th of the couplets, and not
from a perception of the double edge down the length of them.

As Luigi was coming to the terminating line, the door opened. A very
handsome sullen young woman, of the dark, thick-browed Lombard type,
asked what was wanted; at the same time the deep voice of a man;
conjecturally rising from a lower floor, called, and a lock was rattled.
The woman told Luigi to enter. He sent a glance behind him; he had
evidently been drained of his sprightliness in a second; he moved in
with the slackness of limb of a gibbeted figure. The door shut; the
woman led him downstairs. He could not have danced or sung a song now
for great pay. The smell of mouldiness became so depressing to him that
the smell of leather struck his nostrils refreshingly. He thought: "Oh,
Virgin! it's dark enough to make one believe in every single thing they
tell us about the saints." Up in the light of day Luigi had a turn for
careless thinking on these holy subjects.

Barto Rizzo stood before him in a square of cellarage that was furnished
with implements of his craft, too dark for a clear discernment of
features.

"So, here you are!" was the greeting Luigi received.

It was a tremendous voice, that seemed to issue from a vast cavity.
"Lead the gentleman to my sitting-room," said Barto. Luigi felt the wind
of a handkerchief, and guessed that his eyes were about to be bandaged
by the woman behind him. He petitioned to be spared it, on the plea,
firstly, that it expressed want of confidence; secondly, that it took
him in the stomach. The handkerchief was tight across his eyes while
he was speaking. His hand was touched by the woman, and he commenced
timidly an ascent of stairs. It continued so that he would have sworn
he was a shorter time going up the Motterone; then down, and along a
passage; lower down, deep into corpse-climate; up again, up another
enormous mountain; and once more down, as among rats and beetles, and
down, as among faceless horrors, and down, where all things seemed
prostrate and with a taste of brass. It was the poor fellow's nervous
imagination, preternaturally excited. When the handkerchief was caught
away, his jaw was shuddering, his eyes were sickly; he looked as if
impaled on the prongs of fright. It required just half a minute to
reanimate this mercurial creature, when he found himself under the
light of two lamps, and Barto Rizzo fronting him, in a place so like the
square of cellarage which he had be