It
resembles at once the barking of a dog and the howl of a wolf; it
consists of the hooting of the screech-owl, the yelling of a ravenous
wild beast, and the fearful hiss of a serpent. It borrows somewhat from
the roar of tempestuous waves, the hollow rushing of the winds among the
branches of the forest, and the tremendous crash of deafening thunder.

"Ye Furies," she cries, "and dreadful Styx, ye sufferings of the damned,
and Chaos, for ever eager to destroy the fair harmony of worlds, and
thou, Pluto, condemned, to an eternity of ungrateful existence, Hell,
and Elysium, of which no Thessalian witch shall partake, Proserpine, for
ever cut off from thy health-giving mother, and horrid Hecate, Cerberus
curst with incessant hunger, ye Destinies, and Charon endlessly
murmuring at the task I impose of bringing back the dead again to the
land of the living, hear me!--if I call on you with a voice sufficiently
impious and abominable, if I have never sung this chaunt, unsated with
human gore, if I have frequently laid on your altars the fruit of the
pregnant mother, bathing its contents with the reeking brain, if I have
placed on a dish before you the head and entrails of an infant on the
point to be born----

"I ask not of you a ghost, already a tenant of the Tartarean abodes, and
long familiarised to the shades below, but one who has recently quitted
the light of day, and who yet hovers over the mouth of hell; let him
hear these incantations, and immediately after descend to his destined
place! Let him articulate suitable omens to the son of his general,
having so late been himself a soldier of the great Pompey! Do this, as
you love the very sound and rumour of a civil war!"

Saying this, behold, the ghost of the dead man stood erect before her,
trembling at the view of his own unanimated limbs, and loth to enter
again the confines of his wonted prison. He shrinks to invest himself
with the gored bosom, and the fibres from which death had separated him.
Unhappy wretch, to whom death had not given the privilege to die!
Erichtho, impatient at the unlooked-for delay, lashes the unmoving
corpse with one of her serpents. She calls anew on the powers of hell,
and threatens to pronounce the dreadful name, which cannot be
articulated without consequences never to be thought of, nor without the
direst necessity to be ventured upon.

At length the congealed blood becomes liquid and warm; it oozes from the
wounds, and creeps stea