The romantic in Maeterlinck began to show itself plainly in The Seven Princesses. Death is still the motive, but the picture is ampler, the frame more decorative. Presently we shall see meads and forests, maidens in distress, fountains and lonely knights. Movement, though it be a mere sinister rustling of dead leaves, is more manifest in this transitional period. The Seven Princesses is like some ancient morality, with the nervous, sonorous, musical setting of a latter-day composer. It has a spacious hall of marble, with a flight of seven white marble steps; there are seven sleeping maidens; a silver lamp sheds its mysterious glow upon the seven of mystic number (the poet unconsciously recalls those other seven sleepers of the early chroniclers), and the landscape without the palace--through the windows of the terrace is seen the setting sun; the country is dark, marshy, and between the huge willows a gloomy canal stretches to the horizon. Upon its stagnant waters a man-of-war slowly moves. The old King and Queen in the terrace note its approach. Here we have a prologue full of atmosphere, an enigmatic story awaiting its solution. We learn from the disjointed dialogue that the Prince, the heir apparent, is expected. He comes upon the ship. He is welcomed by the aged couple--"people are too old without knowing it," says the Queen--and the ship leaves. Its departure is managed poetically. The far-away voices of the sailors are heard in monotonous song: "The Atlantic, the Atlantic," evokes a feeling of the remote which we feel when Vanderdecken's vessel vanishes in The Flying Dutchman. This refrain of "The Atlantic, the Atlantic, we shall return no more, the Atlantic," sets vibrating certain chords of melancholy. In the meantime the Prince has been regarding the sleepers through the glass windows. The Queen, whose premonitions of approaching evil are quite Maeterlinckian, points out the beautiful girls, names them. The most beautiful of all is Ursula. The Prince notices that this Princess does not sleep like her sisters. "She is holding one of her hands strangely,..." he remarks. "Why has she not bound up her hair?" asks the Queen, distractedly. Gradually the little evidences accumulate. Something is wrong below, there in the great hall, where breathlessly sleep the seven Princesses on the cushions of pale silk strewn upon the marble steps.