the world!  I resolved to fight for existence, no matter what dire horrors should be yet in store for me.  Nina—­my love—­my beautiful one!  Her face gleamed out upon me in the pestilent gloom of the charnel-house; her eyes beckoned me—­her young faithful eyes that were now, I felt sure, drowned in weeping for my supposed death.  I seemed to see my tender-hearted darling sobbing alone in the empty silence of the room that had witnessed a thousand embraces between herself and me; her lovely hair disheveled; her sweet face pale and haggard with the bitterness of grief!  Baby Stella, too, no doubt she would wonder, poor innocent! why I did not come to swing her as usual under the orange boughs.  And Guido—­brave and true friend!  I thought of him with tenderness.  I felt I knew how deep and lasting would be his honest regret for my loss.  Oh, I would leave no means of escape untried; I would find some way out of this grim vault!  How overjoyed they would all be to see me again—­to know that I was not dead after all!  What a welcome I should receive!  How Nina would nestle into my arms; how my little child would cling to me; how Guido would clasp me by the hand!  I smiled as I pictured the scene of rejoicing at the dear old villa—­the happy home sanctified by perfect friendship and faithful love!

A deep hollow sound booming suddenly on my ears startled me—­one! two! three!  I counted the strokes up to twelve.  It was some church bell tolling the hour.  My pleasing fancies dispersed—­I again faced the drear reality of my position.  Twelve o’clock!  Midday or midnight?  I could not tell.  I began to calculate.  It was early morning when I had been taken ill—­not much past eight when I had met the monk and sought his assistance for the poor little fruit-seller who had after all perished alone in his sufferings.  Now supposing my illness had lasted some hours, I might have fallen into a trance—­died—­as those around me had thought, somewhere about noon.  In that case they would certainly have buried me with as little delay as possible—­before sunset at all events.  Thinking these points over one by one, I came to the conclusion that the bell I had just heard must have struck midnight—­the midnight of the very day of my burial.  I shivered; a kind of nervous dread stole over me.  I have always been physically courageous, but at the same time, in spite of my education, I am somewhat superstitious—­what Neapolitan is not? it runs in the southern blood.  And there was something unutterably fearful in the sound of that midnight bell clanging harshly on the ears of a man pent up alive in a funeral vault with the decaying bodies of his ancestors close within reach of his hand!  I tried to conquer my feelings—­to summon up my fortitude.  I endeavored to reason out the best method of escape.  I resolved to feel my way, if possible, to the steps of the vault, and with this idea in my mind I put out my hands and began to move along slowly and with the utmost care.  What was that?  I stopped; I listened; the blood curdled in my veins!  A shrill cry, piercing, prolonged, and melancholy, echoed through the hollow arches of my tomb.  A cold perspiration broke out all over my body—­my heart beat so loudly that I could hear it thumping against my ribs.  Again—­again—­that weird shriek, followed by a whir and flap of wings.  I breathed again.