His ancestors stared at him and they seemed to him to be spectres, themselves legends, falsities against which tradition would no longer act as a protection. They seemed to him like ghosts, enemies.... He opened wider his burning eyes upon their stiff, trained and robed or harnessed figures, which seemed to step towards him from the eight panels of the walls, in order to stifle him in their midst, to oppress him in a narrow circle of nightmare on his panting breast, with iron knees forcing the breath out of his lungs, with iron hands crushing his head, from which the sweat trickled over his temples. Then he felt afraid, like a little child that has been told creepy stories, afraid of those ghosts of emperors, afraid of the glimpses of visions which again flashed pictures of the inundations before him: the meadow with the corpses, the men in the punt fishing up the woman. The corpses began suddenly to come to life, to burst out laughing, with slits of mouths and hollow eyes, as though they had been making a fool of him, as though there had been no inundations; and the dusk of the bed-chamber, filled with emperors, pressed down upon him as with atmospheres of nitrogen. "Andro! Andro!" he cried, in a smothered utterance and then louder, as though in mortal anguish, "Andro! Andro!..." The door at the end of the room was thrown open; the valet entered, alarmed, in his night-clothes. The reality of his presence broke through the enchantment of the night and exorcized the ghosts back into portraits. "Highness!..." "Andro, come here...." "Highness, what's the matter?... How you frightened me, highness! What is it?... I thought...." "What, Andro?" "Nothing, highness. Your voice sounded so terribly hoarse! What's the matter?..." "I don't know, Andro: I am ill, I think; I can't sleep...." The man wiped Othomar's clammy forehead with a handkerchief: "Will your highness have anything to drink? A glass of water?..." "No, thank you, thank you.... Andro, can you come and sleep in here?" "If you wish it, highness...." "Yes, here, at the foot of my bed. I believe I'm not very well, Andro.... Bring your pillow in here." The man looked at him. He was not much older than his prince. He had waited on him from childhood and worshipped him with the worship of a subject for majesty; he felt wholly bound to him, tied to him; he knew that the prince was not strong, but also that he never complained.... Growing suddenly angry, he turned to go to his room and fetch his pillow: "No wonder, when they fag and tire you like this!" he cried, unable any longer to restrain his fury. "General Ducardi no doubt thinks that you have the same tough hide as himself!" Muttering in his moustache, he went away, returned with his pillow and laid it on the step of the bed of state: "Are you feverish?" he asked. "No ... yes, perhaps a little. It will pass off, Andro. I ... I am...." He dared not say it.