Bartoletti started violently, and the Duke’s hand went to his sword. Then the magician halted, pulled a vial from his breast, and dipping a match in it, produced a strong rose-coloured flame, from which he lit the small lamp that hung at his belt.
Whilst the match flared and shone, they saw plainly for several yards in every direction. They were in a low vaulted cavern, hewn, to all appearance, by no mortal hands, out of the rock. They stood on a slightly-elevated platform, and at their feet lay a glistening sheet of black that could only be water. It was, however, a hasty examination, for the match soon spent itself, and Bartoletti’s lamp gave but light enough, as Bras-de-Fer observed, “to show how dark it was.”
“Are we on the banks of the Seine or the Styx?” asked the Regent, jestingly, yet with a slight tremor in his voice.
“Man knoweth not whither this dark stream may lead,” replied Bartoletti, solemnly, lighting at the same time a spare wick of his lamp, to embark it on a morsel of wood which he pushed into the current.
For several minutes, as it seemed to their watching eyes, the light floated farther and farther, till swallowed up by degrees in the black distance.
All were now somewhat impressed with the gloom and mysterious silence of the place. Bartoletti took courage, and informed the Regent he was about to begin.
“Not till you have drawn a pentacle!” objected the Duke, apprehensively. “Such a precaution should on no account be neglected.”
“It is unnecessary, Highness,” answered the other. “Against the lesser fiends, indeed, it forms an impregnable defence; but he who is approaching now, the very Prince of Darkness himself, cares no more for a pentacle than you do!”
The Regent would not be satisfied, however, till, under Malletort’s superintendence, he had drawn with the point of his sword a circle and triangle in magic union on the bare rock. Then he ensconced himself carefully within his lines, and bade the magician “go on.”