The abbe now drew aside the curtain which concealed the secret passage
to the library, and here, at the first step, he was met by a certain
proof, if such were wanting, to show him the credit to be given to the
countess's statements that she was in the habit of descending to the
vault: as he opened the door a mass of cobwebs blew into his face. The
countess, however, was firm in her hallucination. It is a phase of
such nervous disorders as hers to believe that what they have dreamed
is actual fact; they can even supply small details.

As the countess went up the steps she whispered to her companion--

"A window is broken here, and the wind whistles through it." And as
they turned the angle of the steps there was a narrow slip-window
which in the daytime gave light to the staircase, the panes of which
were actually broken. She had never seen this. When they came to the
door of the library she confided to the abbe that she was always
frightened to pass the threshold.

"It is such a ghostly place!" she said. "When the moon shines through
the shutter of the upper window it throws white specks upon the mosaic
pattern of the marble floor, which makes it look like some mysterious
writing. In one of the corners between two presses there is a glass
case with a skeleton in it; in another case the wax impression, taken
after death, of Ignatius Loyola."

Everything was precisely as the countess related. The moon shone
through the upper panes of glass, the skeleton stood in his glass
case, the waxen head of the dead saint lay in the other, but the
countess had never crossed the threshold. In her childhood her nurse
had told her these tales of the Bondavara Castle, and when she had
become its mistress her first care had been to lock these rooms. Ten
years' dust lay on the carpets, on the chairs and tables; cobwebs hung
from the ceilings, mice played games in the deep wainscots, for no one
ever came here.

At the moment in which the countess and her companion entered the
library a certain peace reigned in the vault below. The tumult seemed
lulled; there were neither shrieks nor demoniacal songs to be heard.
From the mortuary chapel, however, the notes of the organ reached the
ears of the two listeners. It sounded like the prelude which is played
in church before mass begins, only the chords of the prelude were all
discords; it was as if the organ were played by a condemned spirit.

The countess stood before the chapel door, her