After communicating with those about him in a low whisper, too low to be understood by others almost within his reach, one of the soldiers lifted a spear, at the point of which fluttered a blood-red banner, tufted and fringed with snow-white feathers, and pointed in silence toward a large opening, which appeared to command a view of the whole interior. The stranger drew near, and grasping one of the bars with a powerful hand, lifted himself up, and after looking awhile, turned away with a sick impatient shudder, and wiped his eyes; and then lifting himself up again, he made a signal to somebody within, and straightway a large tent-like awning was quietly withdrawn, so as to reveal the interior of a court-yard, with cells opening into it--in the nearest of which sat a princely-looking middle-aged man, half-buried and apparently half asleep or lost in thought, in a large, heavy, old-fashioned chair, with a curiously carved table before him, on which there lay, side by side with writing materials, a lamp and a letter evidently unfinished, two or three illuminated manuscripts, a dagger and a map; a massive goblet richly chased, the rough gold tinged and sweltering with the hot blood of the southern grape, a variety of strange mathematical instruments--a copy of Zoroaster--and a Hebrew Bible, with clasps of the costliest workmanship, and a cover of black velvet frosted with seed pearls--a crushed and trampled coronet--and a lighted pipe, ornamented with precious stones, the shaft a twisted serpent and the bowl a burning carbuncle--a live coal--from the core of which, as out of the midst of a perpetual, unextinguishable fire, issued a delicate perfume, filling the whole neighborhood, as with the smoke of a censer; and leaving the eye to make out--by little and little--through the fragrant vapor, first a pair of embroidered Persian slippers, then a magnificent robe, flowered all over as with the sunshine of the sea, and weltering in the changeable light of the open window, then a prodigious quantity of lustrous black hair flowing down over the shoulders, from underneath a crimson velvet cap with a diamond buckle and clasp, and a tassel of spun gold, strung with sapphire, ruby, amethyst and pearl--and a pomp of black feathers overshadowing an ample forehead of surpassing power, and eyes of untroubled splendor; and then, after a long while, a heap of black shadow lying coiled up underneath the table, from the midst of which an occasional flash, as of a serpent's tongue, or an angry sparkle--as of a serpent's eye, would appear--and at last the whole proportions of a superb-looking personage, who had been trying, hour after hour, with a compressed lip and a thoughtful determined eye--to snap what appeared to be a handful of seed pearl, one by one, through the grated window before him, without touching the bars--hour after hour--and always in vain! The passage way was too narrow--the bars too near together.