Note: Translator Pauline Bancroft Flach died in 1966, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.
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She did not know that people were raising an altar,
lighting charcoal, strewing incense, and that the
emperor was taking one of the doves out of the cage
to make a sacrifice to her. But his hands were so
benumbed that he could not hold the bird. With a
single flap of her wings the dove freed herself, and
disappeared into the darkness of the night.
When that happened, the courtiers looked
suspiciously at the old sibyl. They thought that it
was she who was the cause of the misfortune.
Could they know that the sibyl still thought she
was standing by the shepherds’ fire, and that she
was now listening to a faint sound which came
vibrating through the dead silence of the night? She had
heard it for a long time before she noticed that it
came from the sky, and not from the earth. At
last she raised her head, and saw bright, glistening
forms gliding about up in the darkness. They were
small bands of angels, who, singing, and apparently
searching, flew up and down the wide plain.
While the sibyl listened to the angels’ song, the
emperor was preparing for a new sacrifice. He
washed his hands, purified the altar, and grasped the
other dove. But although he now made a special
effort to hold it fast, the bird slipped through his
fingers, and swung itself up into the impenetrable
night.
The emperor was appalled. He fell on his knees
before the empty altar and prayed to his genius.
He called on him for strength to avert the
misfortunes which this night seemed to portend.
Nothing of all this had the sibyl heard. She was
listening with her whole soul to the angels’ song,
which was growing stronger and stronger. At last
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