Suddenly the silence was broken by a shrill sound like the
creaking of a rusty spring. It startled Don Juan; he all but
dropped the phial. A sweat, colder than the blade of a dagger,
issued through every pore. It was only a piece of clockwork, a
wooden cock that sprang out and crowed three times, an ingenious
contrivance by which the learned of that epoch were wont to be
awakened at the appointed hour to begin the labors of the day.
Through the windows there came already a flush of dawn. The
thing, composed of wood, and cords, and wheels, and pulleys, was
more faithful in its service than he in his duty to Bartolommeo
--he, a man with that peculiar piece of human mechanism within
him that we call a heart.
Don Juan the sceptic shut the flask again in the secret drawer in
the Gothic table--he meant to run no more risks of losing the
mysterious liquid.
Even at that solemn moment he heard the murmur of a crowd in the
gallery, a confused sound of voices, of stifled laughter and
light footfalls, and the rustling of silks--the sounds of a band
of revelers struggling for gravity. The door opened, and in came
the Prince and Don Juan's friends, the seven courtesans, and the
singers, disheveled and wild like dancers surprised by the dawn,
when the tapers that have burned through the night struggle with
the sunlight.
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