mblance to the king
himself, that Louis fancied he was looking at his own face reflected in
a mirror; with the exception, however, that the face was saddened by a
feeling of the profoundest pity. Then it seemed to him as if the dome
gradually retired, escaping from his gaze, and that the figures and
attributes painted by Lebrun became darker and darker as the distance
became more and more remote. A gentle, easy movement, as regular as
that by which a vessel plunges beneath the waves, had succeeded to the
immovableness of the bed. Doubtless the king was dreaming, and in this
dream the crown of gold, which fastened the curtains together, seemed
to recede from his vision, just as the dome, to which it remained
suspended, had done, so that the winged genius which, with both its
hand, supported the crown, seemed, though vainly so, to call upon the
king, who was fast disappearing from it. The bed still sunk. Louis,
with his eyes open, could not resist the deception of this cruel
hallucination. At last, as the light of the royal chamber faded away
into darkness and gloom, something cold, gloomy, and inexplicable in
its nature seemed to infect the air. No paintings, nor gold, nor velvet
hangings, were visible any longer, nothing but walls of a dull gray
color, which the increasing gloom made darker every moment. And yet the
bed still continued to descend, and after a minute, which seemed in its
duration almost an age to the king, it reached a stratum of air, black
and chill as death, and then it stopped. The king could no longer see
the light in his room, except as from the bottom of a well we can see
the light of day. "I am under the influence of some atrocious dream," he
thought. "It is time to awaken from it. Come! let me wake."

Every one has experienced the sensation the above remark conveys; there
is hardly a person who, in the midst of a nightmare whose influence is
suffocating, has not said to himself, by the help of that light which
still burns in the brain when every human light is extinguished, "It is
nothing but a dream, after all." This was precisely what Louis XIV. said
to himself; but when he said, "Come, come! wake up," he perceived that
not only was he already awake, but still more, that he had his eyes open
also. And then he looked all round him. On his right hand and on his
left two armed men stood in stolid silence, each wrapped in a huge
cloak, and the face covered with a mask; one of them held a small lamp