"Yes;" returned his busy mate, whose ugliness kept bustling to and fro merrily and unweariably amid the vials, mirrors, human skeletons, and all the other strange implements. The incense was now brought; a flame blazed upon the altar; and the magician cautiously, almost with trembling, took the great volume out of his most secret cabinet. "Do we start now?" cried Beresynth. "Silence!" answered the old man solemnly: "interrupt not these holy proceedings by any profane or any useless words." He read, at first in a low voice, then louder and more earnestly as he paced with measured steps to and fro, and then again round in a circle. After a while he paused and said: "Look out, how the heavens are shaping themselves." "Thick darkness," replied the servant on his return, "has enwrapt the sky; the clouds are driving along; rain is beginning to drip." "They favour me!" exclaimed the old man: "it must succeed." He now knelt down, and murmuring his incantations often toucht the ground with his forehead. His face was heated; his eyes sparkled. He was heard to pronounce the holy names which it is forbidden to utter; and after a long time he sent his servant out again to look at the firmament. Meanwhile the onrush of the storm was heard; lightning and thunder chased each other; and the house seemed to tremble to its lowest foundations. "Hearken to the tempest!" shouted Beresynth coming back hastily: "Hell has risen up from below, and is raging with fire and fierce cracking crashes of thunder; a whirlwind is raving through the midst of it; and the earth is quaking with fear. Hold with your conjuring, lest the spokes of the world splinter, and the rim that holds it together burst." "Fool! simpleton!" cried the magician: "have done with thy useless prating! Tear back all the doors; throw the house door wide open." The dwarf withdrew to perform his master's orders. Meanwhile Pietro lighted the consecrated tapers; with a shudder he walkt up to the great torch that stood upon the high candlestick; this too at last was burning; then he threw himself on the ground and conjured louder and louder. His eyes flasht; all his limbs shook and shrunk as in convulsions; and a cold sweat of agony trickled from his brow. With wild gestures, as if scared out of his senses, the dwarf rusht in again, and leapt for safety within the circles. "The world is at the last gasp," he shriekt, pale and with chattering teeth: "the storms are rolling onward; but all beneath the voiceless night is dismay and horrour; every living thing has fled into its closet, or crept beneath the pillows of its bed to skulk away from its fears." The old man lifted up a face of ghastly paleness from the floor, and with wrencht and indistinguishable features screamed in sounds not his own: "Be silent, wretch, and disturb not the work. Give heed, and keep a fast hold on thy senses. The greatest things are still behind."