24 A GIRA THROUGH SICILY, 
Turning away from this strange exhibition of death’s 
doings, I followed the old monk into the vaults allotted to the 
women. Here the spectacle was still more shocking and im¬ 
pressive The bodies were not placed in an upright position 
like those of the men, but were laid out at full length in 
glass cases; the walls on both sides were covered. 
The young, the gay, the beautiful, were all here, laid 
lowly in the relentless embrace of death; decked out in silken 
dresses, laces, and jewelry, as in mockery of the past. Each 
corpse had its sad history. I saw a young bride who was 
stricken down in a few brief months after her marriage. She 
was dressed in her bridal costume ; the bonnet and vail still 
on, the white gloves drawn over her skeleton fingers ; a few 
withered flowers laid upon her breast by the mourning one 
she # had left behind. Through the thin vail could be seen a 
blanched, grinning, bony face; the sunken sockets of the eyes 
marked around with the dark lines of decay ; the long hair 
drawn in luxuriant masses over her withered bosom. Another 
