Heiligenstern smiled. “That, your Highness, is a vision of the prince’s own future, when, restored to health, he is able to disport himself with his playmates in the gardens of the palace.”
“But they were not the gardens of the palace!” the little boy exclaimed.
“They were much more beautiful than our gardens.”
Heiligenstern bowed. “They appeared so to your Highness,” he deferentially suggested, “because all the world seems more beautiful to those who have regained their health.”
“Enough, my son!” exclaimed the Duchess with a shaken voice. “Why will you weary the child?” she continued, turning to the Duke; and the latter, with evident reluctance, signed to Heiligenstern to cover the crystal. To the general surprise, however, Prince Ferrante pushed back the black velvet covering which the Georgian boy was preparing to throw over it.
“No, no,” he exclaimed, in the high obstinate voice of the spoiled child, “let me look again…let me see some more beautiful things…I have never seen anything so beautiful, even in my sleep!” It was the plaintive cry of the child whose happiest hours are those spent in unconsciousness.
“Look again, then,” said the Duke, “and ask the heavenly powers what more they have to show you.”
The boy gazed in silence; then he broke out: “Ah, now we are in the palace…I see your Highness’s cabinet…no, it is the bedchamber…it is night…and I see your Highness lying asleep…very still…very still…your Highness wears the scapular received last Easter from his Holiness…It is very dark…Oh, now a light begins to shine…where does it come from? Through the door? No, there is no door on that side of the room…It shines through the wall at the foot of the bed…ah! I see”—his voice mounted to a cry—“The old picture at the foot of the bed…the picture with the wicked people burning in it…has opened like a door…the light is shining through it…and now a lady steps out from the wall behind the picture…oh, so beautiful…she has yellow hair, as yellow as my mother’s…but longer…oh, much longer…she carries a rose in her hand…and there are white doves flying about her shoulders…she is naked, quite naked, poor lady! but she does not seem to mind…she seems to be laughing about it…and your Highness…”
The Duke started up violently. “Enough—enough!” he stammered. “The fever is on the child…this agitation is…most pernicious…Cover the crystal, I say!”
He sank back, his forehead damp with perspiration. In an instant the crystal had been removed, and Prince Ferrante carried back to his mother’s side. The boy seemed in nowise affected by his father’s commotion. His eyes burned with excitement, and he sat up eagerly, as though not to miss a detail of what was going forward. Maria Clementina leaned over and clasped his hand, but he hardly noticed her. “I want to see some more beautiful things!” he insisted.
The Duke sat speechless, a fallen heap in his chair, and the courtiers looked at each other, their faces shifting spectrally in the faint light, like phantom travellers waiting to be ferried across some mysterious river. At length Heiligenstern advanced and with every mark of deference addressed himself to the Duke.
“Your Highness,” said he quietly, “need be under no apprehension as to the effect produced upon the prince. The magic crystal, as your Highness is aware, is under the protection of the blessed spirits, and its revelations cannot harm those who are pure-minded enough to receive them. But the chief purpose of this assemblage was to witness the communication of vital force to the prince, by means of the electrical current. The crystal, by revealing its secrets to the prince, has testified to his perfect purity of mind, and thus declared him to be in a peculiarly fit state to receive what may be designated as the Sacrament of the new faith.”
A murmur ran through the room, but Heiligenstern continued without wavering: “I mean thereby to describe that natural religion which, by instructing its adepts in the use of the hidden potencies of earth and air, testifies afresh to the power of the unseen Maker of the Universe.”
The murmur subsided, and the Duke, regaining his voice, said with an assumption of authority: “Let the treatment begin.”
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 fireflies 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 seaweed on the lift of the tide.
He stood spellbound, 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,
