Eric had retired with his bride to a shady spot in the garden, where the fair aerial spectacle appeared to the greatest advantage. The number of guests he had to entertain, as well as the festivities, had had hitherto prevented him from exchanging a single word with her without witnesses, and it was more than a year since they had last met. He now found himself for a moment alone with her, under the mild and lovely summer sky, in which the flaming stars seemed to dance round them in the air, while the festive din was hushed, and nothing was heard but the deep solemn notes of the horn-players, floating over the Sound from a distant hill. A torrent of thought and feeling seemed ready to gush from the king's heart. "My Ingeborg! my soul's beloved!" he exclaimed, embracing her, "now hath the merciful Lord heard my inmost prayer; he hath himself united us with an inviolable sacrament; no power in heaven or earth can part us now. I am indeed the happiest of human beings; were I omnipotent I would this hour make every soul around me happy." "Eric! my beloved Eric!" answered Ingeborg, throwing her arms around his neck, "I have this day seen with thee into the Lord's clear heaven; the troth I plighted thee at the altar I shall repeat in my dying hour; my angel shall wake me with it at the last day----" "Think not now of death," interrupted Eric, tenderly: "our life begins but now." "One moment may contain a thousand lives," she continued, with, heartfelt emotion; "even were one of yon flying stars to crush me in thine arms I still should deem myself happy; thou wouldest still be mine, although mine eyes should close upon all the glories of this world." They thus talked confidentially together, and poured out their inmost souls to each other, undisturbed by their princely guests, whose whole attention was turned upon the aerial spectacle. The happy bridal pair sank, with deep emotion, into each other's arms, and appeared to forget themselves and the whole world in a silent embrace. They were suddenly aroused by a loud explosion and a hissing sound in the air; they raised their eyes and saw with astonishment the mild beams of the star-light dimmed by the brightness of a large ball of fire, which ascended hissing in the air as though it would reach the heavens. It shone clear and bright above their heads; but as they were looking at it with admiration it exploded, and dispersed into many thousand small stars, which gradually waned and disappeared.