"Do not fall asleep again, little Aasé," he continued: "I had enough of this jest before. Open thy pretty eyes, and look on me. Dost thou not know me?"
She opened her eyes, but they did not look on him: they were widely extended, and her gaze fixed, without play or animation; and her little handsome countenance, which was deadly pale, wore the solemn and fearful expression of somnambulism.
"Now, by my soul!" exclaimed the king, falling back, perplexed, "if thou art a witch or sorceress, I shall hold no farther parley with thee. Thou shalt be burnt one day, when thou fallest into the hands of the clerks. Yet, nay: thou art too beautiful for that," he added, recovering his calmness, and looking at her keenly. "Ha, woman! is this real, and no crafty jugglery? If thou canst gaze down upon the damned, say what the dead robber on the Daugberg wheel is about? What would he tell King Erik Christopherson within eight days?"
"The robber on the wheel?" repeated Aasé in a soft, toneless voice, and without changing her mien or posture--"he is now in the black pit, and calls on King Erik Christopherson."
The king started: he gazed on her again, and blinked with much uneasiness and suspicion, as he looked around. "Deceive me, cheat, and it shall cost thee thy life!" he muttered, with his hand on the hilt of his dagger, and retreating a step farther towards the door. "Whom seest thou in the pit?" he again inquired, in a low tone, appearing no longer to doubt that she was in some wonderful state that enabled her to see into the Hidden, and perhaps to reveal the Future which he dreaded.
She hesitated to reply, as it seemed to cost her a painful effort to look on that which presented itself to her interior sense--a sense so different from that denoted by her rigid, motionless, extended eyes.
"In the pit I see robbers--murderers--ravishers!" she said, at length, in the same whispering, toneless voice: "there are kings, princes, and bishops among them. And, lo! there he sits--the murderer of his brother--on a throne of dead men's bones, with cushions of fiery serpents! He prepares a place for his brother's son! Hearest thou?--"
"Woman! demon! What devilry dreamest thou of?" exclaimed the king, overcome with fearful anguish. "Answer me! Speak! Can I yet be saved? How long a respite have I?"
"Ask the sword that rattles on the wall!" replied the somnambulist in a louder voice, pointing to the king's sword, but without turning her eyes towards it: "when that falls, thy time is near at hand."
With a convulsive motion, the king snatched at his sword; but the slender hook that supported it gave way, and it fell, rattling, on the stone floor.