Heiligenstern immediately spoke a word to the Oriental, who bent over the metal bed which had been set up in the middle of the room.  As he did so the air again darkened and the figures of the magician and his assistants were discernible only as flitting shades in the obscurity.  Suddenly a soft pure light overflowed the room, the perfume of flowers filled the air, and music seemed to steal out of the very walls.  Heiligenstern whispered to the governor and between them they lifted the little prince from his chair and laid him gently on the bed.  The magician then leaned over the boy with a slow weaving motion of the hands.

“If your Highness will be pleased to sleep,” he said, “I promise your Highness the most beautiful dreams.”

The boy smiled back at him and he continued to bend above the bed with flitting hands.  Suddenly the little prince began to laugh.

“What does your Highness feel?” the magician asked.

“A prickling...such a soft warm prickling...as if my blood were sunshine with motes dancing in it...or as if that sparkling wine of France were running all over my body.”

“It is an agreeable sensation, your Highness?”

The boy nodded.

“It is well with your Highness?”

“Very well.”

Heiligenstern began a loud rhythmic chant, and gradually the air darkened, but with the mild dimness of a summer twilight, through which sparks could be seen flickering like fire-flies about the reclining prince.  The hush grew deeper; but in the stillness Odo became aware of some unseen influence that seemed to envelope him in waves of exquisite sensation.  It was as though the vast silence of the night had poured into the room and, like a dark tepid sea, was lapping about his body and rising to his lips.  His thoughts, dissolved into emotion, seemed to waver and float on the stillness like sea-weed on the lift of the tide.  He stood spell-bound, lulled, yielding himself to a blissful dissolution.

Suddenly he became aware that the hush was too intense, too complete; and a moment later, as though stretched to the cracking-point, it burst terrifically into sound.  A huge uproar shook the room, crashing through it like a tangible mass.  The sparks whirled in a menacing dance round the little prince’s body, and, abruptly blotted, left a deeper darkness, in which the confused herding movements of startled figures were indistinguishably merged.  A flash of silence followed; then the liberated forces of the night broke in rain and thunder on the rocking walls of the room.

“Light—­light!” some one stammered; and at the same moment a door was flung open, admitting a burst of candle-light and a group of figures in ecclesiastical dress, against which the white gown and black hood of Father Ignazio detached themselves.  The Dominican stepped toward the Duke.

“Your Highness,” said he in a tone of quiet resolution, “must pardon this interruption; I act at the bidding of the Holy Office.”