At length, on reaching the tenth hall, I thought I recognised some of the forms I had seen dancing in my dream; and to my bewilderment, when I arrived at the extreme corner on the left, there stood, the only one I had yet seen, a vacant pedestal.

It was exactly in the position occupied, in my dream, by the pedestal on which the white lady stood.

Hope beat violently in my heart.
"Now," said I to myself, "if yet another part of the dream would but come true, and I should succeed in surprising these forms in their nightly dance; it might be the rest would follow, and I should see on the pedestal my marble queen.

Then surely if my songs sufficed to give her life before, when she lay in the bonds of alabaster, much more would they be sufficient then to give her volition and motion, when she alone of assembled crowds of marble forms, would be standing rigid and cold." But the difficulty was, to surprise the dancers.

I had found that a premeditated attempt at surprise, though executed with the utmost care and rapidity, was of no avail.