it gave a ready concealment to intruders with evil intentions; and
under the protecting screen of tapestry many a secret had been
discovered, many robberies facilitated, and some celebrated murderers
had been sheltered with circumstances of mystery that forever baffled
investigation.

Maximilian smiled as the sight of the hangings, with their rich colors
glowing in the fire-light, brought back to his remembrance one of those
tales which in the preceding winter had made a great noise in Vienna.
With a soldier's carelessness, he thought lightly of all dangers that
could arise within four walls; and having extinguished the lights which
burned upon a table, and unbuckled his sabre, he threw himself upon a
sofa which he drew near to the fire; and then enveloping himself in a
large horseman's cloak, he courted the approach of sleep. The fatigues
of the day, and of the preceding night, had made this in some measure
needful to him. But weariness is not always the best preface to repose;
and the irritation of many busy anxieties continued for some time to
keep him in a most uneasy state of vigilance. As he lay, he could see
on one side the fantastic figures in the fire composed of wood and
turf; on the other side, looking to the tapestry, he saw the wild
forms, and the _melee_, little less fantastic, of human and brute
features in a chase--a boar-chase in front, and a stag-chase on his
left hand. These, as they rose fitfully in bright masses of color and
of savage expression under the lambent flashing of the fire, continued
to excite his irritable state of feeling; and it was not for some time
that he felt this uneasy condition give way to exhaustion. He was at
length on the very point of falling asleep, or perhaps had already
fallen into its very lightest and earliest stage, when the echo of a
distant door awoke him. He had some slight impression that a noise in
his own room had concurred with the other and more distant one to awake