CHAPTER I
Now the rwnbling of the great organ swelled to a roar, pressing, like a rising giant, against the vaulted ceiling, to burst through it. Freder bent his head backwards, his widewopen, burning eyes stared unseeingly upward, His hands formed music from the chaos of the notes; su"uggling with the vibration of the sound and stirring him to his innermost depths. He was never so near tears in his life and, blissfully helpless, he yielded himself up to the glowing moisture which dazzled him. Above him. the vault of heaven in lapis lazuli; hovering therein, the twelvewfold mystery, the Signs of the Zodiac in gold. Set higher above them, the seven crowned ones: the planets. High above all a silver-shining bevy of stars: the universe. Before the bedewed eyes of the organ~player, to his music, the stars of heavens began the solemn mighty dance. The breakers of the notes dissolved the room into nothing. The organ, which Freder played, stood in the middle of the sea. It was a reef upon which the waves foamed. Carrying crests of fl'Oth, they dashed violently onward. and the seventh was always the mightiest. But high above the sea. which bellowed in the uproar of the waves, the stars of heaven danced the solemn. mighty dance. Shaken to her core, the old earth started from her sleep. Her torrents dried up; her mountains fell to ruin. From the
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