After a pause the voice again echoed from the skull: “His fate is inevitable if he executes what he has planned,” came from the horrible cavity in a whisper so distinct that even Bononius could no longer doubt. “In resignation lies the sole salvation of his life. This, Hecate, who removes all that her breath has touched, announces to him.” With these words a terrible peal of thunder resounded through the hall. The skull in the niche began to stir, and--incredible marvel--grow smaller, like a cloud in the evening sky which gradually melts into nothing. The two young men gazed fixedly at the mysterious phenomenon. Two minutes more, and the skull had entirely vanished from the shining floor--it had not sunk into the earth, but, as it were, fallen to pieces, blown away, dissolved in smoke like a phantom. When Caius Bononius looked up, he saw his friend lying apparently lifeless on the altar steps. “It is all over,” he murmured, pale with horror, as Bononius touched him on the shoulder. For a time Caius left the sorrowing youth to his despair. Olbasanus, who was probably accustomed to such scenes, waited silently a few steps off. “Lucius,” the young sage began after a little hesitation, “consider only one thing! The gods, if they exist, must be regarded as the incarnation of everything that is sublime. But the nobler, purer, and therefore more akin to the gods a man’s nature is, the more decidedly he is repelled by the horrible and ghostly. The very idea of divinities, even of a deity ruling the realm of death, forbids us to believe incidents such as we have just witnessed to be the expression of their will. I, too, cannot guess this Chaldean’s enigmas; but I doubt with all the power of my mind that they are what he declares them to be. Do you also doubt, Lucius! Own to him that you do; don’t spare your money, and ask fresh testimony. Your Hero, you said, _saw_ the goddess of death; do you, too, request a sight of her, in order either to believe implicitly or find the lever by which you can overthrow all these incomprehensible things.” This time there was some delay before Lucius Rutilius could be persuaded. But at last, becoming more and more influenced by his friend’s calmness, he yielded and made the request Bononius directed. Olbasanus’s penetration had long since anticipated this turn of affairs. He silently led the two youths through half-a-dozen paths running in different directions across the dark park. Situated on a gently-rising hill, the magician’s garden covered a square of several hundred feet, which was enclosed like a sanctuary by walls almost as high as a house, and overgrown with ivy and other climbing vines. Here and there fountains played in alabaster basins; strange statues, looking like pallid shades in the starlight of the moonless night, stood like spectral guards amid the shrubbery. Ancient evergreen-oaks and plane-trees spread their many-branching crowns.