The ruins of fifteen hundred vanished years oppressed him; he sickened
under all this human thought; felt bored by all this luxury and art.
He struggled in vain against the constantly renewed fantastic shapes
that sprang up from under his feet, like children of some sportive
demon.
Are not fearful poisons set up in the soul by a swift concentration of
all her energies, her enjoyments, or ideas; as modern chemistry, in
its caprice, repeats the action of creation by some gas or other? Do
not many men perish under the shock of the sudden expansion of some
moral acid within them?
"What is there in that box?" he inquired, as he reached a large closet
--final triumph of human skill, originality, wealth, and splendor, in
which there hung a large, square mahogany coffer, suspended from a
nail by a silver chain.
"Ah, _monsieur_ keeps the key of it," said the stout assistant
mysteriously. "If you wish to see the portrait, I will gladly venture
to tell him."
"Venture!" said the young man; "then is your master a prince?"
"I don't know what he is," the other answered. Equally astonished,
each looked for a moment at the other. Then construing the stranger's
silence as an order, the apprentice left him alone in the closet.
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