orching silence. Oh!--
But I shall come to that in time. Now let me hasten; the hours are less
tardy than I, and they bring with them my last.

Thought of this day--sole pageant defiling through memory--was startled
again by the far, sweet sound of a bell, some bell ringing twilight out
and evening in across the wide Campagna. I wondered what delayed Lenore.
Did it take so long to toss off the cloudy back-falling veil, to wrap in
any long cloak her gown of white damask and all the sheen of her milky
pearl-dusters and fiery rubies? I thought with exultation then of what
she was so soon to see,--of the route through sunken ruins, down wells
forsaken of their pristine sources and hidden by masses of moss, winding
with the faint light in our hands through the awful ways and avenues of
the catacombs. The scene grew real to me, as I mused. Alone, what should
I fear? These silent hosts encamped around would but have cheered their
child. But with her, every murmur becomes a portent of danger, every
current of air gives me fresh tremors; as we pass casual openings into
the sky, the vault of air, the glint of stars, shall seem a malignant
face; I fancy to hear impossible footsteps behind us, some bone that
crumbling falls from its shelf makes my heart beat high, her dear hand
trembles in my hold, and, full of a new and superstitious awe, I half
fear this ancient population of the graves will rise and surround us
with phantom array. Now and then, a cold, lonely wind, blowing from no
one knows where, rises and careers past us, piercing to the marrow. I
think, too, of that underground space, half choked with rubbish, into
which we are to emerge at last, once the hall of some old Roman revel. I
see the troubled flashes flung from the flaring torch over our assembly.
Alert and startled, I see Lenore listen to the names as if they summoned
the wraiths and not the bodies of men whom she had supposed to be lost
in the pampas of Paraguay, dead in the Papal prisons, sheltered in
English homes, or tossing far away on the long voyages of the Pacific
seas. I see myself at length taking the torch from its niche and
restoring it, as a hundred times before, to Pietro da Valambo, while
it glitters on some strange object looking in at the vine-clad opening
above with its breaths of air, serpent or hare, or the large face and
slow eyes of a browsing buffalo. And as I think, lo! an echo in the
house, a dull tramp in the hall, a stealthy tread in the