The lights continued to waver, although there was no draught in the room. One might have believed that invisible wings were fluttering about the altar. The lace on Celinina's gown rose and fell; and the petals of her artificial flowers betrayed the passage of a playful breeze, or the soft touch of tender hands. Just then Celinina opened her eyes. They filled the room with bright inquiring glances cast down and up and around her. She instantly unclasped her hands, the ribbon that bound them together offering no resistance; and closing her little fists, she rubbed both eyes as children do when they awake. Then with a quick movement, and without the slightest effort, she sat up, and looking upward at the ceiling, she began to laugh,--a peculiar inaudible laugh apparent to the eyes alone. The one sound that reached the ear was the rapid beating of wings, as if all the doves of the earth were flying in and out of the death-chamber, brushing their feathers against the walls and ceiling. Then Celinina rose to her feet, stretched out her arms, and two short white wings sprouted from her shoulders. They flapped and beat for a few seconds; then she rose in the air and disappeared. In the parlor everything remained as it was; the lights glowed on the altar, pouring copious streams of melted wax on the _bobeches_. The images all stood in their places without moving an arm or a leg or unsealing their austere lips. The good woman was plunged in a profound sleep which must have been a special blessing to her. Nothing had changed, except that the little blue coffin had been left empty. VII. What a royal celebration at the home of the Señores of ---- to-night! The house is filled with the thunder of drums. Children cannot be made to understand that they might enjoy things a great deal more if they only omitted the infernal noise of the warlike instrument. But this is not all. In order that no human tympanum may be left in condition to perform its natural functions the next day, they have added to the drum the thumping of the _zambomba_,--that hellish contrivance whose sounds were intended to reproduce the growls of Satan. The symphony is completed by the tambourine, which, like the rattling of old tin pans, would irritate the most placid nerves; and still this discordant hubbub without rhythm or melody, more primitive than the music of savages, is inspiriting and cheerful on this particular night, and bears something of a distant likeness to a celestial choir.