Roquairol asked him what woe or joy had driven him hither at midnight to a _Moravian_ churchyard, and whither he had sent the man with the sword. Albano did not know that Moravians reposed here; and, moreover, he had not observed that the sword, probably from fear of its being used, had been stolen. He answered, "My dead sister was fain to speak with me at the altar; and she has spoken"; but he feared to say more of this. Then Roquairol's countenance suddenly changed; he stared at him, and demanded confirmation and explanation; during this he looked into the air as if he would draw faces from it by his looks, and said monotonously, fixing his eyes, however, on Albano the while, "Dead one, dead one, speak again!" But only the death-flood went on speaking under them, and nothing more. But he threw himself before the altar on his knees, and said in measured tone, and yet with trembling lips: "Fly open, spirit-gate, and show thy transparent world. I fear not you, the transparent ones; I become one of you, when you appear, and walk with you, and become an apparition myself." "O my good one, forbear," Albano entreated, not only from piety, but from love also; for an accident, a night-bird shooting over, might, indeed, kill them by horror: this horror stood, too, not far from them; for on the illuminated side of the weeping birches stepped out a white, majestic old form. But when Roquairol, frantic with wine and fancy, reached out the dying mask into the air, and said, turning toward the grave of the heart, "Take this face, if thou hast none, old man, and look at me from behind it!" Alban seized him; the white form stepped back with bowed head and folded arms into the branches; the round tower on the battle-field struck the hour, and the dreamy region, murmuring, struck a response. "Come to my warm heart, thou passionate soul. O that I were permitted to receive thee on my very birthday, at my very birth-hour!" This sound melted at once the ever-changing man, and he hung upon him with wet eyes of joy, and said: "And to keep me even till our dying hours! O look not upon me, thou unchangeable, because I appear so wavering and broken; in the waves of life man breaks and crinkles as the staff flickers in the water, but the essential being stands nevertheless firm as the staff. I will follow thee into other parts of Tartarus; but still relate the history."