uld not feel otherwise, and calls up ideas as a
February sunbeam calls gnats out of the dead earth and sets them
spinning.

I venture up the stone staircase, although most of the finely carved
balusters are gone, and the arch-stones have so slipped out of place
that they seem to cling together by the will of Providence rather than
by any physical law. The stairs themselves, although of fine stone
that has almost the polish of marble, are cracked as if an earthquake
had tormented them, and worn by the tread of innumerable feet into
deep hollows. I reach a landing where a long corridor stretches away
into semi-darkness. The floor is black with dirt, and so are the doors
which once opened into rooms where luxury waited upon some who were
born, and upon others (perchance the same) who died. A sound reaches
me from the far-end of the corridor that makes me feel like a coward.
It is the raving of a madman. How he seems to be contending with all
the fiends of hell! Sometimes his voice is so low, and the words crowd
one upon another so fast, that the muttering is like the prolonged
growl of a wild beast; then the mood changes, and the unseen man seems
to be addressing an invisible audience in grand sonorous sentences as
though he were a Cicero; and perhaps he may be, but as he speaks in
_patois_ his eloquence is lost upon me. What a terrible excitement is
in his voice! How it thrills and horrifies! And he is alone, quite
alone in this dismal old house with the fiends who harass him. This I
learn from a young girl whom I meet at the bottom of the staircase.
She tells me that the man is only mad at the time of the new or the
full moon (I forget which), and that his raving lasts but two or three
days. Then nobody ventures near him; but at other times he is quite
rational and harmless. He has left, however, upon me an impression
more lasting perhaps than that of the old tottering staircase that
threatens to close up every moment like a toy snake that has been
stretched out.

Most of the old houses are entered by Gothic doorways, and the oak
doors are studded with large nail-heads. The locks and bolts are of
mediaeval workmanship. Sometimes you see an iron ring hanging to a
string that has been passed through a hole in the door. It is just
such a string as Little Red Riding-hood (an old French fable,
by-the-bye) pulled to lift the latch at the summons of the wicked
wolf. And what a variety of ancient knockers have we here! Many ar