e, I leaped out of the hateful box, and fell--fell
some little distance, bruising my hands and knees on what seemed to be
a stone pavement. Something weighty fell also, with a dull crashing
thud close to me. The darkness was impenetrable. But there was
breathing room, and the atmosphere was cool and refreshing. With some
pain and difficulty I raised myself to a sitting position where I had
fallen. My limbs were stiff and cramped as well as wounded, and I
shivered as with strong ague. But my senses were clear--the tangled
chain of my disordered thoughts became even and connected--my previous
mad excitement gradually calmed, and I began to consider my condition.
I had certainly been buried alive--there was no doubt of that. Intense
pain had, I suppose, resolved itself into a long trance of
unconsciousness--the people of the inn where I had been taken ill had
at once believed me to be dead of cholera, and with the panic-stricken,
indecent haste common in all Italy, especially at a time of plague, had
thrust me into one of those flimsy coffins which were then being
manufactured by scores in Naples--mere shells of thin deal, nailed
together with clumsy hurry and fear. But how I blessed their wretched
construction! Had I been laid in a stronger casket, who knows if even
the most desperate frenzy of my strength might not have proved
unavailing! I shuddered at the thought. Yet the question
remained--Where was I? I reviewed my case from all points, and for some
time could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion. Stay, though! I
remembered that I had told the monk my name; he knew that I was the
only descendant of the rich Romani family. What followed? Why,
naturally, the good father had only done what his duty called upon him
to do. He had seen me laid in the vault of my ancestors--the great
Romani vault that had never been opened since my father's body was
carried to its last resting-place with all the solemn pomp and
magnificence of a wealthy nobleman's funeral obsequies. The more I
thought of this the more probable it seemed. The Romani vault! Its
forbidding gloom had terrified me as a lad when I followed my father's
coffin to the stone niche assigned to it, and I had turned my eyes away
in shuddering pain when I was told to look at the heavy oaken casket
hung with tattered velvet and ornamented with tarnished silver, which
contained all that was left of my mother, who died young. I had felt
sick and faint and cold, and had only