Suddenly Albano heard around him the smothered murmur and confused talk of a throng. There was nothing on either side. "Do you hear nothing?" he asked. "All is still," said the Baldhead. But the swarm kept on murmuring and whispering eagerly and hotly, as if it could not be ready and agreed. The bold youth shuddered. The gates of the shadowy kingdom stood far open into the earth; dreams and shadows swarmed in and out, and flew near to bright life. The two stepped up to the thicket before Lilar. There came a boy out of the wood with an enormously big head, helping himself along on two crutches, and holding a rose, which he offered, with a nod, to the youth. Albano took it, but the little fellow nodded incessantly, as if he would say he should like to have him smell of it. Albano did so; and suddenly the sinking of the stage of life, a bottomless slumber, drew him down into the dark, unfathomable depths. When he awoke heavily, he was alone and unarmed, in an old dusty Gothic chamber. A faint little light scattered only shadows around. He looked through the window; it seemed to be Lilar, but on the whole landscape snow had fallen, and the heavens were white with cloud, and yet the stars singularly pierced through. "What is this? Am I standing in the mask-dance of dreams?" he asked himself. Then an arras went up; a covered female form, with innumerable veils on the face, stepped in, stood a moment, and flew to his heart. "Who is it?" he asked. She pressed him to her bosom more passionately, and wept clear through the veil. "Knowest thou me?" he asked. She nodded. "Art thou my unknown sister?" he asked. She nodded, and with a sister's close embrace, with hot tears of love, with rapturous kisses, held him fast to herself. "Say, where livest thou?" She shook her head. "Art thou dead or a dream?" She shook her head. "Is thy name Julienne?" She shook her head. "Give me a sign of thy truth!" She showed him half of a gold ring on a table that stood near. "Show thy face, that I may believe thee!" She drew him away from the window. "Sister, by Heaven, if thou liest not, then raise thy veil!" She pointed with her long, outstretched, enveloped arm to something behind him. He kept on intreating. She motioned vehemently toward a certain place, and repelled him from herself. At length he obeyed, and turned sidewards; then he saw in a mirror how she suddenly threw up the veils, and how, beneath them, the superannuated form appeared whose image, with the signature, his father had given him on Isola Bella. But when he turned round again, he felt on his face a warm hand and a cold flower; and a second slumber drew downward his conscious being.