Looming afar
through the mists of time, the little fact had become a gigantic vision.
Yes, here it was in miniature, all that he had dreamed of; a palace of
four feet high!
"You have the key of this palace," said Alice; "it has waited--that is,
its secret and precious chamber has, for you to open it, these three
hundred years. Do you know how to find that secret chamber?"
Middleton, still in that dreamy mood, threw open an inner door of the
cabinet, and applying the old-fashioned key at his watch-chain to a hole
in the mimic pavement within, pressed one of the mosaics, and immediately
the whole floor of the apartment sank, and revealed a receptacle within.
Alice had come forward eagerly, and they both looked into the
hiding-place, expecting what should be there. It was empty! They looked
into each other's faces with blank astonishment. Everything had been so
strangely true, and so strangely false, up to this moment, that they
could not comprehend this failure at the last moment. It was the
strangest, saddest jest! It brought Middleton up with such a sudden
revulsion that he grew dizzy, and the room swam round him and the cabinet
dazzled before his eyes. It had been magnified to a palace; it had
dwindled down to Liliputian size; and yet, up till now, it had seemed to
contain in its diminutiveness all the riches which he had attributed to
its magnitude.
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