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Updated: June 24, 2025
The room was filled with a confusion of voices, and among the groups surging about him Odo noticed a number of the Duke's sbirri making their way quietly through the crowd. The notary of the Holy Office advanced toward Heiligenstern, who had placed himself against the wall, with one arm flung about his trembling acolyte.
"There is one here purer than I...the crystal will not speak for me in that other's presence..." "Who is that other?" Heiligenstern asked. The boy fixed his eyes on the little prince. An excited murmur ran through the company and Heiligenstern again advanced to the Duke. "Will your Highness," he asked, "permit the prince to look into the sacred sphere?"
His evasion known, the Holy Office had contented itself with imprisoning Heiligenstern in one of the Papal fortresses near the Adriatic, while his mistress, though bred in the Greek confession, was confined in a convent of the Sepolte Vive and his Oriental servant sent to the Duke's galleys.
Father Ignazio has lately counselled the little prince's visiting in state the protectress of his line, and his Highness's physician, Count Heiligenstern, does not disapprove the plan. In fact," she added, "I understand that he thinks all special acts of piety beneficial, as symbolising the inward act by which the soul incessantly strives to reunite itself to the One."
No sooner had they taken their places than Heiligenstern stepped forth, wearing a doctor's gown and a quaintly-shaped bonnet or mitre. In his long robes and strange headdress he looked extraordinarily tall and pale, and his features had the glassy-eyed fixity of an ancient mask.
He leaned back with a gesture of dismissal; but added, reddening slightly, as Odo prepared to withdraw: "You will oblige me, cousin, when you meet my physician, Count Heiligenstern, by not touching on the matter of the restorative you have seen me take." Odo left his cousin's presence with a feeling of deep discouragement.
Almost immediately the globe was seen to cloud, as though suffused with milk; the cloud gradually faded and the boy began to speak in a low hesitating tone. "I see," he said, "I see a face...a fair face..." He faltered and glanced up almost apprehensively at Heiligenstern, whose gaze remained impenetrable. The boy began to tremble. "I see nothing," he said in a whisper.
The Duke sat speechless, a fallen heap in his chair, and the courtiers looked at each other, their faces shifting spectrally in the faint light, like phantom travellers waiting to be ferried across some mysterious river. At length Heiligenstern advanced and with every mark of deference addressed himself to the Duke.
Heiligenstern smiled. "That, your Highness, is a vision of the prince's own future, when, restored to health, he is able to disport himself with his playmates in the gardens of the palace." "But they were not the gardens of the palace!" the little boy exclaimed. "They were much more beautiful than our gardens." Heiligenstern bowed.
The murmur subsided, and the Duke, regaining his voice, said with an assumption of authority: "Let the treatment begin." Heiligenstern immediately spoke a word to the Oriental, who bent over the metal bed which had been set up in the middle of the room. As he did so the air again darkened and the figures of the magician and his assistants were discernible only as flitting shades in the obscurity.
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