sed the hall with a hard and sounding step as
measured as the ticking of a clock, and placing his skinny hand upon the
hilt of an immense long rapier, and stamping with his heel on the floor,
he uttered in a horribly disagreeable creaking voice resembling the
grating of an engine these words, which dropped in a dry mechanical
fashion from his ashy lips:--

"This is mine--mine--Hans Burckhardt, Count of Barth!"

I felt a creeping sensation coming all over me.

At the same instant the door opposite flew open wide, and the Count of
Barth disappeared in the next apartment; and I could hear his hard, dry
automatic tread upon the stairs descending the steps, one by one, for
a long time; there seemed no end to it, until at last the awful sounds
died in the remote distance as if they had descended into the bowels of
the earth.

But as I was still listening, and hearing nothing further, all in a
moment the vast hall filled as if by magic with a numerous company; the
spinet began to jingle; there was music and singing of love, and
pleasure, and wine.

I gazed and saw by the bluish-grey moonlight ladies in the bloom of youth
negligently floating over the floor, and chiefly about the old spinet;
elegant cavaliers attired, as in the olden time, in innumerable dangling
ribbons, and the very perfection of lace collars and ruffles, seated
cross-legged upon gold-fringed stools, affectedly inclining sidelong,
shaking their perfumed locks, making little bows, studying all kinds of
graceful attitudes, and paying their court to the ladies, all so
elegantly, and with such an air of gallantry, that it reminded me of the
old mezzotint engravings of the graceful school of Lorraine in the
sixteenth century.

And the stiff little fingers of an ancient dowager, with a parrot bill,
were rattling the keys of the old spinet; bursts of thin laughter set
discordant echoes flying, and ended in little squeaks with such a sharp
discordant rattle of constrained laughter as made my hair stand on end.

All this silly little world--all this quintessence of fashion and
elegance, long out of date, all exhaled the acrid odour of rose-water and
essence of mignonette turned into vinegar.

I made new and superhuman exertions to get rid of this disagreeable
nightmare, but it was all in vain. But at that instant a lady of the
highest fashion cried aloud--

"Lords, you are at home here in all this domain--"

But she was cut short in her compliments; a sile