I raised my eyes and, behind the mail-clad shape, I saw the dawn breaking, blood-red, and with great clouds like pillars of smoke rolling up on either side of the place where the sun was about to rise. But as yet the sun was not visible. And as I looked, she cried aloud, and her voice rang through the air like the clash of steel:-- "Listen!" And she struck her spear on the marble pavement. At the same moment there came from afar off, a confused sound of battle. Cries, and human voices in conflict, and the stir as of a vast multitude, the distant clang of arms and a noise of the galloping of many horses rushing furiously over the ground. And then, sudden silence. Again she smote the pavement, and again the sounds arose, nearer now, and more tumultuous. Once more they ceased, and a third time she struck the marble with her spear. Then the noises arose all about and around the very spot where we stood, and the clang of the arms was so close that it shook and thrilled the very columns beside me. And the neighing and snorting of horses, and the thud of their ponderous hoofs flying over the earth made, as it were, a wind in my ears, so that it seemed as though a furious battle were raging all around us. But I could see nothing. Only the sounds increased, and became so violent that they awoke me, and even after waking I still seemed to catch the commotion of them in the air. * --Paris, February 15, 1883. ---------- * This dream was shortly followed by Mrs Kingsford's antivivisection expedition to Switzerland, the fierce conflict of which amply fulfilled any predictive significance it may have had. ----------- XIX. The Game of Cards: A Parable I dreamed I was playing at cards with three persons, the two opposed to me being a man and a woman with hoods pulled over their heads, and cloaks covering their persons. I did not particularly observe them. My partner was an old man without hood or cloak, and there was about him this peculiarity, that he did not from one minute to another appear to remain the same. Sometimes he looked like a very young man, the features not appearing to change in order to produce this effect, but an aspect of youth and even of mirth coming into the face as though the features were lighted up from within. Behind me stood a personage whom I could not see, for his hand and arm only appeared, handing me a pack of cards. So far as I discerned, it was a man's figure, habited in black. Shortly after the dream began, my partner addressed me, saying, "Do you play by luck or by skill?" I answered: "I play by luck chiefly; I don't know how to play by skill. But I have generally been lucky." In fact, I had already, lying by me, several "tricks" I had taken. He answered me:-- "To play by luck is to trust to without; to play by skill is to trust to within. In this game, Within goes further than Without." "What are trumps?" I asked. "Diamonds are trumps," he answered.