Would your majesty like to see it?'
"'How can I go and see it, when, as you know very well, I am ill in bed?
Besides I should be sure to take cold in a frosty night like this, even
if I put on the blankets, and took the feather-bed for a muff.'
"A sort of quivering passed over their faces, which seemed to be their
mode of laughing. The whole shape of the face shook and fluctuated as if
it had been some dark fluid; till by slow degrees of gathering calm, it
settled into its former rest. Then one of them drew aside the curtains
of the bed, and, the window-curtains not having been yet drawn, the king
beheld the white glimmering night outside, struggling with the heaps of
darkness that tried to quench it; and the heavens full of stars,
flashing and sparkling like live jewels. The other Shadow went towards
the fire and vanished in it.
"Scores of Shadows immediately began an insane dance all about the room;
disappearing, one after the other, through the uncovered window, and
gliding darkly away over the face of the white snow; for the window
looked at once on a field of snow. In a few moments, the room was quite
cleared of them; but instead of being relieved by their absence, the
king felt immediately as if he were in a dead house, and could hardly
breathe for the sense of emptiness and desolation that fell upon him.
But as he lay looking out on the snow, which stretched blank and wide
before him, he spied in the distance a long dark line which drew nearer
and nearer, and showed itself at last to be all the Shadows, walking in
a double row, and carrying in the midst of them something like a bier.
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