26 
A GIUA THROUGH SICILY. 
What save the contemplation of the future ? Yet it seemed 
as if in his midnight watches he must sometimes feel unde¬ 
fined terrors check the flo w of his blood; that the rustling of 
the night air among the folds of the shrouds, and the drop¬ 
ping asunder of skeleton forms ; the sudden grating of the 
doors, when moaning gusts of wind swung them open upon 
their hinges ; the dry rattling of fleshless jaws, the gnawing 
of bones by the vermin, the sepulchral gloom, must some¬ 
times startle him from his reveries like a coming solution of 
the dread mystery. Who can tell—not even himself—of all 
the strange thoughts that flit through his brain in the dreary 
watches of the night ;—what weird visions he sees of life 
brought back again into those ghastly corpses *5 what faint 
moans rise from out the darkness—moans for lives misspent, 
and never more to return upon earth ; wild bursts of anguish 
for errors that can never be retrieved, prayers for one drop of 
mercy before the day of eternal doom ! In these dread, dark 
hours, I thought how the cold sweat must gather upon his 
brow, and the strength forsake him, and the clammy grasp 
of the unseen hand—the skeleton hand that never relents for 
youth or beauty, for fame or virtue—draw tight around his 
throat, and make his breath come thick and short, and his 
eyes stare affrighted, like the sightless orbs of the dead along 
the walls. 
From the conversation of the monk, I learnt that these 
catacombs are supported by contributions from the relatives 
of the deceased, who pay annually a certain sum for the pre¬ 
servation of the bodies. Each new-comer is placed in a tem¬ 
porary niche, and afterward removed to a permanent place, 
where he is permitted to remain as long as the contributions 
continue ; but when the customary fees are not forthcoming 
the corpses are thrown aside on a shelf, where they lie till the 
relatives think proper to have them set up again. Whole 
shelves are filled with skulls and bodies of the dead, put out 
of the way to make room for others of a more profitable 
character. 
It might be supposed that the air of the catacombs is in 
some degree affected by the fresh bodies ; but this is not the 
