So it would go on and on till it ran down. A minute or two of creaking and croaking, as it were, whilst it cleared its old asthmatic throat, then a sudden silvery tirala-tirala, then a catch, a cough, and mutter-mutter-mutter. Or was it more like an old woman maundering in her sleep, who should suddenly quaver out a snatch from a ditty of her girlhood, and afterwards mumble incoherently again? I suppose the pin-points on the cylinder, all save just those six, were worn away; or, possibly, those teeth of the steel comb were the only ones that retained elasticity enough to vibrate. A sequence of six notes, as inconclusive as six words plucked at random from the middle of a sentence; as void of musical value as six such words would be of literary value. I wonder why it has always had this instant, irresistible power to move me. It has always been a talisman in my hands, a thing to conjure with. As when I was a child, so now, after twenty years, I have but to breathe it to myself, and, if I will, the actual world melts away, and I am journeying in dreamland. Whether I will or not, it always stirs a sad, sweet emotion in my heart. I wonder why. Tirala-tirala—I dare say, for another, any six notes, struck at haphazard, would signify as much. But for me—ah, if I could seize the sentiment it has for me, and translate it into English words, I should have achieved a sort of miracle. For me, it is the voice of a spirit, sighing something unutterable. It is an elixir, distilled of unearthly things, six lucent drops; I drink them, and I am transported into another atmosphere, and I see visions. It is Aladdin’s lamp; I touch it, and cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces are mine in the twinkling of an eye. It is my wishing-cap, my magic-carpet, my key to the Castle of Enchantment. The Castle of Enchantment.... When I was a child the Castle of Enchantment meant—the Future; the great mysterious Future, away, away there, beneath the uttermost horizon, where the sky is luminious with tints of rose and pearl; the ineffable Future, when I should be grownup, when I should be a Man, and when the world would be my garden, the world and life, and all their riches, mine to explore, to adventure in, to do as I pleased with! The Future and the World, the real World, the World that lay beyond our village, beyond the Forest of Granjolaye, farther than Bayonne, farther even than Pau; the World one read of and heard strange legends of: Paris, and Bagdad, and England, and Peru. Oh, how I longed to see it; how hard it was to wait; how desperately hard to think of the immense number of long years that must be worn through somehow, before it could come true.