little the buzzing of the blood in my ears had become a thundering surf.
At last I heard the voice of the Rev. Magister calling my name—faintly as if from far off. It was as if the voice came out of my own heart.
The glimmering lamp in hand, nearly dazed by an inexplicable drowsiness which I had never before experienced, I groped my way through the dark rooms into the vaulted chamber and placed myself in the niche.
In the lamp the clockwork was faintly ticking, and I saw through the reddish belly of the idol the wick glowing between the snake's jaws as it slowly moved round and seemed to rise almost imperceptibly in spirals.
The full moon must have been standing vertically above the aperture in the vaulted roof, for in the water filling the basin of the stone table there swam her reflection as a motionless disk of yellowish greenshining silver.
For long I thought the gilded chairs were empty. But by and by I began to distinguish in three of them the figures of men sitting; and when they hesitatingly moved their faces I recognized in the north the Rev. Magister Wirtzigh, in the east an unknown person called Dr. Chrysophron Zagreus, as I gathered from their subsequent conversation, and in the south, with a wreath of poppies on his bald pate, Dr. Sacrobosco Haselmeyer.
Only the chair in the west was empty.
By and by my hearing also must have been awakened, for words were coming to me, partly in Latin, which I did not understand, partly, however, in the German language.
