1826.] A True Adventure. 279 



tlierc was no prospect of a better lodging for the niglit tlian her osleria 

 afforded. We had no resource tlien, and, fairly worn out with hunger 

 and fatigue, I gladly followed the beldame through a spacious stone 

 entrance hall, from whence various passages diverged, into one of the 

 latter; and, after a short pause, halted at the foot of a drop ladder, by 

 which I was requested to precede my hostess into my apartment for the 

 night. This apartment in no way corresponded to its mode of entrance. 

 It had evidently formed part of one of those chateaux so common in 

 the middle ages to frontier countries and mountainous districts, where 

 every feudal lord was independent in the fastnesses of his own strong 

 hold. Many of these yet exist in the loftier range of the Grisons, and 

 I had passed the ruins of more, beetling amidst the rocky defiles of the 

 Haute Engadine. They seem to be the last link of that heavy chain of 

 despotism which so lojig enslaved tlie moral energies of a whole people ; 

 the last visible memorial of those ages of darkness and ruin, to which 

 themselves are now hastening. It was a long narrow and lofty saloon 

 into which we entered. A straw mattress lay at the further end, which 

 with a chair or two of faded fanciful embroidery and an old table, was 

 the sole furniture. There was that damp, charnel-house smell, which so 

 well indicates the empire of desertion and neglect ; the candle flickered 

 in the dank vapour, which seemed to resent this invasion of its habitual 

 gloom ; the voice sounded hollow and unearthly ; the foot clanked un- 

 seemly on the black oaken floor. The walls were rudely wainscoted, but, 

 from the remnants of some tattered hangings, appeared originally to 

 have been tapestried. A rude stone abutment at the extremity had 

 filled up an old bay window, in which were cut two narrow loop-holes, sub- 

 stituted for windows. " It will be quite a different thing, Signor, when 

 the fire is kindled," said my departing hostess. I gazed at the carved 

 lofty frontal and yawning vacancy of the hearth ; my anticipations of 

 cheerfulness and warmth from such a quarter were not so sanguine, and 

 in a moment I was left in darkness, to my own reflexions. I cannot say 

 how long I remained a tenant of one of the old arm-chairs, half musing, 

 half dozing before the cheerless fire-place, but I remember being startled 

 by a steady ray of light bursting close upon me, and which on inspection 

 I found proceeded from a sliding pannel-door on one side of me, wliich 

 had been imperfectly closed. I pushed it back, and found myself in a 

 small apartment, flooded with the moonlight, and promising from con- 

 trast all that comfort and snugness, which had long since deserted the 

 saloon. The same close smell indeed pervaded it, but not the same air 

 of total abandonment. It was clothed with faded green hangings, and a 

 bed of similar furniture occupied a great portion of it ; it seemed origi- 

 nally to have served as an oratory, for in one corner there was a stone 

 table surmounted by a cross, an empty niche for the patron saint, and 

 an iron bracket and chain, from which a lamp had been suspended. The 

 curtains were carefully closed around the bed, and the light streaming 

 through a deep-set oriel window, of which the rude transept of stone- 

 work alone remained, fell upon an open missal and a crucifix on its seat ; 

 and hard by on the floor lay a lamp, which from the dusky stain around 

 had been overthrown hastily. I unclosed the curtains — and whether 

 from the force of a heated imagination, or the peculiar effect and influ- 

 ence of the light and shadow, or the accidental arrangement of the bed- 

 clothes, it was as though a corpse was huddled together under that 

 coverlid. It was the work of a moment to destroy this horrible surmise, 



