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 As you pass through the hall and along the stone corridors lit by stained-glass windows, the song of caged birds, the splash of fountains, and the distant sound of music greet your ear. You notice Latin inscriptions painted over the doors and rich decoration on all sides.

Through the windows of the spacious rooms filled with carved furniture and decorated with pictures and tapestries you catch a glimpse of a glorious view of the Swedish and Danish coast, with the towers of Copenhagen in the far distance. In the great library there are cabinets of rare and beautiful objects: the walls are lined with books: the tables are piled with papers all covered with numbers and geometrical figures: curious-looking instruments stand on the shelves: an enormous brass globe occupies one corner of the room and a complicated-looking clock, all wheels and works, stands in another. Down in the basement you find a vast apartment where masses of bottles and crucibles and retorts and glasses filled with strange-colored mixtures are ranged on shelves and tables. Who on earth lives in such a place as this? you ask the attendant. It is the Castle of Uraniborg, he tells you, the home of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe—the greatest astronomer of the age—who is known as "the noblest of the learned and the most learned of the nobles," and he whispers under his breath that he is a magician.

Laughter and the sound of animated voices reach