Almost with a cry of apprehension I perceived again the solitary Prince.  But he merely smiled faintly.  “You see, sir,” he said, “how weary must a guardianship be of them who never tire.  The snow falls, and the bright light falls on all these faces; yet not even my Lady Melancholy stirs a dark lid.  And all these dog-days—­” He glanced at his motionless hounds.  They raised languidly their narrow heads, whimpering softly, as if beseeching of their master that long-delayed supper—­haplessly me.  “No, no, sirs,” said the Prince, as if he had read their desire as easily as he whom it so much concerned.  “Guard, guard, and hearken.  This gentleman is not the Prince we await, Sallow; not the Prince, Safte!  And now, sir,”—­he turned again to me—­“there is yet one other sleeper—­she who hath brought so much quietude on a festive house.”

We climbed the staircase where dim light lay so invitingly, and came presently to a little darker chamber.  Green, blunt things had pushed and burst through the casement.  The air smelled faintly-sour of brier, and was as still as boughs of snow.  There the not-unhappy Princess reclined before a looking-glass, whither I suppose she had run to view her own alarm when the sharp needle pierced her thumb.  All alarm was stilled now on her face.  She, one might think, of all that company of the sleepy, was the only one that dreamed.  Her youthful lips lay a little asunder; the heavy beauty of her hair was parted on her forehead; her childish hands sidled together like leverets in her lap.  “Why!” I cried aloud, almost involuntarily, “she breathes!”

And at sound of my voice the hounds leapt back; and, on a traveller’s oath, I verily believe, once, and how swiftly, and how fearfully and brightly, those childish lids unsealed their light as of lilac that lay behind, glanced briefly, fleetingly, on one who had ventured so far, and fell again to rest.

“And when,” I cried harshly, “when will that laggard burst through this agelong silence?  Here’s dust enough for all to see.  And all this ruin, this inhospitable peace!”

Prince Ennui glanced strangely at me.

“I assure you, O suddenly enkindled,” he said in his suave, monotonous voice, “it is not for my indifference he does not come.  I would willingly sleep; these—­my dear sister, all these old fineries and love-jinglers would as fain wake.”  He turned away his treacherous eyes from me.  “Maybe the Lorelei hath snared him!...” he said, smiling.

I relished not at all the thought of sleeping in this mansion of sleep.  Yet it seemed politic to refrain from giving offence to fangs apparently so eager to take it.  Accordingly I followed this Ennui to a loftier chamber yet that he suggested for me.

Once there, however, and his soft footfall passed away, I looked about me, first to find a means for keeping trespassers from coming in, and next to find a means for getting myself out.

It was a long and arduous, but not a perilous, descent from the window by the thick-grown greenery that cumbered the walls.  But I determined to wait awhile before venturing,—­wait, too, till I could see plainly where Rosinante had made her night-quarters.  By good fortune I discovered her beneath the greenish moon that hung amid mist above the forest, stretching a disconsolate neck at the waterside as if in search of the Lorelei.