She took Chariton into her carriage. The men walked on ahead. On the way Roquairol said to Dian, who had to play the character of Albano in the piece, "So soon as I have said, in the fourth act, 'Even spiritual love goes to meet sensual, and, after all, like a seafarer on his way eastward, arrives at last in the lands of sundown,' then you fall in." Dian laughed, and said, "I'll fall in. In Italy, however, the passage begins at once as a southerly and westerly one." Albano was silent for vexation, and repented having helped persuade Linda to this doubtful festival. The Princess cast sundry rapid glances of contempt at the cheated Linda, and she answered them with the like; distinguished women betray their sex most in hostile contact with distinguished ones. 130. CYCLE. Most of the spectators had in the beginning come more for the sake of the spectators and performers than of the play; but soon they were attracted by the mystery and by the extraordinary stage itself. The scene was laid on the so-called Island of Slumber in the Prince's garden, which was covered with a wild, thick tangle of flowers, bushes, and high trees. Its eastern side showed an open, free foreground, on which the performance was to take place, with a white Sphinx on an empty tomb farther in among the green. The wings of the scenes were the dark leafy parts; pit and boxes the shore opposite, which was separated from the island by a lake, about as broad as a moderate-sized ship. From two trees of the two opposite shores hung down like a lantern out over the middle of the lake the cage of the jay or chorus, suspended there by way of bringing her deep, dull voice nearer to the spectators. "I am, to tell the truth, 'curious," said the Knight to his son, "to know whence you will draw the tragical." "Leave me alone for that!" said Roquairol, who had hitherto been walking backward and forward silently and uneasily, with his eyes on the ground; "only I must make a general request of the company to be pardoned the delay. When I address the moon in the fifth act, I can very well use the real one, if I only begin just so that her rising shall coincide with the last scene." At length he embarked, with a face that was growing pale, in the Charon's boat, as he said, and ferried over alone. Then the other players sailed over one after another. All were lost behind the trees; and now, from behind in the embowered western parts of the island, the immortal overture from Mozart's Don Juan rose like an invisible spirit-realm slowly and grandly into the air. "_Diablesse!_" cried thereupon the brother of the Knight to the jay, and clapped his hands at the same time as a signal. "Open the coffin," the creature began, in a hollow voice, accompanied by single, lugubrious, tones of the orchestra,--"open the coffin in the churchyard, and show for the last time the breast of the corpse and his dry eyelid, and then shut it to forever."