“When the ceremony was over, Franz, who was indifferent to his defeat, went to the chapel of the palace, and lighting a candle, walked up into the organ loft.  There he played to himself another song, a hymn he had composed in honour of Princess Kunigmunde.  It was filled with rapture and a breathless wonder, and in it his inmost soul spoke its unuttered love.  He had not sung this song in public, it was too sacred.  As he played and sang to himself in a low voice he was aware of a soft footstep.  He started and looked round, and there was the Princess, bright in silk and jewels, with a pink rose in her powdered hair.  She took this rose and laid it lightly on the black keys.

“‘That is the prize,’ she said.  ’You won it, and I want to thank you.  I never knew music could be so beautiful.’

“Franz looked at her, and said ‘Thank you.’  He had risen from his seat and was about to go, but the light of his candle caught Princess Kunigmunde’s brown eyes (which were wet with tears), and something rose like fire in his breast and made him forget his bashfulness, his respect, and his sense of decorum.

“‘Come with me,’ he said, in a broken voice.  ’Let us fly from this Court to the hills and be happy.’

“But the Princess shook her head sadly, and said:  ’Alas!  It is impossible.  I am betrothed to the King of the Two Sicilies.’

“Then Franz mastered himself once more, and said:  ’Of course, it is impossible.  I was mad.’

“The Princess kissed her hand to him and fled.

“At that moment Franz heard a noise in the nave of the chapel; he looked over the gallery of the organ loft, and saw sidling away in the darkness the dim figure of a deformed man.

“That night Princess Kunigmunde had a strange dream.  She thought she was transported into a beautiful southern country where the azure sky seemed to scintillate with the dust of myriads and myriads of diamonds, and to sparkle with sunlight like dancing wine.  The low blue hills were bare and sparsely clothed with delicate trees, and the fields, sprinkled with innumerable red, yellow, white and purple flowers, were bright as fabulous Persian carpets.  On a grassy knoll before her the rosy columns of a temple shone in the gleaming dust of the atmosphere.  Beside her there was a running stream, on the bank of which grew a bay-tree.  There was a chirping of grasshoppers in the air, a noise of bees, and a delicious warm smell of burnt grass and thyme and mint.

“Near the stream a man was standing; he was an ordinary man, and yet he seemed to tower above the landscape without being unusually tall; his hair was bright as gold, and his eyes, more lustrous still, reflected the silvery blue sky and shone like opals.  In his hands he held a golden lyre, and around him a warm golden cloud seemed to rise, on a transparent aura of light, like the glow of the sunset.  In front of him there stood a creature of the woods, a satyr, with pointed ears, cloven hoofs, and human eyes, in his hairy hands holding a flute made out of a reed.