“While I was yet under the first confused and shuddering impression of this doubt, my guide came back with a powerful solar lamp, and, seeing me stand beside the body, said sharply:—­

“’Well, Signore, you look as if you had never seen a dead man before in all your life!’

“‘I have seen plenty,’ I replied, ’but never one so young, and so handsome.’

“‘He dropped down quite suddenly,’ said he, volunteering the information, ’and died in a few minutes.  ’Then finding that I remained silent, added:—­

“‘But I am told that it is always so in cases of heart-disease.’

“’I turned away without replying, and, having placed the lamp to my satisfaction, began rapidly sketching in my subject.  My instructions were simple.  I was to give the head only; to produce as rapid an effect with as little labor as possible; to alter nothing; to add nothing; and, above all, to be ready to leave the house before daybreak.  So I set steadily to work, and my conductor, establishing himself in an easy-chair by the fire, watched my progress for some time, and then, as the night advanced, fell profoundly asleep.  Thus, hour after hour went by, and, absorbed in my work, I painted on, unconscious of fatigue—­ might almost say with something of a morbid pleasure in the task before me.  The silence within; the raving of the wind and rain without; the solemn mystery of death, and the still more solemn mystery of crime which, as I followed out train after train of wild conjectures, grew to still deeper conviction, had each and all their own gloomy fascination.  Was it not possible, I asked myself, by mere force of will to penetrate the secret?  Was it not possible to study that dead face till the springs of thought so lately stilled within the stricken brain should vibrate once more, if only for an instant, as wire vibrates to wire, and sound to sound!  Could I not, by long studying of the passive mouth, compel some sympathetic revelation of the last word that it uttered, though that revelation took no outward form, and were communicable to the apprehension only?  Pondering thus, I lost myself in a labyrinth of fantastic reveries, till the hand and the brain worked independently of each other—­the one swiftly reproducing upon canvas the outer lineaments of the dead; the other laboring to retrace foregone facts of which no palpable evidence remained.  Thus my work progressed; thus the night waned; thus the sleeper by the fireside stirred from time to time, or moaned at intervals in his dreams.

“At length, when many hours had gone by, and I began to be conscious of the first languor of sleeplessness, I heard, or fancied I heard, a light sound in the corridor without.  I held my breath, and listened.  As I listened, it ceased—­was renewed—­drew nearer—­paused outside the door.  Involuntarily, I rose and looked round for some means of defence, in case of need.  Was I brought here to perpetuate the record of a crime, and was I, when my task was done, to be silenced in a dungeon, or a grave?  This thought flashed upon me almost before I was conscious of the horror it involved.  At the same moment, I saw the handle of the door turned slowly and cautiously—­then held back—­and then, after a brief pause, the door itself gradually opening.”