The voices he heard were very hushed, and the steps seemed to go
away, far away, leaving him alone with Hirschvogel. He dared not
look out, but he peeped through the brasswork, and all he could
see was a big carved lion's head in ivory, with a gold crown atop.
It belonged to a velvet fauteuil, but he could not see the chair,
only the ivory lion.
There was a delicious fragrance in the air--a fragrance as of
flowers. "Only how can it be flowers?" thought August. "It is
November!"
From afar off, as it seemed, there came a dreamy, exquisite music,
as sweet as the spinnet's had been, but so much fuller, so much
richer, seeming as though a chorus of angels were singing all
together. August ceased to think of the museum: he thought of
heaven. "Are we gone to the Master?" he thought, remembering the
words of Hirschvogel.
All was so still around him; there was no sound anywhere except
the sound of the far-off choral music.
He did not know it, but he was in the royal castle of Berg, and
the music he heard was the music of Wagner, who was playing in a
distant room some of the motives of "Parsival."
Presently he heard a fresh step near him, and he heard a low voice
say, close behind him, "So!" An exclamation no doubt, he thought,
of admiration and wonder at the beauty of Hirschvogel.
Then the same voice said, after a long pause, during which no
doubt, as August thought, this newcomer was examining all the
details of the wondrous fire-tower, "It was well bought; it is
exceedingly beautiful! It is most undoubtedly the work of Augustin
Hirschvogel.
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