I saw before me a long vaulted corridor devoid of all ornaments. The moon shone faintly in through some windows, and there was light enough to enable one to see that the corridor was empty. The moonlight was so sharply reflected from the snowy walls and partly from the floor paved with smooth, alternately white and black, diamond-shaped stones, that I could tell every cloud that passed over the moon.
I entered the corridor; but to my astonishment a peculiar cold blew on me, as though it were open at the other end. I went on through it until I came to a point where it joined another corridor at a right angle. This second corridor was empty, too. I went through that, and coming to a third corridor, I thought I came to the entrance to the main hall. But in place of the door through which I had in past years so often entered the hall unnoticed, I found merely a bare wall. I went on, therefore, to the corner; but here I discovered a fourth corridor, forming a right angle with the third.
There was no doubt that, during the few years since I had visited the palace, many changes must have taken place. The location of the corridors must have been altered, and the entrance to the hall destroyed or removed. I went through the fourth corridor, but found no door, no exit. At the same time I discovered that the corridors through which I had gone formed a rectangular parallelogram. Thus, from the fourth corridor I passed into the first. Judging by the light, I thought I was in the corridor which I entered from the antechamber; but I could not find any more the door through which I came, and which had been mysteriously shut behind me. For several minutes I searched for a door in the walls, but in vain. I wondered how all this was possible, and finally I became convinced that I was in a series of corridors from which there could be no escape until my friend should think it best to utter his magical “Efetta!”
I must confess that I was surprised by this introduction into these arts. To entice a man in the night from his home, under a pretext that he is to come to a banquet, to lead him into a palace, let him enter through an open gate, and then decoy him into a
