Beauty was to partake of the draught anew, at the same time and in the same
manner as himself, that she might awake with him, and that he might find
her charms unimpaired. All the ministers swore solemnly to observe these
regulations; firmly purposing to burn the sleeper, if sleep he ever did, at
the very first opportunity, and scatter his ashes to the winds. Then they
would fight for the Empire among themselves; each, meanwhile, was mainly
occupied in striving to gain the rebels over to his interest, insomuch that
the people grew more miserable day by day.

And as the aged Emperor waxed more and more feeble, he began to see
visions. Legions of little black imps surrounded him crying, "We are thy
sins, and would be punished--would'st thou by living for ever deprive us
of our due?" And fair female forms came veiled with drooping heads, and
murmured, "We are thy virtues, and would be rewarded--would'st thou cheat
us?" And other figures came, dark but lovely, and whispered, "We are thy
dead friends who have long waited for thee--would'st thou take to thyself
new friends, and forget us?" And others said, "We are thy memories--wilt
thou live on till we are all withered in thy heart?" And others said, "We
are thy strength and thy beauty, thy memory and thy wit--canst thou live,
knowing thou wilt never see us more?" And at last came two warders,
officers of the King of Death, and one of them was laughing. And the other
asked why he laughed, and he replied:

"I laugh at the Emperor, who thinks to escape our master, not knowing that
the moment of his decease was engraved with a pen of iron upon a rock of
adamant a million million years or ever this world was."

"And when comes it?" asked the other.

"In ten minutes," said the first.