“Empty, ungodded, splintered, hung the crucifix above the high altar, from which the holy vessels had vanished.
“A fellow, dressed in black, the caricature of a monk, stood in the pulpit, howling out in a pulpit-voice:
“'Repent! The kingdom of heaven is at hand!'
“A loud neigh answered him.
“The organ-player—I saw him, he was like a demon—stood with his hands and feet on the keys and his head beat time to the ring-dance of the spirits.
“The fellow in the pulpit pulled out a book, an enormous, black book with seven locks. Whenever his fingers touched a lock it sprang up in flame and shot open.
“Murmuring incantations, he opened the cover. He bent over the book. A ring of flames suddenly stood around his head.
“From the heights of the cathedral it struck midnight. But it was as though it was not enough for the clock to proclaim the hour of demons just once. Over and over again did it strike the ghastly twelve, in dreadful, bated haste.
“The light in the cathedral changed colour. Were it possible to speak of a blackish light this would be the expression best applied to the light. Only in one place did it shine, white, gleaming, cutting, a sharply whetted sword: there where death is figured as a minstrel.
“Suddenly the organ stopped, and suddenly the dance. The voice of the preacher-fellow in the pulpit stopped. And through the silence which did not dare to breathe, rang the sound of a flute. Death was playing. The minstrel was playing the song which nobody plays after him, on his flute which was a human bone.