_There_, the dark, tall statures of the Princes Metzengerstein -
their muscular war-coursers plunging over the carcasses of fallen
foes - startled the steadiest nerves with their vigorous expression;
and _here_, again, the voluptuous and swan-like figures of the dames
of days gone by, floated away in the mazes of an unreal dance to the
strains of imaginary melody.

But as the Baron listened, or affected to listen, to the
gradually increasing uproar in the stables of Berlifitzing - or
perhaps pondered upon some more novel, some more decided act of
audacity - his eyes became unwittingly rivetted to the figure of an
enormous, and unnaturally colored horse, represented in the tapestry
as belonging to a Saracen ancestor of the family of his rival. The
horse itself, in the foreground of the design, stood motionless and
statue-like - while farther back, its discomfited rider perished by
the dagger of a Metzengerstein.

On Frederick's lip arose a fiendish expression, as he became
aware of the direction which his glance had, without his
consciousness, assumed. Yet he did not remove it. On the contrary, he
could by no means account for the overwhelming anxiety which appeared
falling like a pall upon his senses. It was with difficulty that he
reconciled his dreamy and incoherent feelings with the certainty of
being awake. The longer he gazed the more absorbing became the spell
- the more impossible did it appear that he could ever withdraw his
glance from the fascination of that tapestry. But the tumult without
becoming suddenly more violent, with a compulsory exertion he
diverted his attention to the glare of ruddy light thrown full by the
flaming stables upon the windows of the apartment.