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In the centre of the room, immediately under the dome, stretched a billiard-table, and near it was a circular one of black marble, inlaid with red onyx and lapis lazuli, which formed a miniature zodiac similar to that at Denderah, while in the middle of this table sat a small Murano hour-glass, filled with sand from the dreary valley of El Ghor.
If Madame de Fleury was expected, the hours and the minutes were counted, and the sand in the hour-glass that stood on the schoolroom table was frequently shaken. The moment she appeared Victoire ran to her, and was silent; satisfied with standing close beside her, holding her gown when unperceived, and watching, as she spoke and moved, every turn of her countenance.
"Ah! yours is a somniferous orthodoxy, Captain Manual," said the young sailor, laughing, while he slipped his arms into the sleeves of a morning round-about, covered with the gilded trappings of his profession; "sleep appears to come most naturally to all you idlers. But give me a passage, and I will go up, and call the schooner down to us in the turning of an hour-glass."
It seemed incredible that the sand should still be running in the hour-glass, for ages appeared to have passed over my head since last I was in that room. I paced up and down, awaiting the coming of my chief, feeling neither fear nor regret, but rather dumb despair. In a few minutes his heavy tread was on the stair, followed by the measured tramp of a file of men.
"The men, like impassive machines levelled their muskets at my breast. I held up my hand. "'Sergeant, I said as calmly as I could, 'you are now about to exceed your instructions. Give another command at your peril. The exact words of the general were, 'When the last sands of this hour-glass are run. I call your attention to the fact that the conditions are not fulfilled.
With a grin of fierce delight, he lifts up his hour-glass before her, and, in spite of her resistance and that of a gentleman who attends her, is about to bear her off. Every line of this composition is instinct with life. In the twelfth, Death carries off a Bishop from his flock.
After rising a good way, it is met by a long tongue, which comes down from the clouds; and when the two have joined, they look something like an hour-glass. The water-spout is then carried by the wind, sometimes gently, sometimes with violence, over the sea, sometimes up into the clouds, and then, bursting asunder, it descends in a deluge.
They gnawed holes in the sacks, and the contents poured upon the ground like sand from an hour-glass, to be immediately attacked and destroyed by white ants.
The minister had gone on in his discourse, until the sand in the hour-glass on the rails before the deacons had wellnigh run out, and Deacon Dole was about turning it, when suddenly I saw the congregation all about me give a great start, and look back.
The town had settled down into something that the tonic magic of the place prevented being decay, but it was though time still turned the hour-glass, but did it dreamingly, infatuated with the marvellous thing she had brought forth that now was not.
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