rooms, now dark within, were darkened yet more by the dazzling shoots of
flame from the vault of blackness overhead. Those that ventured to look
out of the windows saw, in the blue brilliancy of the quick-following jets
of lightning, the lake at the foot of the rock, ordinarily so still and so
dark, lighted up, not on the surface only, but down to half its depth; so
that, as it tossed in the wind, like a tortured sea of writhing flames, or
incandescent half-molten serpents of brass, they could not tell whether a
strong phosphorescence did not issue from the transparent body of the
waters, as if earth and sky lightened together, one consenting source of
flaming utterance.

"Sad was the condition of the late plastic mass of living form that had
flowed into shape at the will and law of the music. Broken into
individuals, the common transfusing spirit withdrawn, they stood drenched,
cold, and benumbed, with clinging garments; light, order, harmony, purpose
departed, and chaos restored; the issuings of life turned back on their
sources, chilly and dead. And in every heart reigned the falsest of
despairing convictions, that this was the only reality, and that was but a
dream. The eldest sister stood with clasped hands and down-bent head,
shivering and speechless, as if waiting for something to follow. Nor did
she wait long. A terrible flash and thunder-peal made the castle rock; and
in the pausing silence that followed, her quick sense heard the rattling
of a chain far off, deep down; and soon the sound of heavy footsteps,
accompanied with the clanking of iron, reached her ear. She felt that her
brother was at hand. Even in the darkness, and amidst the bellowing of
another deep-bosomed cloud-monster, she knew that he had entered the room.
A moment after, a continuous pulsation of angry blue light began, which,
lasting for some moments, revealed him standing amidst them, gaunt,
haggard, and motionless; his hair and beard untrimmed, his face ghastly,
his eyes large and hollow. The light seemed to gather around him as a