which he would be sure to recognize. Had
they put my name on the coffin-lid? I wondered. Yes, there it
was--painted on the wood in coarse, black letters, "FABIO ROMANI"--then
followed the date of my birth; then a short Latin inscription, stating
that I had died of cholera on August 15, 1884. That was yesterday--only
yesterday! I seemed to have lived a century since then.

I turned to look at my father's resting-place. The velvet on his coffin
hung from its sides in moldering remnants--but it was not so utterly
damp-destroyed and worm-eaten as the soaked and indistinguishable
material that still clung to the massive oaken chest in the next niche,
where SHE lay--she from whose tender arms I had received my first
embrace--she in whose loving eyes I had first beheld the world! I knew
by a sort of instinct that it must have been with the frayed fragments
on her coffin that my fingers had idly played in the darkness. I
counted as before the bits of metal--eight bits length-wise, and four
bits across--and on my father's close casket there were ten silver
plates lengthwise and five across. My poor little mother! I thought of
her picture--it hung in my library at home; the picture of a young,
smiling, dark-haired beauty, whose delicate tint was as that of a peach
ripening in the summer sun. All that loveliness had decayed into--what?
I shuddered involuntarily--then I knelt humbly before those two sad
hollows in the cold stone, and implored the blessing of the dead and
gone beloved ones to whom, while they lived, my welfare had been dear.
While I occupied this kneeling position the flame of my torch fell
directly on some small object that glittered with remarkable luster. I
went to examine it; it was a jeweled pendant composed of one large
pear-shaped pearl, set round with fine rose brilliants! Surprised at
this discovery, I looked about to see where such a valuable gem could
possible have come from I then noticed an unusually large coffin lying
sideways on the ground; it appeared as if it had fallen suddenly and
with force, for a number of loose stones and mortar were sprinkled near
it. Holding the light close to the ground, I observed that a niche
exactly below the one in which _I_ had been laid was empty, and that a
considerable portion of the wall there was broken away. I then
remembered that when I had sprung so desperately out of my narrow box I
had heard something fall with a crash beside me, This was the thing,
then--this