#353
As the sounds of the bells died away a voice began to speak from somewhere high up in the gloomy shadows above their heads. The magicians strained their ears to hear it. Many of them were now in such a state of highly-strung nervousness that they imagined that instructions were being given to them as in a fairy-tale. They thought that perhaps mysterious prohibitions were being related to them. Such instructions and prohibitions, the magicians knew from the fairy-tales, are usually a little queer, but not very difficult to conform to – or so it seems at first sight. They generally follow the style of: «Do not eat the last candied plum in the blue jar in the corner cupboard» or «Do not beat your wife with a stick made of wormwood». And yet, as all fairy-tales relate, circumstances always consipre against the person who receives the instructions and they find themselves in the middle of doing the very thing that was forbidden to them and a horrible fate is thereby brought upon their heads.
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