iron upon a rock of adamant a million million years or ever this world was.”

“And when comes it?” asked the other.

“In ten minutes,” said the first.

When the Emperor heard this he was wild with terror, and tottered to the couch on which the Sleeping Beauty lay.  “Oh, awake!” he cried, “awake and save me ere it is too late!” And, oh wonder! the sleeper stirred, and opened her eyes.

If she had been so beautiful while sleeping, what was she when awake!  But the love of life had overcome the love of beauty in the Emperor’s bosom, and he saw not the eyes like stars, and the bloom as of peaches and lilies, or the aspect grand and smiling as daybreak.  He could only cry, “Give me the potion, lest I die, give me the potion!”