"Pshaw! sir, you trifle with me; again I tell you--" But here the Landgrave spoke with an affectation of composure, and with an effort that did not escape notice;--"again I tell you that I fear you not. Go on." "Then come forward a little, please your highness, to the light of this lamp." So saying, with a step or two in advance, he drew the prince under the powerful glare of a lamp suspended near the great archway of entrance from the interior of the palace. Both were now standing with their faces entirely averted from the spectators. Still more effectually, however, to screen himself from any of those groups on the left, whose advanced position gave them somewhat more the advantage of an oblique aspect, The Masque, at this moment, suddenly drew up, with his left hand, a short Spanish mantle which depended from his shoulders, and now gave him the benefit of a lateral screen. Then, so far as the company behind them could guess at his act, unlocking with his right hand and raising the masque which shrouded his mysterious features, he shouted aloud, in a voice that rang clear through every corner of the vast saloon, "Landgrave, for crimes yet unrevealed, I summon you, in twenty days, before a tribunal where there is no shield but innocence" and at that moment turned his countenance full upon the prince. With a yell, rather than a human expression of terror, the Landgrave fell, as if shot by a thunderbolt, stretched at his full length upon the ground, lifeless apparently, and bereft of consciousness or sensation. A sympathetic cry of horror arose from the spectators. All rushed towards The Masque. The young cavaliers, who had first stepped forward as volunteers in the Landgrave's defence, were foremost, and interposed between The Masque and the outstretched arms of Adorni, as if eager to seize him first. In an instant a sudden and dense cloud of smoke arose, nobody knew whence. Repeated discharges of fire-arms were heard resounding from the doorway and the passages; these increased the smoke and the confusion. Trumpets sounded through the corridors. The whole archway, under which The Masque and the Landgrave had been standing, became choked up with soldiery, summoned by the furious alarms that echoed through the palace. All was one uproar and chaos of masques, plumes, helmets, halberds, trumpets, gleaming sabres, and the fierce faces of soldiery forcing themselves through the floating drapery of smoke that now filled the whole upper end of the saloon. Adorni was seen in the midst, raving fruitlessly. Nobody heard, nobody listened. Universal panic had seized the household, the soldiery, and the company. Nobody understood exactly for what purpose the tumult had commenced--in what direction it tended. Some tragic catastrophe was reported from mouth to mouth: nobody knew what. Some said the Landgrave had been assassinated; some, The Masque; some asserted that both had perished under reciprocal assaults. More believed that The Masque had