I opened my eyes to discover whence the sounds had come, and even as the light streamed from unknown and unseen sources, so it was with the harmonies which followed, harmonies surpassing in beauty and swelling glory anything I had ever heard before.

And to these magnificent but soft and soothing strains I yielded myself up and slept.  How long my sleep continued I have no means of knowing.  It seemed to last but an instant, but when I opened my eyes once more I felt absolutely renewed in body and in spirit.  The damp garments which I had worn when I fell back upon the couch had in some wise been removed, and when I stood up to indulge in the usual stretching of my limbs I found myself clad in an immaculate flowing robe of white, soft of texture, fastened at the neck with a jewelled brooch, and at the waist its fulness restrained by a girdle of gold.  Furthermore, I had apparently been put through a process of ablution which left me with the cockles of my heart as warm as toast, and my whole being permeated with a glow of health which I had not known for many years.  The aches in my bones, which I had feared on waking to find intensified, were gone; and if I could have retained permanently the aspect of vigor and beauty which was returned to me by the mirror when I stood before it, I should be in imminent danger of becoming conceited.

“I wonder,” said I, as I gazed at myself in the mirror, “if this is the correct costume for breakfast.  It’s a slight drawback to know nothing of the customs of the locality in which you find yourself.  Possibly an investigation of my new wardrobe will help me to decide.”

I looked over the rich garments which had been provided, and found nothing which, according to my simple bringing up, suggested the idea that it was a good thing to wear at the morning meal.

“They ought to send me a valet,” I murmured.  “Perhaps they will if I ring for one.  Where the deuce is the bell, I wonder?”

A search of the room soon divulged the resting-place of this desirable adjunct to the tourist’s comfort.  The dial system which has proved so successful in American hotels was in vogue here, except that it manifested a willingness on the part of the proprietor to provide the guest with a range of articles utterly beyond anything to be found in the purely mundane caravansary.  I found that anything under the canopy that the mind of man could conceive of could be had by the mere pushing of a button.  The disk of the electrical apparatus was divided off into many sections, calling respectively for saddle-horses, symphony concerts, ocean steamships, bath-towels, stenographers; cocktails of all sorts, and some sorts of which I had never before heard, and all of which I resolved to try in discreet sequence; manicures, chiropodists, astrologers, prophets, clergymen of all denominations, plots for novelists—­indeed, anything that any person in any station of life might chance to desire could be got for the ringing.