Through one of these doorways I was conducted into a chamber fitted up with an oriental splendour; the walls were tesselated with spars, and metals, and uncut jewels; cushions and divans abounded; apertures as for windows but unglazed, were made in the chamber opening to the floor; and as I passed along I observed that these openings led into spacious balconies, and commanded views of the illumined landscape without.  In cages suspended from the ceiling there were birds of strange form and bright plumage, which at our entrance set up a chorus of song, modulated into tune as is that of our piping bullfinches.  A delicious fragrance, from censers of gold elaborately sculptured, filled the air.  Several automata, like the one I had seen, stood dumb and motionless by the walls.  The stranger placed me beside him on a divan and again spoke to me, and again I spoke, but without the least advance towards understanding each other.

But now I began to feel the effects of the blow I had received from the splinters of the falling rock more acutely that I had done at first.

There came over me a sense of sickly faintness, accompanied with acute, lancinating pains in the head and neck.  I sank back on the seat and strove in vain to stifle a groan.  On this the child, who had hitherto seemed to eye me with distrust or dislike, knelt by my side to support me; taking one of my hands in both his own, he approached his lips to my forehead, breathing on it softly.  In a few moments my pain ceased; a drowsy, heavy calm crept over me; I fell asleep.

How long I remained in this state I know not, but when I woke I felt perfectly restored.  My eyes opened upon a group of silent forms, seated around me in the gravity and quietude of Orientals—­all more or less like the first stranger; the same mantling wings, the same fashion of garment, the same sphinx-like faces, with the deep dark eyes and red man’s colour; above all, the same type of race—­race akin to man’s, but infinitely stronger of form and grandeur of aspect—­and inspiring the same unutterable feeling of dread.  Yet each countenance was mild and tranquil, and even kindly in expression.  And, strangely enough, it seemed to me that in this very calm and benignity consisted the secret of the dread which the countenances inspired.  They seemed as void of the lines and shadows which care and sorrow, and passion and sin, leave upon the faces of men, as are the faces of sculptured gods, or as, in the eyes of Christian mourners, seem the peaceful brows of the dead.

I felt a warm hand on my shoulder; it was the child’s.  In his eyes there was a sort of lofty pity and tenderness, such as that with which we may gaze on some suffering bird or butterfly.  I shrank from that touch—­I shrank from that eye.  I was vaguely impressed with a belief that, had he so pleased, that child could have killed me as easily as a man can kill a bird or a butterfly.  The child seemed pained at